Smart people

This article postulates on why Silicon Valley is the way it is (it's the smart people).

Paul's thesis is that it takes the right people – nothing more. "If you could get the right ten thousand people to move from Silicon Valley to Buffalo," he says, "Buffalo would become Silicon Valley." In a footnote he adds that perhaps the number of people you need could be as low as 500 or so.

I know I've seen something similar with our Ft. Collins, CO engineering office. The entire area is populated with smart technical people for various reasons. One can start a company there and staff it with smart people easier than Clovis/Fresno--even though Ft. Collins itself is 1/4 the population.

This concept applies to companies too. If you can hire a critical mass of smart people, you can do great things. If you can't..