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Why birds of a tech feather flock together

IN THE LATE 19th century Alfred Marshall, a founding father of modern economics, asked why firms in the same industry were often geographically near each other. Proximity, he said, created something “in the air”: “…if one man starts a new idea, it is taken up by others and combined with suggestions of their own; and thus it becomes the source of further new ideas.”

Marshall was thinking about Victorian manufacturing, but the same is true of the information-technology companies of the 2010s. Silicon Valley is home to many of the industry’s giants, and hopeful founders of young start-ups still head for northern California. A certain Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard for Palo Alto as soon as he got the chance. Others beat a path to newer hubs, such as Berlin, London, Moscow, New York or Tel Aviv.

Economic theory suggests four main reasons why firms in the same industry end up in the same place. First, some may depend on natural resources, such as a coalfield or a harbour. Second, a concentration of firms creates a pool of specialised labour that benefits both workers and employers: the former are likely to find jobs and the latter are likely to find staff. Third, subsidiary trades spring up to supply specialised inputs. Fourth, ideas spill over from one firm to the next, as Marshall observed. But there are also forces that encourage companies to spread out. One is the cost of transporting their products to widely dispersed customers. Another is rents, which rise when firms cluster together.

You might imagine that the dramatic fall in the cost of communications and computing would have pushed firms in the information-technology industry (among others) farther apart. Natural resources do not matter to them; all they need is a good internet connection. The ease of online communication should reduce the need for their people to be close together in order to work, to deal with customers and suppliers or to swap ideas. Young companies really can pick their spot. That would seem to count against Silicon Valley, where premises are costly, and against London and New York, which are not only expensive but also lack California’s high-tech history. Berlin is cheaper, but there are plenty of places all over Europe where costs are lower.

Yet although you can find tech companies of all shapes and sizes almost anywhere, the smaller ones especially have a fondness for huddling together. Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist, puts this down mainly to the continuing attraction of a deep pool of skilled labour. “The less an industry needs to be near natural resources, its suppliers or its customers,” he says, “the more it’s likely to cluster where its workers want to live.”