Globalization, Movement of Intellectual Capital and Innovation – The Russian Case

One of the least discussed aspects of globalization is the movement of highly trained and talented international scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs to U.S. innovation centers like Silicon Valley and Boston. An unintended byproduct of the U.S. Immigration Reform Act of 1965, large numbers of talented and ambitious South Asians, Taiwanese and Israelis, among others, were attracted to move to these innovation centers. Later, in the chaos of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian and other ex-Soviet scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs joined the global movement of intellectual talent to the U.S. The terms of global competition to attract and retain human intellectual capital are changing and as they do, there are important insights from the Russian Case into the global movement of human capital and the relationship of this movement to technology innovation. Based on in-depth interviews with 157 Russian-speaking immigrants in the tech sectors of Silicon Valley and Boston/Cambridge, the authors of Hammer and Silicon – The Soviet Diaspora in the U.S. Innovation Economy examined the role of U.S. and Soviet, then Russian government immigration policy and the experience of immigration for the real people who comprise human intellectual capital, as will be discussed and summarized in this presentation.

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