What Europe still has to learn from the US in academic innovation

Can we learn anything from ongoing high-tech success stories coming from the US in the last half-century? Europe and the rest of the world have tried to understand and copy technology clusters such as Silicon Valley and the Boston Area without much success. It is now generally acknowledged that it is not possible to copy and paste the American model on the Old Continent, but that does not mean that efforts should not be renewed. New lessons might be learnt from these failures. First, technology innovation is a culture; it is not a process that can be planned. Secondly, high-tech entrepreneurship requires a combination of human and financial resources, which are very different from those needed in traditional industries. If we can agree upon these lessons, Europe might be in a position to fight back.