[russell]

I think it does. It's the culture the leakees take with them. DEC tried to stamp out entrepreneurialism, but most of the SV companies tolerated it or encouraged it. My first customer at my first startup was a former employer. When I moved to SV from Boston decades ago, I remember how impressed I was with the informality, no suits, ties, deference, that kind of stuff. Equally impressive was the infrastructure, from Wilson, Sonsini to Frys to an entrepreneurs club to all the little companies that had just what you needed.

[edgefield]

If you look around Silicon Valley, you see a lot of companies that have a culture similar to HP in its heydays, when the "HP Way" was still going strong. HP was one of the early companies to succeed in the Valley. I suspect other early companies in the Valley also had strong cultural influences on startups in the Valley. We know, for instance, that many startups emerge from individuals that worked for established companies, and what better way to transmit a culture than through individuals leaving one company and starting another.