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Judy Estrin, who has built several Silicon Valley companies and was the chief technology officer of Cisco Systems, says Silicon Valley is in trouble. In a new book, “Closing the Innovation Gap,” which will be in bookstores Tuesday, she writes that the valley’s problems are symptomatic of a crisis in innovation facing the country as a whole.

“Starting in 1998, there was such a shift in Silicon Valley toward chasing money and short-term returns,” she said.

　3年間休暇もろくに取らずに働いたあと、1年休んで世界を放浪したり、小説を書いたりといった働き方をする人は「チャンクワーカー」と呼ばれる。ライフスタイル重視の働き方をする人は「ライフスタイルワーカー」だ。例えば、渡辺さんの知人に「好きな場所に住んで仕事をしたい」というプログラマーがいる。半年に1回くらい営業活動のためにシリコンバレーに戻ってくるが、それ以外の時期はスペインの孤島など、世界中の好きな場所に行って仕事をしている。このような人たちは、シリコンバレーでは決して特殊ではない。

シリコンバレーで重視されているのは、人的ネットワークである。優秀な研究者、技術者、起業家予備軍、有能なベンチャー・キャピタリスト、ビジネスで功成り名を遂げて後進の起業家予備軍を支援するエンジェルが、産学の垣根を越えてネットワークを作っている。ソーシャル･キャピタルが形成されているのである。

Eric Schmidt: "His contribution to Google - it is literally not possible to overstate. He essentially architected the organizational structure."

Steve Jobs: "There's something deeply human about him."

Campbell began by asking Schmidt what Google's most interesting problems were. One was building out the executive team. So Campbell got to work, coming in at least once a week as the only non-Googler attending Google's Monday meeting of the executive management group and, often, the Tuesday product-pitch meetings. His outside perspective helped Google set up a product management group that didn't step on the toes of the engineers. Campbell also has worked with Schmidt on everything from how to run a staff meeting to which topics deserve coverage at a board meeting to helping deal with Google's maturation as a company. "I'll say, 'What should we talk about at the meeting?' and he'll say the three most interesting things and the tone," Schmidt says. "We work as a tag team."

Thanks in part to Campbell's influence on hiring at Google, being supersmart isn't the only criterion for getting a top job there; you also have to play well with others. Campbell doesn't necessarily say much - unless he disagrees with something. "He's careful," says Schmidt. "He's not trying to overwhelm the management team. But you'd ask, 'What do you think about this candidate?' and he'd go, 'Ehhhhh ... no. There's something wrong with his character.'" Schmidt says Campbell has helped build Google's board (which shares two directors with Apple, Genentech's Arthur Levinson and Schmidt). Campbell has also helped defuse internal political problems, as when Chris Sacca, Google's former head of special initiatives, had a conflict with another executive. "It didn't take 15 seconds before he said, 'I'm not gonna lie to you; this guy is not a fan of yours,'" Sacca recalls. The two executives then proceeded to work through their differences.

In fact, Campbell has served as the secret glue helping bind Schmidt to two other rather important executives, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, enabling them to make decisions together despite their sometimes radically different perspectives. He has helped mold a process by which the three work out issues privately, then come together as a united front behind the best choice. Note: This is not consensus-building. "No one was selling out," Sacca says. "They had just been taught this amazing art of decision-making where you express your dissent, lobby each other, hear everyone out, and then get to a decision. There's no doubt that it was all Coach." Recently Campbell has been logging time at YouTube, which Google bought in 2006, meeting regularly with CEO Chad Hurley, and helping find a balance between keeping its own identity and adopting some of Google's methods. "He's the perfect guy," says Schmidt. "It's growing dramatically and full of young managers, and he's seen this 15 times. He walks in the room at YouTube, and everybody smiles."

While all the testimonials speak of Campbell as a quasi-religious force for good in Silicon Valley, it's fair to ask whether his close and confidential relationships create a clubby atmosphere that is not always sufficiently transparent to stockholders. At Google, for example, he is a free agent beholden to no one, who possesses more strategic intelligence about the company than virtually anyone besides the CEO and founders, and he is the only outsider to regularly attend board meetings. According to Schmidt, Campbell knew for a year that a key employee was suffering from a serious illness but didn't tell Schmidt about it. (The employee recovered.) Schmidt shrugs it off, believing Campbell's respect for the employee's privacy was the right call. "He is my closest confidant," says Schmidt, "because he is the definition of trust." Another potential concern over Campbell's manifold connections to other Valley powerhouses is that it could be a threat to company secrets. Yet his colleagues see his network as a plus. Says Intuit's Cook: "What could be better than having a guy around who has insights into companies as hot as Google?"

Significantly, viral-loop networks don't create content -- they organize it. They provide an environment that is, in theory, almost infinitely scalable, and then rely on the wisdom of crowds to create or aggregate masses of material to fill it. The more people, the more content, the more powerful the lure for those sitting on the sidelines. "The viral adoption model" is the "cheapest way to grow an audience," says Union Square Ventures' Wilson. At no time in history has it been possible to market to so many by starting with so little.