I genuinely don't understand the point of this article. It seems to be that, because technology companies are partnering with businesses in other industries, they're somehow betraying the "disruptive" culture of the technology industry.<p>Is it so hard to believe that you might want to partner with GSK for bioelectronics research? Regardless of your opinions on GSK or the pharmaceutical industry in general, where else would you find that many scientists and researchers who can actually do the work? Sure Google could set up a recruiting blitz and try to raid the pharmaceutical industry, but they have little to no expertise as it is (I assume), so why <i>wouldn't</i> you want to work with someone who does?<p>Same thing with Chrysler. Why would Google want to start out in the automotive industry with a huge capital outlay to build a factory, staff it, etc.?<p>Sure, if these things take off and there's real money to be made, maybe it makes sense to take the work in-house, through development or acquisitions (e.g. Motorola), but I don't know why it's somehow "bad" to partner with companies who have expertise you don't.
When was ever Silicon Valley was going to be or has been disruptive to capitalism?
It was always about mega corporations, bubbles and venture capital...<p>If anything SV did was to "enhance" capitalism as it centralized capital arguably even more than the financial sector, it's super easy to inflate valuations hence generating capital and it requires almost no initial investment and very low operating costs.<p>SV doesn't build huge factories, it doesn't create "tangible" assets, and it requires almost no workforce (compared to other industries) to operate.<p>5 guys in a garage birthing billion dollar companies isn't disruptive to capitalism it is it's wet dream; "you telling me I don't have to build multi-billion dollar factories and employ 150K workers to create a 10bln dollar company?! where do i sign?!"<p>EDIT: As for the article itself, the title is just odd, SV vs "big pharma" has nothing to do with capitalism.
SV (or the "startup scene") was never really good at disrupting markets that require decades of research and tons of "actual work", software is quick and easy to make, if you can easily wrap it around an existing business model or idea you got a product which is relatively quick and easy to launch.
SV can't easily take on the pharmaceutical industry because it's modus operandi is antithetical to the drug industry.
This is the same reason why no one in SV was really taking on companies like Intel or NVIDIA or even the likes of Altera or Qualcomm because you can't "hack" your way into making silicon without doing decades of R&D.<p>"Hardware" (or if we shall call a duck a duck then "software as a dongle/thingie") startups are now becoming sort of a thing because cheap, small, powerful and power efficient general purpose silicon is now dirt cheap and available everywhere.
Additionally there are tons of chip design/fabrication companies that would create semi-custom silicon for you within a span of a few weeks without you having to really do anything you just define what you want your SOC to do and look like and you get it in the mail 6 weeks later.<p>SV can still innovate in the medical scene primarily around the edge and core technologies like deep learning, simulating biochemistry and protein folding health information management and the such.
But even then this won't really be traditional SV startups as the majority of them will grow for the academia because you still need research in very specific fields and not a good idea for an app and a few programmers.
The aim of silicon valley companies, or any other company for that matter, is to make a profit. Sometimes, to profit, you disrupt, other times, you partner. This whole notion that the valley is anti capitalist seems unsubstantiated.