Learn How To Build Your Own Silicon Valley

March 5, 2013 - PRLog -- Portola Valley, California – T2 Venture Capital (T2VC), a Silicon Valley venture firm, launches its monthly series Rainforest Architects, the world’s first course designed to teach people how to build innovation ecosystems. A first workshop was successfully held in Silicon Valley on January 9 – 11, 2013.  The next workshop will take place on April 22 – 24, 2013, also in Silicon Valley, CA.  More details about the program and registration can be found at:   www.t2vc.com/rainforest-architects

Rainforest Architects delivers a unique learning experience—combined with practical tools—to help participants develop skills for constructing entire communities that generate high levels of innovation and productivity.

Participants will learn:
●     What makes ecosystems like Silicon Valley function?
●     How do you design and build such ecosystems in the real world?
●     Which practical tools and leadership skills are necessary?

People around the world look to Silicon Valley as the world’s most powerful ecosystem for nurturing innovation, but they always wonder how they can build similar ecosystems elsewhere,” according to Greg Horowitt, Managing Director of T2VC.  “Rainforest Architects provides professional training on how to replicate that magic, how to create that kind of highly productive environment.”

Ade Mabogunje, of Stanford’s Center for Design Research and one of the co-developers of the program, says: “What often surprises people is that Silicon Valley is not really a specific place.  It is a mindset.  In Rainforest Architects, we seek to penetrate that mindset, deconstruct it, and then teach people how to reconstruct it in their own networks, wherever they happen to be.”

The “Rainforest” framework—developed by T2VC over the past decade—helps people understand, design, and foster their own communities to generate high levels of innovation.  It starts with the fundamental assumption that human ecosystems are like biological systems: the mere presence of basic elements is not enough.  It is the dynamic interactions between all of the elements in a complex system that drive productivity.  Thus, “Rainforests” are socio-biological networks of human relationships that can take many forms, whether they are economic regions, academic institutions, or large corporations.  

Leonardo Maldonado, TEDx Patagonia, General Manager of Gulliver (Chile), and Rainforest Architect from the first Workshop, says: “The Rainforest Architects framework is the best I've found to understand the organic nature of the ecosystem, and how to tackle it. Meeting 'Ecosystem Architects' from around the world has been a wonderful opportunity for me. To share their experiences, their challenges and their strategies has given me profound insights for my own challenges."

Rainforest Architects is a series of progressively specialized workshops that feature leading thinkers and doers sharing their insights on how to build innovation ecosystems.  The course is designed to be highly immersive and experiential, stretching beyond a traditional classroom format to provide participants a unique, memorable learning experience.  The monthly series started with the first workshop: a unique, intensive, intimate, personalized workshop that covers the full spectrum of cutting-edge Rainforest ideas and practice.  Subsequent workshops and practices will delve even further, to help participants achieve deeper levels of expertise, knowledge, skill, and insight.

About T2VC
T2 Venture Capital is a unique Silicon Valley venture firm that both grows startups and designs innovative ecosystems to nurture startups.  T2VC invests capital and time in technology startups with great promise. Unique among venture firms, however, T2VC leverages the practical knowhow of company-building to advise clients on designing ecosystems, shaping innovation policy, structuring entrepreneurial capital, and creating programs to catalyze growth.  For more information about T2VC, visit www.t2vc.com or contact Cecilia Moreno, Program Manager at cecilia@t2vc.com