What is Appreciative Intelligence^®?

I coined the term appreciative intelligence in 1996 after studying the phenomenal growth of entrepreneurship in the Silicon Valley since the late 1980s.

What was the reason that talents of all sorts congregated around a small region in Northern California? What allowed entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, academics, and immigrants (primarily from Asia) to take unusual amounts of risks that led to the rise of the networked world as we know today? I believe that appreciative intelligence is the individual ability that contributed partly to the success of the Silicon Valley.

University of California professor and researcher AnnaLee Saxenian pointed out that by 1990 one-third of the population of engineers in the Silicon Valley was foreign born, primarily from China, Taiwan, and India. According to her, Chinese and Indians run 13 percent of Silicon Valley companies between 1980 and 1984, and 29 percent between 1995 and 1998. What did the area provide to attract such a disproportionately high number of high-talent immigrants?

My research about Indian American entrepreneurs in early 1990s suggested that they (and Chinese Americans) felt welcomed, accepted, and were given the opportunity to experiment in Silicon Valley in a way they could not have in another country or region. The venture capitalists looking to fund the right ideas were asking the question “how can I make this work” as opposed to “what are the chances this idea will fail? A climate of opportunity recognition, resilience, and high anticipation of positive outcomes existed in the region that became contagious and an organizing force.

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