Sorry I haven’t seen more out of California regarding innnovation then I have out of Texas and other oil states (drilling tech), Wisconsin and Cleveland (Centers for US MR and CT tech), New York (financial), etc etc etc.
It just happens that they do more in the way of software. Is Cali more layed back - sure I guess - but that doesn’t translate to innovation. Innovation is 4 parts sweat and 1 part inspiration.
Yeah, right.
California is the source of 1/4th of patent applications filed, and they are not all software-related (as if software patents are trivial). There's a reason why many hardware / medical equipment companies maintain a large R&D presence in California at great expense, while they shift the low level manufacturing jobs to the South and East (South Carolina).