Peter Holmes and I are in Northern California covering the Open Source Business Conference - a celebration of creative energy, open source programmers, entrepreneurs, VCs, vendors, and CIOs of major corporations. We're all here to get an overview of a critical transformational stage in information technology at the critical time when the transformation is taking place... history in the making.

Just 25 miles from here is the Intellectual Property factory of Stanford University and perched in idyllic hills surrounding Menlo Park reside the world's most powerful business resources for the world's most powerful entrepreneurs - and many have roots in Cleveland... like Morgenthaler, Jones Day and now Draper. They know exactly what to do with IT initiatives here... how to address even the most complex software IP and business development issues. For high potential IT firms, they provide the best counsel in the world. While associated with NEO, they have unique perspective and insight found only by operating here, in the new economy capital.

This leads me to question why we don't see more knowledge transfer between the two - there are untapped synergies to leverage. I'll explore them as we attend the OSBC - check back at REALNEO daily.