CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Silicon Valley--with its distinctive ecology of university research, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs--is the very embodiment of America's innovation system and the wellspring of the "new new thing."

Except that it is not new. Long before there was "Silicon Valley" there was "Oil Creek Valley," with the same financing model that exactly 150 years ago took a crazy idea and launched an industry that changed the world even more thoroughly than the Internet has done, at least so far. It's called the oil industry. And, as so forcibly struck me as I worked on the new edition of The Prize, the start-up that got the oil industry going had all the features now associated with the modern venture capital system.

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