Ambition is a big part of it, and European attitudes can be incomprehensible to Americans. I remember one discussion that ended with the statement, "the Belgians had ambition once and the Congo is still suffering for it".
As a foreigner observing Denmark (not sure about the rest of Europe), I think Danes are actually pretty ambitious, but often in a non-commercial way. It's definitely not cool to slack off and do nothing, so there is ambition in the sense that there's a strong cultural preference to better yourself, do interesting things, produce something. Even if you have a full-time day job, you're not "supposed" to just watch TV in your spare time, but should be an active member of an organization, have projects, something. But it's perfectly acceptable (perhaps even preferable) for your ambition not to be primarily about making money. In tech, for example, DIY hackerspace stuff, media art, nonprofits like Copenhagen Suborbitals, etc., all carry at least as much cachet as the startup sector does.
Yes, same in France, you can't be doing nothing but being explicitly looking after money is very much frowned upon.
Meanwhile in the US people are happy to use yearly income as the scale to compare people. Which is certainly wrong: any nurse should be higher on the scale than Columbian mafia bosses, right?
I think part of it is that in social position in large parts of Europe has come to be less dependent on money, and social welfare systems and strong labour movements driving salaries up have created a situation where there's less cultural pressure towards seeing money as a proxy for worth.
On the extreme end, there was a survey mentioned in Norwegian papers before christmas which stated that the majority of Norwegians believed they earned the equivalent of about $16,000/year more than they need.
That doesn't mean many wouldn't love to have more. But if you feel you're making $16,000/year more than you need, then it takes something other than money before you start taking big risks.
Of course Norway is an extreme given the income levels, but I feel that the general attitude of "having enough" or even more than you need is more prevalent in Europe - across income classes - than it seems to be in the US.
It's different from lack of ambition: Many of the same people who feel they have enough money, still want very much to reach some hard to reach goal. But choices can get very different if money isn't an important part of setting those goals.
While I understand this, remember that there are entrpreneurs, and then there is the subset of 'tech'. You won't find Richard Branson to fit the 'tech-startup' mold, but he's certainly an entrepreneur. And a pretty good one at that. Many, many people in europe privately fund all sorts of high-end businesses. They just don't use VC money and nor do they always go public. So the data have some variation of "survivorship bias", but in the sense that these data (ie, true survivors) are invisible if you are using a tech/ipo screen.
The only reason I mention this, is that its all-together quite likely that there are some very talented people out there, in europe, who will undoubtedly have what it takes to do what needs to be done.
The better explanation as to why silicon valley does not exist in europe, however, is just cultural. The US has NASA, Los Alamos, White Sands, Area-51, and all kinds of massive experience with science/industry and the types of invention and "productisation" of technology that comes from having huge deserts to play with expensive toys (rockets, weapons). That does not exist in europe, neither the culture, the money, nor the geography. And as a point of history, that to me is a better explanation of why silicon valley is where it is in terms of leading the commoditization of technology, and being the lynchpin a broader market.[#]
Tech entre-preneurialism is a sub-set of this market (ie, many SV firms are huge, or government centric). And thats why for tech-startups, you will always over-represent in SV, because of the larger ecosystem to which VC is a subset (of funding, to wall-street and the government...which underwirite BigCo tech still).
The other thing that is relevant is culture. But in a different way than it is often portrayed here. The ambition of many middle-class people is to strike it rich... "to live like a european". Obviously, this won't motivate europeans...for two reasons. The less obvious reason is lack of social mobility; the more obvious reason is the obvious one (ie, they are more worried about keeping a good thing going, than rebuilding a good thing from scratch).
This might not be a perfect explanation, but even as a straw man its worth considering that there is some truth in it.
[#] While the wealth and brains exist in europe, the critical-density of (capital, expertise, experimental sandbox) does not.
I was lucky enough to have toured both the european space facilities, and kennedy space center. The difference is that the european space program is focused on the science and engineering first, self-promotion a distant second. The ESA facilities were not centralized (i spent a week living in a bus to see most of them), and they weren't set up to handle tourists or journalists. The actual launches aren't even done from europe, so while i did see a live rocket test and the assembly hall for the ariane 5, these are not things which you can buy tickets to, and most of what the average citizen could buy tickets to was just ... bland. By contrast, KSC is a showroom first, it's set up to impress people, especially with things like the rocket garden, the vehicle assembly building, and what amounts to a theme park in the arrival area.
When you tally up the science and cost, both programs are probably very comparable, but the US program is much more approachable, because of a strong self-promotion mindset and a complete lack of self-awareness. Loud and proud. The ESA programs are much more low key, what pride there is must be carefully weened from between people's modesty.
I think the difference in the space programs is a reflection of the cultural difference caused by how the US was formed. The european culture has always valued knowing your place, and people who didn't want to stay in that place moved to the US. The US as a consequence values people who try to shout from the rooftops and reach for the sky.
NASA and Los Alamos are mostly played out, and White Sands is just a fun place to jump off sand dunes. This isn't to detract from the rest of your post, but the US isn't what it was, or all that you think it is.
"The US has NASA, Los Alamos, White Sands, Area-51, and all kinds of massive experience with science/industry and the types of invention and "productisation" of technology that comes from having huge deserts to play with expensive toys (rockets, weapons)." ... LHC? That is all.
While I don't disagree with this by any means, you are talking an incredibly specialized asset in the LHC. The difference is that Silicon Valley was not built to play with <particular> specialized assets, so much as it was built to <develop specialized assets> to play with in general. In that regards, it was built to make toys to put in 'the sandbox'. In this view, having a sandbox to play in is quite useful. Not only is it motivating, but its "open plan" facilitates a broad imagination for useful experiments. Rather than a single-framework of experiment designed for a singular and very specialized asset.
Speaking as someone who has lived and worked extensibly in all three (US, Britain,"Europe") I would argue that Britain is certainly closer to the rest of Europe than it is to the US.
I live in Sweden now, the organisation I work for is in the Netherlands, I have relatives in Switzerland and in Spain. The way society is structured in all of the EU countries I have visited or lived in are way closer to each other than to the US, including Britain IMHO.
"Ambition is a big part of it, and European attitudes can be incomprehensible to Americans."
What attitude are you referring too? do you have any objective fact that would prove that europeans are less ambitious than americans?
If you go to any selective European school or university, students are certainly as ambitious as their american counterparts and aren't afraid of working hard to achieve their goals.
However, they are probably more interested in an executive position in the finance industry than founding a company, which doesn't sound unreasonable.
