Bill Gates has said his last goodbye. Announcing his decision to retire from his position as Chairman of Microsoft, Gates wished the company well and said he was going to pursue philanthropic and personal interests. It’s the end of an era in Silicon Valley.

But innovation and inventiveness have never been more prevalent. It’s a global phenomenon, driven by ubiquitous connectivity. We don’t need Silicon Valley to incubate ideas and bring them to fruition. Just connect to one of the hundreds of virtual Silicon Districts that populate the cybersphere, and you’ll be collaborating with peers and mentors in no time flat.

Ideas are like fire. The more you share them, the more you have. Extreme collaboration is the name of the game, and that concept is growing like wildfire. Multinational conglomerates working with ‘makers’ and indigent hipsters online to create the next killer app or black swan – who would have thought it possible?

The downside is that it’s chaos out there. You never know where the best network for your idea lies, and you can lose control of a project pretty fast. But that’s the beauty of art imitating life. It’s random and chaotic, with plenty of mishaps, but the beauty that emerges, almost unbidden, is truly awesome.

Things change faster than ever, and life, and business, has achieved a scale of complexity that is mind-boggling. But let it never be said that “everything that can be invented already has” because you ain’t seen nothing yet. It’s the end of the world as we knew it – and the start of something much, much greater.