I have had the fortune to experience several industrial ecosystems over my many years of work as a researcher and an entrepreneur of sort. I landed in Berkeley after experiencing the education and University system in Italy, as a “theory” researcher. The Silicon Valley ecosystem presented me with the opportunity of working with companies and of proliferating my ideas there, until Richard Newton (a colleague at UC Berkeley) and I co-founded in the 80s two companies who are now the leaders in Electronic Design Automation (Cadence and Synopsys). These companies are still alive and well and enjoy an overall market cap of more than 23 Billion USD. Following this experience, I helped founding other companies in US and Europe and I extended my work into the Venture Capital Community. I also entered in contact with Singapore and several European countries to help in their innovation initiatives. In this talk, I will describe my experiences in the different industrial ecosystems and which role University and industrial research, start-ups, established companies, and venture capital play in them. I will conclude with some considerations on how to make the entrepreneurial and University fabric more effective than it is today.