Giving Compass' Take:

• In this Northern California Grantmakers post, a board member from the Knight Foundation discusses the housing crisis in Silicon Valley and argues that tech companies have not adequately addressed local problems.

• How can we close this so-called "empathy gap," not just within the tech industry but in elite philanthropy and social entrepreneurship at large? First step: Engage with communities in a more meaningful way.

• Here's why Silicon Valley’s business of giving may just be too disruptive.

As Silicon Valley, my home and place of work, dreams up what’s next, so, too, does the world dream up the next Silicon Valley.

From the speculation on Silicon Valley’s heir apparent to the slow outpouring of talent and venture capital from the region to Jeff Bezos hosting “Amazon Idol” with American cities competing to win HQ2 and its supposed 50,000 jobs and $5 billion, our competitive advantage over the rest of the world is clearly narrowing.

As new innovation centers arise and potentially surpass Silicon Valley, too few of them, however, seem to be asking what we got — and continue to get — wrong here.

Consider, for example, that 30 percent of Silicon Valley’s public-school students are on free or reduced lunch. Or that rents are 227 percent higher than the national average, contributing to the region’s severe affordable housing crisis. Or that the “awful” treatment of women by our top employers has become infamous. Silicon Valley may indeed be trying to make the world a better place—just not the parts of the world that happen to be located in Silicon Valley.

Our self-imposed limitations on world improvement are due, in large part, to a lack of creativity, philanthropy, and collaboration in building our shared future and disrupting our troubled past.

Read the full article about Silicon Valley's growing empathy gap by Daniel Harris at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, via Northern California Grantmakers.