by going fabless or by moving production offshore. Here in Austin AMD, Freescale and Applied Materials have cut roughly 2,000 manufacturing jobs in the past year. Cypress has closed Fab 4, Samsung is about to close Fab 1, AMD has closed a fab, and Samsung has announced it plans to lay off a third of its Austin work force. Applied Materials, among others, is shifting its production to Asia to be closer to its customers and to cut costs. Dell closed its last PC factory in Austin last year, for the same reasons. Even when the economy recovers, these manufacturing jobs aren't coming back. Austin's response is the same as what I've seen in Silicon Valley -- focus on being a design center and nurture an entrepreneurial infrastructure. The real value in any product -- from chip to box -- is the innovative design that goes into it. But how do you realize that value if you have a great idea but no employer to pay you to develop it? Go into business for yourself. Incubate to Innovate Being talented at engineering doesn't correlate directly -- or even closely -- with being talented at doing business. Even if you think you have a knack for business, you still need to complete your R&D, build a prototype, prepare a marketing plan and a business plan, put together a team and stay alive until you can find the money to fund all your plans. That's where technology incubators come into play. Incubators