The network would encourage participation of small firms as well as giant corporations. Theoretical knowledge would flow more freely to engineers in industry. Mayhew said that the largest obstacle to such a network is not technological or financial, but the culture of corporate America. We need a culture change. We need to value information sharing among companies.
Competitors can cooperate without losing their competitive advantage.
She called on Congress to promote the understanding that competitive cooperation is now permissible within the bounds of antitrust and intellectual property laws. But there's a lot of resistance. This can be traced to a lingering fear of antitrust restrictions that no longer apply. William Spencer, president of Sematech, said that vital technology information is transferred within the consortium by engineers and scientists returning to their member companies. Two-thirds of the engineers and managers at Sematech are assignees who spend two to three years at Sematech before returning to their home company.