Developing software to model the financial productivity of semiconductor manufacturing processes or semiconductor equipment would be a fertile area of growth. There are about 600 fabless companies, most of them in the United States. In Wisconsin, there are none. The number of fabless companies has doubled in the past two years alone. This has not escaped civic participants.
Bioscience is a leading high-tech business segment in Wisconsin.
High-tech competition is global, something planners in Wisconsin would do well to remember. High-tech centers are the pillars on which the economies of Taiwan, China, South Korea and Singapore are being built. This global competition is coordinated and fueled by strategic and security interests of nationalistic governments around the world. Wisconsin should not benchmark Minnesota or other Midwestern states for high-tech positioning. Doing so would be akin to looking in a mirror.