Some 53 years after the invention of the transistor, Wisconsin faces a stiff challenge in competing in the high-tech economy. As a recent emigre from Silicon Valley, having spent a career running high-tech businesses, I do not have civic or municipal experience. The cycle of technical development and decline is occurring at ever faster rates.
New technologies appear that change the competitive landscape.
Leaders, like Wang in word processors or General Signal in photolithography, are not only supplanted, but are now out of the business. Intel uses speed in developing new products as a primary competitive weapon and makes obsolete prior-generation products. Amid this environment of relentless change, my guess is that any statistical tabulation of high-tech jobs would be misleading. Too much weight would be given to obsolete or declining areas. Semiconductors are the enabling technology for all high-tech industries identified by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.