While panelists agreed that long-term research has taken a back seat in the age of startups, they were divided over the implication for the electronics industry. The answer, it seems, depends on the definition of innovation, panel members said. Startups do product innovation based on technology invented somewhere else. Ackland was the most vocal advocate of the notion that real research that leads to real innovation can only be done in an environment without constant market pressures.
Startups are more efficient at developing new ideas to market than any other enterprise.
Meanwhile, innovation at the established company suffers. Innovation is meaningful only when technology is successfully brought to market, and that involves invention, development, marketing, financing, manufacturing and many other activities. But Hewes' remarks slightly favored established companies more than startups. In just four years, he said, TI was able to increase the number of die per wafer in its semiconductor lines from 310 in 1995 to 2,616 in 1999. The very essence of innovation seems to have changed over the past 20 years.