edaForum06 Presentation

Business Session II

Barry Dennington, Philips The Partnership Network

Abstract

MBA students learn about the importance of strategy. They learn about creating 'barriers to entry which block competitors' and 'creating a beachhead dominance'. As business professionals, we find that the complexity of today's semiconductors industry network changes the way these strategic objectives are deployed. Strategy today often means working with your competitors and leveraging joint skills and resources to help each other compete in the global marketplace and it introduces a new word in the world of partnerships: “Coopertition”, where competition and cooperation come together.

Partnerships come in many forms. They can be through academia, research organisations, industry consortiums, standards bodies, individual people, investors and many others. All have unique ways of working and significant challenges to make them successful. The formation of partnerships can start with a vision, a grand business plan or simply two parties coming together to solve a problem. Whatever the case, the ideals that create partnerships by no means guarantee that the path to success will be smooth or even come close to achieving the original intent. Leading and guiding a partnership requires a wide range of competences, from outstanding technological knowledge to diplomatic behaviours usually associated with world politics. This talk will discuss the many forms of partnership, why they were started and what it takes to make them successful.

Biography

Barry Dennington Senior Vice President CTO SoC Design Technology Philips Semiconductors

Barry Dennington has been in the semiconductor business for the past thirty years and has held leadership positions in Innovation & Technology and Business Management, including multiple overseas assignments in North America and Europe. Barry joined Philips Semiconductors in February 2000 as Vice President of the Computing and ASIC Business based in San Jose, California. In March 2002 he took up the position of VP of the Technology and Customer Engineering Group. In July 2005, he was appointed VP of SoC Design Technology In addition, Barry leads the Digital Design Technology Competency domain for Philips Semiconductors. Prior to joining Philips, Barry held Business Management roles in Plessey Semiconductors. He started his semiconductor career in 1975 as an ASIC Design Engineer with American Micro Systems Inc (AMI) and then moved on to Thomson, that became SGS and ST Microelectronics later.