SOMETIMES AN EVENT IS WORTHY OF ITS HOOPLA, AS IS THE CASE FOR THIS
week’s VIP-studded luncheon (speech by Gov. Gray Davis) marking the formation of the Center for Pervasive Communications at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at UCI.
The CPC is a collaboration of the above-mentioned Samueli, co-chairman of Broadcom Corp., and Dwight Decker, chairman of Conexant Systems. They’ll kick in several million dollars each “to build expertise in communications technology” at the engineering school.
For multi-billionaire Samueli, such contributions are getting to be routine. Last year he made naming donations of $20 million and $30 million to the UCI and UCLA engineering schools, respectively.
What makes this particular donation so notable (besides the center’s new-economy-type name, which may take some getting used to for old-economy types like yours truly) is that it provides yet another benchmark for OC’s emergence as a world-class technology center. And it does so by bringing together two industry leaders whose OC-based companies are likely to become increasing rivals in the high-speed chip business.
But competition is one thing, necessity is another. The companies said they “have come together in a mutual desire to foster talent development in Orange County’s high-tech business community” and “to build a local talent pool in communications technology, accessible to area companies.” Interpretation: We all need engineers.
There’s a broader vision here, too. As the companies have also noted, the new center will “enable the growth of the region as a high-tech business center.”
Decker for some time now has been saying that Orange County is developing the world-class university and the talent base (which then becomes a magnet for more talent) that is necessary for a region to thrive in a high-tech economy. But he has added that Orange County isn’t there yet.
“I believe this will be the No. 2 area in technology,” Decker told the OCBJ recently. “We’re close now. What we need to do is make UCI a Stanford, and we’re working on it.”
In fact, Decker presaged this week’s event in an April speech to the OC Forum, which honored him as the OCBJ’s Businessperson of the Year for 1999.
“We want to play a leadership role in helping to develop this area into the epicenter of next-generation communications technology,” Decker said. “We’ll do it with our companions down the street, Broadcom, that are our competitors as well as collaborators,they will be (collaborators) over time,and we will certainly do it in conjunction with the many companies that will be started by our team and their team and others as they spin off from our companies and build the infrastructure of communications companies here over the next five to 10 years.”
Another observation: One person who was not scheduled to attend this week’s event was Broadcom’s CEO and other co-founder, Henry Nicholas. A Broadcom spokesperson explained that education is Samueli’s bailiwick and someone has to tend the store: “They can’t both be away at the same time.”
Then again, it’s no secret that there’s a certain amount of friction between the competitive Decker and the ultra-competitive Nicholas. Education and collaboration are important ingredients for a world-class technology center, but so, too, are a few executives with a take-no-prisoner attitude.
