Silicon Hub
Tools:
The Silicon-based Innovation Hub, or Silicon Hub for short, is an innovative business model to accelerate the creation of a New Economy in areas that don’t already have a Silicon Valley. The Hub refers to a engineering core into which all information flows related to design, money, manufacturing, logistics, banking, and finance services all converge, and business operations and transactions are executed, all through broadband Internet-based web services. This network-based hub will host data center, servers, design tools, and IP repertory and provide web services of different business operations for the realization of digital innovation, be it integrated circuits, System on a Chip (SOC), or embedded board, boxed device, or component. Digital design information, i.e. the precious intellectual property from individual designers throughout the world, flows in and out of the hub and is exchanged with the manufacturing hubs in China and Taiwan and other locations for subcontracting tasks of physical realization of the product. The Silicon Hub will also be linked to other innovation hubs in the world, such as US, Russia, Japan, and Europe and enables the host nation to become an indispensible part of the leading edge of the global innovation chain. The concept can also be applied to other fast-moving industries which can leverage global innovation and manufacturing resources provided by the Hub.
FNC is partnering to create Silicon Hubs. These Hubs will integrate with Europe, Asia, and USA, each in itself housing the best in Silicon semiconductor design, IP, manufacturing, logistics, marketing and distribution, and become a silicon knowledge and operation center of the future.
We intend to establish a fully operational Silicon-based Innovation Hub. The Hub will become a Silicon Knowledge and Operation Center where creative designers of product applications, designs, and new technologies from the world can concentrate their designs with the tools provided by the Hub and package other aspects of the value chain that are better done for local markets such as production, marketing and sales, and financing to other locations closer to customers. The Hub will be the home to the young and talented people, where they will get trained with high value-added professional skills to execute hardware and software engineering tasks, operation and project management, sales and marketing, manufacturing and logistics, etc, all on a centralized operation platform through distributed Internet-based web services. The Hub will be the Operation and Finance Platforms where the stakeholders can leverage their strengths in IP repository and finance services and maximize their financial gains.
The Hub with its Board and Advisory Committee will consists of a Technology Development Laboratory, a Platform Operation Center, Registered start-ups of Private Product Companies, and System Application and Engineering Companies. Technology Development Laboratory has the responsibility to carry out contracts endowed from the Governments or Platform Operation Center and is a cost center. Platform Operation Center is the soul of the whole Hub and houses all necessary tools accessible from the Internet and Intranet by professionals, and through application specific web services, to carry out the tasks of product design, IP application retrieval, subcontracting of manufacturing, assembly, distribution, accounting and financing operations. Its administration will have a team of IP experts, and legal counselors to safeguard the IP repository and its applications. Depending on the needs of each creative individual, Registered Start-up Companies of various kinds can access all available tools with a fee to the Platform Operation Center to execute its designs, solicit services, and arrange financial and operation services. Host country governments will need to have a policy of tax compensation to encourage large number of registering start-ups. The System Application and Engineering Companies will act as major contractors for local engineering projects and coordinate international teams, products, and equipments for successful implementation of projects.
Revenues of the Hub will come from services of operation and platform rental, product turn-over, and commissions. The Hub can leverage its values of IP repository, revenues, and platforms for financial gain and infusion and sustain the operations into the future. Also, the Hub can hold shares of Registered Product and System Applications and Engineering Companies. With objective 3rd party rating of these companies, the Hub can execute financial gains if and when the participating companies go IPO in international stock market.
FNC’s Silicon Hub plans will be executed by a team that consists of well-seasoned professionals with versatile expertise in all key areas of development and production eco-systems of electronic, electrical, and mechanical products, networking and control, and environmental engineering. This FNC-guided team will serve as an engineering consulting company to the Hub and execute the mutually agreed tasks to ensure the successful establishment of the Hub’s operation platforms and offer consultations in all aspects of Hub operations afterwards.
The Silicon Hub project emerged out of conversations between FNC, host governments and partner companies, particularly with a company whose principals had created one of the most successful high technology parks in Taiwan. The conversations led to the study and refinement of what made other high technology parks successful, and then considered how the process could be accelerated and amplified by bring to bear FNC’s consortium of legal, finance, banking, insurance, media, and PR team. One aspect of these plan is to find technology companies with their high-valued intellectual property (IP) and to arrange for both a comprehensive array of partnerships, and to arrange for due diligence and investment bank-style valuations, to package the IR into more traditional bankable assets and thereby attract more investments necessary for sustaining and growing the Technology Park, creating more high-valued jobs, and, bringing the New Economy more sharply into focus in whatever host country that the Silicon Hub(s) where located.
Silicon semiconductor and ICT industries have long exhibited unique business characteristics, including, prominently, high-valued intellectual property residing in silicon real estate of few meter or even millimeter squares containing millions of transistors. After a few decades of technology outsourcing, a globally connected manufacturing logistic capability exists to support semiconductor transportability, market access, process standardization, and light weight, and from origins concentrated in Silicon Valley, Texas and Japan, silicon industry technology and production techniques are sweeping across many traditional industries seeking protection of their intellectual property. Putting a company’s secrets into hardware and firmware is increasingly a viable solution for IP protection and security. As a result, we are witnessing miniaturization and converging applications of electronic products simultaneously all on a single device, such as Apple’s iPhone and other smart PDAs combining data/voice communication, GPS, audio/video, 3D accelerometer and more.
In the processes of device and application convergence and consolidation, there is a gradual physical separation of product realization between design companies (fabless) that know their customers and have a novel distribution idea (such as Apple’s for music and videos, iTunes), and manufacturing companies (foundries), exemplified by the fast-paced phenomena combining design and manufacturing finesse from US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China. Further, with the advance of Internet technology, coupled with this portability from miniaturization, an emerging enormous business opportunity has arisen: Networked Services of devices.
Networked Services of devices enables anybody accessing any format of data/information, from any place around the globe, and with any kind of device for any of tens of thousands of purposes, as exemplified by the over 100,000 apps in the Apple iPhone App Store. A few more recent examples of emerging businesses from big name players, are Google’s Power Management Socket, Amazon’s Kindle, and Barnes and Nobles (book store chain) Nook, based on Google’s Android mobile operating system, each of which is using a Networked Service to create a business ecosystem around a device.
There are two reasons for calling these centers Silicon Hubs. One, already alluded to, is because they are based on silicon semiconductors. The other is that silicon will be used to for the photovoltaics that will create clean renewable energy. Silicon Hub, a simple phrase, is a linguistic way to compact two very different value chains that both start with the same thing: sand, which is made mostly of silicon.
FNC’s knowledge and insight into the future of the ICT industries enables us to spot an inevitable trend with enormous business opportunity that any country with vision and national will can make it happen. There are several places that have the necessary local infrastructure and business ecosystems to complement a Silicon Hub, such as the proper standard of banking, financial, and telecommunication infrastructures. Once done in a pre-emptive way in any place, the whole world may only need one Silicon Hub. A network-based hub for the realization of digital innovation is cost efficient, and does not require huge tracts of physical land. The Silicon Hub requires only broadband Internet infrastructure, money for initial long and investment in IP and operation platforms, and other infrastructures such as legal, insurance, banking, financial. It is possible that a country or region hosting the Hub, merging the strength of the local host nation and the strength of China and Taiwan for innovation and manufacturing will have an equivalent economic impact in 10 years on global innovation market to that of semiconductor manufacturing hub in Taiwan in 30 years.