Si2 Leadership Change

Steve Schulz, who had been president and CEO of standards body Si2 for the past 12 years has resigned from the organization, Semiconductor Engineering learned today.

He said he has thoroughly enjoyed the 12-1/2 years that he was with Si2 and is very, very proud of the successes from rebuilding it when he first joined and all of the growth the organization has had.

“I still have a lot of enthusiasm for the technology, and for, of course, the mission of the organization.”

Schulz said being with a not-for-profit is different than a for-profit company. “There are things I always look to from the standpoint of maximizing value, which is a universal thing anywhere, but what you don’t have at a not-for-profit is, for instance, the leadership that would be normally focused on the financial part: if the money is good, all’s good. It’s a complex dynamic with a global organization, very diverse and while I’ve enjoyed the technology part, I’m ready for a different kind of experience. In the last couple of years…the part of my job that I found thrilling and fun and exciting, is the part that I found to be increasingly difficult. My general approach is one of looking towards the opportunities and the strategic direction and vision.”

He reminded the organization added seven major projects under his leadership.

Uncertainty on the horizon
Some of the challenges coming include a lot of uncertainty in it’s changes. As such, there are parts of the industry that are probably feeling more like they don’t want to have too much control or power in one place, Schulz said. “You might want to be looking more at containing things. I think a lot of the mindset has shifted in these times towards a near term thing of reducing and simplifying. You hear a lot of talk about consolidation. In fact, it’s also true in the standards world because there have been a lot of standards bodies out there that have merged or gone away, and meanwhile Si2 has continued to grow and succeed, and I think it will going forward.”

However, Schulz said he will be more comfortable taking on something “fresh and exciting” and probably no longer on the not-for-profit side.

As far as future direction, he sees tremendous potential in the realm of IoT, “but the problem right now is in parts of the industry, they’ve lost the ability to reimagine – they are stuck in a tunnelvision mindset.”

“There’s a lot coming in different market categories, and it’s going to be a lot of opportunity but to make that happen to the greatest advantage of the semiconductor industry, and to make it happen most efficiently, there are a lot of things that we need to differently in how we think about design, how we think about optimization and how we need to think more ‘system.’ All of that is an opportunity for standard to remove barriers and make it smoother and more efficient, but you need to have companies looking forward not only to IoT as a buzzword, but [figure out] how we do our business and our technology differently because of it,” Schulz concluded.