Entrepreneurship and the Rise of Silicon Valley: The Career of Robert Noyce, 1956–1990

Abstract

My premise in this dissertation is that the career of Robert Noyce can illuminate the relationship between technical entrepreneurship and the rise of the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley, California. Noyce invented the first practical integrated circuit, the precursor to the microprocessors that lie at the heart of modern electronics. He cofounded Silicon Valley's first successful semiconductor company, Fairchild Semiconductor, in 1957, as well as the industry's most power ful firm, Intel. Noyce both cofounded and served as a prominent spokesman for the industry's most effective lobbying organization, the Semiconductor Industry Association. His successful entrepreneurial career inspired hundreds of Silicon Valley residents to start their own high-tech companies. For the last two years of his life, Noyce served as the first Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SEMATECH, a billion dollar manufacturing research consortium with membership that included fourteen semiconductor firms and the Department of Defense. I draw on twenty-five oral history interviews with Noyce's contemporaries and on four years of research in a half-dozen corporate and university archives.1 I explore four major themes: the