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CEO pitches Digital Greenhouse vision
Thursday, November 11, 1999 By Douglas Heuck, Post-Gazette Business Editor
About 150 members of Pittsburgh's high-tech community gathered yesterday in the Westin William Penn's Urban Room to get an update from the new leader of the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse.
And though the project is in an early stage and in an industry that is unproven, Greenhouse President and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Yablonsky told the crowd, "I'm pretty confident we can make this thing work."
The project's mission "is to build a chip-design industry focused on digital video and digital networking," said Yablonsky, formerly of the Downtown software development firm Carnegie Group.
Design is the goal, he said, and not manufacturing because design "is a key bottleneck in the industry."
And the idea is gaining acceptance and partners. When the enterprise was announced in June, it contained corporate partners Sony Corp., Oki Electric Industry Co. and Cadence Design Systems. It has since added Casio Computer Corp. and computer-networking giant Cisco Systems.
Other partners include the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, as well as the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon and Penn State universities.
There has been interest among other possible corporate partners. However, Yablonsky has walked away from those who've intimated that they would never build a plant in Western Pennsylvania.
"We're trying to get Cisco to build a big chip-design facility here," he said.
He told the crowd that it is no mystery why the region is seeing an infusion of venture capital firms: It's the ideas for good new businesses being generated from local universities. "This is probably the best time to start a business in Western Pennsylvania, in terms of venture capital."
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