A: Cree's biggest challenges are to manage the tremendous growth, as well as build a team to continue to take that momentum and build on that growth. So really, it's people-oriented in terms of building and developing our team. At Cree, it's an on-going cycle of really putting more energy and emphasis on management and people development within the company to really develop their skills to be better prepared to manage and grow this company to the next stage of our development.

Q: What's one thing you didn't see coming?

A: If you go back over the last approximately 10 years, we underestimated how fast and how far we could develop the blue LED technology. And because we underestimated that, it made us underestimate the potential in terms of timing when LEDs could become a viable alternative for lighting. We may have invested more money sooner in trying to understand not just the core technology of the LED but in the applications surrounding it.

Q: What's the most innovative thing you've seen or heard of another company doing?

A: We're continually trying to evolve our management approach and techniques. There's no one thing. We constantly look at what's being done and try to take the best ideas and apply them in our specific situation. They're not answers but ideas, which if we apply them in our situation we think can continue to drive us. Most of those ideas come from things being done by other high-technology companies in the Silicon Valley.

Q: How about Cree?

A: We have so many innovative things we're working on. We're fairly focused on them and how to commercialize them, in everything from LEDs for lighting to working on power devices that we think will fundamentally save energy long-term in terms of power-switching applications.

The light bulb is the end-goal application. Not just the light bulb, but really to replace conventional bulb-based lighting with LED-based lighting, whether it be the bulb itself or replacing a fixture with an LED-based fixture. It's essentially replacing old lighting technology with new solid-state lighting technology based on LEDs.

Because of our focus on those things and trying to make that happen, we really don't spend a lot of energy evaluating technology not related to those areas and those applications.

Q: Who or what is your biggest competition? Why?

A: We have several different business areas. If you look specifically at the LED area, our biggest competition is a group of companies based in Asia. There's one in Japan called Nichia Chemical and then a group of LED companies in Taiwan that are all developing similar technology. We're in a race with them to invent better technology that's more cost-effective sooner, which will allow us to enable the markets before they will. The people that we have and their commitment and passion to win the race to commercialize the light bulb is probably our single biggest asset.

Q: What is the biggest issue facing the state?

A: North Carolina's challenge is to not rest on the success that it's had, but to really push forward and build an even better climate for business and job development, not just in the short term but really one that feeds on itself over time. My sense is that North Carolina has been successful and people assume it will continue to happen, and from my perspective, just like any business, of which North Carolina is one when it's competing with other states or countries, it has to continue to offer a compelling reason for people to develop businesses and grow them here.

Q: North Carolina sees biotech and service companies as a key to its future. Is that the right path? Should we be giving incentives to attract them here?

A: I think that service companies rely on product companies to service. If there aren't enough product companies, the question will be what is the demand on the service side? In terms of biotechnology, it's a very exciting area, but I believe every other state in the union is claiming that's what they're going to focus on. My question would be: With the amount of competition, will that be enough to drive the state? In my mind, those are nice ideas, and they probably are appropriate today, but the question is where do we need to be 10 years from now and have we really thought that through? And I'm not sure we have yet.

[Incentives are] like any other business proposition. Yes, if they're not going to come without them, assuming that it's a good business deal.

Q: What's the biggest change in business today compared to when you started?

A: The world has truly become global in that you have to evaluate business ideas and opportunities on a worldwide basis, where there really aren't very many boundaries to competition any more. That's what Cree does by definition because our markets are not in the United States, but that's a big change from 15 to 20 years ago.