In politics, power corrupts; in the semiconductor industry, power causes sclerosis of leadership. It was on full display last week at Electronica 2006 in Munich, Germany. One of the highlight sessions at any of the biennial Electronica shows is the CEO panel, in which the heads of major semiconductor companies (with an emphasis on European powers) discuss industry trends and offer their visions for the future.

It can be an enlightening experience when the audience gets involved in the discussion. This year, no such luck. A longtime moderator-journalist was thrown overboard in favor of an academic with little interviewing skill. But more disturbingly, the Electronica organizers allowed no questions. The CEOs--Wolfgang Ziebart, president and chief executive of Infineon Technologies; Michel Mayer, chairman and CEO of Freescale Semiconductor; Frans van Houten, president and CEO of NXP; and Satoru Ito, chairman and CEO of Renesas Technology--therefore had a pain-free forum in which to chant their practiced marketing pitches. They could appear to be in touch with the electronics community by their participation, when in fact they had walled themselves off from it.

Our news editor, Junko Yoshida, approached Ziebart for questions after the panel. "I don't think so," said the CEO's PR man.

STMicroelectronics CEO Carlo Bozotti didn't even show up for the panel. "Urgent business" was the reason given. But why subject yourself to a public forum when you can spend part of the next evening at your own event, delivering a carefully crafted message to an audience of 500 who are quite literally locked into a hotel ballroom until you've finished?

NXP's van Houten at the last minute bailed on a long-planned interview with Yoshida. Ito accepted, and later rejected, an invitation to participate in our EE Times Global Design Forum panel with other CEOs (see story, page 26). Then he accepted and rejected an interview with EE Times Europe's Peter Clarke.

If the organizers thought a no-questions format was a great idea, they're sorely mistaken. They abrogated their responsibility as trade show organizers, which is to encourage dialogue. This group of CEOs is eloquent when it wants to be. If it was they who made a no-questions panel a condition of their participation, then we've entered a sad, dark world.

Attitude flows downhill. If executives are aggressively avoiding dialogue, it's not long before your field applications engineer starts giving you lip service as well. You can vote with your checkbook, but as the industry shrinks this becomes less of a bargaining chip.

There was a time when electronics was roaring and CEOs energetically engaged in public discourse about where things were headed and the numerous possibilities that awaited technology creators who shared ideas. Perhaps they've lost the vision, the courage of their convictions. They've retreated into ancient castles, pulled up the drawbridges and donned rose-colored glasses. It may be comforting to the executive class, but to an industry that has grown, evolved and thrived on constant techno-business dialogue from the bottom up and the top down, this is a dangerous turn of events.