Innovation is about finding a better way of doing something. Like many of the new development buzzwords (which many of them are over-used on many business documents), the concept of innovation originates from the world of business. It refers to the generation of new products through the process of creative entrepreneurship, putting it into production, and diffusing it more widely through increased sales. Innovation can be viewed as t he application of better solutions that meet new requirements, in-articulated needs, or existing market needs. This is accomplished through more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments and society. The term innovation can be defined as something original and, as a consequence, new, that “breaks into” the market or society.
Innoveracy: Misunderstanding Innovation article points out that there is a form of ignorance which seems to be universal: the inability to understand the concept and role of innovation. The way this is exhibited is in the misuse of the term and the inability to discern the difference between novelty, creation, invention and innovation. The result is a failure to understand the causes of success and failure in business and hence the conditions that lead to economic growth. The definition of innovation is easy to find but it seems to be hard to understand. Here is a simple taxonomy of related activities that put innovation in context:
- Novelty: Something new
- Creation: Something new and valuable
- Invention: Something new, having potential value through utility
- Innovation: Something new and uniquely useful
The taxonomy is illustrated with the following diagram.
The differences are also evident in the mechanisms that exist to protect the works: Novelties are usually not protectable, Creations are protected by copyright or trademark, Inventions can be protected for a limited time through patents (or kept secret) and Innovations can be protected through market competition but are not defensible through legal means.
Innovation is a lot of talked about nowdays as essential to businesses to do. Is innovation essential for development work? article tells that innovation has become central to the way development organisations go about their work. In November 2011, Bill Gates told the G20 that innovation was the key to development. Donors increasingly stress innovation as a key condition for funding, and many civil society organisations emphasise that innovation is central to the work they do.
Some innovation ideas are pretty simple, and some are much more complicated and even sound crazy when heard first. The is place for crazy sounding ideas: venture capitalists are gravely concerned that the tech startups they’re investing in just aren’t crazy enough:
Not all development problems require new solutions, sometimes you just need to use old things in a slightly new way. Development innovations may involve devising technology (such as a nanotech water treatment kit), creating a new approach (such as microfinance), finding a better way of delivering public services (such as one-stop egovernment service centres), identifying ways of working with communities (such as participation), or generating a management technique (such as organisation learning).
Theorists of innovation identify innovation itself as a brief moment of creativity, to be followed by the main routine work of producing and selling the innovation. When it comes to development, things are more complicated. Innovation needs to be viewed as tool, not master. Innovation is a process, not a one time event. Genuine innovation is valuable but rare.
There are many views on the innovation and innvation process. I try to collect together there some views I have found on-line. Hopefully they help you more than confuze. Managing complexity and reducing risk article has this drawing which I think pretty well describes innovation as done in product development:
8 essential practices of successful innovation from The Innovator’s Way shows essential practices in innovation process. Those practices are all integrated into a non-sequential, coherent whole and style in the person of the innovator.
In the IT work there is lots of work where a little thinking can be a source of innovation. Automating IT processes can be a huge time saver or it can fail depending on situation. XKCD comic strip Automation as illustrates this:
System integration is a critical element in project design article has an interesting project cost influence graphic. The recommendation is to involve a system integrator early in project design to help ensure high-quality projects that satisfy project requirements. Of course this article tries to market system integration services, but has also valid points to consider.
Core Contributor Loop (CTTDC) from Art Journal blog posting Blog Is The New Black tries to link inventing an idea to theory of entrepreneurship. It is essential to tune the engine by making improvements in product, marketing, code, design and operations.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Will Science Have a Seat at President Trump’s Table?
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603350/will-science-have-a-seat-at-president-trumps-table/?utm_campaign=internal&utm_medium=homepage&utm_source=cover-story&set=603375
Every president since FDR has had a science advisor. Trump has yet to name one or indicate leading candidates.
There may still be one person who can prevent Donald Trump, denier of the scientific consensus on global warming and vaccines and rejecter of other apparent truths, from being an “anti-science” president.
The question is whether he will find such a person. Trump hasn’t yet named a science advisor, and his team has given no indication of who it might end up being.
Every president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has had a science advisor, though the influence of the position, and the extent to which it has kept presidents from neglecting or misusing empirical evidence, has varied considerably throughout the years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Technology of Airport Security Scanners Helps Guide the Blind
http://mwrf.com/systems/technology-airport-security-scanners-helps-guide-blind?NL=MWRF-001&Issue=MWRF-001_20170119_MWRF-001_371&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=9324&utm_medium=email&elq2=11e71ceb9ee64dad8e336baca350d927
A personal radar system could give a sixth sense to people who already lost one to blindness. Researchers at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland are testing wearable scanners that guide the blind or visually impaired by mapping the environment with radio pulses.
Guide Sense, as the technology is called, bounces millimeter waves off objects to measure distance, speed, and where the objects are located in relation to the wearer. The device conveys information to users either with voice feedback or vibrations to indicate how close something is.
http://www.guidesense.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Disney Thinks High Schools Should Let Kids Take Coding In Place of Foreign Languages
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/02/05/2143240/disney-thinks-high-schools-should-let-kids-take-coding-in-place-of-foreign-languages?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Florida lawmakers are again proposing a contentious plan that would put coding and foreign language on equal footing in a public high school student’s education. Under a proposed bill students who take two credits of computer coding and earn a related industry certification could then count that coursework toward two foreign language credits.
Computer coding as a foreign language? Florida lawmakers again push the idea
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article130772249.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech Still Doesn’t Get Diversity. Here’s How to Fix It
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/tech-still-doesnt-get-diversity-heres-fix/
While Apple and other American tech firms should be applauded for joining the legal fight against the executive order and making statements such as “diversity makes us stronger,” they should also use this moment as an opportunity for some much-needed self-reflection on a troubling reality: The American tech industry remains a bastion of white, male privilege.
When my organization, Open MIC, reviewed data from some of the biggest tech firms, we saw a consistent pattern: overwhelming, disproportionate percentages of white employees. Adobe’s workforce is 69 percent white and Apple’s 56 percent. Google? 59 percent. Microsoft? 58 percent. The list goes on. Black people, Latinos, and Native Americans are underrepresented in tech by 16 to 18 percentage points compared with their presence in the US labor force overall.
Tech companies and investors should be concerned: Evidence strongly suggests that a racially diverse tech sector could translate into stronger financial performance. A McKinsey report showed a linear relationship between racial and ethnic diversity and a company’s financial performance. “For every 10 percent increase in racial and ethnic diversity on the senior-executive team,” the report stated, “earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) rise 0.8 percent.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Santos Dumont and the Origins of Aviation
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/08/santos-dumont-and-the-origins-of-aviation/
The history of aviation is a fascinating one, spanning more than two thousand years starting from kites and tower jumping. Many hackers are also aviation fans, and the name of Alberto Santos Dumont may be familiar, but if not, here we talk about his role and accomplishments in the field. Santos Dumont is one of the few aviation pioneers that made contributions in both balloons, airships and heavier-than-air aircraft.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Coding as a Foreign Language
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/09/coding-as-a-foreign-language/
How many of you speak more than one language?
It’s been a constant of the last few decades, officials and politicians in charge of education worrying that tech-illiterate children are being churned out of schools ill-equipped for the Jobs Of Tomorrow, and instituting schemes to address the issue. One of the latest of these ideas has come our way from Florida, and it’s one that has sparked some controversy. It sounds simple enough, make coding equivalent to language learning when it comes to credits in Floridian high schools.
You might think that this idea would be welcome, but instead it has attracted criticism from those concerned that it will become an either-or choice in cash-strapped school districts.
Computer coding as a foreign language? Florida lawmakers again push the idea
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article130772249.html
Miami businesswoman Elizabeth De Zulueta speaks English and Spanish. She knows some Italian and Russian, too.
She’s also a robotics engineer who knows how to code using technical training in computer science and electrical and mechanical engineering.
Having studied languages and coding, De Zulueta knows the value of both skills, and she can attest from her personal experience — while there are striking similarities in the mechanics of how each is learned — computer coding and foreign language are not the same.
Yet some Florida lawmakers are again proposing an innovative, but contentious, plan that would put coding and foreign language on equal footing in a public high school student’s education.
Aimed at preparing students for high-tech jobs — like De Zulueta’s — in a modern digital economy, the legislation (SB 104) has the backing of such influential powerhouses as Disney and the Florida Chamber of Commerce.
“I love this idea. This is the future,”
But the idea is drawing renewed criticism from educators and Hispanic advocacy groups
“I sort of comically applaud that some would want to categorize coding as a foreign language,”
“Coding cannot be seen as an equivalent substitute,” Carvalho said. “It shouldn’t be an either-or. It should be both — and a reality for all kids.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
A cancelled product development – success or failure?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/test-cafe/4457785/A-cancelled-product-development—success-or-failure-
R&D projects are occasionally cancelled. This means that a company’s money, talent, and time was spent on R&D, and no product was ever invented that earned money back to the corporation. Can a cancelled project ever be considered a success?
Yes, absolutely!
We all know what a successful project looks like: A product meets all of its development time and cost goals. It is then released to manufacturing, meeting its cost and capacity goals. In the market, it meets its revenue and profit goals. Its profits recoup all its development costs, and then some, it delivers growth for the corporation. This favorable return on investment is the very definition of a successful product development.
But there is another successful project as well. It starts as a tender young idea. In the early investigation phase all aspects of feasibility are considered: technical feasibility, schedule feasibility, business feasibility. This early investigation discovers a serious problem going forward. It is cancelled before too many of the organization’s resources in people, time, and expense are incurred. This is a successful product as well.
Of the two successful projects above, only the first makes money for the company. But if we don’t accept the second project as a success, we are doomed to create worse failures, trapped by our own definition of success and failure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lindsay Craig — Teaching Tech to Help Solve the World’s Problems
Design News’ 2017 Rising Engineering Star works tirelessly to make sure children, here in the US and as far away as Uganda, have access to technology.
https://www.designnews.com/content/lindsay-craig-teaching-tech-help-solve-world-s-problems/46723818952529?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20170224.tst004t
Growing up in a small Massachusetts town, Lindsay Craig didn’t look up to sports stars or celebrities. His heroes were the likes of Nikola Tesla and Isaac Asimov.
At age 36, one could now argue that Craig, better known as Linz to his friends, is a hero in his own right.
Craig works tirelessly to make sure children, here in the US and as far away as Uganda, have access to technology. And, he takes the time to teach them the basic concepts of that technology.
This is just part of the reason he was named the Design News 2017 Rising Engineering Star during the 16 th annual Golden Mousetrap Awards ceremony, held earlier this month in Anaheim, Calif., in conjunction with Pacific Design & Manufacturing.
“The unmitigated joy on any kid’s face when they light up an LED is just absolutely amazing,” Craig said the next day during a Center Stage presentation on the show floor.
He told the standing-room-only crowd about his frequent travels to Africa, where he teaches kids the basics of Arduino, Bluetooth, and drag-and-drop programming, among many other skills.
“These people are capable of PCB design at the age of 8 or 9; all people in all cultures,” Craig said, adding that the kids he teaches work with wooden robotics because they simply can’t buy off-the-shelf- parts. “These are incredibly ecstatic kids who are building amazing things. These kids are literally going to turn around and provide solutions to problems in their community.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Four reasons to be fluent in multiple platforms
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/four-reasons-to-be-fluent-in-multiple-platforms/4d1b988aa7aea97e6724eb536b1decc1.html
Being fluent in multiple platforms can be a helpful tool in the automation field for engineers and integrators and can give the engineer the ability to solve more problems and be a better, more rounded engineer.
Like languages, being able to work with multiple platforms in the automation field can open the mind and give the engineer the ability to solve more problems and be a better, more rounded engineer. Other reasons for having this ability include:
1. It gives the customer platform options
2. It shows there is more than one way to complete a project or task
3. It broadens an engineer’s skill set
4. It makes an engineer valuable for integrating systems
Tomi Engdahl says:
Win the 2017 Bell Labs Prize
The Bell Labs Prize
https://www.bell-labs.com/prize/
The Bell Labs Prize is a competition for innovators from participating countries around the globe that seeks to recognize proposals that ‘change the game’ in the field of information and communications technologies by a factor of 10, and provides selected innovators the unique opportunity to collaborate with Bell Labs researchers to help realize their vision.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mothers of innovation: 12 women engineers and scientists to know
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/serious-fun/4438969/Mothers-of-innovation–12-women-engineers-and-scientists-to-know
Tomi Engdahl says:
America May Miss Out On the Next Industrial Revolution
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/03/15/2228206/america-may-miss-out-on-the-next-industrial-revolution
Robots are inevitably going to automate millions of jobs in the U.S. and around the world, but there’s an even more complex scenario on the horizon, said roboticist Matt Rendall. In a talk Tuesday at SXSW, Rendall painted a picture of the future of robotic job displacement that focused less on automation and more on the realistic ways in which the robotics industry will reshape global manufacturing. The takeaway was that America, which has outsourced much of its manufacturing and lacks serious investment in industrial robotics, may miss out on the world’s next radical shift in how goods are produced.
America may miss out on the next industrial revolution
Preparing for automation means investing in robotics
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/15/14935360/automation-robots-ai-manufacturing-future-sxsw-2017
Tomi Engdahl says:
NSA, DOE Say China’s Supercomputing Advances Put US At Risk
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/03/15/220247/nsa-doe-say-chinas-supercomputing-advances-put-us-at-risk
Advanced computing experts at the National Security Agency and the Department of Energy are warning that China is “extremely likely” to take leadership in supercomputing as early as 2020, unless the U.S. acts quickly to increase spending. China’s supercomputing advances are not only putting national security at risk, but also U.S. leadership in high-tech manufacturing. If China succeeds, it may “undermine profitable parts of the U.S. economy,”
NSA, DOE say China’s supercomputing advances put U.S. at risk
China’s computing efforts are a threat to U.S. national security and may undermine profitable parts of the U.S. economy, a new report warns
http://computerworld.com/article/3180984/high-performance-computing/spy-agency-doe-see-china-nearing-supercomputing-leadership.html
Advanced computing experts at the National Security Agency and the Department of Energy are warning that China is “extremely likely” to take leadership in supercomputing as early as 2020, unless the U.S. acts quickly to increase spending.
“To maintain U.S. leadership in HPC,” the report says, “a surge” of U.S. “investment and action is needed to address HPC priorities.”
Concern about China’s technical advances have been raised before by U.S. scientists and industry groups, but never in such striking terms — or by representatives of a spy agency.
The threat from China is so acute that “absent aggressive action by the U.S. — the U.S. will lose leadership and not control its own future in HPC,” the report states.
Something to keep in mind is that this report was written at a time when many assumed that supercomputing funding was not under threat. The report calls for more spending while the Trump administration, along with the Republican-controlled Congress, is planning major cuts in the federal budget.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If American Robots Had Their Own Economy, It’d Be Bigger Than Switzerland
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/03/15/1829202/if-american-robots-had-their-own-economy-itd-be-bigger-than-switzerland
The total value of all the robots in the United States, from Roombas to auto-manufacturing plants to those that fold laundry, and everything in between, is $732 billion
If American robots had their own economy, it’d be bigger than Switzerland
https://news.fastcompany.com/if-american-robots-had-their-own-economy-itd-be-bigger-than-switzerland-4032520
$732 billion, a number that, according to a study released today by researchers at CEBR and Redwood Software, is larger than that of the economy of Switzerland.
Other findings in the study suggest that American investment in robotics has doubled since 2009, and went up 30% between 2011 and 2015. The researchers also concluded that investing in robotics has a higher long-term return than that of transportation, financial services, or real estate.
Tomi Engdahl says:
58% of High-Performance Employees Say They Need More Quiet Work Spaces
https://slashdot.org/story/17/03/15/1911253/58-of-high-performance-employees-say-they-need-more-quiet-work-spaces
Behold the open industrial office space. At one moment, it feels like such a hip environment, bustling with easy communication and collaboration, innovation and headphones just behind every monitor. At another moment, the open office is the loudest, most annoying, distracting and unproductive environment one can imagine. What if the open industrial office is just part of a larger misguided fantasy? What if this office style is hurting our employees working on the hardest problems — our high-performance employees (HPEs)?
58% of high-performance employees say they need more quiet work spaces
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/15/58-of-high-performance-employees-say-they-need-more-quiet-work-spaces.html
What if the open industrial office is just part of a larger misguided fantasy? What if this office style is hurting our employees working on the hardest problems—our high-performance employees (HPEs)? What if the open office is causing retention problems, and affecting the quality of our end products?
As I outlined in my HPE article, executives and high-performance employees tend to optimize against completely different trade and life principles—they generally have very different views of the world. This disconnect shows itself very clearly in the environmental conditions of our creative and technical offices.
My latest anonymous survey* shows that 58% of HPEs need more private spaces for problem solving, and 54% of HPEs find their office environment “too distracting.”
Executive Idealism vs Reality
Without struggling to understand the principles of the HPE, executives risk building the most common environment for potential success, i.e. the easy and unimaginative solution rooted in a detached understanding of innovation as something hatched by fits of random social interaction and illumination—as opposed to understanding innovation as a sustainable and persistent framework that is cultivated, shepherded, maintained and reproduced over long periods of time.
In open environments, executives imagine social collaboration and surreal collision between disparate disciplines. Executives wish for the the next magical idea born from the random chaos of the corporate universe. To executives, easy access means easy sharing and easy success; we should always be able to yell at our coworkers within 25 feet whenever the mood strikes.
Everyday Problem Solving vs Pure Innovation
In contrast to many romanticized narratives, most HPE work involves just showing up every day and being consistent. Executives need to clearly separate everyday problem solving from the seeds of pure innovation.
The average day of the HPE is spent solving really hard problems related to an innovative product, idea or company direction. This means remaining focused for long hours in support of existing and future creatives/hardware/software/designs/narratives. HPEs are usually cranking on a days-long task, following through on a contract they made with peers or executives. HPEs overwhelmingly need quiet and calm space in order to efficiently complete their daily work.
What do these numbers mean?
58% of HPEs need more private spaces for problem solving, and 54% of HPEs find their office environment “too distracting.”
1) Distractions kill HPE productivity.
2) Poor productivity hurts our products and time-to-market.
3) Generally speaking, our offices are too open.
4) We need to slow down and listen to our people.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Know the soul of the high-performance employee, then we can build the 10,000 things.
Well-being and retention can only come through understanding.
https://hackernoon.com/know-the-soul-of-the-high-performance-employee-then-we-can-build-the-10-000-things-ad753ffd9b7f
Who are the HPEs?
Rather than being tasked with doing the most, high-performance employees (HPEs) are asked to solve the hardest problems in every company. They are the technicians, builders, designers, creatives, culture shapers, narrators and innovators. Together they erect product and industry across the globe. They are the focus of international recruiting, yet they remain largely misunderstood and poorly cared for. Certainly they are paid very well, but retention and morale trends are concerning.
HPEs are the direct conduit between executive/management direction and the actual paying customer. For example, in a software or tech company they would be:
Software Engineers
Data Scientists
Visual Designers
Structural & 3-D Prototype Designers
Narrative Developers
Just let me be the best.
HPEs are driven by trade and craft. They want to be surrounded by the peers, process and structure to do their very best work. They have a life-long relationship with raw technical skills that directly translate into digital/physical products.
It’s all very simple: the disposition and laser-focus required to become an HPE usually come at the expense of time spent debating, negotiating and evangelizing. Furthermore, it’s quite obvious that executives and HPEs tend to optimize against completely different career and trade principles—this cannot be understated.
The spirit of the HPE is so unique that it requires exceptional care and thought. Spurred by the explosion in global micro-innovation, executives around the world are scrambling to understand what makes these beautiful people thrive and perform. Many executives are totally lost, simply because they cannot understand the HPE mind.
Treat the Symptoms
As the business world becomes faster and faster, retention and morale are becoming the major issues with HPEs. The raw cost of losing employees is staggering, and that cost is magnified with HPEs—as key losses can cause acute impacts on innovation, and even spiral into corporate culture disasters.
Always predictable, executives are approaching the issue much like western medicine approaches individual health—treat the symptoms of disease, not the cause:
Employees are leaving early → let’s offer free dinner
Employees are arriving late → let’s offer free breakfast
Employees are tired → let’s install an espresso bar
Morale is low → let’s install video game consoles
Employees are unhealthy → let’s give away free gym membership
The problem is that HPEs are not average people. They are not primarily motivated by perks.
What do HPEs really need?
As low HPE retention remains a constant threat in technical industries, companies must cultivate and understand the mastery and purity of trade in order to manage retention and cultivate morale. The following can serve as a solid foundation:
Technical Competency of Direct Managers
Mentorship
Visual/Written Communication vs Spoken Word
Calm Space
Process, Time Constraints & Predictable Delivery Cycles
The Best Self-Selected Equipment
Community Involvement & Evangelism
Technical Competency of Direct Managers
Technical ability of direct managers may be the most important factor for morale and retention with high-performance employees. It’s so obvious. HPEs want to work with other experts, period. As for corporate productivity concerns, it’s also obvious that two experts working together—even if their areas of specialization are different—is exponentially more effective than the expert jostling with the novice.
Just like the innovative record producer working with the musician, if management and executives can stay extremely close to the reality and spirit of their HPEs, the sky is the limit. Continuing these close relationships over long periods of time is the key to sustainable innovation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The passion is not self-evident in working
My passion is accustomed to speak in connection with demanding vocation or profession strong creativity tasks. Everyday working life of passion will be easily passed – but should not, because it is a formidable force.
I have a firm belief that man will reach its peak when experiencing the passion on job.
My colleagues and greatest successes over the years have all been fed by passion. Therefore passion is worth to encourage, educate and nurture – both employees and employers.
Employee: Are you making choices based on passion?
Does a passion for the work that each task should be approached always fervently?
It is essential to listen to and understand themselves: What do you value? What you ignite? How important for you is to experience the passion at work? What motivates the long term? What are the successes reward?
There are jobs in which the importance and necessity of passion is emphasized. Potential of the working environment, you should reflect on what your self is the key. Dare to work when you search for to determine if you are a corporate culture inspiring, stimulating and supporting your goals. Are you seeking for a place where you can realize your passion?
IT industry typically seeks people who are fascinated by the problem-solving. It is a good starting point.
Passion is a necessary ingredient when we solve problems, create new concepts, we help completing the change, or are training our people.
Employer: Do you build culture where there is space for passion?
Passion can not be forced. If the corporate culture is not supported by enthusiasm, it is unnecessary requires, let alone market, that passion is the way to the house. Corporate culture prevails in relations between people, and the strengthening and development work is carried out continuously, just like the front of any human relationship.
I believe that passion goes hand in hand with confidence. A relationship of trust between the employer and the employee must take to build
Be aware of the passion killers: fear, uncertainty and indifference – and the old classic lack of communication. Build a culture where success is taken into account. Failures are allowed. Thoughts are listened to. highlighting ideas and open discussion is encouraged.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kumppanit/Sofigate/intohimo-ei-ole-itsestaanselvyys-tyoelamassakaan-6634147
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Brainstorming Doesn’t Work’
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/03/28/1357223/brainstorming-doesnt-work
People aren’t necessarily more creative in groups than alone, or vice versa, according to numerous studies. An anonymous reader shares an article:
In fact, creativity needs both conditions; our performance peaks when we alternate — first working alone, then coming together to share our ideas, then going off by ourselves again to mull over what we heard. It’s a process. This is because our brains’ creative engines are fueled both by quiet mind-wandering, allowing novel and unexpected connections to form, and by encountering new information, which often comes from other people.
Brainstorming Doesn’t Work–Try These Three Alternatives Instead
https://www.fastcompany.com/3069239/brainstorming-doesnt-work-try-these-three-alternatives-instead
Our brains’ creative flow isn’t time-bound the way the typical brainstorm is. Here are a few ways to shake things up.
People aren’t necessarily more creative in groups than alone, or vice versa. In fact, creativity needs both conditions; our performance peaks when we alternate–first working alone, then coming together to share our ideas, then going off by ourselves again to mull over what we heard. It’s a process. This is because our brains’ creative engines are fueled both by quiet mind-wandering, allowing novel and unexpected connections to form, and by encountering new information, which often comes from other people.
The typical brainstorm over-delivers on the latter and under-delivers on the former, which means that for lots of people, brainstorming is an utter nightmare. Introverts just feel alienated, and extroverts aren’t pushed to reflect more deeply on the ideas they’ve batted around amongst themselves.
Here are three alternatives that can help you sidestep all of these issues and actually get something done.
1. The Ambassador Method
Split your team into two groups, and put each in a separate room. The teams are set up to work on the same topic or problem statement. Team 1 doesn’t speak; they write down their ideas quietly and individually. Team 2 has a more traditional brainstorm, calling out their ideas and writing them up on the whiteboard. Let people choose which team they’d like to be on
When the ambassadors are done presenting, they return to their rooms for a new round. At this point, anybody is allowed to switch rooms.
Traditional brainstorming is time-bound in a way that our brains’ natural creative flow is not.
2. The Sleepover Method
Invite anyone on your team who’s up for it to take part in a traditional brainstorming session, which can last from a half-hour to an hour. Anyone who doesn’t want to turn up for the in-person brainstorm can still get involved: Have the notes from that session written up and distributed to the whole group–those present for the brainstorm and those who opted out. Tell everybody to take them home, read through those notes, and sleep on them. The next morning, have everybody take 15 minutes to write down any new ideas that came to them. Then share these ideas with everyone in the group.
Our brains do a tremendous amount of work while we sleep.
3. The Strolling Method
This one has the same beginning: A group of people come together to brainstorm on a given problem for a half-hour to an hour. Their ideas are written up and handed out to the entire team. Now everyone is sent outside for a walk. If you’re pressed for time, this can last as briefly as 15 minutes, but it’s better at half an hour or 45 minutes. Everyone is then brought back together to discuss what they’ve thought of.
Walking is a powerful creative exercise. It’s basically the “Goldilocks” amount of physical effort that it takes to oxygenate your brain without your muscles needing to pull in too much oxygen themselves.
Darwin had a famous sand walk at his estate.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are People More Creative Alone Or Together? Trick Question
https://www.fastcompany.com/3069033/are-people-more-creative-alone-or-together-trick-question
Your brain doesn’t care if you’re an introvert or an extrovert. It needs solo- and group-time to be creative–in that order.
“Want to be more productive and creative?” one Fast Company contributor recently asked. “Collaborate less.” “You’ll never do your best work alone,” wrote another, also on the question of creativity.
Why We Can’t Agree On When We’re Most Creative
Everyone seems to have their own answers:
Introverts: “When I’m alone.”
Extroverts: “When I have other people around.”
Management consultants: “When I’m with a group of people in a well-run meeting–preferably run by me.”
Harvard Business Review: “Erm, which issue did you pick up–the one with this article, or with this one?”
How did we get here?
The debate has been running for much longer, but its current form can be traced to two influential books published in the last decade.
One is Susan Cain’s Quiet, a 2012 manifesto for introverts, which decries what she saw as the rise of a counterproductive new groupthink.
Keith Sawyer wrote Group Genius in 2007, an effort to rebut much of the research concluding that breakthroughs come just from the exchange of ideas in groups.
But if both camps can point to solid research to back up their claims, is it possible–scientifically speaking–to have it both ways? Well, sort of. Let’s look at it in terms of how the brain works.
How can you put this into practice? Try brainstorming like this:
1. Grab some large sticky notes and have everyone write down their ideas, one per note, for 10 minutes.
2. Have them put their ideas on the wall, and everyone gets three minutes to look them over.
3. When time’s up, everyone goes back and writes new ideas for five more minutes.
4. The stickies go up, and everyone looks at them for two minutes.
5. Then everyone goes back to being alone and writes out new ideas for just 90 seconds.
6. The stickies go up one last time, and everyone looks at them for a final five minutes.
7. Discuss.
You’ll be done in half an hour.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Welcome to the Age of Continuous Innovation
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331529&
Modern applications now are comprised of pre-fab code snippets representing atomized functions delivered as microservices packaged within containers.
Technology stories regularly focus on macro trends including the Internet of Things, Big Data, Mobile, Cloud Computing, and Artificial Intelligence. On their own, each of these trends leads to massive changes in how fast information flows and brings about new applications and services. Taken together, they constitute radical changes in information technology — we are witnessing a new information age.
These trends and their underlying technologies are all a part of the Third Wave of Computing and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, both of which will fundamentally alter how we experience technology in our work and play, governance, and even our relationships. Information change has never been faster as exemplified by the practice of Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery for new or updated applications that are developed and introduced at high velocity. Basically, this means that applications are constantly updated to meet new requirements. The days of Waterfall Development have long vanished, and even Agile Development techniques are dramatically morphing to meet new age needs. The emphasis is all about speed, agility, and digital transformation to improve a company’s performance through harnessing digital technologies.
Modern applications now are comprised of pre-fab code snippets representing atomized functions delivered as microservices packaged within containers. These containers are deployed across “server-less” clusters using orchestration platforms that automate the capacity, scaling, patching, and administration of the infrastructure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Welcome to the Age of Continuous Innovation
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331529&
Modern applications now are comprised of pre-fab code snippets representing atomized functions delivered as microservices packaged within containers.
Technology stories regularly focus on macro trends including the Internet of Things, Big Data, Mobile, Cloud Computing, and Artificial Intelligence. On their own, each of these trends leads to massive changes in how fast information flows and brings about new applications and services. Taken together, they constitute radical changes in information technology — we are witnessing a new information age.
Modern applications now are comprised of pre-fab code snippets representing atomized functions delivered as microservices packaged within containers. These containers are deployed across “server-less” clusters using orchestration platforms that automate the capacity, scaling, patching, and administration of the infrastructure. Combined with a distributed computing architecture, this represents a massive paradigm shift in IT practice and infrastructure that has occurred in only the last several years in both application development and operations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Canadian town picks Uber for public transit
https://www.cnet.com/news/uber-public-transit-canadian-town-innisfil/
Innisfil, Ontario, concludes that subsidizing the car-hailing service is cheaper and more flexible than running its own buses.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How IT can foster a spirit of ‘intrapreneurship’
http://www.cio.com/article/3187407/leadership-management/how-it-can-foster-a-spirit-of-intrapreneurship.html
Corporations don’t have to look outside for fresh and innovative ideas. Instead, businesses can foster intrapreneurship by encouraging better communication between IT and other departments.
Entrepreneurship is typically associated with startup companies, and the eager, driven and innovative minds that start them. But there’s another type of entrepreneurship, and it lives inside established organizations.
Intrapreneurs are already employed in your organization — they’re workers with progressive ideas that will benefit the company. The only problem is, these intrapreneurs often struggle to find the right channels to see their ideas realized.
“These are the employees who want to get their hands dirty and are often the first people to volunteer for a job. Intrapreneurs are not content with the status quo. They often see how things could be part of a bigger picture and come up with ideas to realize this new vision,” says Tim Beerman, CTO at Ensono, a company that offers mainframe and hybrid IT solutions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Four Grand Engineering Challenges
K-8 education, and life after HTML
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331567
Industry veterans laid out four grand challenges in engineering at a National Academy of Engineering event here at the Computer History Museum—preparing the next generation of engineers, creating a more interactive medium than HTML, developing truly secure systems for the Internet of Things and responding to the bandwidth crisis in big data centers.
Engineers should spend time in K–8 classrooms as a service project, “like coaching little league — we have to grow an engineering culture,” said Alan Kay, a former fellow at Apple, Disney and Hewlett Packard. “Our notion of service has to be directed toward the next generation…the kids can’t wait,”
However, he was quick to note it’s hard to find the right balance of engineering and teaching skills and effective techniques to engage young students. For example, massive open online courses, a current rage at the university level, “are terrible,” and “you have to have some insights to use” the Internet “as something other than a legal drug,” he quipped.
“Almost nothing” will come to pass from a 2002 initiative to define the needs of the engineer in 2020, said Kay who participated in the effort. He called for engineers to think big to define bold directions.
“Why can’t engineering re-engineer itself?”
“This shows how the graph, equation and circuit diagram dance together. It gives you an intimacy with the system that you can’t get any other way,” he said, moving elements around in a demo
A handful of engineers at Google are trying to use these techniques in a new publication they launched dedicated to machine learning.
Moderator Vint Cerf characterized the work as opening the door to a new kind of literacy. However, he noted the archival challenge that “the underlying software still has to work in 100 years.”
Security expert Peter Neumann discussed the government project he works on that aims to pave a road to provably secure systems. He is a principal investigator for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on CRASH (Clean-Slate Design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts), a program that aims to build self-healing systems resistant to cyber attacks.
Such systems are sorely needed. Even today’s devices using a hardware root-of-trust such as ARM’s TrustZone are liable to side-channel attacks or fault injections based on monitoring a system’s power use or sending disrupting energy pulses.
“The IoT cannot possibly survive in the long run if there is no security… There’s no hope if we continue on the path we’re on of putting more and more things online that can be compromised either directly or through the network they are on,” he said, calling companies that advertise they can secure the IoT “a fantastic fraud” and “all smoke and mirrors.”
The CRASH program has developed a formal spec for a 64-bit MIPS system that uses special instructions so “if you don’t have right credentials, you can’t get at an associated object, which might be an entire database or app,”
Even if it’s successful it’s not bulletproof. “You still face key management issues, denial-of-service attacks and insider misuse like a Snowden attack, which is one of worst problems of all,” he said.
Google’s head of networking described the Herculean tasks the Web giant faces currently handling a quarter of the Internet’s traffic.
“We need a lot of help in networking, computing is at a crossroad and networking will play an out-sized role in what computing becomes,” said Amin Vahdat.
According to Amdahl’s law of needing a Mbit/s I/O for every MHz of computing, one of Google’s 50,000-server clusters needs 5 Pbits/s bandwidth. By contrast, the entire Internet is estimated to have an aggregate bisection bandwidth of 200 TBits/s.
The problem will only grow as Internet traffic and Google’s businesses grow. Handling network upgrades without disrupting services “takes fundamental architecture work,” he added.
BGP does not predict the shortest path for a job as much as 20 percent of the time, Vahdat said. With Espresso, Google essentially maintains on servers its own route maps and traffic conditions on them using application-specific signals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This is How Geeks Become Rockstars
Founders of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter…
they all got something in common
https://code.energy/geeks-become-rockstars/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Heated Concrete Could Pave the Way for Ice-Free Runways
http://www.aerodefensetech.com/component/content/article/26746?eid=376641819&bid=1730450
Iowa State University tested slabs of electrically conductive concrete at Des Moines International Airport. The test slabs are made up of 1 percent carbon fiber and a special mix of cement, sand, and rocks. The carbon fiber allows the concrete to conduct electricity, but there is some resistance to the moving electrons, which creates heat.
The slabs at the Des Moines airport are 7.5 inches thick in two layers – the bottom 4 inches are regular concrete, the top 3.5 are electrically conductive concrete. Between the layers are 12 metal electrodes, six per slab, running the width of each slab. The electrodes are wired to the nearby hangar’s power supply.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Survey Sees Engineering Brain Drain
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331593&
Senior engineers are retiring at an accelerated pace, creating a brain drain impacting all aspects of the supply chain from product creation though delivery.
Many estimates project that half of the engineering workforce will be eligible for retirement in the next few years. This knowledge drain is impacting the ability of organizations to keep pace.
At IEEE GlobalSpec, we hear and see that the pace of engineering and the complexity of the engineer’s role has changed. Engineers are facing real challenges finding solutions and information they need to solve their toughest problems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321
My lecturer instilled in me the power of numbers and calculation, how it gives you the ability to predict things; in that sense the subject always felt magical,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Museum of Fialure
Innovation
http://museumoffailure.se/
Learning is the only way to turn failure into success.
Museum of Failure is a collection of interesting innovation failures. The majority of all innovation projects fail and the museum showcases these failures to provide visitors a fascinating learning experience.
The collection consists of over sixty failed products and services from around the world. Every item provides unique insight into the risky business of innovation.
The exhibition is open to the public from June 7 in downtown Helsingborg, Sweden.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steve Wozniak: Human Over Technology
https://www.designnews.com/automation-motion-control/steve-wozniak-human-over-technology/83115108456683?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20170426.tst004t
Maintaining a creed of human over technology has served Apple and its co-founder Steve Wozniak well over the last four decades. In this Q&A, Wozniak discusses how making technology work for people brought about the Apple II and shares his thoughts on arti
Tomi Engdahl says:
How GE avoided Kodak’s fate
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/29/how-ge-avoided-kodaks-fate/?sr_share=facebook
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineering Ed Stuck in the Past
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331670&
Curriculum modifications and forum replacements must be made in the engineering and computer science education system if we want to equip future generations.
I was taught engineering in a very traditional method: a professor standing at the front of the classroom and students trying to make out scribbled hand writing and copying it down by way of pen and loose leaf. It wasn’t the most efficient process, but it was what we had to work with in the eighties.
Today, the engineering education is trapped in the past. It’s the reason so many companies have widely complained about the low levels of practical awareness and technical know-how among candidates to fill new, high-tech positions. The talent gap is larger than you think, and the deficit puts a chokehold on innovation.
Engineering students are faced with vastly different sociological and economic challenges from those born in the fifties, sixties, even eighties. In just the next 5-10 years, scientists and researchers say we’ll be looking at an entirely new world than the one we see and interact with today, in large part due to the rapid rate of technological innovation. To advance with it, substantial curriculum modifications and forum replacements must be made in the engineering and computer science education system if we want to equip future generations.
The tech talent gap is even larger than you thought
Over 1,500 chief information officers agree there’s a deficit, which means massive demand for those with the right skills.
https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/tech-talent-gap-survey-0816
We’ve known for a while now that there’s a tech talent shortage. But that shortage may be even bigger than you’d expected—in fact, according to a recent survey, it may be at its highest level since 2008.
IT outsourcer Harvey Nash and auditing firm KPMG surveyed over 3,000 technology leaders for their annual CIO Survey, and found that an astonishing 65% said that hiring challenges are hurting the industry. That number marks a six-point increase over last year’s survey, where 59% expressed that sentiment.
“That’s pretty staggering,” Bob Miano, president and CEO of Harvey Nash USA, told the Wall Street Journal. “CIOs may have great ideas but if you can’t get the IT talent, that’s a growing problem.”
Beyond data scientists, though, security and cloud computing are singled out as particular areas of IT spending—and subsequent hiring demand.
Cybersecurity, meanwhile, has been a recent point of hiring focus for the U.S. government: the Department of Homeland Security received clearance to bring on 1,000 new IT security experts earlier this year
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steve Wozniak: Human Over Technology
https://www.designnews.com/automation-motion-control/steve-wozniak-human-over-technology/83115108456683?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20170503.tst004t
Maintaining a creed of human over technology has served Apple and its co-founder Steve Wozniak well over the last four decades. In this Q&A, Wozniak discusses how making technology work for people brought about the Apple II and shares his thoughts on arti
Tomi Engdahl says:
Science Does Matter!
http://www.powerelectronics.com/power-management/science-does-matter?NL=ED-003&Issue=ED-003_20170501_ED-003_769&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_2_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=10836&utm_medium=email&elq2=5523eebcd104408093d36798c13cfefc
The March for Science, coinciding with Earth Day, took place in more than 500 cities worldwide with dozens of nonpartisan scientific professional societies in a turnout intended to combine political and pro-science demonstrations. Scientists left their labs to take to the streets Saturday, April 22, along with students and research advocates in pushing back against what they fear are mounting attacks on science.
Among the protester’s targets were the proposed U.S. government budget cuts under President Donald Trump
A 2010 editorial in the scientific journal Nature warned of “a growing anti-science streak on the American right” and argued that the rising trend threatened the country’s future, which “crucially depends on education, science, and technology.” Writing in the Scientific American, Shawn Lawrence Otto, author of The War On Science, wrote: “It is hard to know exactly when it became acceptable for U.S. politicians to become anti-science.”
Scientists have been responsible for many of today’s inventions that increased our workforce by providing jobs for millions of people. Our current economy includes devices that were invented within the last century, including semiconductors, television, cell phones, the internet, electric vehicles, power electronics, energy storage, alternative energy systems, such as solar and wind power, etc. Some of this technology was derived from industry along with help from National Laboratories.
Normally, I would not want to get involved in the political fantasy world, but the time has come to raise my voice and to put a positive spin on science and engineering. For example, why should people who have no scientific background decide that we don’t need scientific reasoning when it comes to climate change? One question is, how do we educate the uneducated? Or, can we?
One answer is we have to put a price tag on everything. Some in the current political world say climate change is a hoax.
Another question of concern is, what will happen with funding for National Laboratories? Are they the next ones to feel the “budget ax”? Still another budget question is what will happen to the Department of Energy (DOE), will it be downsized?
Professional organizations, such as the IEEE, should also be an active participant in a pro-science counteroffensive.
Andrew Jewett, writing in the April 21 issue of The Atlantic, says, “I worry about the movement’s arguments. A few skeptics have charged that the march will politicize science, reinforcing an already widespread perception of scientists as liberal activists rather than dispassionate researchers. ”
A huge amount of social-scientific literature—or just a good, hard look at the political scene—shows that conflict, uncertainty, and collective self-interest would remain central features of democratic politics even if all of the disputants took scientific findings as their starting point for policy recommendations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Five Must-Ask Questions for Successful 5G Design
Design teams involved with 5G technology must bear much in mind in order to obtain a winning formula.
http://www.mwrf.com/systems/five-must-ask-questions-successful-5g-design?NL=MWRF-001&Issue=MWRF-001_20170502_MWRF-001_431&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=10852&utm_medium=email&elq2=243ece0017864c75afcf284eafc488fb
You are leading a team to go after this 5G business. Your organization’s strategic imperatives include leadership in 5G and you are an essential part of making that real. Your management, your team, your C-suite, and your board of directors are counting on you. No pressure. You embark on this initiative, you have your team intact, it is time to draw battle plans and start the assault. But is your team ready? Do they have Tom Wolfe’s “Right Stuff” to realize that vision of 5G dominance?
If you are two years into your effort, it’s not too late—have a chat with your team and find out:
1. Do you have the right background and expertise?
I recall once having to make the unpopular decision for my team to standardize on a single programming language. Once I made that call I realized that everyone not only had to learn the language, but also had to become proficient object-oriented programmers—a rarity at that time. It was still the right decision, but the implementation time was greater than originally expected.
5G means new technologies for many of us.
5G may mean new business models for you.
2. Do you have the right tools?
Some of those new technical areas will require new tools for your team. In many cases, they will know a lot about what will make the difference. Is there new hardware?
3. Are you properly connected to your key customers?
I am a fan of the agile software manifesto, especially in its commentary about putting your designers close to customers and providing rapid and frequent updates to functionality, while embracing regular and rapid changes in requirements.
4. Is your timing consistent with theirs?
The recipe for the most fabulously successful projects I have witnessed are probably familiar to you: your project is timed to supply your lead 2-3 customers in perfect alignment with their project timing and the overall market demand is simultaneously growing. This magical combination is, to some extent, the result of luck, but my very first boss in this high-tech world always told me that you make your own luck. What this means to me is to start with a well-prepared team, with the right tools tightly connected to their most important customers, and then make sure your schedule matches theirs.
5. Do you have the support you need from your organization?
This is hardly unique to 5G, but we all need this reminder. I have never personally witnessed a manager leading a “strategic imperative” who was satisfied with the support coming from the rest of the organization. I have also never witnessed true innovation in a relaxed atmosphere. Therefore, we leaders are asked to embrace these challenges.
Conclusion
Talk to your team and find out what they think would make the difference. They and you will not get everything you ask for, but this process will likely clear a few roadblocks. And the innovation associated with a well-prepared, customer-connected, and motivated team will help you overcome the other challenges.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Hero Professor Sergei Bezrukov: Seeding the Next Generation of Innovators
http://community.silabs.com/t5/Official-Blog-of-Silicon-Labs/IoT-Hero-Professor-Sergei-Bezrukov-Seeding-the-Next-Generation/ba-p/189466?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=april2017newsletter&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTWpFeU5HVmhaREJrT0dFMyIsInQiOiJnWWlqaVc2OVJkMnhYb3ZGVGMzZVJUOWtMdVBJSU41czJ6XC9nRk1aZjB6eFp1WWNxR3dxUjlYbk9OUk9TbnFiMXhhSmhKQ0RaSWY1ZStOZ2RzVFdSaEFseUs2Ryt4eEZvUmQwNllnbjlHQXprZXhaZXhib3RFYWdESVFtWXRSZ1kifQ%3D%3D
What Silicon Labs devices are you having the students use in these individual projects, and why did you pick them?
We use many Silicon Labs products, and many of them are our first-preference products. This includes low-power microcontrollers. I have intensive experience with your 8051 series and EFM32 series; they are very low power, actually the best in the market.
Other Silicon Labs products that we intensively use are various USB bridges from the CP21xx series, temperature/humidity sensors from the Si70xx series, and the Sub-1G Si44xx radios. These are really easy to handle, and I like them a lot. This year, I also introduced your Bluetooth and WiFi modules from the Blue Gecko and Wizard Gecko series in my courses, wrote several forum articles on them, and we plan new projects based on them.
Where do you see the IoT going in the next 5–8 years given your unique experience as a researcher and educator?
I think we will see a lot more simple devices will appear which are self-powered and deliver small data as needed for very specific applications. Also, more development will be done in the energy harvesting area for devices can self-power themselves from native power sources like sunlight, heat, or vibration and transmit some data wirelessly. And finally, just more wireless everything as the distance capacity for wireless transmission continues to multiply and forces designers to extend boundaries further in their problem-solving.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Developing A Life-Saving Innovation
http://semiengineering.com/developing-a-life-saving-innovation/
NI’s guest blogger looks at how a team of researchers developed a cardiovascular homecare solution.
Ideas that come from the lab will be just ideas if you cannot bring that knowledge to the community. Our idea is driven by the reality of the increase in cardiovascular disease in the community. As reported by the World Health Organization (WHO), there was about 17.3 million people around the world died from CAD in 2008, representing 30% of all cases of death globally. This number is expected to grow to 23 million by 2030.
Protecting the heart is crucial for every family. Cassandra system is the solution for cardiovascular homecare. This is a monitoring system that enables ECG recording data transmitted from home directly to the server in the hospital.
To fully operate, Cassandra contains 2 main components: a wireless ECG monitoring device (wECG) and a data hub. The wECG is designed as a small, lightweight, flexible patch to continuously record the heart electrical activity. The data is transmitted to the NI MyRIO-based data hub via Bluetooth and to the Internet server through Wifi. The reliable range of Bluetooth transmission is 20 meters, which in consequence, covers about 200 m2 area. There are up to 16 wECG devices connecting to the Hub at the same time. HRV scanning software and cardiovascular disease prediction algorithms are developing and will soon be implemented into the Hub. The Hub can be installed at home or hospital’s patient so that it can actively monitor the patient’s cardiovascular health.
In Cassandra project, we are currently using a smartphone as a mobile data hub, which helps us to connect wECG with the online database. For this reason, the smartphone is required to constantly run with 3G connection. This significantly reduces our product reliability.
Benefits of using LabVIEW and NI tools NI MyRIO kit was chosen to build the data hub because of two reasons. First, the kit is powerful enough to receive and process the signal in real-time, which is really important to this project. Second, the NI LabVIEW is a user-friendly design software with Graphical Design Method, which allows us to design and implement within 3 months.
As in use Bluetooth protocol as the only wireless connection between wECG and the hub, the lack of this protocol on NI MyRIO is a critical issue.
Our software includes 2 parts: the connection between the ECG device and Android smartphones via Bluetooth Low Energy Protocol (BLE) and the data transfer protocol between the smartphone and the website.
After six months, our effort was proved as the result shows that the proposed Cassandra system can be used as that multi-signal monitoring for continuous ECG monitoring during daily activities
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Changing Work Environment for Engineers Today
http://www.powerelectronics.com/power-management/changing-work-environment-engineers-today?NL=ED-003&Issue=ED-003_20170508_ED-003_166&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_2_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=10949&utm_medium=email&elq2=7abf6995d730425f84df9b80b5a56cfb
IEEE Engineering360’s third annual “Pulse of the Engineer” report asked engineers and technical professionals in the industrial sector questions related to their jobs.
The Pulse of the Engineer research report presents the answers obtained from 1,581 survey respondents. In the information below parentheses show the percentage of respondents for that statement. The job functions included:
Design engineers (35%)
Engineering consultants (14%)
Individual contributors (30%)
Managers or senior managers (24%)
Figure 1 provides a good indication of today’s engineering community. Three items stand out that indicate how engineers are surviving in a competitive environment.
Engineers are required to do more with less (55%)
Pace of engineering is constantly increasing (51%)
Technology is improving productivity (43%)
Engineers are under several pressures that impact their ability to perform their jobs because product development is going through some changes
Designs are more complex/sophisticated (47%)
Design cycles are shrinking (46%)
There are more time-to-market pressures (42%)
Workload in most cases depends on company size and the amount of work they have in-house. An indicator of this is the number of projects an engineer is working on
The highest percentage is for 3-5 projects (42%)
More than 20 projects was rare (2%)
1-2 projects (29%)
6-10 projects (22%)
ngineering evaluation factors for team/department performance:
Customer service/satisfaction (61%)
Product quality (57%)
Meeting launch dates (42%)
Product unit costs (35%)
the constraints that an engineer feels are jeopardizing a company’s productivity, innovation, and/or product quality.
Resources/people constraints/shortage (48%)
Talent/specialized knowledge shortage (46%)
Budgetary constraints/shortage (44%)
Project/product deadline/time constraints (45%)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Marvell’s New CTO Wants ‘Culture of Innovation’
Bullish new blood amid troubled times
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331703
Neil Kim is just what the doctor ordered for Marvell — a booster shot of positive, practical engineering energy for a company about halfway through a major surgical makeover. The former head of Broadcom’s central engineering group spent an hour with EE Times sharing his views at the end of his first week on the job as Marvell’s new chief technologist.
It’s been a wild ride at Marvell, and it’s not over yet.
While it has been focused on rebuilding itself, the semiconductor industry around it has gone through a historic consolidation. Marvell’s top competitors in embedded processors, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi have beefed up for the next rounds of battle amid slowing market growth. Broadcom merged with Avago, and Qualcomm is set to gobble up NXP, enabling new levels of chip integration, savings, and economies of scale.
Former CEO Sutardja was himself an engineer at heart. He was known for getting deeply involved in projects such as MoChi, a silicon interconnect that he described in a 2015 ISSCC keynote, one of his last major public talks.
EET: How will you diversify out of hard drives?
Kim: There is a lot of growth ahead in storage. The hard drive market is flattening and declining slightly over time. We are a leader, but there is still market share to be had in that area.
We also can grow in cloud storage applications and go into higher-value sockets in hard drives. There’s also an opportunity to engage in ASICs as well as merchant chip markets.
Networking is another growth area with a 10G Ethernet transition on many campuses. I’ve already seen some of the things we are doing in architecture that look very interesting.
We also are a leader in chips for wireless access points for the enterprise. And automotive is becoming a multi-billion-dollar market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
After Moore’s Law — What?
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1331698
The semiconductor industry must, at last, outgrow its obsession with pitch shrinkage, and go creative with the “heterogeneous integration of different technologies” to push economic growth.
The Intel people might as well keep insisting that Moore’s Law isn’t dead, and that their 14-nm chip can pack more transistors than their rivals. That’s Intel being Intel, with a narrative that serves its purpose.
But this story doesn’t necessarily apply to other chip companies looking for a better valuation.
The semiconductor industry must, at last, outgrow its obsession with pitch shrinkage, and go creative with the “heterogeneous integration of different technologies” to push economic growth, according to Nicky Lu, chairman, CEO and founder of Etron Technology.
In short, it’s time to stop using Moore’s Law as a security blanket.
Lu suspects that Intel wouldn’t appreciate him calling Moore’s Law “virtual.” But Moore’s Law, in his opinion, long ago stopped serving chip engineers as a technology guide. Instead, Moore’s Law has been serving the investment community as “an economic law that justifies return on investment,” he explained.
As long as investors use it as a yardstick for the semiconductor industry’s growth, chip vendors feel they can’t afford to acknowledge the obsolescence of Moore’s Law. Even Lu doesn’t exactly declare Moore’s repeal.
But it’s important for the semiconductor industry to acknowledge that the industry “changed the rules of the game” when Intel — followed by TSMC and Samsung — opted for a tri-gate structure [known as FinFET], Lu noted. “The semiconductor industry replaced line scaling (transistor size) with area scaling (miniaturizing the unit area),” thus fundamentally changing the very nature of Moore’s Law, Lu said.
In Lu’s view, it’s critical to recognize that the semiconductor industry is no longer following the original template. Moore’s Law survived not by the shrinkage of the traditional transistor, but by riding variety of techniques — including advancements in packaging.
Shift to area, volume scaling
The FinFET structure, by standing taller, created a 3D space that allows a unit area to accommodate two transistors, thus triggering semiconductor engineers to transition their focus from “transistor size to the unit area.”
Lu calls such an era of area scaling “Silicon 2.0.” In the Silicon 2.0 era, chip designers replaced the conventional planar transistor with a new 3D tri-gate transistor structure. This allowed each die area to continue to increase the number of transistors by 2X.
Memory chip companies also took up the idea of area scaling. Toshiba built 3D NAND in 48 layer. Samsung pushed further, creating a 64-layer flash memory device. By going 3D, chip makers achieved the virtual equivalent of 13nm, although the technology level they used was only 32nm, Lu explained.
Silicon 2.0 was made possible by either 3D transistors or 3D cell structures.
While area scaling became prevalent for process nodes from 22/20nm to 7nm process in the Silicon 2.0 age, the semiconductor industry also developed new ideas such as SiP (system in package), MCM (multi-chip module) and 3D stacked dice. Lu describes this as a period of “volume scaling” (as opposed to “area scaling”), and calls it “Silicon 3.0.”
The concept of heterogeneous integration, especially “a stack of chips built using different technologies,” makes Silicon 3.0 promising.
Making Lu confident of the eventual arrival of Silicon 4.0 is the integrated fan-out (InFO) wafer-level packaging technology recently achieved by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
Traditionally, chip designers placed a bond pad onto a die for external communication. In contrast, TSMC’s InFO put bonding pads outside the die to create a fan-shaped structure, eliminating the need for an interconnecting substrate.
In short, TSMC’s InFO is what enabled Apple to offer a very thin package-on-package, with a high number of I/O pads and better thermal management in the A10 applications processor in the iPhone 7. As Lu put it, TSMC’s InFO is the reason the Taiwan foundry behemoth has been able to lock Apple in as its customer for nearly all A10 processors.
How to bring back value to chips
The eternal question facing the semiconductor industry is how to regain the system and application ends’ value. Lu hopes the industry will find the answer in the age of Silicon 4.0 by pursuing heterogeneous integration technologies that work together with non-semiconductor-based applications systems.
Etron Technology is in a way already practicing what Lu preaches.
While running Etron, a leading manufacturer of buffer memories and SoCs including USB 3.0 host controller ICs, Lu has been obsessed with developing a spherical 360-degree video capture device called “Lyfie.”
The human field of view — typically limited to about 160-degrees — can be extended to a spherical 360 degrees, capturing everything around the user. With a new app, one can also record “VR-3D scenery,” thus allowing AR/VR content to be easily shared on YouTube and Facebook.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Dangers of Engineering While Unlicensed
http://hackaday.com/2017/05/08/the-dangers-of-engineering-while-unlicensed/
Citizen engineers, beware the Beaver State. If you want to discuss engineering in a public setting, you’d better have a license. If you don’t, you could end up like Oregon resident Mats Järlström — paying a $500 fine and being threatened with even larger civil penalties and jail time.
The story of how Järlström became ensnared in this unfortunate series of events begins innocently enough, and it’s a story that any Hackaday reader can probably relate to. After his wife received a traffic ticket in the mail from a red-light camera in the town of Beaverton, Järlström began pondering the math of traffic signal timing. After a little digging, he found the formula used for calculating the time traffic signals stay in the yellow stage. Moreover, he found a flaw in the formula, which dates back to 1959, that could lead to incorrect violations issued by automated traffic cameras.
Järlström began communicating his findings far and wide, as any of us might do in an attempt to right an injustice. But the first rule of engineering in Oregon is apparently not to talk about engineering in Oregon if you’re not a licensed professional engineer (PE), which Järlström is not.
‘I feel violated’: Engineer who pointed out traffic signals flaw fined for ‘unlicensed engineering’
Welcome to the crazy world of Oregon state law
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/29/engineer_fined_for_talking_about_math/
Last year, Mats Järlström was fined $500 for revealing troubling flaws in the mathematical formula used to govern the timing of US traffic lights.
Järlström, a Swedish electronics engineer who has lived in America for more than two decades, realized there was a design fault in traffic systems
So Järlström decided to try to improve the math managing the transition time from yellow to red, in order to allow a driver traveling through an intersection with a yellow light to slow down and turn without being flagged for a red light violation. And in early 2015 he shared his proposal with the media, policymakers, and those interested in the traffic technology.
“It’s not rocket science,” Järlström said in a phone interview with The Register. “It took me about 40 minutes to figure it out.”
For communicating his findings in five emails, the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying in March, 2015 opened an investigation. In August 2016, the rules body found [PDF] that Järlström had engaged in unlicensed engineering and assessed a $500 fine.
Järlström paid the fine but fears his ongoing interest in traffic light timing will lead to further penalties. Violating the Act could subject him to $1,000 in civil penalties, $6,250 in criminal fines, and as much as a year in jail.
Every state in the US regulates the practice of engineering. “Unusually, however, Oregon’s Professional Engineer Registration Act … also restricts and punishes ordinary people for their most basic acts of civic engagement and political speech,” the complaint states.
What’s more, the Act restricts the use of the word “engineer” to those in the state who are professionally licensed engineers, a limitation also challenged in the complaint.
Oregon residents who describe themselves as “software engineers” on LinkedIn or elsewhere may wish to reconsider.
In Sweden, Järlström studied electrical engineering – where the term isn’t subject to licensing.
He is currently self-employed, conducting audio product tests and repairs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What! Really? Engineers Who Taste Colors
Posted Apr 27, 2017 at 11:22 pm
https://www.eeweb.com/blog/max_maxfield/what-really-engineers-who-taste-colors
Are there any synaesthetic logic designers out there who see/perceive different colors associated with the various symbols on a schematic diagram?
Seeing sounds and tasting colors
Have you ever heard of synaesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia and synesthesia)? Derived from the Greek syn, meaning “together” or “union,” and aesthesis or aisthesis, meaning “sensation” or “to perceive,” synaesthesia embraces a variety of different conditions in which the stimulation of one set of sensory inputs (say sound) is simultaneously perceived by one or more of the other senses (sight or touch, for example).
It’s important to note that synaesthesia is additive; that is, it “overlays” the primary senses. Also, we should remind ourselves that there are many different types of synaesthesia. For example, when some synaesthetes hear music, they might see patterns of colors hovering about three feet in front of them. A trill of the flute may appear as a collection of purple triangles and small pink dots, for example. (It is said that if a non-synaesthete wants to get a feel for what this might be like to experience, a good start would be to watch appropriate portions of the original Fantasia movie by Walt Disney.)
a non-synaesthete, like myself, sees the alphabet printed as black text on white paper
By comparison, a synaesthete might look at the same black text on white paper, but perceive each letter as having its own unique color
As I say, some synaesthetes “see” the letters as being black, but “perceive” colors as being “associated” with the letters. By comparison, other synaesthetes actually do “see/perceive” the letters as really having those colors.
It’s important to note that the above is simply a representation created by yours truly. Every synaesthete (of this type) perceives their own color alphabet.
Actually, when you come to think about it, we may all be synaesthetic, at least to some small degree. If we are asked to associate different colors with different notes on a piano, for example, the vast majority of us would tend to associate darker colors (like brown) with lower notes and lighter colors (like yellow) with higher notes. Since colors and the frequency of notes have nothing intrinsically to do with each other, it may be that such an association is synaesthetic in origin.
Synaesthetic engineers
I started to wonder if there are there any synaesthetic logic designers out there who would associate different colors with the various symbols on a schematic diagram.
As you can imagine, it’s a bit difficult to introduce this topic into the conversation at parties, but eventually I came across an electrical engineer called Jordan A. Mills, who told me that he does indeed perceive different colors when looking at gate-level schematic diagrams.
Although I’d never thought of this before, Jordan told me that he also sees the various symbols used in flowcharts as having their own colors.
All of this led me to think about software designers creating code using a programming language like C (or hardware designers using a hardware description language like Verilog or VHDL).
Observe the automatic syntax coloring for things like function declarations, function calls, value assignments, and so forth. When I see this, several thoughts immediately spring to mind as follows:
When I was starting out, we didn’t even know enough to dream of syntax coloring editors. We thought we were lucky to have access to black-and-white text editors (we also had to walk to work barefoot through the snow).
If there were any synaesthetic coders back then, maybe their brains automatically performed this syntax coloring for them; can you imagine how handy this would be?
If there are any synaesthetic coders now, then it would be awkward if their brains are trying to apply a different set of colors to the ones being used by the editor; can you imagine what a pain this would be?
What do you think about this?
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Money is done by the one who opens the data to the network”
Tyler Seppälä, a research manager at Etla and soon to become a professor at the Aalto University in charge of Digital Operations, says that in the digital economy, money is being made by the one who manages the platform and opens the data that it owns to be exploited by third parties.
Seppälä presented his views last week at the first Embedded Conference Finland event in Helsinki, Finland.
He argued that the companies that control the centralized platform and data have been successful over the past ten years, but have also provided this information to others. The best examples of this are apparent, namely, Apple and Google. – And keep in mind that Apple does not have a buying organization, Seppälä stressed.
Everyone is intrigued by digitization and the Internet of things, but the truth is that the development is only in its early stages. – 98 percent of devices are not connected to the Internet, “Seppälä recalled.
The same goes for Finnish companies. – 24 percent say they invest in the Internet, but 76 percent do not invest!
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/6306-rahaa-tekee-se-joka-avaa-datan-verkkoon
Tomi Engdahl says:
Titan Note transcription gadget suspended from Indiegogo after raising $1.1 million
If it seems too good to be true — don’t fund it
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/5/12/15629954/titan-note-suspended-indiegogo-refunds
The crowdfunding campaign for Titan Note — a transcription gadget that seemed too good to be true — has been suspended from Indiegogo after raising more than $1.1 million from backers. A spokesperson for Indiegogo told The Verge the campaign had been suspended due to “violations of our terms of use,” and that refunds had been issued to all backers. The company would not comment on any specifics.
The original Titan Note campaign promised a product with capabilities far beyond any gadget currently available.
When we covered the Titan Note in March, we suggested the company was perhaps exaggerating the capabilities of its product. After all, we said, if Apple or Amazon can’t produce transcription software as accurate and speedy as this, what chance does a company with no commercial history have? We later received a DMCA takedown notice for using of Titan Note’s product imagery to illustrate our story.
https://twitter.com/search?q=titan%20note&src=typd
Tomi Engdahl says:
Product development can be faster and cheaper
The most important result of VTT’s Semtec project is the new calculation methods, which are for the first time in industrial use and available with industry-specific tools.
VTT’s project has developed faster, more accurate and more agile computing tools and methods for the product development of electrotechnical equipment. This makes it possible to exclude expensive and time-consuming prototype phases in the electromechanical industry.
Technology Research Center VTT’s SEMTEC project developed faster, more accurate and more agile computing tools and methods. This makes it possible to exclude expensive and time-consuming prototype phases in the electromechanical industry.
Finnish industry gains this competitive edge as the product development of electric motors and generators and transformers speeds up and is more cost-effective for the market. The project also produces quieter and more energy-efficient machines.
“SEMTEC has launched close and symbiotic cooperation between industrial companies, research institutes and universities. Thanks to open source, new models developed by scientists can be tested in industry-specific design systems. The project has provided the opportunity to commercialize a new, top-notch modeling machinery for our own use, which we have already been able to win major deals, “says the study Trafotek Eelis Takala.
The project utilized the Elmer tool, a software based on CSC’s Open Source Elemental Method (FEM) software, which enables effective parallel computation and multiple physical phenomena to be coupled.
Sources:
http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2017/05/17/tuotekehitysta-voi-nopeuttaa-ja-halpuuttaa/
http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/6323-uusilla-tyokaluilla-eroon-kalliista-protokehityksesta
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bill Gates Has Seven Predictions for the Future
https://futurism.com/bill-gates-seven-predictions-future/
1. In the next 15 years, 33 million people could be wiped out in less than a year by a pathogen.
2. Africa will become entirely self-sufficient in terms of food production.
3. The lives of the poor will be transformed by mobile banking.
4. In the year 2035, poor countries will no longer exist.
5. By 2030 there will be a clean energy breakthrough that will revolutionize our world.
6. Countless jobs will be lost to automation.
7. Polio could be eliminated worldwide by 2019.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Design Thinking – from innovation process to practicing mindsets and abilities
http://www.tivi.fi/Kumppaniblogit/symbio/design-thinking-from-innovation-process-to-practicing-mindsets-and-abilities-6650226
Symbio invited Stanford University lecturer Anja Svetina Nabergoj to Finland in April 2017. She met executives from top100 companies to discuss how Design Thinking could elevate the digital transformation that most of these companies are going through. Design thinking has been on the innovation agenda for many executives and companies hoping that this user-centered innovation approach will help them better meet the needs of its users and deliver more value.
Finland as a country has great engineering capabilities, committed leaders and very innovative companies. One thing that I noticed while interacting with senior leaders is that they believe that their domain expertise could be complemented with additional creative problem solving skills that would allow them to look at the problems with the different perspective. One way to increase those skills is by using design thinking process as well as mindsets.
Design Thinking is a creative problem solving and innovation methodology that has been adopted by many companies all around the world from banks, hotels, airlines, consumer goods to technology companies. The approach works both in B2C as well as B2B contexts and is most useful for challenges that are human centered, complex and ambiguous or not well defined.
Customer insight in five steps
To better understand that particular group of users, they decide to use the Design Thinking approach. I will walk you through a scenario of how the process plays out on their real life example.
Empathy: In empathy phase we are focusing on really getting to know the users.
Define: In the define phase, we unpack all the data we have collected during empathy while looking for interesting and surprising behaviors, patterns as well as unexpected observations. The unpacking process helps us better understand what is the problem really about.
Ideate: In the ideation phase we use several techniques (such as structured brainstorming, introducing constraints, analogous brainstorming and facilitated selection process) to ensure that the team comes up with many diverse and radical solutions for a given challenge. When we enter the idea selection phase, we chose ideas for their potential in order to retain some of the creative and radical ideas and carry them into the next phase.
Prototype: We believe in the power of early and low-resolution prototypes. While most companies use some level of prototyping, they often refine their prototypes to the resolution that is too polished.
Test: The goal of early testing is to learn weather the challenge we are solving is meaningful to the user and did we find a relevant solution for that problem. During the testing phase we do not go out in front of user to validate our solution, but to learn more.
Design Thinking mindset and abilities
One thing that is at the heart of this user-centered innovation is a set of mindsets and abilities that we use when we innovate in a user-centered way. The main challenge in many organizations is that Design Thinking is limited to user insight group or service design team, while in reality the underlying mindsets and abilities used in design thinking can be applied to everything we do as a company, from redesigning internal processes, designing incentive structures that resonate with employees, reimagine onboarding experiences or imagining more user-friendly ways of submitting expense reports.
The true innovators are the ones that were able to build internal ability to:
- Focus on human needs and create meaningful experiences for employees and customers.
- Rapidly experiment and tolerate ambiguity that is an integral part creative problem solving.
- Radically collaborate across departments and teams in order to bring diverse perspectives and learn from others.
- Intentionally build prototypes in order to test assumptions early in the project and rather fail early and learn from mistakes.
Co-Creating What’s Next
https://www.symbio.com/fi/palvelut/co-creating-whats-next/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Europe’s companies often need a kick-start for innovation — Prof. Luke Georghiou
EU firms should be brought within ‘innovation ecosystems’.
https://beat.10ztalk.com/europes-companies-often-need-a-kick-start-for-innovation-prof-luke-georghiou/
Europe needs to demonstrate to many of its companies the benefits of innovation, according to Professor Luke Georghiou, the vice-president for research and innovation at the University of Manchester, UK.
You advised on the EU report The Economic Rationale for Public R&I Funding and its Impact. The report states that public research funding should be used to kick-start market-creating innovation, but is there any evidence that this works?
‘Arguably only public funding can meet that need, in the sense that most fundamental technologies have originated in publicly funded programmes. It still needs the entrepreneurial insights of firms to match those to market opportunities.’
The economic rationale for public R&I funding and its impact
https://bookshop.europa.eu/en/the-economic-rationale-for-public-r-i-funding-and-its-impact-pbKI0117050/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Europe’s companies often need a kick-start for innovation – Prof. Luke Georghiou
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/europe-s-companies-often-need-kick-start-innovation-prof-luke-georghiou_en.html
Europe needs to demonstrate to many of its companies the benefits of innovation, according to Professor Luke Georghiou, the vice-president for research and innovation at the University of Manchester, UK.
Can you give an example?Prof. Luke Georghiou says that Europe needs more companies that are able to apply research.
‘People would give the arch example of a company innovation to be the iPhone, but as the economist Mariana Mazzucato has shown, at the core of that are technologies developed in the public sector, for example touchscreens and GPS. Another big example, of course, is the World Wide Web originating in CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). We could (also) look at Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanners, core to hospital diagnosis, which began as scientific instruments in labs developed by researchers.’
All of which are based on money coming from governments?
‘Yes. So the underpinning knowledge base is largely coming from government programmes, but … the entrepreneurial insight to configure these to match market needs, or public needs, is generally coming from business.’
Europe is great at generating research, but lags behind other regions of the world when it comes to successful new companies. What needs to be done?
‘Quite often, the case is that we simply don’t have enough companies with what we call absorptive capacity. That is one of the key words in the report.
When you say bring companies into an ‘innovation ecosystem’, what does that mean?
‘Let us think of a company that is currently simply using off-the-shelf technologies, equipment, business models, not innovating. That is often because it is cut off from the knowledge supply. So, what you might do is have a scheme which subsidises a doctoral researcher to go and work on a company problem. You create a job for them, but you also give that company the capability not only of what that person is doing for them, but all the networks that they bring with them. Helping them to develop links with key customers for their innovations, public or private, is also important.’
In order to bring companies into these ‘innovation ecosystems’, to stimulate the development of these market-creating firms, what does Europe need to do?
‘One of the problems (to date) was that there were a number of measures but they were all separate from each other and not seen as a concerted effort. So I believe that brigading them under the brand of the European Innovation Council (a proposal to reform how breakthrough innovation is supported) is an important first step. I would expect that whole area to be evolving, but in the second half of Horizon 2020 (the EU’s funding programme for research and innovation) and beyond it.’
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Tools Do Engineers Use to Keep Their Minds Active?
What tools and techniques do you use use to keep your mind and body in tip-top engineering-ready condition?
https://www.eeweb.com/blog/max_maxfield/what-tools-do-engineers-use-to-keep-their-minds-active
After several messages had bounced back and forth, one of them said, “My wife has been dragging me (purposefully chosen verb) to line dancing lessons. I find it very difficult, but I am trying to stay with it, partly because I’ve heard that learning new dance steps is good for the aging and rapidly declining brain.”