Searching for innovation

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:

XKCD Automation

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.

 

 

 

 

4,464 Comments

  1. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How to Fail Fast and Smart During the Optical Product Design Process
    https://www.vision-systems.com/whitepapers/2018/04/how-to-fail-fast-and-smart-during-the-optical-product-design-process.html?cmpid=enl_vsd_vsd_newsletter_2018-06-25&pwhid=6b9badc08db25d04d04ee00b499089ffc280910702f8ef99951bdbdad3175f54dcae8b7ad9fa2c1f5697ffa19d05535df56b8dc1e6f75b7b6f6f8c7461ce0b24&eid=289644432&bid=2151852

    Failure is an inevitable part of the product development process, because you have to explore all the ways a design won’t work to find the way it will work. When you’re in a situation that demands speedy development cycles, how can you fail faster and smarter to reduce costs and get to market faster?

    Reply
  2. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Hiring top technical talent: how to sift through all the noise to uncover the perfect candidate for the job
    https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333352

    Arguably, your company’s most important asset is its people. With the vast social networks and job sites available, attracting candidates when you have an opening isn’t a problem. You’ve got a myriad of resources available to you, such as posting positions through online job sites like LinkedIn and Monster or leveraging your existing employee base to generate references.

    The problem with these methods is that you are also going to generate a myriad of resumes. Even a single posting can result in a deluge of applicants. Certainly, playing a numbers game in this way will give you a wide range of options. However, mediocre candidates know about the numbers game as well, so they flood the market with their resumes. This means that the person you are looking for – the one who is perfect for the position – is going to be that much harder to find.

    Technical camouflage

    The task of identifying the best-qualified candidate can be a nightmare when the position requires specialized expertise, as it can be challenging to accurately assess someone’s technical capabilities. Mediocre candidates know this and use all of the right buzzwords to appear as if they are an excellent prospect. Even if engineering provides materials to assess a candidate’s knowledge of C++ or circuit design, the limited scope of such tests is only going to eliminate the worst candidates, not help identify the best.

    This traditional approach to filling technical positions often leads to two undesirable outcomes. The first is that more candidates must be passed through to the technical interview stage for further assessment. This requires substantially more time and involvement than technical staff can afford to give.

    The second undesirable outcome is perhaps even more important: There’s a very good chance that the best candidates will be eliminated. Consider that engineers typically spend the majority of their time developing their technical skill set. Thus, many of the best technical minds – the ones who are going to be able to keep projects on schedule and on budget – are notoriously poor at selling themselves. Top-talent engineers often don’t like to stick out in a crowd, and their resumes reflect this, which is why they often find their way to the trash bin in favor of someone who has a more polished resume but is less qualified.

    You don’t need to interview a thousand people to find the best ones if you interview the best people to begin with. An effective way to do this is to work with a recruitment company that has already filtered through countless resumes and applicants

    Each person recommended by a recruiter will be an expert in his or her field.

    Reply
  3. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Top 20 Deep Tech Innovations of 2017
    https://medium.com/dissected-by-propel-x/top-20-deep-tech-innovations-of-2017-5506697eba1a

    2017 has seen an exciting range of groundbreaking discoveries. Everything from self- driving cars, developments in space travel, new ways to treat disease, and robots designed to scale services many in the past thought unimaginable.

    Reply
  4. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Visualizing The World’s 20 Largest Tech Giants
    http://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-worlds-20-largest-tech-giants/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialWarfare

    Large companies can be located all over the globe.

    For example, massive auto companies can be found practically anywhere on a map.

    While the banking, pharma, energy, and retail industries also have geographic spread as well, the same cannot be said for the rapidly-growing tech industry

    Of the 20 largest tech giants globally, a total of zero are located outside of the United States and China.

    Reply
  5. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Robots do not destroy employment, politicians do
    https://www.dlacalle.com/en/robots-do-not-destroy-employment-politicians-do/

    I’m not worried about artificial intelligence, I’m terrified of human stupidity.

    The debate about technology and its role in society that we need to have is being used to deceive citizens and scare them about the future so they accept to submit to politicians who cannot nor will protect us from the challenges of robotization.

    However, there are many studies that tell us that in 50 years the vast majority of work will be done by robots. What can we do?

    We have lived the fallacies of dystopian estimates for decades.

    Reply
  6. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Box opens up about the company’s approach to innovation
    https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/11/box-opens-up-about-the-companys-approach-to-innovation/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook

    Most of us never really stop to think about how the software and services we use on a daily basis are created. We just know it’s there when we want to access it, and it works most of the time. But companies don’t just appear and expand randomly, they need a well defined process and methodology to keep innovating or they won’t be around very long.

    Reply
  7. Tomi Engdahl says:

    DARPA dedicates $75 million (to start) into reinventing chip tech
    https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/24/darpa-details-75-million-initiative-to-reinvent-chip-tech/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook

    The Defense Department’s research arm, DARPA, is throwing an event around its “Electronics Resurgence Initiative,” an effort to leapfrog existing chip tech by funding powerful but unproven new ideas percolating in the industry. It plans to spend up to $1.5 billion on this over the years, of which about $75 million was earmarked today for a handful of new partners.

    The ERI was announced last year in relatively broad terms, and since then it has solicited proposals from universities and research labs all over the country, arriving at a handful that it has elected to fund.

    Reply
  8. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
    New study says that top companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have higher productivity growth than others because of higher proprietary IT spending

    Why Do the Biggest Companies Keep Getting Bigger? It’s How They Spend on Tech
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-the-biggest-companies-keep-getting-bigger-its-how-they-spend-on-tech-1532610001

    The secret of success for Amazon, Google and Microsoft is how much they invest in their own technology

    Your suspicions are correct: The biggest companies in every field are pulling away from their peers faster than ever, sucking up the lion’s share of revenue, profits and productivity gains.

    Economists have proposed many possible explanations: top managers flocking to top firms, automation creating an imbalance in productivity, merger-and-acquisition mania, lack of antitrust regulation and more.

    But new data suggests that the secret of the success of the Amazons, Googles and Facebook s of the world—not to mention the Walmart s, CVSes and UPSes before them—is how much they invest in their own technology.

    There are different kinds of IT spending. For the first few decades of the PC revolution, most companies would buy off-the-shelf hardware and software. Then, with the advent of the cloud, they switched to services offered by the likes of Amazon, Google and Microsoft . Like the difference between a tailored suit and a bespoke one, these systems can be customized, but they aren’t custom.

    IT spending that goes into hiring developers and creating software owned and used exclusively by a firm is the key competitive advantage.

    Today’s big winners went all in

    Tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple—as well as other giants including General Motors and Nissan in the automotive sector, and Pfizer and Roche in pharmaceuticals—built their own software and even their own hardware, inventing and perfecting their own processes instead of aligning their business model with some outside developer’s idea of it.

    The result is our modern economy, and the problem with such an economy is that income inequality between firms is similar to income inequality between individuals: A select few monopolize the gains, while many fall increasingly behind.

    This also has implications for wages—the rise in the wage gap since 1978 is almost entirely attributed to an increase at more-productive firms that occurred as pay at less-productive firms remained relatively static

    When new technologies were developed in the past, they would diffuse to other firms fast enough so that productivity rose across entire industries.

    Samuel Slater, the “father of America’s industrial revolution,” was able to more or less single-handedly bring England’s pioneering power-loom technology to the U.S. by apprenticing himself to an English weaver and memorizing the design of his looms and mills.

    20 years ago, firms could adopt Microsoft Office or Adobe ’s desktop publishing software and instantly disrupt larger firms that were slower to adopt this new technology.

    But imagine instead of power looms, someone is trying to copy and reproduce Google’s cloud infrastructure itself.

    One explanation for how this came to be is that things have just gotten too complicated.

    While in the past it might have been possible to license, steal or copy someone else’s technology, these days that technology can’t be separated from the systems of which it’s a part.

    Just spending money on technology doesn’t cut it, however.

    This seemingly insurmountable competitive advantage that comes with big companies’ IT intensity may explain the present-day mania for mergers and acquisitions

    It may be difficult or impossible to obtain critical technologies any other way.

    biggest firms are becoming more productive across many countries—in both the U.S. and in Europe

    It’s not clear just how long this phenomenon will drive the biggest firms in each sector to grow faster than their competitors.

    Reply
  9. Tomi Engdahl says:

    This is How Geeks Become Rockstars
    https://code.energy/geeks-become-rockstars/

    Founders of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter…
    they all got something in common

    It’s no coincidence many tech founders (like Mark Zuckerberg) were computer science students. Once you master computer science, you’ll have the computational mind that powers rockstar tech entrepreneurs

    Apple, IBM, Twitter and other giants are pouring big bucks to help people learn computer science.

    Computer science demand is exploding
    The US Department of Labor predicted there will be 1.4 million computer science jobs by 2020—but only enough people to fill 30% of these jobs. These startling numbers are even being picked up by the mainstream media:

    “Tech Companies Work to Combat Computer Science Education Gap” USnews.com

    “Silicon Valley could hire every American with high-tech skills and it would still have hundreds of thousands of unfilled jobs.” Inc.com

    “At Facebook we literally hire as many talented engineers as we can find. There just aren’t enough people who are trained and have these skills today.” Mark Zuckerberg

    If computer science is really all that great, why don’t more people study it? Well, they try… computer science is within the top 10 most popular degrees. But there’s a catch: it’s really hard to learn computer science in universities.

    Reply
  10. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Survey Finds Most Americans Think That They Have Above Average Intelligence
    http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/survey-finds-most-americans-think-that-they-have-above-average-intelligence/

    A new US-based nationally representative survey has found that 65 percent of respondents (70 percent in men, 60 percent in women) agree with this rather telling statement: “I am more intelligent than the average person.” Hopefully this doesn’t require a rudimentary lesson in statistics to explain why this simply isn’t possible.

    many people overestimate their intellectual capabilities.

    the same pattern can be found in other countries around the world too

    Reams of psychological research notes that we are all fairly prone to overestimating our capabilities, with some people more prone than others. One finding in particular, one that crops up in this latest study, stands out: the least intelligent tend to be the most overconfident.

    This doesn’t mean that confidence is necessarily associated with low intelligence, however, as university graduates often (more accurately) describe themselves as more learned.

    Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE) is alive and well in the general population.

    This can have dangerous effects: the most confident anti-vaxxers, for example, tend to be those with the least amount of knowledge on the subject.

    People tend to rate themselves more highly in a wide range of subjects, though, from driving to morality to videogames and cooking. Normally, those who are the least competent rate themselves very highly.

    It’s also possible that the people’s definitions of intelligence are different from person to person. That’s fair enough; as we explain here, IQ is just one, fairly flawed measure of cognitive abilities. With that in mind, one could see how a majority of respondents correctly assume that they are smarter in one particular aspect compared to the general population.

    Reply
  11. Tomi Engdahl says:

    ‘Why Liberal Arts and the Humanities Are as Important as Engineering’
    https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/08/05/2254244/why-liberal-arts-and-the-humanities-are-as-important-as-engineering?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29

    Engineering professor Vivek Wadha writes:
    A technological shift is in progress that will change the rules of innovation. A broad range of technologies, such as computing, artificial intelligence, digital medicine, robotics and synthetic biology, are advancing exponentially and converging, making amazing things possible. With the convergence of medicine, artificial intelligence and sensors, we can create digital doctors that monitor our health and help us prevent disease; with the advances in genomics and gene editing, we have the ability to create plants that are drought resistant and that feed the planet; with robots powered by artificial intelligence, we can build digital companions for the elderly. Nanomaterial advances are enabling a new generation of solar and storage technologies that will make energy affordable and available to all.

    Creating solutions such as these requires a knowledge of fields such as biology, education, health sciences and human behavior.

    Why liberal arts and the humanities are as important as engineering
    http://wadhwa.com/2018/06/12/liberal-arts-humanities-important-engineering/

    Earlier in my academic career, I used to advise students to focus on science and engineering, believing that they were a prerequisite for success in business. I had largely agreed with Bill Gates’s assertions that America needed to spend its limited education budgets on these disciplines, because they produced the most jobs, rather than the liberal arts and humanities.

    This was in a different era of technology and well before I learned what makes the technology industry tick.

    We learned that though a degree made a big difference in the success of an entrepreneur, the field it was in and the school that it was from were not significant factors. YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki, for instance, majored in history and literature; Slack founder Stewart Butterfield in English; Airbnb founder Brian Chesky in the fine arts. And, in China, Alibaba chief executive Jack Ma has a bachelor’s in English.

    Steve Jobs touted the importance of liberal arts and humanities at the unveiling of the iPad 2: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing, and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.” With this focus, he built the most valuable company in the world and set new standards for the technology industry.

    Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell, who majored in English, also emphasized this. I recently asked him how he turned his company around and caused its stock price to increase by an astonishing 450 percent over five years. He said that it was through relentlessly focusing on design in every product the company built; that engineering is important but what makes a technology product most successful is its design.

    Reply
  12. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Education
    Children Learn Best When Their Bodies Are Engaged in the Living World. We Must Resist the Ideology of Screen-Based Learning
    https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/08/06/0056259/children-learn-best-when-their-bodies-are-engaged-in-the-living-world-we-must-resist-the-ideology-of-screen-based-learning?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29

    Nicholas Tampio, associate professor of political science at Fordham University in New York, writing for Aeon magazine:
    As a parent, it is obvious that children learn more when they engage their entire body in a meaningful experience than when they sit at a computer. If you doubt this, just observe children watching an activity on a screen and then doing the same activity for themselves. They are much more engaged riding a horse than watching a video about it, playing a sport with their whole bodies rather than a simulated version of it in an online game.

    Today, however, many powerful people are pushing for children to spend more time in front of computer screens, not less.

    Look up from your screen
    https://aeon.co/amp/essays/children-learn-best-when-engaged-in-the-living-world-not-on-screens

    Children learn best when their bodies are engaged in the living world. We must resist the ideology of screen-based learning

    As a parent, it is obvious that children learn more when they engage their entire body in a meaningful experience than when they sit at a computer. If you doubt this, just observe children watching an activity on a screen and then doing the same activity for themselves. They are much more engaged riding a horse than watching a video about it, playing a sport with their whole bodies rather than a simulated version of it in an online game.

    Today, however, many powerful people are pushing for children to spend more time in front of computer screens, not less. Philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have contributed millions of dollars to ‘personal learning’, a term that describes children working by themselves on computers, and Laurene Powell Jobs has bankrolled the XQ Super School project to use technology to ‘transcend the confines of traditional teaching methodologies’. Policymakers such as the US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos call personalised learning ‘one of the most promising developments in K-12 education’, and Rhode Island has announced a statewide personalised learning push for all public school students. Think tanks such as the Brookings Institution recommend that Latin-American countries build ‘massive e-learning hubs that reach millions’. School administrators tout the advantages of giving all students, including those at kindergarten, personal computers.

    Reply
  13. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Intelligent Men Look Different – Says Science
    http://awesci.com/intelligent-men-look-different-says-science/

    A recent study published by researchers from the Czech Republic proves that all of us humans have a natural ability to estimate how intelligent a man really is, by just looking at his facial features. That said, the study also mentions that you can’t judge a woman’s intelligence by observing her facial features. It works for only men. However, both men and women have this ability to estimate the intelligence of a man by looking at his face.

    Reply
  14. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Who are the Engineering Heroes of Today?
    https://www.eeweb.com/profile/max-maxfield/articles/who-are-the-engineering-heroes-of-today

    Are there any engineers that you would regard as “must-see” speakers at technical conferences? If so, here’s your chance to let your voice be heard.

    Reply
  15. Tomi Engdahl says:

    NSB Warns Global Competitiveness in Jeopardy Without a Stronger STEM Workforce
    https://www.powerelectronics.com/community/nsb-warns-global-competitiveness-jeopardy-without-stronger-stem-workforce?NL=ED-003&Issue=ED-003_20180720_ED-003_248&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_2_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=18736&utm_medium=email&elq2=998f2a69ff8245699755ee4cd9843b16

    Despite an uptick in four-year-degree science and engineering graduates over the past near two decades, it pales in comparison to the STEM-capable workforce in China.

    Reply
  16. Tomi Engdahl says:

    As Moore’s Law Dies, the Chip Giants Seek Fresh Prey
    Software is the new game in town for the semiconductor industry.
    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-01/as-moore-s-law-dies-the-chip-giants-seek-fresh-prey

    After a five-year, $240 billion acquisition spree, there’s a suspicion that the nature of deal-making in the semiconductor industry may be starting to change.

    The chipmakers are increasingly interested in snapping up their software cousins as they try to differentiate themselves from rivals. On Sunday, Bloomberg News reported that Arm, the British chip designer owned by SoftBank Group Corp., had reached a $600 million deal to acquire Treasure Data, a startup that specializes in making sense of big data.

    This seems a long way from Arm’s core business of designing underlying semiconductor technology, which customers can then license and adapt to their own needs. But as research and development spending increases, Arm and other chip companies are trying to squeeze more profit out of every chip that’s made with their intellectual property. Offering additional software and services is a fast way to do that.

    Reply
  17. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Back To School Classroom Tech
    12 ways that technology is enhancing education and the classroom.
    https://www.designnews.com/electronics-test/back-school-classroom-tech?ADTRK=UBM&elq_mid=5214&elq_cid=876648

    Reply
  18. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Taiwan: Small is Beautiful
    https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1333587

    The Taiwanese are leveraging Taiwan’s smallness to their advantage, especially in efforts to turn themselves into a unique technology center.

    “Taiwan is a small island.” You hear that often when you talk to Taiwanese. On one hand, they say this somewhat self-deprecatingly. Between the lines, however, they’re also drawing a line in the sand — to define where Taiwan differs from its gigantic neighbor.

    Reply
  19. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How to engineer the future and increase energy efficiency
    https://www.csemag.com/single-article/how-to-engineer-the-future-and-increase-energy-efficiency/033f46ed922af013ecbf0774dbc102dc.html?OCVALIDATE=

    Current methods and devices for mass production are outdated and need to adapt to more flexible, automated, and energy-efficient methods of engineering.

    The following is a list of top-10 tips for engineering the future and reducing environmental impacts.

    Use automation to close the disconnect between design and manufacturing.
    Embrace mass customization for innovative and better-made structures.
    Deploy onsite construction labs for local fabrication.
    Engineer buildings for the future of collaborative robotics.
    Create digital twins of buildings as living user manuals.
    Use fewer cranes during construction and maintenance by deploying robots to do the heavy lifting in hazardous conditions.
    Inspecting buildings by drones is safer and more accurate-with no cradles required.
    Use Lidar-equipped drones to check the as-built condition against the digital twin.
    Reduce waste by manufacturing and delivering components to order.
    Calculate weight to better understand environmental impacts and true operating costs.

    Reply
  20. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Mixing software development roles produces great results
    https://opensource.com/article/18/8/mixing-roles-engineering?sc_cid=7016000000127ECAAY

    Three reasons why mixing roles in engineering is good for users.

    Most open source communities don’t have a lot of formal roles. There are certainly people who help with sysadmin tasks, testing, writing documentation, and translating or developing code. But people in open source communities typically move among different roles, often fulfilling several at once.

    In contrast, team members at most traditional companies have defined roles, working on documentation, support, QA, and in other areas.

    Why do open source communities take a shared-role approach, and more importantly, how does this way of collaborating affect products and customers?

    Reply
  21. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Top 10 Rejected Shark Tank Pitches That Became Successful
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm-oeV2KWaY

    Reply
  22. Tomi Engdahl says:

    2018 Microwaves & RF Salary & Career Report: Satisfaction
    https://www.mwrf.com/learning-resources/2018-microwaves-rf-salary-career-report-satisfaction?NL=MWRF-001&Issue=MWRF-001_20180823_MWRF-001_225&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=19412&utm_medium=email&elq2=e4ebac1a02ed4bf69a9f66ae0b0b6ba7

    The highest-ranking factors that contribute to job satisfaction are “researching potential design solutions” and “the challenges that accompany the design of new products.” It should also be noted that compensation ranked third. Overall, it does appear that engineers in this industry are satisfied with their work and the challenges that come with it, along with the compensation they receive for what they do.

    However, about 40% did say they would consider leaving the engineering profession. The two most popular reasons were to “try something different” and to “pursue other interests or opportunities.”

    Would Engineers Recommend Engineering?

    If most of today’s engineers are feeling satisfied, would they in turn recommend engineering as a career path to a young person looking to choose a profession? About 89% of respondents said they would. One remarked, “For the right person, engineering offers the opportunity to learn new things for the entire duration of your career and to be creative with that new knowledge.”

    Reply
  23. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Tomorrow’s Doctors Must Be Engineers Too
    https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/tomorrows-doctors-must-be-engineers-too

    In many medical schools, little has changed. But Li is heading up a brand new school with a radically different approach. When it comes time for the students to study pharmacology, he says, they’ll have more than a chart in a textbook—they’ll have a computer program with a simulated patient to learn on. “If the kidneys start failing, they can experiment with changing the dosage of the drug,” he says.

    Li is dean and chief academic officer for Carle Illinois College of Medicine, created in partnership by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Carle Health System. Li says the school is the first in the world to apply engineering principles to the teaching of medicine, bringing analytics and problem-based learning to every aspect of the curriculum.

    students are also required to have high-level math, computer science, and statistics.

    While plenty of M.D.-Ph.D. programs already exist that enable students to get both medical and advanced engineering degrees, Li says Carle offers something very different than that “layered-on” method.

    These students are being trained to enter a profession that’s in the throes of transformation, with advances in sensors, devices, and computing changing how doctors do their jobs. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems will likely play an increasingly important role, ingesting vast quantities of medical data and provide lightning-fast analytics. In the best-case scenario for doctors, AI and other technologies will take on much of the grunt work of medical practice, giving doctors more time to spend with patients and focus on challenging cases. But there are other possible futures in which machines take on so much of the work that human experts are less necessary. How these trends will play out is highly uncertain.

    Reply
  24. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Why engineers are looking to animals for new technology
    https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/23/why-engineers-are-looking-to-animals-for-new-technology/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage

    As a race, human beings have a lot of shortcomings. We’re not very fast, not all that strong and while we have been able to create technology that helps us overcome our environments, we’re not very good at adapting to them. Animals, on the other hand, have been successfully adapting and evolving to meet the world’s challenges long before we were stumbling around.

    While it might be too late for us to learn these lessons ourselves from our animal counterparts, it’s not too late to pass them on to our inventions. And biomimetic and bio-inspired labs across the world are doing just that.

    Reply
  25. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Those Who Can Do, Can’t Teach
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/opinion/sunday/college-professors-experts-advice.html

    Advice for college students: The best experts sometimes make the worst educators.

    If you want to be great at something, learn from the best. What could be better than studying physics under Albert Einstein?

    A lot, it turns out. Three years after publishing his first landmark paper on relativity, Einstein taught his debut course at the University of Bern. He wasn’t able to attract much interest in the esoteric subject of thermodynamics: Just three students signed up, and they were all friends of his. The next semester he had to cancel the class after only one student enrolled.

    “Einstein was never an inspired teacher, and his lectures tended to be regarded as disorganized.”

    Although it’s often said that those who can’t do teach, the reality is that the best doers are often the worst teachers.

    It wasn’t that they didn’t care about teaching. It was that they knew too much about their subject, and had mastered it too long ago, to relate to my ignorance about it. Social scientists call it the curse of knowledge.

    Reply
  26. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Air Pollution Causes ‘Huge’ Reduction in Intelligence, Study Reveals
    https://science.slashdot.org/story/18/08/28/0113202/air-pollution-causes-huge-reduction-in-intelligence-study-reveals?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29

    Air pollution causes a “huge” reduction in intelligence, according to new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health.

    Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/27/air-pollution-causes-huge-reduction-in-intelligence-study-reveals

    Impact of high levels of toxic air ‘is equivalent to having lost a year of education’

    Reply
  27. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Why the majority is always wrong | Paul Rulkens | TEDxMaastricht
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNGFep6rncY

    Paul Rulkens is an expert in achieving big goals in the easiest, fastest and most elegant way possible. Originally trained as a chemical engineer, he has moved his focus to the fascinating field of high performance.

    Reply
  28. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Why we are wrong when we think we are right | Chaehan So | TEDxMünchen
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVRco_eLjdc

    Reply
  29. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How to Have a Good Conversation | Celeste Headlee | TEDxCreativeCoast
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6n3iNh4XLI

    When your job hinges on how well you talk to people, you learn a lot about how to have great conversations – and most of us don’t converse very well. A great conversation requires a balance between talking and listening. This balance is important because bad communication leads to bad relationships, at home, at work, everywhere.

    Reply
  30. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The Age of the Heroic Inventor Is Over
    Today, business disruptors get the attention that hardware innovators used to
    https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/the-age-of-the-heroic-inventor-is-over

    They were seen as miracles, and accepted as such. In a relatively empty, largely agrarian world, these magical inventions had enormous impact, and even before they were widely adopted, it was understood almost immediately what they did and, to some degree, how they would be used.

    In contrast, the world today is a busy, connected place. Magic has been replaced by science and technology. Inventions are numerous, seemingly incremental, and mostly taken for granted. My grandchildren are not going to ask me what it was like to use the first transistor. It’s a meaningless question. Even engineers initially viewed the transistor as a simple replacement for the vacuum tube, while the laser was generally believed to be a glorified flashlight. No one remembers the first time they used the Internet or GPS; they just evolved. There was no initial flash of discovery.

    And unlike Bell, Marconi, and Edison, none of the inventors of these new technologies started out an amateur. They were all highly trained engineers and scientists, often working in teams supported by government research grants or corporate research labs and churned out all over the world in universities running degree programs that didn’t even exist in the early 20th century.

    Moreover, today’s inventions are rarely credited to single individuals. All of the recent inventions that I cited above involved multiple creators.

    Reply
  31. Tomi Engdahl says:

    These Are the Most Hyped Technologies of 2018
    https://www.designnews.com/electronics-test/these-are-most-hyped-technologies-2018?ADTRK=UBM&elq_mid=5457&elq_cid=876648

    What’s got the hype? And what’s losing it? The 2018 Gartner Hype Cycle report outlines the current maturity and adoption of technologies and gives predictions of what’s on the horizon for AI, Blockchain, IoT, VR/AR, and even battery technologies.

    Reply
  32. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Stop treating tech jerks like gods
    https://nypost.com/2018/09/01/stop-treating-tech-jerks-like-gods/

    Fans of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs seem to worship them more for their bad behavior than their great work.

    Could we stop worshipping rich men who are jerks?

    Despite tremendous financial security, success and personal comfort, these men gained a reputation for being petty and ungenerous whenever possible. They don’t exemplify very many personality traits we associate with a good person.

    People can create things we enjoy and still be bad people. But you wouldn’t know that from their fan bases. It’s not that they’re grappling with the idea of their heroes being complex individuals, it’s that they see these men as wholly aspirational.

    Their fans think that they are perfect and are willing to go to war with anyone who thinks otherwise.

    Tech Web site Mashable has stated that people who aren’t Musk fans meet the “immutable wrath of Musk’s fans online, which comes typically via some nonsensical defense of a billionaire’s right to do whatever he wants and variations of the word ‘bitch.’ ”

    In 2016, pop culture website The Ringer wrote of Elon Musk that, “not since Steve Jobs has a tech entrepreneur ignited such unabashed fandom.”

    And yet, Musk runs a company where, according to a 2017 report in The Guardian, employees in Tesla factories are passing out face-down from exhaustion and other workers are being told to work around the bodies.

    True, Jobs made a device I use every day.

    When fans worship people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and aspire to be like them, they’re not saying that they’d like to make a device that the world uses. They’re not even saying that they’d like to be very wealthy. They’re saying that they’d like to achieve a level of wealth and power where no one can judge them and they can behave as horribly as they like — just as Jobs and Musk have done. They don’t want to do good in the world, like Bill Gates, they just want to be able to say any horrible thing they want on Twitter.

    And the world quite honestly doesn’t need any more of those guys.

    Reply
  33. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Will big brands disrupt higher education?
    https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/28/will-big-brands-disrupt-higher-education/

    In the years to come, who will hospitality hiring managers trust to credential students: Cornell University or the Four Seasons? Will it be Google or Penn State that sets the standards that determine who qualifies as a good computer programmer? Could GE define competency in aeronautic engineering rather than Vaughn College? Should employers place more value in a fashion credential backed by the editors of Vogue or the Pratt Institute?

    Institutions of higher education are, of course, not unfamiliar with branding.

    AdChoices

    Will big brands disrupt higher education?
    Daniel Pianko, Carol D’Amico
    Aug 29, 2018

    Saving for education
    Daniel Pianko
    Contributor
    Daniel Pianko is co-founder and managing director of University Ventures, a fund focused on innovation from within higher education.
    More posts by this contributor
    Rethinking return on education investment
    Why Silicon Valley Falls Short When It Comes To Education
    Carol D’Amico
    Contributor
    Carol D’Amico is executive vice president of Strada Education Network, a national nonprofit dedicated to strengthening America’s pathways between education and employment.
    In the years to come, who will hospitality hiring managers trust to credential students: Cornell University or the Four Seasons? Will it be Google or Penn State that sets the standards that determine who qualifies as a good computer programmer? Could GE define competency in aeronautic engineering rather than Vaughn College? Should employers place more value in a fashion credential backed by the editors of Vogue or the Pratt Institute?

    Institutions of higher education are, of course, not unfamiliar with branding. The brands of top-tier institutions shape not just consumer sentiment, but the market and regulatory landscapes that have governed their existence for decades. The single greatest determinant of U.S. News & World Report rankings is reliance on “reputation.” Eight of the top 20 U.S. News universities are Ivy League schools which are, on average, more than 250 years old.

    Brands evolve slowly in any industry. Just ask Arizona State University’s Michael Crow or other leaders of a cadre of innovative colleges and universities that tout dramatic accomplishments, but fail to crack the spaces dominated for centuries by big brands like Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

    But the role of brands in higher education may be changing. Mega brands from outside education are beginning to transform the way students and employers think about learning.

    Owners of global consumer brands sense two broad shifts in higher education that make it ripe for “brand extensions.” First, traditional education is under assault. Employers are increasingly skeptical of the correlation between a college performance and workplace outcomes. Depending on how you count, coding schools may be graduating as many computer scientists as traditional universities.

    Peter Thiel offers $100,000 to brilliant minds willing to drop out of college. Major companies like Google and IBM are looking beyond the degree to find employees with the skills and competencies they demand — regardless of whether they went to college.

    The definition of education credential, too, is changing. As the shelf life of skills shrinks, the degree is fast losing relevance as the primary unit of measurement for post-secondary education. Our nation’s colleges and universities are, increasingly, using digital credentials to help their graduates show-what-they-know and enable employers to make sense of skills or accomplishments.

    The economics of higher education also makes sense to big brands.

    Media brands desperately seeking product extensions understand that education is a big market, with over $500 billion of higher education spend in the U.S. alone. No-name private colleges charge $50,000 in tuition and fees. Name-brand colleges create massive profits

    But the opportunity for brands is not just economic. Media companies bring other assets to the table, including more curated, and often times high-quality, content than virtually any university.

    This is not an either-or for universities.

    Great universities will bring tradition and academic excellence — while the global brand has connections to employers and incredible content.

    The formula is simple: Well-structured, branded programs will be superior to an unbranded degree. They will give elite institutions a run for their money.

    Reply
  34. Tomi Engdahl says:

    50% of Parents in the US Believe Coding Most Beneficial Subject For Their Children, 75% Believe Big Tech Firms Should Be Involved in Helping Schools: Study
    https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/09/02/1813231/50-of-parents-in-the-us-believe-coding-most-beneficial-subject-for-their-children-75-believe-big-tech-firms-should-be-involved-in-helping-schools-study?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29

    According to a Microsoft-commissioned survey, 50% of parents in the U.S. with children aged 18 and under believed coding and computer programming to be the most beneficial subject to their child’s future employability (“compared to foreign language skills at 28%”).

    New survey: What parents think about technology in the classroom
    https://educationblog.microsoft.com/2018/08/new-survey-what-parents-think-about-technology-in-the-classroom/

    Reply
  35. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Here’s an Idea: Scientists Serve Up New Spins on Whiskey, Wine, and Beer
    https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/tb/webcasts/podcasts/32776?utm_source=TBnewsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20180904_Main_Newsletter&eid=376641819&bid=2225912

    The processes for making wine, beer, and spirits have remained relatively unchanged for centuries.

    In this episode of Here’s an Idea™, we look at the efforts of vineyard owners, distillers, and brewers who are discovering small ways to innovate and adjust their own crafting techniques.

    Reply
  36. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Bringing the culture of experimentation to everyone
    https://medium.com/@openinnovationmeetup/bringing-the-culture-of-experimentation-to-everyone-87daf49e798e

    Last spring we sat down to figure out what we could do to boost the idea of open innovation and gather experts from all different fields together to share their learnings and experience on this topic.

    Back in the day Industryhack organized weekend-long hackathons with big corporations. The idea was to introduce quick experimentation and pilot projects to the traditional, slow-moving industries.

    As a newly founded company, Perfektio spotted a business opportunity, and noticed they could build their identity around open innovation and problem solving with quick, experimental projects.

    So far, open innovation from a startup’s point of view has meant fierce competition against similar firms in hopes of landing a deal through innovation challenges and hackathons.

    But what if, instead of competing with each other, we collaborate

    Reply
  37. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Secure
    https://www.securityweek.com/everythings-amazing-nobodys-secure

    One of the best comedic routines I’ve ever had the opportunity to hear is Louis C.K.’s “Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy” piece. He makes some very clear if not painful points about how we as human beings in a modern society take things for granted. For example, we complain when the WiFi on the airplane goes out. But we never take a second to consider the technological marvel that it takes to deliver that WiFi experience to passengers in a metal tube shooting through the sky.

    Enter today’s consumer-driven techno-economy. Let’s be real – if you’re in at least your forties you’ve seen the evolution of computer technology from the very start.

    So here’s the point. With all this amazing technology floating around us from watches that don’t need a phone to place calls, to digital assistants that respond to our voices, to all manner of widgets that make our lives easier and more connected – we’re far less secure than we ever have been. This should be no surprise, right? I forget who this idea is attributed to, but the thought is that it takes society about 10 years to fully understand the ramifications of any major technological advancement. For example, it’s taken us over ten years to comprehend the impact the cellular phone had on our lives. The issue is, we develop technology at a pace that is at least 10x this speed.

    Truth told, in today’s society we’ve prototyped, tested, developed, released, and sunset a technology or widget 8 years before we ever understand it’s societal impact. If that doesn’t concern you, you don’t understand technology. Security is critical to our lives since tech impacts every single crevice of everyday life. Yet, security isn’t something that’s commonly written into product requirements!

    So yes, the world we live in is infused with technological marvels that we couldn’t have dreamed of twenty years ago. But at the same time, we’re orders of magnitude less secure, and in some cases even less safe, as a result. If you’re reading this, odds are good you have a role to play in the security and safety of technology that’s deployed throughout our lives.

    So you have a duty. All of you. Everyone out there. Think about what all these technological advancements mean – and how they can impact people’s lives. Think of how we can balance the drive for cool new things, with security and safety. Because everything today is more amazing than it’s ever been in history – but we’re much less safe and secure because of all the technology. And fixing that is your job.

    Reply
  38. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Welcome Aboard! 16 Examples of the History and Future of Electric Flight
    https://www.designnews.com/electronics-test/welcome-aboard-16-examples-history-and-future-electric-flight?ADTRK=UBM&elq_mid=5515&elq_cid=876648

    Electric cars are rapidly becoming more commonplace. Now, it’s time to look to the skies for electric airplanes.

    Reply
  39. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Ask Hackaday: Managing Inspiration
    https://hackaday.com/2018/09/06/ask-hackaday-managing-inspiration/

    For most of us, hacking is a hobby, something to pass a few idle hours and satisfy our need to create. Precious few of us get to live the dream of being paid to tinker; most of us need some kind of day job to pay the bills and support our hacking habits. This necessarily creates an essential conflict, rooted in the fact that we all only have 24 hours to spread around every day: I need to spend my time working so I can afford to hack, but the time I spend working to earn money eats away at my hacking time. That’s some catch, that Catch-22.

    From that primary conflict emerges another one. Hacking is a hugely creative process, and while the artist or the author might not see it that way, it’s true nonetheless.

    Hot Flashes

    Creative inspiration is often described in terms like, “A bolt out of the blue,” or as a “spark” or “flame.” There’s good reason for that: that’s exactly what it feels like when it hits you. In an instant, you see the solution to something you’ve been puzzling over, or the idea for something that could change the world hits you.

    The point is, inspiration generally strikes when we’re least prepared to do anything about it. It’s tough to scribble a short note when you’re in the shower or in traffic, or even when you let your mind wander in yet another pointless meeting at work.

    But assuming you get your idea written down somehow, how many times will you actually be in a position to do anything about it right then and there?

    For most of us, the answer to that is: approximately never. If we’re lucky, we’ll get the idea written down before it evaporates, and it’ll become yet another entry in our notebook or journal to be dealt with later. If we’re really lucky, inspiration and free time will sync up with that other limiting factor — materials — and we’ll get a few components plugged into a breadboard or some stock cut up and tack welded together before we get tugged away to address some other needful thing. That’s what makes your bench look like mine

    Your Turn

    This was not intended to be a catalog of my unfinished projects, or even a litany of our community’s collective failures with time management.

    Reply
  40. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How do innovations build smart cities?
    https://innovationcloud.com/blog/how-do-innovations-build-smart-cities/?vis=bpfb2708

    Hey, are you aware your city is dumb?

    My city is dumb? How dare you?! Ok, maybe sometimes I get annoyed searching for a parking spot for half an hour, or when the dumpsters are so full I can’t throw away even a tissue. Ahmm…there are a few things, actually, now when I think about it, that make me feel like my city isn’t made to suit my needs. In a sense it’s inefficient, some solutions being outdated. It could use some innovation. You think we can make it smart?

    Yes, definitely, emerging technologies can do wonders for city life. By 2050 it is expected that around 60% of the population will live in cities, and we need to make our surroundings capable of handling such a large number of people.

    A city is considered to be smart when it’s able to evolve by using the best tools in order to make the lives of its residents easier on several levels. Smart city uses technology collaboration to make public utilities like parking, transportation and waste management, emergency services, street lighting, security etc., more efficient and optimized.

    Reply
  41. Tomi Engdahl says:

    “Technological innovation” is more than just invention. It is a process, often long and costly, of transforming new scientific knowledge into feasible technology

    Reply
  42. Tomi Engdahl says:

    ”The top man in the British army, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd, responded to the threat of Nazi militarisation by increasing the amount spent on forage for horses by a factor of 10. Cavalry officers would be provided with a second horse; tank officers would get a horse too.”

    ”The people who bug large organisations to do new things are socially awkward, slightly fanatical and politically often hopelessly naive.”

    https://www.ft.com/content/3c1ab748-b09b-11e8-8d14-6f049d06439c

    Reply
  43. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The Boring Company proves life can be a video game
    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/10/the-boring-company-proves-life-can-be-a-video-game/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage

    The Boring Company just posted a video on Twitter showing its latest digging machine can be controlled by an Xbox One controller. Because, if you’re going to dig holes, why not make it a bit of fun?

    Software makes it easy to map PC controls to an Xbox pad. Instead of developing and fabricating a custom controller, using an Xbox gamepad is a cost-effective alternative for a lot of organizations. The military services agree. In its latest subs the US Navy tapped the Xbox 360 controller to maneuver submarine periscopes and the Army’s anti-drone laser uses an Xbox controller. They’re used to control robots and drones, too.

    The reasoning is simple: A lot of research goes into game controllers. Microsoft reportedly spent over $100 million on the Xbox One controller

    Reply
  44. Tomi Engdahl says:

    CNBC:
    Survey of 1,000+ C-level execs finds the majority view lack of access to software developers as a bigger threat to success than lack of access to capital

    Tech’s ultimate success: Software developers are now more valuable to companies than money
    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/companies-worry-more-about-access-to-software-developers-than-capital.html

    A majority of companies say lack of access to software developers is a bigger threat to success than lack of access to capital.
    Still, companies are misusing their most important resource, with too many developers tied up in projects designed to prop up legacy systems and bad software, at a cost of $300 billion a year — $85 billion just dealing with bad code.
    Correctly deployed, the expertise of software developers could add $3 trillion to global GDP over the next decade.

    Reply
  45. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Why does optimism about the future seem so rare these days?

    Optimistic
    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/09/optimistic/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook

    Surely the truth is somewhere in between; surely any rational assessment of the future must include a mixture of both optimism and pessimism. So why do those seem like two entirely separate modes of thought, of late?

    Reply

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