Can you train people to innovate? Financial analyst Barry Ritholtz has shared a helpful slide set titled “Innovation can be trained” that’s worth reading. Printing and then tacking individual slides to your cube walls can be used as a daily reminder that organizations can create cultures of innovation. It’s based on the work The Innovator’s DNA by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton Christensen.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Why entrepreneurs innovate better than managers
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/why-entrepreneurs-innovate-better-managers
MIT research suggests it’s because they ‘use their brains in a different and more complete way’
Entrepreneurs may innovate more successfully than do managers not because they try more often – MIT researchers were surprised to find that isn’t so — but rather because when they do try they apply more of their brainpower to the task.
Tomi Engdahl says:
7 Massive Ideas That Can Change the World
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/ff-seven-big-ideas/all/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tony Fadell on the unique nature of Apple’s design process
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/tony-fadell-unique-nature-apples-design-process
Often referred to as the godfather of the iPod, Tony Fadell recently explained why Apple’s design process sets it apart from the pack.
Fadell explained that a key and yet often overlooked difference between Apple and other tech companies is that Apple ships 99% of the products that pass certain internal milestones. By way of contrast, during Fadell’s tenure at Philips – where he was charged with overseeing the company’s audio strategy – the iPod guru noted that Philips would axe 9 projects out of 10, even if a particular product was about to ship.
Nine times out of ten, or 99 times out of 100, they would kill the project, either at the beginning, the middle or right before the product was supposed to be shipped.
That can’t be good for morale and certainly lends itself towards creating a corporate culture where employees feel as if their work doesn’t really matter all that much.
“When you’re in a culture that has a point of view, and drives to launch everything it does, you know you’re on the hook and you better bring your best game every time,” Fadell explained.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers are cold and dead inside, research shows
Unable to care or love, claims Swedish trick-cyclist
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/21/engineers_cold_and_dead_inside/
A study carried out by psychology researchers in Sweden has shown that people who go into engineering are less caring and empathetic than those who enter caring professions such as medicine.
Trick-cyclist Chato Rasoal and his colleagues determined this by surveying 200 students from six different study programs, using a “well-established questionnaire” which apparently reveals the degree of imagination, the ability to assume the perspective of others, and whether the subject cares about others.
“it’s well known that women are more empathetic than men”.
However this was taken into account while evaluating the results, and engineers still came out flinty and unfeeling compared to their fellow men (mostly fellow men).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Projectors, Pandora and Pyrotechnics — 10 Pimped-Out Projects for Raspberry Pi
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/even-more-raspberry-pi-projects/
Increasingly, the Raspberry Pi is the platform of choice for these forward-thinking gadgeteers. Makers are using the tiny $35 platform to help the blind, manage their e-mail, play games — even put on pyrotechnic stage shows that would make the most hardened hair band weep with joy. These 10 projects show the enormous potential of this tiny board and should keep your weekend full of prototyping fun.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 More Mind-Blowing, Skill-Building Raspberry Pi Projects
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/12/more-raspberry-pi-please/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech giants don’t invent the future, they package it
Sanding down the rough edges of progress
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/21/open_and_shut/
Enterprise technology vendors have a serious case of “not invented here” syndrome, and it may be challenging the value that they claim to bring to their customers.
After all, none of the big technology trends of the past two decades emerged from the bowels of legacy tech vendors, despite their outsized R&D budgets. Open source? Not invented here. Cloud computing? Mobile? Big data? Same answer: none of it was invented by the legacy technology vendors.
Which is not the same as saying that these companies, from IBM to Oracle, provide no value. But the nature of that value is sometimes confused. These companies don’t tend to be the innovators: they are the ones packaging others’ innovations.
In other words, some of the world’s biggest technology brands are just that: brands.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. The bigger a company gets, the more bureaucratic it tends to become. While this slows its ability to innovate or, perhaps more accurately, its ability to turn research lab innovations into market-ready products, it does have the benefit of de-risking a technology purchase.
Because of the power of such brands, it has become a truism that “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM,” even if they could have joined Barclays in saving 90 per cent of its IT budget by foregoing legacy vendors’ solutions and instead building with open source and cloud.
CIOs don’t turn to an HP or SAP to save money. Not usually. Nor do they really go to the legacy vendors for cutting-edge innovation. Instead, they look to these incumbent vendors to take cutting-edge innovation and remove the sharp edges. IBM made open source safe for the enterprise. Microsoft and a host of incumbent vendors are doing the same for Hadoop, NoSQL databases, and other essential big data infrastructure. Citrix, HP, VMware and others are doing the same for cloud.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Solving Problems The Square Way
http://www.fastcompany.com/3004037/solving-problems-square-way
Thus, Dorsey can afford to reward his employees with a nice bottle of scotch or two–likely a better incentive for good work than what he used to offer.
It’s a funny story, sure, but it also serves to show what’s rewarded at Square: problem solving. Though Square is often lauded for its culture of design, that understanding overlooks a simple truth. “We’re not just a design company; we’re not just an engineering company,” says CTO Bob Lee. “We’re strong in both areas–we need to be.” And part of what’s made Square such a success story is its ability to cultivate a collaborative atmosphere for designers and engineers–a DNA of problem solving that unifies its various product groups.
Since the service launched several years ago, Square has become as much known for its industrial design as for its dead-simple digital services, which include Square Register and Square Wallet.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Marc Andreessen On The Future Of Enterprise
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/27/marc-andreessen-on-the-future-of-the-enterprise/
Marc Andreessen: So the computer industry started in 1950 and basically ran for 50 years with the same model, which was a model where all of the new computers, all the new technology, all the new software started out being sold for the highest prices to the biggest organizations.
So originally the customer was the Department of Defense.
And then five years later computers became — they dropped half in price and then the big insurance companies could buy them, and that’s when Thomas Watson, who ran IBM at the time, was quoted as saying, “There’s only a market need in the world for five computers.”
The reason that wasn’t crazy when he said it is because there were only five organizations that were big enough to buy a computer. So that’s how it started.
And then the PC came out and then all of a sudden individuals could start to buy computers. But the PC only ever got to hundreds of millions of people. It never got to billions of people.
Now, the smartphone has come out and it can get to billions of people.
And so it has always been this kind of trickle-down model for 50 years. We think that basically about 10 years ago the model flipped. And so we think that the model flipped to a model where, today, where the most interesting and advanced new technology now comes out for the consumer first. And then small businesses start to use it. And then medium-size businesses start to use it, and then large businesses start to use it, and then eventually the government starts to use it. But this is a complete change from the way it has always worked.
Marc Andreessen: The mobile billing. The advantage — the thing that that’s going to be able to do is do split billing in a new way, between the business and the consumer. So on a single device you will be able to cleanly build data usage by application.
Marc Andreessen: What’s that, Platfora? Yeah, Platfora is the actual user interface layer on top of Hadoop. So sort of Platfora and Cloudera kind of go hand in hand.
Alexia Tsotsis: It seems like the consumer market is starting to cool — I mean, not starting, but the signaling is there.
Marc Andreessen: Yeah. It’s unpredictable. All you need is for one of the new enterprise companies to completely whiff a quarter and their stock will collapse and then everybody will get all freaked out. I mean, it’s just a continuous — the reality is every single business is hard.
Alexia Tsotsis: I think the model there is if someone shows up and they have got 80 percent of the skills.
Marc Andreessen: Yeah, let’s teach them — right, exactly, the employer says let’s teach them the other 20 percent. And it’s like, well, instead of literally sending them to college, which presumably didn’t work the first time around or whatever, let’s just go ahead and provide them with the online training. Let’s set them up with their tablet at home with high-definition video. They can develop their remaining skills, or be able to retrain people once they are in the jobs.
The other is there is this real issue, like for some people it feels great to never be tied to a specific employer and to always be doing contract work and be changing jobs every two years, and it feels like it’s fun and exciting and exhilarating. For a lot of people that’s really scary. And so the lifetime employment promise that the big companies used to be able to make was very compelling for a lot of people because it felt safe.
Alexia Tsotsis: So we are watching the collapse of Zynga and Groupon and LivingSocial in the consumer space. Where is the bloodbath going to be, if there is one, in the enterprise space?
Marc Andreessen: I don’t know. Probably in the second and third tier. I mean, usually when you have a funding boom, categories usually get overfunded.
So probably it’s in the second- and third-tier competitors. We actually get yelled at for this a lot, but we really believe it. So the big technology markets actually tend to be winner take all. There is this presumption — in normal markets you can have Pepsi and Coke. In technology markets in the long run you tend to only have one, or rather the number one company in — the number one company in any consumer products — cars, the number one company in cars is, I don’t know, Toyota or whoever it is.
Marc Andreessen: Well, the venture capitalists who are successful in investing in the winners will be very happy with this. The venture capitalists who are investing in the losers will be very sad. But everybody will get freed, because at some point there will be a bunch of companies — a bunch of startups that will go bankrupt, and then everybody will say, that must mean the whole sector is going down.
Alexia Tsotsis: What is the solution to that? It’s so perplexing.
Marc Andreessen: That’s permanent. I think it’s permanent. I think it’s human nature. There are certain things that can’t be fixed, and I think that’s one of them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Silicon Valley Nation: Which are the most-innovative countries?
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/silicon-valley-nation/4405538/Silicon-Valley-Nation–The-most-innovative-countries-are-
a new global innovation survey is how confused executives worldwide can be when asked about a number of important business-innovation drivers.
Seventy-one percent of executives reported that their government should push domestic innovation rather than imported, while 71 percent said their governments should open markets further and promote imported innovation and investment.
And nearly one in three believes that “by creating more competition among businesses and making some products and services obsolete, innovation has a negative impact” on their economy.
A top concern among respondents is the need for countries to evolve their education systems and approaches to better serve business needs.
What’s the role public and private investment plays? Widely varied as you can imagine.
On the other side, while the feeling about the impact of private investment has stagnated between years,
Most-innovative countries
So what’s the answer? The usual suspects top the list (chart below), as evaluted by their peer nations: The United States, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the U.K., Sweden and China are tops in order.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why your company’s competitor won’t hire you
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4405856/Why-your-company-s-competitor-won-t-hire-you
Recent news from Silicon Valley court rooms brings to mind the hit song “Hotel California,” released in 1977 by American rock band the Eagles. Lead singer Don Henley has said that the song is about excess but its famed “you can check out any time you’d like, but you can never leave” lyric is ringing true this month when it comes to employment in tech.
By now you’ve heard about the emails and documents opened up by a case that alleges technology companies including, Apple, Google, Intel, and several others violated antitrust laws by entering into formal or informal agreements to not recruit each other’s employees.
How much more innovation could be occurring if employees and their ideas could move more fluidly from company to company, from industry pillar to start-up, from competitor to competitor?
Tomi Engdahl says:
If in doubt, innovate
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21570834-nordic-region-becoming-hothouse-entrepreneurship-if-doubt-innovate
The Nordic region is becoming a hothouse of entrepreneurship
IN 2010 A GROUP of students at Aalto University, just outside Helsinki, embarked on the most constructive piece of student activism in the history of the genre. They had been converted to the power of entrepreneurialism during a visit to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When they got home they organised a “summer of start-ups” to spread the word that Finland’s future lay with new companies, not old giants. The summer of start-ups turned into a season of innovation.
The Start-Up Sauna—a business accelerator that is still run by young enthusiasts but now funded by government, business and academia—occupies a dilapidated warehouse next to the university. It offers a wide range of services: working space, coaching for budding entrepreneurs, study trips to Silicon Valley and plenty of networking opportunities (including in the Sauna’s many saunas).
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Engineers: What should be taught in Engineering 101?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/voice-of-the-engineer/4406176/5-Engineers–What-should-be-taught-in-Engineering-101-
Somewhere right near the beginning students need to understand limitations, such as strength of materials, and kinematics, in the area of forces and accelerations.
How stuff works – Take a clock apart – Take a calculator apart – study old patent designs, Learn how a superhet radio works, how did analog television work. automobile engine- 3 phase motor – line-o-type machine, anything, and everything – take it apart, see how it clips together. what makes a retractable pin tip work, why does the ratchet always spin the same way? No math, no calculus, how does a rocket motor work?
Then came high school sophomore physics where the teacher absolutely imposed the process of unit thinking into everything we did. Again, an aha! moment.
A survey of the technologies to be taught and how fundamental classes apply to them. Examples:
Differential equations and Control theory
Magnetic fields and RF signal propagation.
The applicability of the math to real problems would have been a great motivator.
Teach the art of heuristics = finding something that works, finding out how well it works and finding how to reproduce it. Engineering is NOT applied science, and science is not theoretical engineering. Science seeks to understand. Engineering seeks to make something that works. In engineering, we may not know how it works, but we know how to work it. Think Tesla.
I think you meant “empirical” not “heuristic”. A heuristic is a simplified generalization. That is, a rule of thumb. Empirical is something that is found by experiment and has no theoretical basis. The problem with an empirical solution is that you have no real idea of its generality. Without the theory to back it you don’t know if you have found a robust solution. I have seen more products that have problems because somebody found an empirical solution, and sold it. Technicians can work empirically, it takes an engineer to deal theoretically.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why you need a home lab to keep your job
Your boss won’t pay for training, so your partner has to put up with servers at home
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/07/home_lab_career_saver/
IT professionals can’t assume their employers want, or can afford to, train them in the latest technologies and should hone and acquire new skills at home in a self-built test lab.
That’s the opinion of Mike Laverick, VMware’s senior cloud infrastructure evangelist.
Laverick has operated a lab for over a decade, starting with a single PC and scaling to a 42U rig that lives in a co-location facility and includes kit donated by vendors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“We teach English, maths and science to all students because they are fundamental to understanding society,” she said.
“The same is true of digital technology. When we gain literacy, we not only learn to read, but also to write. It is not enough to just use computer programs.”
Many schools around the world are changing education programmes in schools to teach children to code, rather than simply to use, computers.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21371609?ocid=socialflow_twitter_bbcworld
Tomi Engdahl says:
Video: PBS Off-Book Explores the Open-Source Art Movement
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1394&doc_id=258446
PBS’s Off-Book series recently released a digital short on an art movement involving the creative use of computer programming. Off-Book is a bi-weekly web series all about exploring new art movements that are pushing the boundaries of our creative potential with the onset of new-age media. Just to name a few of these movements, previous episodes touch upon typography, animated GIFs, Lego art, web design, and Internet cultures that have greatly influenced and provided new forms of creative expression to artists all around. These new forms of media are enabling all of us to openly express ourselves in ways that continue to push our human capability forward.
This week’s episode, dubbed “The Art of Creative Coding,” covers three sets of software communities that aim to provide their respective members with tools that far exceed the limiting potential of paint and a brush.
Creativity has now established a community of coders and artists alike that continue to experiment, push the boundaries of new technologies, and create new forms of expression. It is no coincidence that most of these movements are sparked by open-source availability, as art shares many similar characteristics with these kinds of projects, allowing anyone to participate and contribute. So, if you feel like expressing yourself, give coding a try. You might just spark some new ideas and kickstart a completely new community of creators.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why engineers are awesome
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/serious-fun/4407077/Why-engineers-are-awesome
National Engineers Week is just around the corner, kicking off officially on February 17. The theme for 2013: Celebrate Awesome.
On the following pages, you’ll find 10 reasons engineers and being an engineer are awesome.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineering Education Starts at an Early Age
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=259060
In honor of National Engineers Week, I’d like to recognize how interest in science and engineering does not necessarily begin in classrooms or derive from textbooks. In fact, the desire to innovate and discover often occurs organically at an early age.
While most of the general public understands that their car or A/C unit is a system, few recognize the abundance of simple systems we interact with on a daily basis. Everyday systems such as doorknobs or clean tap water are just as important, and require the hard work of many great engineering minds.
Tools such as the Lego Mindstorms programmable robots are cleverly disguised as novelties while doubling as Trojan horses into the developing minds of children. While these tools are engaging and fun for kids to play with, they introduce fundamental concepts of system design that will be vital to a future in engineering education.
We must recognize that keeping students engaged with lessons that are relevant to their everyday lives is essential. Engaging curriculum directly links abstract engineering concepts to impressive and dynamic real-world applications. Popular news items such as NASA exploration, CERN, or the recent Felix Baumgartner space jump are outstanding examples of innovation and discovery that attract kids to science and engineering in the first place.
Many engineering educators have already begun to recognize this trend and started the glacial pace of evolving their curriculum to incorporate experimentation and hands-on projects that not only teach the math of engineering, but also empower students to begin building basic systems to apply those concepts.
As the tools for system design become more democratized and available to all ages and skill levels, the seeds planted at an early age will blossom into an empowered generation of innovative and passionate engineers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Getting lucky at trade shows (DesignCon special!)
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/catching-waves/4405610/EDNGetting-lucky-at-trade-shows–DesignCon-special-
Here are Dr. Wiseman’s four principles along with my interpretation for tradeshows:
1. Expect good fortune (i.e., have a plan)
Define your personal goals. What problems do you need solved?
2. Maximize your chance opportunities (i.e., be flexible)
Be on the lookout for opportunities that deviate from your plan.
3. Listen to your lucky hunches
Many (though certainly not all) of your hunches float up to consciousness as ambiguous desires when they fit a pattern that has worked for you before.
4. Turn bad luck into good (i.e., keep on chooglin’ )
Learn how other people think about problems in their field. The farther the field is from yours, the less likely their insight will help, but if it does help, the more likely that you’ll learn something that can disrupt an industry. Balance your risk-reward by spending time in presentations and with exhibitors who work in your field (high probability of low reward) with those that work in a disparate field (low probability of high reward).
Tomi Engdahl says:
An engineer on safari—what African animals teach about problem solving—part 1
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4407329/An-engineer-on-safari-what-African-animals-teach-about-problem-solving-part-1
Africa is as wild and wonderful as I imagined. What I didn’t expect, was to learn lessons about problem solving that I could apply to my career as an engineer back home in Silicon Valley. After the first few sightings being “star struck” by seeing so many different species in their natural habitat, I started paying more attention to their behavior, their interactions and their choices. Many of those turned into life lessons for me to bring home. The top ten are presented here along with photos
Number 1: Face your problem head on.
Number 2: Take time to listen.
Number 3: As soon as there is trouble you can’t handle alone, sound the alarm.
Number 4: Protect your investments.
Number 5: Defend your territory.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Three things they should have taught in Engineering 101, Part 2: How to visualize electrical components
http://www.edn.com/design/components-and-packaging/4407227/Three-things-they-should-have-taught-in-Engineering-101–Part-2–How-to-visualize-electrical-components
HOW TO VISUALIZE ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS
Mechanical engineers have it easy. They can see what they are working on most of the time. As an EE, you do not usually have that luxury. You have to imagine how those pesky electrons are flittering around in your circuit.
We are going to cover some basic comparisons that use things you are familiar with to create an intuitive understanding of a circuit.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Electronic Learning Toys Can Help Educate the World
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=259402
The Lego craze may have quieted over the past 81 years, but the toys continue to shine their brilliance on young and old alike. The more than 400 billion blocks out in the world have shown us how playing with our imagination can make learning fun.
Like Lego, littleBits Electronics is on a mission. It wants to give the world appendable toys that help make electronics and circuitry builds an easy, fun, and educational experience for all creative people.
LittleBits bills itself as “an open-source library of electronic modules that snap together with magnets for prototyping, learning, and fun.” The latest littleBits platform v0.3 offers a wide array of electronic blocks. The magnetic connections ensure that current always flows in the right direction (and that components don’t fry).
Bdeir told us she hopes that, like Lego, littleBits changes the way we think about educating our children. Schools have been known to limit imaginative learning with strict curricula and an emphasis on high-stakes testing. Learning through playing allows one to experiment and become engaged in a boundless world of possibility. Perhaps more entrepreneurial efforts of this sort will enlighten schools to get back to being fun.
Little Bits
http://littlebits.cc/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A More Natural Way to Learn
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=259475&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
The traditional way of teaching at a college or university has always struck me as strange and artificial. The teacher summarizes sets of rules, illustrates the related concepts on the whiteboard, and students are expected to derive some form of understanding about the topic from this.
Contrast this to how a three year old learns how to play videos on an iPhone. No one tells her how the capacitive sensing array under the glass works or how the underlying operating system multitasks between gesture recognition and measurement of the gravity vector using onboard accelerometers. She simply moves and swipes, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing at making the device work the way she wants. These hands-on, trial-and-error tests induce a change in how the child uses the phone. After a few months of learning like this, children are often more adept at using the phone than their parents are!
The child’s inductive approach to learning is a stark contrast to the artificial deductive approach we experience so often in school. The inductive approach is more natural and typically leads to a deeper, more useful understanding.
I selected the system-level modeling tool MapleSim, from Maplesoft, to enable this inductive approach. It allows students to model a system, observe realistic behaviors, and generate equations that help explain those underlying behaviors.
The Art of Electronics, and give students the golden rules of op amps and tell them how current goes into certain ports and not others, and why voltages should be of a certain value. The students are then asked to solve the circuits by hand. There’s a lot of potential for error here. It’s asking a lot of the students, especially if they haven’t had any experience with electronics.
Alternatively, in the inductive (MapleSim) approach, students start by drawing the schematic, and then simulate it. Then they extract the underlying equations in the software, explore them using different scenarios, and analyze the equations to derive conclusions. The best part of this for students is that they can match it with what they are seeing in their textbooks, as the simulation process they go through is the same as in the textbook.
Traditional tools do have their place, but they don’t let the students see under the hood, which is an impediment to learning.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analog circuit design kit jointly by ADI and Digilent
http://www.eeherald.com/section/new-products/nps201204018.html
The Digilent Analog Discovery Design Kit priced at $99 USD and the advanced Digilent Analog Explorer Design Kit priced at $199 USD hep students to build and test analog and also digital circuits using a personal computer without the need for any other equipment.
“Active learning – learning by doing – helps engineering students understand the process of breaking down larger problems into smaller, more easily solved parts without losing the overall understanding of the complete system,” said John Robertson, professor, Department of Engineering Technology, College of Technology and Innovation, Arizona State University. “The two new analog design kits from Digilent and Analog Devices set-up quickly and generate lots of data making any PC a 24/7 design studio for engineering students. I believe that students who own design kits and build circuits frequently learn better, retain more and enjoy the experience.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does telecommuting really reduce employee performance?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57572174-93/does-telecommuting-really-reduce-employee-performance/
Academic research suggests that working more than one day a week away from the office, for jobs that require a lot of collaboration with colleagues, can cut into performance.
While there are plenty of benefits to telecommuting, much of the academic research on it shows that working from home tends to work best in limited doses.
“There’s a lot of data on this,” said Ben Waber, a visiting scientist at the MIT’s Media Lab and president and CEO, Sociometric Solutions, a consulting firm. “If you are telecommuting once a week, it’s basically the same as working face to face all the time.”
More time away from the office than that, though, and performance can dip. Waber is quick to point out that certain jobs, ones that deal primarily with people outside the employee’s workplace, such sales representatives, do just fine rarely coming into the office. But Waber said research shows that employees who collaborate with others perform better when they have frequent face time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sparkfun takes roadtrip across US in campervan full of electronics
Forget coding, everyone should learn to solder
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/05/sparkfun_tour/
The tour will run over the summer, starting in Hawaii and trying to visit at least one school in each state with three or four Sparkfun staff, a professional educator, and a big bag of electrical components from which up to 30 kids can build stuff, assuming someone stumps up the $1,500 cost of the visit, rising to $2,500 per class after the first 50.
Sparkfun originally tried a kickstarter project to fund the tour, but that failed to raise enough cash so is now asking schools to cough up the dough.
For the sake of comparison Generation Science, which tours Scottish schools in a similar vein, charges around £600 for a similar experience, though the electronic kits are extra (Sparkfun is handing out the hardware in class).
Sparkfun sells all manner of electronic bits, and is very keen to get into the educational market
Tomi Engdahl says:
SparkFun takes their educational show on the road
http://hackaday.com/2013/03/05/sparkfun-takes-their-educational-show-on-the-road/
They’ve bought an RV and are headed for your state with buckets full of hobby electronic hardware. It’s SparkFun’s National Education tour and if you want them to host a workshop for kids in your area now’s the time to sign up!
Tomi Engdahl says:
“So, when will you be done with your design?”
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/analog-ic-startup/4408240/-So–when-will-you-be-done-with-your-design-
Not exactly the question a typical design engineer is looking forward to. You’re at the start of a new project and it is time to commit to a development schedule. Now what? Your first instinct is to be vague. Use verbs like “should” and “hope” and lots of conditional statements. But you know that’s not going to fly. You can give your best estimate. But you’re usually too optimistic and then you will get yelled at when you don’t meet that commitment.
So what is the best way to come up with a schedule for the design phase of your project?
A schedule that is too much padded just invites inefficiency and typically, the allotted time will be used up anyway. Over-aggressive schedules will always be missed, and because of that, they lose their significance, and even demotivate the team. The critical-chain method attempts to avoid both those pitfalls.
The concept starts with estimating the time needed for completing each sub-task. These should be reasonable estimates that have a 50%-60% chance of being realized. Then, for each of the sub-tasks, estimate safety or buffer needed to almost certainly meet the schedule. That buffer is not added to each of the sub-tasks, but instead, all individual buffers are added together to form a project buffer.
The goal is then to keep this project buffer intact as long as possible, which means focusing on the tasks that still need to be completed, rather than at the ones that are completed already. This keeps the urgency on the need to meet the project milestones, while allowing for setbacks that inevitably will occur, not on all, but on some of the sub-tasks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can you engineer from home?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/voice-of-the-engineer/4408098/Can-you-engineer-from-home-
By now you’ve heard about Marissa Mayer’s “no more working from home” decree for Yahoo! employees. It’s received very polar response.
One camp, that agrees with Mayer, firmly believes all employees should be under one roof during the work day, that this scenario is best for team collaboration, allows for best possible management, and that employees need to be focused on work, not distracted by a home office environment.
The other camp, which I tend to sit in, believes there’s nothing wrong with working out of the office (in fact I’m doing so now!). Business is mobile, so why shouldn’t employees be?
In the broader scope, creativity and trust comes into question. Can creativity – a key ingredient to innovative engineering — flourish in an office environment? Can employees be trusted to work from remote locations or do they wander from their responsibilities?
Engineers are among the most creative people out there. Can creative people reach their full potential in an office or corporate setting? Does the environment stifle talents or does such an environment offer collaboration opportunities for brain storming and idea exchange that remote employees do not enjoy?
Finnish electronics industry going down « Tomi Engdahl’s ePanorama blog says:
[...] of the value chain. Competition will emphasise the need for truly novel ideas. The question is how can we innovate [...]
Tomi Engdahl says:
Raspberry Pi’s Eben Upton: “Programming will make you a better doctor”
http://www.gizmag.com/eben-upton-on-raspberry-pi/26521/
Raspberry Pi’s Eben Upton at Technology Frontiers: “Programming will make you a better doctor”
Upton attributed the relative lack of programming marbles in today’s youth on the ubiquity of what he calls “fixed function devices” such as games consoles and smartphones. Even the PC came in for criticism for being an expensive, fragile beast that parents are wary of letting their children experiment with and dismantle lest they permanently break the thing.
Enter the Raspberry Pi: a computer small enough and robust enough to be thrown daily into a schoolbag, while costing no more than the price of a textbook, or so they thought. Upton joked that when the team realized that textbooks can be considerably more expensive they might have had an easier time engineering it. The basic Raspberry Pi costs US$25.
As we now know, Upton and the Raspberry Pi Foundation were able to match the hype, and the Pi has gone on to sell a million units.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Who can carry on Jim Williams’ and Bob Pease’s work?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/anablog/4375194/Who-can-carry-on-Jim-Williams–and-Bob-Pease-s-work-
Another Jim or Bob? Why not a Heather or a Bonnie? Let’s take a good look at some women in engineering who are capable of filling the void that these two icons left.
There are so many fantastic women engineers in electronics
As for what advice she would give to young girls interested in engineering:
Tomi Engdahl says:
California Bill Seeks Campus Credit for Online Study
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/education/california-bill-would-force-colleges-to-honor-online-classes.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Legislation will be introduced in the California Senate on Wednesday that could reshape higher education by requiring the state’s public colleges and universities to give credit for faculty-approved online courses taken by students unable to register for oversubscribed classes on campus.
If it passes, as seems likely, it would be the first time that state legislators have instructed public universities to grant credit for courses that were not their own — including those taught by a private vendor, not by a college or university.
The trend to use educational resources available free online is moving at a gallop, nationwide.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Experience shows that if the right issues are resolved in the right order by the right people, vague requirements can be quickly translated into a detailed design,”
Source: http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2013/february/data-center-systems-planning.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Innovator: Jack Dorsey
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57574758/the-innovator-jack-dorsey/
Jack Dorsey is one of the biggest and most ambitious innovators of our time. His name doesn’t resonate like Jobs or Bezos or Zuckerberg, but his innovations do. His low profile may have a lot to do with his personality.
Dorsey describes himself as extraordinarily reserved and shy, which is ironic considering he’s the man who created Twitter and changed the way people communicate around the world.
His latest creation is a company called Square, which is helping to transform the way we pay for things.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t Risk Your Most Important Calculations to Spreadsheets
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=260464&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
A KPMG study found that, in a sample of 22 spreadsheets, 91 percent contained errors. Is this a fluke? Nope. A similar study by S.G. Powell discovered that, in a sample of 25 operational spreadsheets, 10 had an error — with the consequent financial impact ranging from $216,806 to $110,543,305. That’s not the kind of money any company can risk losing.
What exactly is engineering calculation software, and how does it reduce the risks associated with spreadsheet errors? Simply put, engineering calculation software speaks the language of the mathematical engineer. It’s purpose built for engineers and specifically geared for design and product development applications. Engineers build formulas based on calculus and differential equations, not cells. In engineering calculation software, formulas aren’t hidden away, but instead presented as if on a sheet of drawing paper. By putting the formulas front and center, the risk of error immediately starts to drop. In addition, the software is unit-aware — don’t try to mix your meters and inches — which essentially adds another safety check against design errors.
Another key capability of engineering calculation software is its integration with CAD applications. Not only can the engineer build equations by using parameters, dimensions, or measurements from the 3D model as variables, but each time that 3D model changes, the values automatically get updated in the related equations.
Engineers inevitably run into design variations, but the bulk of their work is spent looking at very similar or slight variations on the same performance characteristics or measures.
The bottom line is that engineering calculation software, with its inherent math language, unit awareness, integration with CAD applications, and standardization/reuse of calculations, eliminates spreadsheet risks and provides key benefits to both the organization and the individual engineer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jack Dorsey on his childhood inspiration for Twitter
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57574797-93/jack-dorsey-on-his-childhood-inspiration-for-twitter/
The co-founder of the microblogging network explains to “60 Minutes” how listening to a police scanner as a child led to Twitter’s creation.
A speech impediment as a child kept the Twitter co-founder at home a lot, where he would play on a computer and listen to the police scanner. He found himself fascinated by the short bursts of talking used by law enforcement and emergency personnel, which was the inspiration for the microblogging social network.
“They’re always talking about where they’re going, what they’re doing and where they currently are,” Dorsey told the CBS TV magazine “60 Minutes.” “And that is where the idea for Twitter came, was now we all have these cell phones. We had text messaging. And suddenly we could update where I was, what I’m doing, where I’m going, how I feel. And then it would go out to the entire world.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIOs Can Be Catalysts for Change in the Postdigital Enterprise
http://www.cio.com/article/730249/CIOs_Can_Be_Catalysts_for_Change_in_the_Postdigital_Enterprise?page=4&taxonomyId=3154
How Does a CIO Become a Postdigital Catalyst?
There’s no simple blueprint for becoming an agent of transformation, but Gandhi and Briggs do offer a few pointers.
Then take these four steps:
Seed innovation. Gandhi and Briggs recommend creating a pocket within your organization focused on research and development. Explore the five postdigital forces and identify specific ways they can be applied to improve your business.
Have essential conversations. Continue the conversation with function heads. Uderstand their priorities
Retool. You’re probably not fully equipped to make the transition to the postdigital enterprise right now. Your organization will need new business and technical skills, and probably new architecture as well.
Prototype. Plan big, start small, fail fast and scale appropriately. Gandhi and Briggs recommend grounding projects in business objectives and simple metrics
“The CIO of the future may look a lot like a venture capitalist—maintaining principles for what makes a solid investment, defining the boundaries upon which deals will be conducted, and driving funding, staffing and strategic support based on often-changing needs and the emerging value of individual initiatives,” Gandhi and Briggs say.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Short Term Thinking vs Long Term Thinking
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/03/short-term-thinking-vs-long-term-thinking.html
One of the mistakes I often see in business is short term thinking vs long term thinking
Sure Samsung is making a killing on handset sales right now. So is Apple. That goes to their bottom line and then onto their balance sheet. And apparently Google isn’t making any money in mobile.
Today.
But when I think about who is developing the strongest franchise in mobile, it is obviously Google. They have gmail on so many phones. They have google maps on so many phones. They are getting the majority of searches on mobile phones. And that doesn’t even begin to address Android itself. It is the dominant mobile operating system around the world. Just think about all the data they are getting from this enormous mobile footprint they have assembled.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Engineering Creativity Challenge
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=260565&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
When faced with engineering creativity challenges, most organizations use brainstorming as their only approach. Developed in the 1950s by Alex Osborn for developing advertising campaigns, brainstorming is a good approach. It’s not the only approach, though, and in many cases, it’s not the best approach.
What we need are approaches to guide our brainstorming such that our energy is focused on solving creativity challenges. We need to focus our creative energies on the design challenge.
I employ three creativity stimulation techniques: biomimicry, nine screens, and TRIZ.
biomimicry looks to nature for creative inspiration.
Biomimicry is a fascinating approach with a strong creativity track record.
Nine screens is another great approach for focused brainstorming. It includes a three-by-three matrix (creating nine screens) with the design challenge in the center.
The concept is to look to the past and the future for potential solutions, and to consider both component and higher-level system perspectives. This creates nine perspectives from which to consider the design challenge.
TRIZ is a third powerful creativity stimulation concept.
TRIZ involves stating a creativity challenge and finding its inherent contradiction. It uses the contradiction (for example, light weight and high strength) to find potentially applicable inventive principles in the contradiction matrix.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Creating solutions for health through technology innovation
http://www.eetimes.com/design/medical-design/4410306/Creating-solutions-for-health-through-technology-innovation
Medical care provides a diverse growth opportunity for designers and manufacturers of electronic systems. The growth is fueled by new discoveries, the need to contain treatment costs and enhance diagnostics, and the increasing number of people who are demanding affordable medical care.
Electronics in health care
Health care is advancing rapidly around the world, driven by new medical discoveries and ongoing demographic and economic changes. Industrial countries are experiencing an aging population, while countries in development are demanding better basic health care to match their newly won prosperity. At the same time, new tests, procedures and medicines make medical care increasingly expensive, forcing the containment of costs even while overall effectiveness improves. In addition, better-informed patients now demand to know more about their health and the treatment they receive, and they are backed by legislative initiatives to make medical data more readily available. All of these factors underline the need for more cost-efficient, more therapeutically effective means of delivering health care.
Electronic systems have an important role to play in meeting all these expectations. New developments in IC manufacturing and design help make medical systems smaller, more power efficient, more accurate, less expensive and more easily integrated into information networks. The result is that the entire health care chain —ranging from hospitals, labs and emergency vehicles, to physicians’ offices and clinics, homes and even wearable devices — can provide more effective diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of patient conditions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Time to Market: A Tale of 2 Products
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=260606&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
We didn’t always call it time to market. In simpler times, it was just called getting the project done, out to door, shipped, and so on. A more formal definition for time to market is “the length of time taken in the product development process from conception of an idea to a finished product.”
Admittedly, when a project actually starts and finishes is somewhat fuzzy and varies from company to company, as well as industry to industry.
What I do know is that this time has gotten shorter.
Now, when I am given a project, I scour the Internet for technical information, visit some forums, occasionally talk with a key rep, and order samples with next-day shipping. I can even usually download any software tools I’ll need, giving me immediate access, and Internet tutorials make learning a snap. Time is now measured in days, with a resolution of hours.
Unless you are a contractor and work for a job house, your product is part of a continuous series of improvements and cost reductions.
I define capacitive touch sensing as the ability to measure capacitance and the smarts to do something with the data.
Because Cypress makes a reconfigurable system on a chip, it took us about six weeks to measure capacitance reliably. It then took us two years to figure out what to do with the data. The knowledge to process the data came one mistake at a time, and we made many, many mistakes.
I went to several power brick companies and found out just how much I didn’t know.
I came back and told my boss that I could design an 85 percent efficient power brick that would get us laughed out of customer meetings.
I told him it would take me three years to come up with a competitive solution, and even then, at best, the solution would still be three years behind the competition, which would have already moved on.
Within any system, there is a core of information that lives within the culture of that group. Break up the group, and that information is lost.
When getting into a new market, time to market is essential. It is important that you make the mistakes you are going to make while there is profit to pay for it and lower expectations on product performance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Feeling Stumped? Innovation Software Can Help
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/your_next_innovation_is_right.html
Analogous-solution software can help us overcome a key mental obstacle to innovation; as a result, it will help us to innovate more quickly and regularly. But we’ve only scratched the surface.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Three things they should have taught in Engineering 101, Part 3: Learn an intuitive approach
http://www.edn.com/design/components-and-packaging/4410458/Three-things-they-should-have-taught-in-Engineering-101–Part-3–Learn-an-intuitive-approach
Intuitive Signal Analysis
I’m not sure if intuitive signal analysis is actually taught in school; this is my name for it. It is something I learned on my own in college and the workplace.
There are three underlying principles needed to apply intuitive signal analysis. (Let’s just call it ISA. After all, if I have any hope of this catching on in the engineering world, it has to have an acronym!)
1. You must drill the basics. For example, what happens to the impedance of a capacitor as frequency increases?
2. You need experience, and lots of it. You need to get a feel for how different components work.
3. Break the problem down.
Spending a lot of time in the lab will help immensely in developing this skill. If you look at the response of a lot of different circuits many, many times, you will learn how they should act. When this knowledge is integrated, a wonderful thing happens: Your head becomes a circuit simulator. You will be able to sum up the effects caused by the various components in the circuit and intuitively understand what is happening.
You will find this signal analysis skill very useful in diagnosing problems as well as in your design efforts. As your intuitive understanding increases, you will be able to leap to correct conclusions without all the necessary facts. You will know when you are modeling something incorrectly, because the result just won’t look right. Intuition is a skill no computer has, so make sure you take advantage of it!
“LEGO” ENGINEERING
The secret professors don’t want you to know is that there are usually about five or six basic principles or equations that lie at the bottom of the pile, so to speak.
If you truly understand these few basic fundamentals in a given discipline, you will excel in that discipline.
Tomi says:
How Mobile Devices Kill Your Creativity
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/03/30/1941241/how-mobile-devices-kill-your-creativity
“ReadWrite has posted a thought-provoking piece on how mobile devices killing our boredom may also be killing our creativity. Quoting: ‘Numerous studies and much accepted wisdom suggest that time spent doing nothing, being bored, is beneficial for sparking and sustaining creativity. With our iPhone in hand — or any smartphone, really — our minds, always engaged, always fixed on that tiny screen, may simply never get bored.”
The iPhone Killed My Creativity
http://readwrite.com/2013/03/29/the-iphone-killed-my-creativity
Tomi Engdahl says:
DesignCon: Nvidia’s engineering VP wants better design tools
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4406049/DesignCon–Nvidia-s-engineering-VP-wants-better-design-tools
Cultural complacency and “uncomplaining” engineers are stunting EDA tool investment and preventing IC companies from keeping up with quickening design complexity, a senior engineering manager at chip vendor Nvidia Corp. said Tuesday (Jan. 29).
“Engineers don’t complain enough,”
“Engineers like myself tend to ultimately figure out a way to live with whatever environment they’re put into,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Excelling in Shades-of-Grey Real World
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=261135
In a world where problems are often ignored and allowed to fester for months or years, engineers do not have that option, as engineering problems ignored may lead to financial collapse or, worse, loss of life. Engineers solve problems to help people, and they do that with a sense of urgency.
In many situations, a combination of human-centered design with state-of-the-art technology yields feasible and sustainable solutions. In more complex situations, physical insight may be incomplete and engineers perform experiments to validate what they do understand and inform what they don’t. This approach to problem solving is called grey-box modeling and it existed long before the name was invented.
Information about the real system comes from two different sources: looking from the inside and looking from the outside. Looking from the inside, we apply the laws of nature, together with the constitutive equations of the components, to the physical model to generate the mathematical equations of motion.
we call this model a white-box model and it is an approximate image of the physical system.
Looking from the outside, measurements alone of the real system give no insight into the real system
A mathematical model is chosen which fits optimally the measured data.
This type of model is called a black-box model.
In reality, modeling is always something in between these two views, resulting in a grey-box model.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Essay-Grading Software Offers Professors a Break
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/science/new-test-for-computers-grading-essays-at-college-level.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks later, clicking the “send” button when you are done and receiving a grade back instantly, your essay scored by a software program.
EdX, the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer courses on the Internet, has just introduced such a system and will make its automated software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it. The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.
The new service will bring the educational consortium into a growing conflict over the role of automation in education.
“There is a huge value in learning with instant feedback,” Dr. Agarwal said. “Students are telling us they learn much better with instant feedback.”
Two start-ups, Coursera and Udacity, recently founded by Stanford faculty members to create “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, are also committed to automated assessment systems because of the value of instant feedback.
Tomi Engdahl says:
There’s No Excuse for Not Designing Virtually
http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=261142&cid=NL_Newsletters+-+DN+Daily
Thomas Edison was at the forefront in the early days of the electrical industry. He was an empiric who spared no expense in his pursuit to push forward. Edison famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Imagine saying the same thing in the workplace today: “I have tried 9,751 different designs that didn’t work, on to the next.”
With all the computing power at the world’s fingertips, virtual design has gone from pen and paper to a complete design environment populated with virtual components that can be constructed and tested in larger, more complex, systems. With virtually no overhead in building multiple revisions, it only makes sense to design virtually first, before a build is attempted. The virtual approach should also be applied to testing, monitoring, and evaluating. Often enough, design on the job follows the Edison style, but it’s time to go Sprague — it’s time to go virtual.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineering Serendipity
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/opinion/sunday/engineering-serendipity.html?pagewanted=all
WHEN Yahoo banned its employees from working from home in February, the reasons it gave had less to do with productivity than serendipity. “Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings,” explained the accompanying memo. The message was clear: doing your best work solo can’t compete with lingering around the coffee machine waiting for inspiration — in the form of a colleague — to strike.
That same day, Google provided details of its new campus in Mountain View, Calif., to Vanity Fair. Buildings resembling bent rectangles were designed, in the words of the search giant’s real estate chief, to maximize “casual collisions of the work force.”
Silicon Valley is obsessed with serendipity, the reigning buzzword
As Yahoo and Google see it, serendipity is largely a byproduct of social networks. Close-knit teams do well at tackling the challenges in front of them, but lack the connections to spot complementary ideas elsewhere in the company. The University of Chicago sociologist Ronald S. Burt calls these organizational gaps “structural holes.”
ONE reason structural holes persist is our overwhelming preference for face-to-face interactions.
“If you just think of serendipity as an interaction with an unintended outcome, you can orchestrate pleasant surprises,