Innovation is about finding a better way of doing something. Like many of the new development buzzwords (which many of them are over-used on many business documents), the concept of innovation originates from the world of business. It refers to the generation of new products through the process of creative entrepreneurship, putting it into production, and diffusing it more widely through increased sales. Innovation can be viewed as t he application of better solutions that meet new requirements, in-articulated needs, or existing market needs. This is accomplished through more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments and society. The term innovation can be defined as something original and, as a consequence, new, that “breaks into” the market or society.
Innoveracy: Misunderstanding Innovation article points out that there is a form of ignorance which seems to be universal: the inability to understand the concept and role of innovation. The way this is exhibited is in the misuse of the term and the inability to discern the difference between novelty, creation, invention and innovation. The result is a failure to understand the causes of success and failure in business and hence the conditions that lead to economic growth. The definition of innovation is easy to find but it seems to be hard to understand. Here is a simple taxonomy of related activities that put innovation in context:
- Novelty: Something new
- Creation: Something new and valuable
- Invention: Something new, having potential value through utility
- Innovation: Something new and uniquely useful
The taxonomy is illustrated with the following diagram.
The differences are also evident in the mechanisms that exist to protect the works: Novelties are usually not protectable, Creations are protected by copyright or trademark, Inventions can be protected for a limited time through patents (or kept secret) and Innovations can be protected through market competition but are not defensible through legal means.
Innovation is a lot of talked about nowdays as essential to businesses to do. Is innovation essential for development work? article tells that innovation has become central to the way development organisations go about their work. In November 2011, Bill Gates told the G20 that innovation was the key to development. Donors increasingly stress innovation as a key condition for funding, and many civil society organisations emphasise that innovation is central to the work they do.
Some innovation ideas are pretty simple, and some are much more complicated and even sound crazy when heard first. The is place for crazy sounding ideas: venture capitalists are gravely concerned that the tech startups they’re investing in just aren’t crazy enough:
Not all development problems require new solutions, sometimes you just need to use old things in a slightly new way. Development innovations may involve devising technology (such as a nanotech water treatment kit), creating a new approach (such as microfinance), finding a better way of delivering public services (such as one-stop egovernment service centres), identifying ways of working with communities (such as participation), or generating a management technique (such as organisation learning).
Theorists of innovation identify innovation itself as a brief moment of creativity, to be followed by the main routine work of producing and selling the innovation. When it comes to development, things are more complicated. Innovation needs to be viewed as tool, not master. Innovation is a process, not a one time event. Genuine innovation is valuable but rare.
There are many views on the innovation and innvation process. I try to collect together there some views I have found on-line. Hopefully they help you more than confuze. Managing complexity and reducing risk article has this drawing which I think pretty well describes innovation as done in product development:
8 essential practices of successful innovation from The Innovator’s Way shows essential practices in innovation process. Those practices are all integrated into a non-sequential, coherent whole and style in the person of the innovator.
In the IT work there is lots of work where a little thinking can be a source of innovation. Automating IT processes can be a huge time saver or it can fail depending on situation. XKCD comic strip Automation as illustrates this:
System integration is a critical element in project design article has an interesting project cost influence graphic. The recommendation is to involve a system integrator early in project design to help ensure high-quality projects that satisfy project requirements. Of course this article tries to market system integration services, but has also valid points to consider.
Core Contributor Loop (CTTDC) from Art Journal blog posting Blog Is The New Black tries to link inventing an idea to theory of entrepreneurship. It is essential to tune the engine by making improvements in product, marketing, code, design and operations.
5,237 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Garner HYPE curve can be found here
http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/mota-99-3d-printer-too-good-to-be-true/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity
Tomi Engdahl says:
Open-Source Space
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/open-source-space
A press release came out announcing the release on April 10, 2014, of a new catalog of NASA software that is available as open source.
The main Web site is at http://technology.nasa.gov. This main page is a central portal for accessing all of the technology available to be transferred to the public. This includes patents, as well as software.
One issue that will become evident right away is that not everyone can access all of the available software. Some of the released software is available only to US residents, and some is even more restricted to only parts of the US government.
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 Timeless Marketing Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Us
http://postcron.com/en/blog/10-amazing-marketing-lessons-steve-jobs-taught-us/
1) MAKE A GREAT PRODUCT.
2) DON’T SELL PRODUCTS, SELL DREAMS.
3) FOCUS ON THE EXPERIENCE.
4) TURN CONSUMERS INTO EVANGELISTS, NOT JUST CUSTOMERS.
5) MASTER THE MESSAGE, (and now that we’re on the subject, the delivery too).
6) DECISIONS SHOULD BE MADE BY A GROUP, NOT A COMMITTEE.
7) FIND AN ENEMY.
8) KEEP THE DESIGN SIMPLE, AND WHEN YOU GET THERE, SIMPLIFY IT EVEN MORE.
9) YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE THE FIRST, BUT YOU’VE GOT TO BE THE BEST.
10) INNOVATE OR DIE.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Design Science: UCSF Project Applies Innovative Thinking to Research
http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/12/13250/design-science-ucsf-project-applies-innovative-thinking-research
Design thinking, developed by IDEO, brings together what people desire with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. Keith Yamamoto, PhD, is aiming to adapt this approach to scientific research.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Standards lead to modularity
Standards develop the framework from which design rules emerge.
http://www.csemag.com/single-article/standards-lead-to-modularity/f514fb3cc71e70c0dc93ea88b278bf54.html
Standards lead to modularity, which drives speed and innovation.
Modularity is an important benefit of standards that often gets overlooked. Modularity has had a long history of enabling breakthroughs in innovation of technology. A great example of this is the computer industry. Through the widespread adoption of modular designs, the computer industry has dramatically increased its rate of innovation. As a result, not only have computer companies transformed a wide range of markets by introducing cheap and fast information processing, but they have also led the way toward a new industry structure that makes the best use of each company’s unique abilities. Modularity is at the core of this remarkable accomplishment-building a complex product or process from smaller subsystems that can be designed independently yet function together as a whole.
Another benefit of modularity is the aspect of separating a complex system into subsystems, which reduces management costs by dividing the development program into independently managed pieces. Each subsystem can then use a specialized design and manufacturing workforce, enabling more sophisticated solutions and rapid improvement.
a modular approach breaks the system up into semi-autonomous, “loosely coupled” modules
In summary, standards lead to modularity. Standards develop the framework from which design rules emerge.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst: In 2014, Open Source Innovation Is Going Mainstream
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/08/07/red-hat-ceo-jim-whitehurst-in-2014-open-source-inn.aspx
How is that 2014 forecast shaping up?
First, he described a new attitude toward open-source solutions in the cloud computing market: I rarely talk to a customer that’s not having open source as one of the top two alternatives, if not the primary alternative.
And it’s no longer an issue that it’s open source. It’s just — “Hey, this is what the industry is supporting, it’s where the innovation’s happening, and so it needs to be part of my infrastructure.”
Long story short, Whitehurst sees 2014 playing out pretty much as he had expected. Open-source solutions are stealing market share from traditional, proprietary software packages
Tomi Engdahl says:
If you want to transfer the knowledge and expertise to the discussion, do not write the instructions.
More important than transmission of information – and more challenging – is sharing knowledge.
“Transfer of facts is simple, but knowledge is a combination of knowledge and experience. It is each person different, “Power says.
Sharing knowledge requires interaction. Power believes that the issue should not talk about knowledge management, but how to managed information or knowledge sharing.
“Strategic thinking also should ask the people themselves, how they see their skills and how they apply it. They can also get tips on how knowledge should divide or develop, ”
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/uutisia/tiedon+siirto+vaatii+ohjausta/a1002244
Tomi Engdahl says:
It-the number of jobs is growing, and there is a need skills that women have not only been, but where they are men better. Nevertheless, women are still in the field in a clear minority.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/summa/naiset+ovat+yha+harvassa+italalla/a1002688
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Microsoft dragged its development practices into the 21st century
In the Web era of development, Waterfalls are finally out. Agile is in.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/how-microsoft-dragged-its-development-practices-into-the-21st-century/
For the longest time, Microsoft had something of a poor reputation as a software developer. The issue wasn’t so much the quality of the company’s software but the way it was developed and delivered. The company’s traditional model involved cranking out a new major version of Office, Windows, SQL Server, Exchange, and so on every three or so years.
The releases may have been infrequent, but delays, or at least perceived delays, were not. Microsoft’s reputation in this regard never quite matched the reality—the company tended to shy away from making any official announcements of when something would ship until such a point as the company knew it would hit the date—but leaks, assumptions, and speculation were routine.
In spite of this, Microsoft became tremendously successful. After all, many of its competitors worked in more or less the same way, releasing paid software upgrades every few years. Microsoft didn’t do anything particularly different.
There’s no singular cause for these periodic releases and the delays that they suffered. Software development is a complex and surprisingly poorly understood business; there’s no one “right way” to develop and manage a project.
Nonetheless, computer scientists, software engineers, and developers have tried to formalize and describe different processes for building software. The process historically associated with Microsoft—and the process most known for these long development cycles and their delays—is known as the waterfall process.
The basic premise is that progress goes one way. The requirements for a piece of software are gathered, then the software is designed, then the design is implemented, then the implementation is tested and verified, and then, once it has shipped, it goes into maintenance mode.
The waterfall process has always been regarded with suspicion. Even when first named and described in the 1970s, it was not regarded as an ideal process that organizations should aspire to. Rather, it was a description of a process that organizations used but which had a number of flaws that made it unsuitable to most development tasks.
Microsoft didn’t practice waterfall in the purest sense; its software development process was slightly iterative. But it was very waterfall-like.
For all these problems and challenges, Microsoft has nonetheless been tremendously successful as a software developer. Before the rise of the World Wide Web, these infrequent releases, troublesome as they may have been, actually made a lot of sense.
Agile development for a changing world
The adjective that’s used to describe these processes is “agile.” There are many different agile development processes, but all retain certain common features. Fundamentally, agile processes are designed around short development cycles, iterative improvement, and the ability to easily respond to change.
Iterative development processes of one kind or another have been around for almost as long as software development itself. The kinds of practices that have come to be known as “agile” proliferated in the 1990s, and the “agile” label was codified in 2001 when a group of developers published the “Agile Manifesto,”
The result of each of these short iterations should be something that is more or less usable.
The real complexity for Microsoft is scale. Many of these methodologies are built for small teams.
To keep track of all these things, every three sprints the teams talk directly to the PM, dev, and QA leadership.
Online collaboration is good, but in-person collaboration is a lot better.
With the new process in place, the Visual Studio team has been able to build better software and deliver it more frequently.
The agile approach of combining development and testing, under the name “combined engineering” (first used in the Bing team), is also spreading.
For Microsoft’s customers, the improvements that have come from the agile approach taken to Visual Studio development are visible and real.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Patents that kill
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/08/innovation
Most inventors are not as generous as the “Newton of Electricity”: they want to turn their inventions into a profit. The patent system, which was developed independently in 15th century Venice and then in 17th century England, gave entrepreneurs a monopoly to sell their inventions for a number of years. Yet by the 1860s the patent system came under attack, including from The Economist. Patents, critics argued, stifled future creativity by allowing inventors to rest on their laurels. Recent economic research backs this up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Make Your Brand Instantly Recognizable
http://www.snappycopywriting.com/get-brand-recognition/
Every business owner is aware of the importance of brand recognition. In fact, the goal of any entrepreneurial effort is to be loved by your customer base and respected by your peers.
But if you aren’t a household name yet, it’s important to understand what makes a brand identifiable, and that means you need to be aware of the five stages of brand recognition.
Being in business today means it is more critical than ever that you respect your customers and give them what they want. Meet them in the middle, or your venture will fail because unhappy customers now have an option to publicly voice their displeasure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tip #30: Keep Your Child Eyes
http://surpriseindustries.com/child_eyes/
Everything surprised and delighted her. Everything made her wonder because her world was wonderful.
I had just witnessed the epitome of what we often call “a child’s eyes.” Through a child’s eyes, everything is intriguing and surprising because everything is new. We respond to all this newness by staring at it, poking it, soaking it all up. We can’t help it.
As we grow older, the world surprises us less simply because we become more familiar with it, and little by little we stare and poke and soak up less.
It wouldn’t be practical to spend your entire life mumbling “wow wow wowww!”. Surprise slows us down, and most of us are busy trying to speed up. But habitation becomes a problem when:
1. We stop seeking novelty and therefore stop experiencing surprise and therefore stop learning.
2. Our expectations prevent us from seeing the novelties in our world.
The solution for problem #1 is simple: go places, meet people, and listen to ideas that make you go “woww” or “oooo” or at least “hmmm.”
Tackling problem #2 requires a bit more effort.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tip #25: The Ultimate Time Hack: how to have more time (by doing less)
http://surpriseindustries.com/have_more_time/
You don’t need more time. You just need to slow down the time you have.
How can you slow down time? Psychologists have found that experiencing awe slows our perception of time, making us happier, more patient, and even more helpful. It’s called Extended Now Theory.
No wonder everything slows down in the movies when “the one” walks into the room. Hollywood knew this all along.
Awe is a feeling of surprise that is usually triggered by vastness, beauty, or extreme complexity.
Neuroscientist David Eagleman points out that new, unexpected experiences feel slower than familiar ones in our memories.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“You don’t have to think that the engineers are the creative snowflakes and rock stars that they think they are, you don’t have to agree with any of that,” Dickerson said. “I’m just telling you that’s how they think of themselves, and if you want access to more of them, finding a way to deal with that helps a lot.”
Engineers want to make a difference, Dickerson said
Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9250329/White_House_s_new_IT_engineer_is_sharp_witty_and_blunt_
Tomi Engdahl says:
This is shocking:
Electric Shocks Preferred to Thinking (Especially by Men)
Digital devices aren’t to blame for our distracted minds
http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/consumer-electronics/portable-devices/electric-shocks-preferred-to-thinking-especially-by-men
The most startling finding was that people would voluntarily give themselves electric shocks rather than just sit with their thoughts for 15 minutes.
Erin Westgate: Yes, so a disengaged mind is a mind that is not engaged in the world around it. So you might think of this as instead of looking at everything going on around you, and focusing on that, you really pull yourself inward, and focus on your own mind, and your own thoughts, divorced from that outside world. And I think this is really important. It’s something that has been valued by philosophers, religious leaders, for hundreds, even thousands of years. And I think it has great value to be able to sit and just think.
Stephen Cass: People in creative fields, such as writers, scientists, and engineers, depend on daydreaming, to some degree, to do their work. Yet many of the people in your study were creative people. Why do you think even professional thinkers have such difficulty disengaging?
Erin Westgate: That’s a good question. I think the very, very simple answer is: This is something that is not easy, it’s not something that comes naturally to the brain, and we can do it—I absolutely believe we can do it—but it takes a lot of effort. You know, you hear about creative people getting writer’s block all the time, or creative blocks, where they can’t quite sit and daydream like they need to to do their work. And I think that ties back into the fact that this is fundamentally hard. I suspect some people are better at it than others, but doing it on command at a designated time, I think it’s just hard for anybody.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Companies That Don’t Understand Engineers Don’t Respect Engineers
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/08/17/0151211/companies-that-dont-understand-engineers-dont-respect-engineers
Following up on a recent experiment into the status of software engineers versus managers, Jon Evans writes that the easiest way to find out which companies don’t respect their engineers is to learn which companies simply don’t understand them. “Engineers are treated as less-than-equal because we are often viewed as idiot savants.
Whereas in fact any engineer worth her salt will tell you that she makes business decisions daily–albeit on the micro not macro level–because she has to in order to get the job done.
These are in fact business decisions, and we make them, because we’re at the proverbial coal face, and it would take forever to run every single one of them by the product people and sometimes they wouldn’t even understand the technical factors involved.
Tomi Engdahl says:
VCs suck (but there’s a way you could prove me wrong)
http://fortune.com/2014/08/13/vcs-suck-but-theres-a-way-you-could-prove-me-wrong/
Venture capital isn’t delivering promised returns, which threatens the industry’s future. Unless all we need is better data.
Mulcahy makes three basic points:
The VC market has performed terribly for more than a decade, but individual VCs still get paid exceedingly well (thanks to long-term management fees).
VCs should have more skin in the game via larger GP fund commitments.
There has been too little innovation on the VC model.
If VC truly is underperforming (as all of the data seems to indicate), then Mulcahy is correct that the industry’s economic model needs an overhaul.
Tomi Engdahl says:
In the Sharing Economy, Workers Find Both Freedom and Uncertainty
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/technology/in-the-sharing-economy-workers-find-both-freedom-and-uncertainty.html?_r=0
Tomi Engdahl says:
11 Summer Vacation Spots for Engineers
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=28&doc_id=1323542&
This collection of places from technology history, museums, and modern marvels is a roadmap for an engineering adventure that will take you around the world.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Future Engineers: Don’t ‘Trip Up’ on Your College Road Trip
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=28&doc_id=1323202&
The dreaded junior year of high school has finally coming to a close. What do you do to celebrate? Go on a road trip!
Just kidding. College visits are more than just an excuse to go on an exciting excursion. In fact, these visits will be your first glimpse into your “future home.” I say “home” because you may be spending four years of your life there, which is a very long time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Good Reasons to Cancel Your Project
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323514&
Now that I have your attention, I can add the caveats. Canceled development projects are not good things. They represent lost investment in terms of money and people. They generally lead to poor morale as people who have put considerable effort into a program find that their efforts have been wasted.
But the optimal number of canceled projects is not zero, particularly in the high-tech sector. There are too many unknowns when a project is launched to say emphatically that every program should go through to completion. Here are five situations when canceling a project is a good thing.
1. The project is successful
This goes to the definition of “successful”.
The truth is that there are many technical and market unknowns for any project
Finding the answer quickly and canceling a program early (if the answers come back negative)
is a successful project in itself.
2. Opportunity cost
Let’s say you have a project, and it is expected to deliver a positive but unimpressive return on investment. Should you do it? Maybe not. The decision is not whether to do this project or do nothing — it’s whether to do this project or pursue another opportunity.
3. Sunk costs don’t matter
If you’ve proceeded with a project but find that it isn’t the stellar marketplace winner you had hoped, how do you treat the investment you already made? Answer: Not at all. One of the worst arguments you can make is “But we already invested so much.” That’s a sunk cost.
4. New competition in the market
What do you do if you are proceeding with a project, and a competitor releases a product that obsoletes yours before it is even introduced? It’s time to reevaluate.
5. Acquiring a similar product or product line
This is rare, but I’ve seen it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Spaghetti Code & Meatball Managers
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=28&doc_id=1322433&
There are valuable contributions that management can make to the design process. Let me get back to you on that later.
Here is my advice on dealing with a meatball of a manager who issues an edict that makes no earthly sense: Ignore it.
Yet this particular manager issued the following instructions: “This code is field-proven over more than 15 years. It is completely bug-free and is the result of 15 years of development. Do not change it! Re-compile this C program to the new processor and keep it exactly the same.”
In the first week alone I discovered at least three serious bugs and learned that units in the field suffered from the same defects.
I ended up designing the new system from scratch
Tomi Engdahl says:
Only a fraction of the coder are women
Information technology and programming has been considered a masculine line of business.
When you look at all the programming language the coders use, the proportion of women remains always marginal.
Women’s share of the potential candidates to grow immediately, if the work does not need to be directly involved with coding.
Around the world, has long been pending for programs in which women seek to attract technology, including programming.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1657:vain-murto-osa-koodaajista-on-naisia&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
In Silicon Valley, Mergers Must Meet the Toothbrush Test
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/in-silicon-valley-mergers-must-meet-the-toothbrush-test/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
When deciding whether Google should spend millions or even billions of dollars in acquiring a new company, its chief executive, Larry Page, asks whether the acquisition passes the toothbrush test: Is it something you will use once or twice a day, and does it make your life better?
The esoteric criterion shuns traditional measures of valuing a company like earnings, discounted cash flow or even sales. Instead, Mr. Page is looking for usefulness above profitability, and long-term potential over near-term financial gain.
Google’s toothbrush test highlights the increasing autonomy of Silicon Valley’s biggest corporate acquirers — and the marginalized role that investment banks are playing in the latest boom in technology deals.
Many of the biggest technology companies are now going it alone when striking large mergers and acquisitions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google goes DARPA
http://fortune.com/2014/08/14/google-goes-darpa/
The famously innovative search company has taken a page from the Pentagon’s radical ideas factory. Here’s what’s brewing in Silicon Valley’s coolest skunkworks.
After making the rounds of various groups, Dugan sat down with Dennis Woodside, then the CEO of Google’s Motorola unit, who was charged with turning around a brand that was once synonymous with cellphone innovation but that had lost its way in the smartphone era. Woodside said that with a renewed focus on innovation, Motorola could leapfrog rivals like Apple and Samsung.
What, he wondered, did Dugan—whose job had been to nurture DARPA’s decades-long streak of breakthroughs—think? “It’s a great strategy for not losing and a lousy strategy for winning,” she answered. A week later the Motorola innovation gig was hers.
Today Dugan is leading a cadre of big-idea special forces—called Advanced Technology and Projects group, or ATAP for short—on an even grander mission for parent Google, where the unit is slated to remain after the sale of Motorola to Lenovo is completed later this year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Visualize data from your Instrument Control System
http://www.engineering.com/ResourceDownload/HowtoChoosetheRightVisualizationTechniques.aspx?utm_source=recommended_designeredge&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=
Most engineers need at least basic charting and graphing for their instrument control systems. But making the right choice for visualization goes well beyond the basics.
Selecting the right data visualization technique could mean the difference between actionable information and missing key insights.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cell Phone-Nokia choked on middle management
Today’s successful companies combine agility on many levels: product development, processes and organization.
Cell Phone-Nokia renewal would have been very difficult due the company’s structure: It can be said that Nokia choked to death on their own middle management.
This said, Nokia, Quality Manager and agility coach in 2007-2011 served as Martin von Weissenberg.
Weissenberg, Nokia cell phone was in the organization of the 13 levels. The middle management was just too much. Initiatives with the best ideas and visions stopped almost always one of the tier Pry of the organization.
- The more levels and cord, the more politics in the organization, Weissenberg.
Can a big company, then the first place to be agile? Coaches agility believe that they can. – Agile large companies does not appear to be a traditional corporate bureaucracy, departments, project managers and our annual budget, Weissenberg and Ziegler say.
The most typical agile house is, however, a newer, smaller software or services. They agility is essential. And in fact, they have to find their own way to be agile.
- If it is the same way agile than its competitors, it does not get a strategic advantage. If it is different, there is a chance of success
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1664:kannykka-nokia-tukehtui-keskijohtoonsa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Planning for Success
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323434&
Though the trip was only five weeks long, it took me months to plan.
By the time we began the trip, I had a thick stack of paper containing all the information. The trip largely went as planned
A three-step process ensures success and echoes the steps I took for my family’s travel.
Identify
Decide on what to verify with formal verification. In this step, the verification engineer must decide what the goals are for applying formal verification. Is it finding bugs, improving simulation coverage, reducing project cycle, learning formal, or — most daring — achieving formal signoff? These goals dictate what kind of formal verification to apply.
Formal verification is a powerful technology, but it is not suitable for all design types. Control and data transport types of design blocks are better candidates than data transform designs
Evaluate
Determine what can be achieved within the resource, budget, and scheduling constraints. Finding the balance point between desire and reality in the context of verification is more complex than the challenge I had in planning our exploration of China, but the essence is the same — finding the point that gives the best (verification) return on investment.
Plan
Pull everything together and create the actual implementation plan stating the who, when, and what. An actual English list of checkers and constraints should be captured in this step. Formal complexity should be explored to plan for a solution. Exact metrics to measure success, such as coverage metrics, need to be established.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google hops into bed with Brit red-top: Cooks up ‘draw an app’ coding compo for kids
Yes, Sun asks tots to debug broken page get out crayons
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/14/google_code/
British red-top The Sun is running a campaign to “Get Kids Coding” in collaboration with Google that demonstrates failures of judgment and technology that have reduced my family as well as some Reg staff to helpless laughter.
The tabloid is, of course, a contentious choice for promoting any academic activity – teachers mostly being Guardian readers
The intentions are good, as far too few kids study computing and our late lamented education minister Michael Gove annoyed a serious number of teachers by insisting that as of September all kids must have the chance to learn coding (as apparently programming must be called these days).
But the slogan is “Get Kids Coding”
It is believed by some that you can learn something useful about programming from scratch in an “Hour of Code”. This is not some small obscure idea; there are hundreds of similar initiatives that extol how easy it is to program and how you can learn it in an hour, afternoon or whatever. Hands up those who think you can.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers: Join Humanitarian Shout Out
Get your community involved in World Humanitarian Day
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323583&
The United Nations World Humanitarian Day is also an opportunity to celebrate the spirit that inspires humanitarian work around the globe. It’s a global celebration of people helping people whether across the world or next door.
Education = power
The power of education has always impressed me. Education is the key to unlocking potential because it creates the opportunity to realize our dreams. This passion for education is why I enjoy working on events, such as the Embedded Systems Conference and ARM TechCon, and collaborating with the esteemed members of our industry curating the educational programs we offer at those events to engineers around the world.
I believe that humanitarian acts happen all the time, every day, all around us. The advancement of technology and international business highlights the growing importance of reaching across borders to embrace our global community. My wish for this humanitarian day is to connect the engineers in our community with the future engineers of Tanzania!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Technology in the Engineering Classroom
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323481&
When it comes to upgrading technology and teaching tools in an engineering classroom, there’s a strange push and pull.
On one hand, there’s a definite need to prepare learners to keep up with the demands of the workplace. Both inside and outside the classroom, technology changes rapidly. That puts tremendous pressure on educators and institutions to provide classes with an experience that complements these changes.
On the other hand, restrictions on finances, time, and human resources make it difficult to shift and upgrade equipment on a regular basis. New technology isn’t simply dropped in. It needs to be programmed into the curriculum, and to some educators, this can feel like rebuilding a boat while out at sea.
There are a number of challenges in introducing something new.
A good way to make the most of opportunities to bring in new technology may be to involve the engineering community at large.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Patent Trolls Destroy Innovation
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/08/20/0158225/how-patent-trolls-destroy-innovation
Everyone agrees that there’s been an explosion of patent litigation in recent years, and that lawsuits from non-practicing entities (NPEs) — known to critics as patent trolls — are a major factor. But there’s a big debate about whether trolls are creating a drag on innovation — and if so, how big the problem is.
the researchers find that firms that are forced to pay NPEs (either because they lost a lawsuit or settled out of court) dramatically reduce R&D spending: losing firms spent $211 million less on R&D, on average, than firms that won a lawsuit against a troll
Tomi Engdahl says:
New study shows exactly how patent trolls destroy innovation
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/19/6036975/new-study-shows-exactly-how-patent-trolls-innovation
A new study by researchers at Harvard and the University of Texas provides some insight on this question. Drawing from data on litigation, R&D spending, and patent citations, the researchers find that firms that are forced to pay NPEs (either because they lost a lawsuit or settled out of court) dramatically reduce R&D spending: losing firms spent $211 million less on R&D, on average, than firms that won a lawsuit against a troll.
“After losing to NPEs, firms significantly reduce R&D spending — both projects inside the firm and acquiring innovative R&D outside the firm,” the authors write. “Our evidence suggests that it really is the NPE litigation event that causes this decrease in innovation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How CIOs Can Survive and Thrive in a Swirl of Change
http://www.cio.com/article/2465697/cio-role/how-cios-can-survive-and-thrive-in-a-swirl-of-change.html
Today’s CIO has to be able to successfully collaborate across departments, connect corporate silos, be customer-focused, get agile and tap the power of data analytics.
CIOs face unrelenting change as part of the job description. Today they must deal with change coming at them from all fronts. More than ever before, CIOs now have to knock down walls, connect corporate silos, keep customers in their sights, be willing to fail fast and pivot to a more successful strategy — one that usually involves wielding the power of data analytics.
“You need to be out and ahead of this issue,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Agility is a cultural change
Change is a process, not a project.
And agility is the operation method rather than the destination.
Agility, or tight affairs anticipation and quick response seen as medicine to failed IT projects.
“If the organization is a thick, agility is an impossibility.”
Agility is appreciated by the post-industrial period of time, mainly dotting the development of matter, but in order for it to be successful, must be agile environment.
Source: http://summa.talentum.fi/article/tv/uutiset/84233
Tomi Engdahl says:
AT&T to deliver 1Gbps broadband to Silicon Valley
http://www.cnet.com/news/at-t-to-deliver-1gbps-broadband-to-silicon-valley/
Even though most communities in the US could benefit from a super high-speed network, such as AT&T’s, delivering this kind of speed to residents and startups in the nation’s technology and innovation hub is likely to be a guaranteed hit. And it could spawn new ideas, technologies and businesses that will benefit the entire technology ecosystem as residents and startups in the area put the high-capacity network to the test.
“Cupertino is leading the way in creating an environment that fosters innovation,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vexed in the city: The ‘sharing’ economy’s hidden toll on San Francisco
http://www.cnet.com/news/vexed-in-the-city-the-sharing-economys-hidden-toll-on-san-francisco/
Under the guise of “sharing,” companies like Airbnb and Uber are cashing in. While they’re providing services beloved by many, their impact is also causing reverberations on the ground
Tomi Engdahl says:
There are two disciplines in which Silicon Valley entrepreneurs excel above almost everyone else. The first is making exorbitant amounts of money. The second is pretending they don’t care about that money.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/fashion/at-burning-man-the-tech-elite-one-up-one-another.html?_r=0
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pioneering Companies Enter a New Data Analytics Phase
http://www.cio.com/article/2466780/cio100/pioneering-companies-enter-a-new-data-analytics-phase.html
Companies such as Ford, General Electric are entering the next phase of data analytics. Analytics 3.0 will go beyond internal use and become a driver of external products and services.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Identify Soft Skills in IT Job Candidates
http://www.cio.com/article/2466088/hiring/how-to-identify-soft-skills-in-it-job-candidates.html
As IT departments are called upon to play larger, more public roles in today’s businesses, the skill set of the ideal IT employee has changed. How can companies identify whether a job candidate has the ‘soft skills’ to bridge the gap between IT and the rest of the business?
“IT is no longer in the back room with the lights off writing code,” says John Reed, senior executive director at Robert Half Technology, an international technology recruiting and staffing company. “IT is in the room with the business leaders when decisions are made.”
“The heads-down IT person who’s just programming is becoming less and less attractive to employers, because you have to be able to communicate with your business partners or their customers,” Browning says.
Browning says she looks for candidates who can act almost like consultants – people who “can really coach non-IT people on how to articulate their needs.” She wants people who can reverse engineer a solution to a problem for someone, or even change the mindset of a person who says she needs A but would really do better using Z – even if Z hasn’t been created yet.
“In IT, it’s important to go to the non-IT people who don’t understand what technology can actually do,” Browning says. That’s where soft skills in an IT person come into play.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Speed time-to-innovation with public cloud
How can companies use public cloud computing to get innovative products and services for customers up and running at speed?
- See more at: http://businessinthecloud.ft.com/?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=pmc-bgr&utm_campaign=An+Overview+Of+Cloud+Adoption+In+The+UK#!/speed-time-to-innovation-with-public-cloud
Tomi Engdahl says:
Readers absorb less on Kindles than on paper, study finds
Research suggests that recall of plot after using an e-reader is poorer than with traditional books
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/19/readers-absorb-less-kindles-paper-study-plot-ereader-digitisation?CMP=twt_gu
A new study which found that readers using a Kindle were “significantly” worse than paperback readers at recalling when events occurred in a mystery story is part of major new Europe-wide research looking at the impact of digitisation on the reading experience.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When the hand is a Chinese smartphone, the components of which come mostly from Asia and the software from the United States, whether the Europeans lost the game completely. – They have not, believes the CEA Leti research institute director Simon Deleonibus
- Europe is 500 million people. Their combined tulons aova 1.7 trillion euros. Together we are the richest nation in the world, so we have certainly afford to launch a new innovation projects.
Even a small country can be top of the world.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1682:suomen-tulevaisuus-on-sulautetussa-alyssa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Politicians do not understand the importance of innovation”
While the debate in Finland about whether research to take money from the state to balance the finances, the rest of the new development is emphasized. VTT’s President and CEO Erkki KM Leppävuori says that politicians do not seem to understand the importance of research and innovation.
- At the same time looks like, unfortunately, it appears that researchers do not understand the importance of getting innovations to the world products, he said.
- One may ask, are we losing the innovation race?
Leppävuori referred to at the same time the way to invest two-thirds of research funds for basic research. – Elsewhere, Asia, and North America, two-thirds of investing close to the market in the product development.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1679:poliitikot-eivat-ymmarra-innovoinnin-merkitysta&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
The C in CIO Isn’t for Celebrity
The best IT leaders have a powerful but rarely discussed trait: humility.
http://www.cio.com/article/2465800/leadership-management/the-c-in-cio-isn-t-for-celebrity.html
Longtime CIO Steve Bandrowczak has accomplished a lot in his career: He’s run large global organizations, spoken on the biggest stages and driven impressive results. But he still sets aside 30 minutes each day to learn something new.
Studies have found humility to be a valuable executive asset.
There are easy ways to spot a humble leader. For one, they talk openly and honestly about failure.
The humble CIO will also emphasize his people’s importance more than his own.
Humble leaders also know they need to lean on others for advice and counsel.
But the most striking evidence of a humble leader? When their organizations succeed, these CIOs talk about “we” and “our.” When something goes wrong, they talk about “I” and “my.”
Will you embrace lifelong learning? Will you speak openly and confidently about your failures? Will you seek advice from your network—and give advice without expecting something in return?
Those are just a few of the questions current and aspiring leaders must ask themselves
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Company With The Best Culture? Twitter, According To Glassdoor
Tech companies made a strong showing in Glassdoor’s first report ranking corporate cultures.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3034679/most-innovative-companies/the-company-with-the-best-culture-twitter-according-to-glassdoor
Tomi Engdahl says:
In our digital world, are young people losing the ability to read emotions?
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-digital-world-young-people-ability.html
Children’s social skills may be declining as they have less time for face-to-face interaction due to their increased use of digital media, according to a UCLA psychology study.
UCLA scientists found that sixth-graders who went five days without even glancing at a smartphone, television or other digital screen did substantially better at reading human emotions than sixth-graders from the same school who continued to spend hours each day looking at their electronic devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Brit Sci-Fi author Alastair Reynolds says MS Word ‘drives me to distraction’
Wordsmith gripes about ‘another sh*t feature’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/25/brit_scifi_author_alistair_reynolds_says_ms_word_drives_me_to_distraction/
In August last year, one-time-sysadmin and now SciFi author Charles Stross declared Microsoft Word ”a tyrant of the imagination” and bemoaned its use in the publishing world.
“Major publishers have been browbeaten into believing that Word is the sine qua non of document production systems,” he wrote. “And they expect me to integrate myself into a Word-centric workflow, even though it’s an inappropriate, damaging, and laborious tool for the job. It is, quite simply, unavoidable.”
Which sounds an awful lot like the same complaint Stross voiced: the publishing industry is so into Word he’d like to work in another tool, but his editors prefer he uses the Microsoft tool.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Air Quality Egg shows power of open development
http://www.fondriest.com/news/air-quality-egg-shows-power-of-open-development.htm
An openly developed air monitoring device in an egg-shaped package raises a question. Can science work at public demand, or do scientists determine what people need?
In the case of the Air Quality Egg, the public won the tug-of war.
From start to finish, the project has been completely open: Anyone could participate, anyone could draft ideas and anyone could fund the project.
A community effort composed of people across the world built the sensor using preexisting, open source technology. Most worked in their spare time, contributing whatever expertise or elbow grease they had.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why has the web gone to hell? Market chaos and HUMAN NATURE
Tim Berners-Lee isn’t happy, but we should be
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/27/the_web_is_dead/
It’s possible to have a certain sympathy for Sir Tim Berners-Lee as he looks at what people have done to his glorious world wide web.
Instead of it remaining the glorious bottom-up egalitarian creation it once was, it’s become infested with people like Facebitch using it to scramble for filthy lucre.
Over in The Guardian, Stuart Jeffries is worrying about what has been done to Berners-Lee’s creation:
Sceptical is right. The world wide web has increasingly facilitated the global spread of misogyny, the hate crime of revenge porn, corporate and state surveillance, bullying, racism, the life-ruining, time-wasting, Sisyphean digital servitude of deleting spam, the existentially crushing spadework of fatuous finessing of those lies, one’s Facebook profiles. It has spread from the grassroots up, from Berners-Lee’s desktop to the world, has been coterminous with lots of other intolerable things.
The go-to economist on this point is William Baumol. He changes the meanings of words a little bit when discussing this: he uses the word invention to describe the creation of new stuff, the world wide web for example, and the word innovation to mean “derivative invention” – or, if you prefer, what people go off to use that new invention to do (as opposed to the more usual meaning of innovation: incremental improvements).
Regardless of the uses to which Bell and Edison imagined people would put their inventions, people used them how they saw fit.
Another way to put this is that human beings are hugely, vastly, interested in a certain number of things (think Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs here) and we’re going to use any new invention that comes along to advance our interests in those things. Food water and sex are pretty high on that list.
If we look to past inventions, we can see several examples of the Hierarchy at work.
Berners-Lee did indeed invent the web: but an invention is as a child. One can create it but then it does need to be released out there into the world and what becomes of it will only partially be determined by who and how it was created: interaction with the rest of that world will have a great deal of influence on what finally becomes of it.