Design companies must look to innovate in their product developments as they emerge from the industry downturn.
This was the view of a panel of design specialist at the NIDays 09 event in London this week.
“Profitable businesses are the life blood of innovation,” said Francis Griffiths, European sales v-p at National Instruments, which organised the event at the IET.
“Driving down the cost of product innovation is the key to most business models,” said Griffiths.
“Companies are starting to innovate at the platform level,” said John Hanks v-p for embedded products at National Instruments.
According to Paul Ingleby from Selex Sensors and Airborne Systems, innovation can be a way of life in larger companies.
“Engineers are innovating all the time,” said Ingleby. “So networking is important and may be this is something engineers aren’t typically all that good at.”
He believed the key was to get engineers from different disciplines communicating more effectively.
“It is getting engineers across different domains talking to each other,” said Ingleby.
The panel also expressed the view that companies not only need engineers with the right skills, but also engineers with the ability to innovate.
The ability of an engineer to look for ways to innovate cannot be taught, they are innate,” said Wing Commander Andy Green from the Bloodhound SSC land-speed record project.
“It may be part of the human condition, the problem is creating the interest in science at an early age and then providing the base level of knowledge,” said Green, who set the keynote for the conference with his presentation entitled "The fastest mathematician on Earth".