Lothar Maier, CEO of Linear Technology talks to Electronics Weekly in series of exclusive interviews where CEOs give their impressions of the last 12 months and point to the challenges and opportunities which lie ahead for the industry.
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In today’s economy, economic value comes from the making and selling of ideas and solutions. Historically economic value was derived from selling commodities in high volume with little margin.
It’s clear that the companies that will succeed in today’s market must be focused on innovation.
Now is the time that most companies have revved up their R&D with a goal of bringing to market new products that will draw on a smaller and more focused customer base.
The lone inventor in analogue can still have an impact. Creativity and inventiveness is highly valued in analogue design, where simple, but hard to design solutions are key.
Anyone can solve a problem by throwing millions of transistors at it, but done the right way, it can be done better and simpler by a creative engineer.
Green power is just another colour added to an engineer’s palette of design and product opportunities.
Interest in green power has led to products that put a new spin on old problems. There is plenty of energy in the ambient world around us, and the conventional approach for energy harvesting has been in solar panels and wind generators.
New energy sources emerging from energy harvesting allow us to capture energy from heat generated from a thermoelectric generator, vibration energy from a piezo element, photovoltaic energy from sunlight and even galvanic energy from moisture.
This makes it possible to power remote sensors, or to charge a storage device so that a microprocessor or transmitter can be powered from a remote location without a local main power source.
Author is Lothar Maier, CEO at Linear Technology