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".