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To quote Shakespeare’s Richard III, ”Now is the winter of our discontent”, or at least, we’re hoping that it doesn’t get much “colder”!  While pundits do say ”it” will still get worse before it gets better, the current economic climate will not last forever.  So, ever the optimist, the longer we’re in it, the closer we are to the end!

However, in this period of job (in)security, we’d like to announce that Xuropa has just opened two ”Job Centers” within the Online Electronic Design Community.

• Career Center: Seeking Career Positions - where to post a description of the ideal job you’re looking for
• Career Center: Seeking Professionals - where to post a description of the professional you’re looking to hire

It’s perfectly FREE for anyone to list positions that are open and for job seekers to post their ideal career move.  Just go to one of the Job Center Online Booths and make your entry in the Forum or browse the positions and professionals as the forums become populated.

Once you’ve made a post to the Forum you’ll be automatically updated with any responses.  If you want to contact the poster, go to the posters Professional Profile and send them a message.  Email addresses are kept strictly confidential, but we facilitate you making the connection.

Note however that we do not allow any anonymous postings.

Of course, this ties in closely to your Professional Profile on Xuropa.  Ensure this is current either manually or by importing your LinkedIn profile.  Also, make sure your list of specializations and skills is up to date.  LinkedIn doesn’t cover these aspects of an electronic design professionals background, so you’ll need to do this manually.

Good luck, what ever you’re looking for!

Posted under Community, career, industry

In case you haven’t heard, one of the companies that did well in 2008 was Rolls-Royce.  Yes, they did!  And yes, the same company who wasn’t doing so well not so long ago.  What did they do differently?

What Rolls-Royce did was to focus back on their core competency - pursuing technical advances and keeping close with their airline customers.  To quote Winston Churchill who said would like to see finance “less proud and industry more content”, this is another reminder that a lot of Silicon Valley companies must refocus back on technology, and not just offering more attractive “deals” to their customers instead.

The thought of refocusing technology then translates into focusing ondisruptive innovation.  In his book, Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen (Harvard Business School) writes that sustaining innovation (the opposite of disruptive innovation) ends up providing more technology to the high end users than what they are willing to pay for.  When the disruptive innovation comes, it provides a new set of less demanding users with less technology but at a state of the art.  There are lots of examples for this (PC vs. iPhones, etc.).  To combat the disruptive innovation, companies with sustaining innovation resort to financial packages to incentivize the less demanding users to stay with the incumbent (sustaining) technology.  

I get the feeling that this has been occurring a lot in Silicon Valley.  Instead of focusing on real (disruptive) innovation, the focus has been on ways to innovate the purchase process.  I saw that first hand at Cadence where a new number of deal structures were used on a regular basis.  In my last quarters there, the sales account review meetings had a different air about them.  In those meetings, the room was filled by finance and legal personnel, rather than field or solution engineers.  More than 75% of the discussion in those meetings was on contract restructuring and revenue recognition rules, than technology and sales (i.e. actually selling something) strategy.

As we have it, Cadence is now refocusing on technology and innovation.  That is the right move.  The key question is how to stay away from the temptations of “financial innovation”.

Posted under business, industry, marketing

 There’s always a lot going on in the electronic design industry, but recently it seems particularly active.  It’s become a routine of mine to cruise the news feeds we bring into Xuropa to get a sense of what’s going on at different points in the value chain.

Here is a brief snapshop of what I saw today

Embedded Systems

Looking to the embedded world, there’s an interesting “the news of my demise is greatly exaggerated” post over at the Windows Embedded Blog.  After comments about how little Windows CE gets mentioned and a recent New York Times article focuses on Windows 7 for a “small world”, there was some “divining” (”wishing”?) going on in the blogosphere.

According to Mike Hall of Microsoft, they’re hard at work on a new release of the OS right now.  Hopefully it fixes all of the bugs that I ran into during my fated experience with it on the HTC Dash.  (Bad, bad memories.)

Bringing the methodology and tools of application level software and hardware platform development closer together appears to be paramount when the two are developed by different companies.  A point made by Jim Hogan in an interview with Ed Sperling.

Consumer Industry

Although news of the change in fortune of Steve Job’s health last week was sad, the amount of coverage it received was staggering.  Everywhere I turned my radio “dial” on the day of the announcement had it every 15 to 20 minutes.  Even the BBC was running it as the top or second news summary item throughout the day.

Now that the dust has settled and the reality of the situation has started to set in, speculation on succession has begun.  The clear lesson for the electronic design industry is the process of succession itself.  The development of a deep management bench and the instilling of a clear direction and set of corporate values are paramount.

EDA Industry

It was a breath of fresh air to read that OneSpin have spun their technology into a family of interoperable formal verification products.  The real news was the emphasis on usability they appear to have taken.  This is an excellent example of a company that has listened to their customer, really understood the reason for slower-than-liked adoption, and then has done something about it.

Too many EDA companies believe that it’s just “one more feature” that will make all the difference in the world.  When in reality it’s the usability of the features they already have and the company’s ability to communicate the value of them that’s at fault.

This reminds me of Beach Solutions, who unfortunately met their demise late last year.  They struggled for years with confusing messaging and a technology lead.  By the time the products were packaged into something comprehensible to the customer, and the emphasis was moved from “what it is” to “what it does”, it was too late.  They’d managed to go from little-to-no engagements to evaluations all over the globe in a matter of months.  Unfortunately the EDA sales process and the waning world economy appear to have taken their toll.

The curious thing is the acquisition by Duolog.  Given that their new marketing at DAC 2008 was almost identical to Beach’s one would have thought they didn’t need the Beach technology.

There are some more sobering words and grim interpretations about the industry from Gabe Moretti over at EDA Design Line. 

Semiconductor Woes

ChipMOS files a lien against Spansion inventory and equipment for the $18M it is owed.  That’s a tremendous amount of money in any economy, and a sure sign of trouble when vendors start suing customers.  There’s also a rumor that Spansion may file Chapter 11.

Technology Sector Jobs

There was some light at the end of the tunnel reported up in Oregon by Mike Rogoway.  According to his information, tech industry employment figures for Oregon improved in December.  He also has a tally of tech job losses in the state.  I wonder if someone is keeping score in Silicon Valley.

EDA Investment & Value

There was a great interview by Ed Sperling of Jim Hogan.  He covered many macro-level aspects of the EDA industry from the business model, technical challenges, and industry make-up.  More on this interview here.

Posted under business, industry, marketing