COVER STORY INNOVATION
Collaboration is crucial
Located in Silicon Valley, PARC (Palo
Alto Research Center) is a scientific
research and Open Innovation
company that’s been at the heart of
some important recent technological
developments.
“Collaboration is crucial and we
bring leading scientists, engineers
and designers together to form teams
across a series of Focus Areas that we
believe are the future of technology,
science and innovation,” explains
Marcus Larsson, the VP of global
business development at PARC.
PARC is a Xerox company and
provides custom R&D, technology,
expertise, best practices and
intellectual property to companies,
start-ups and government agencies.
“Our Open Innovation approach
means that we are able to combine
scientific creativity, interdisciplinary
collaboration and business drive,”
says Larsson.
PARC works across a number
of different industries focussing on
Artificial Intelligence and Human-
Machine Collaboration, Internet of
Things and Machine Intelligence,
Digital Design and Manufacturing,
Microsystems and Smart Devices.
“Creativity and science are at
the heart of our mission to reduce
the time and risk associated with
innovation that is looking to solve
complex problems.”
PARC looks to form a custom,
multi-disciplinary team for every project
or partnership it gets involved with.
“Continuous evolution keeps us
at the cutting edge of innovation
and it enables us to rapidly build
and combine the right capabilities,”
explains Larsson.
“Our work is guided by the
ambitions of our clients and the
stage of innovation they’re at will
define how they work with PARC.
We have a well-defined engagement
process to ensure that they get
what’s needed from any partnership
– whether that’s early stage concept
exploration and validation, proof of
concept and prototype development,
or commercialisation of existing PARC
technologies.”
Launched last year, PARC unveiled
a shared cleanroom-as-a-service
centre that was designed to enable
partners to develop and test new thinfilm
electronics and optoelectronic
devices.
Equipped with a wide range of
tools, it allows for unique processes
such as deposition, wafer bonding
and sputtering. In addition, clients can
draw on PARC’s expertise in working
with semiconductor thin-film materials
including amorphous silicon, metal
oxides, low-temperature polysilicon
and microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS).
“Many large technology
manufacturers have advanced
cleanrooms in place, but very few
facilities are readily available to those
who need small and medium-sized
research and development capabilities
to develop next-generation electronic
devices,” Larsson suggests.
Encouraging innovation
“ADI has a diverse portfolio of
customers, two hundred are strategic,
with whom we have a close working
relationship and our engineers engage
with them on a number of high profile
designs,” explains Liebholz.
“But when we talk about innovation
we also have to pay a lot of attention
to smaller companies and the role
of the Garage, mentioned earlier, is
critical here in helping companies
develop the capabilities they need to
reach a point when their ideas become
viable.”
Innovation often looks to address
current customer needs.
“Businesses tend to focus on
roadmaps that are one year out from
generating revenues and we need to
look five to ten years out at developing
new technologies and products.
But that takes time. It’s about derisking
that process and ensuring
any offerings are viable,” Liebholz
explains.
“Within ADI company engineers
meet at events around the globe
where tracks, demos and papers are
presented and discussed. We bring
our engineers together to both learn
but also to celebrate.”
ADI also has a technology advisory
council that takes ideas from within
the company’s various technology
groups, assesses them and then
looks to support them going forward.
Critically, the key measure of
success when it comes to innovation
is the level of adoption and the
financial return.
“Business margins and return on
investment are critical factors and for
industrial or communication products
we can tell pretty quickly if it has
been embraced. ADI is constantly
looking at financial metrics to see
if we are capturing value. Discipline
and rigour are crucial when looking at
and considering innovation and new
technology.”
The measure of success will be
determined by the company’s overall
revenues, which reflect the vintage of
a company’s innovation, according to
Liebholz.
“At the moment technology
companies are being massively
creative; a huge amount of work is
taking place, but we also need to be
aware of how companies support new
products, how they go about getting
them designed in and what support is
required.
“For larger companies that can be
a trap, as if product support needs to
grow that can lead to engineering time
and resources being misdirected from
innovation.”
ADI is certainly a standout example
of how bigger companies are looking
to innovate, but too many large
companies are failing – they are too
risk averse or simply struggling with
time constraints.
In order to benefit from innovation
more companies need to put in place
processes that tap into new ideas
and creative thinking, from wherever
it comes.
“We bring
leading scientists,
engineers
and designers
together in
Focus Areas
that we believe
are the future
of technology,
science and
innovation.”
Marcus Larsson
14 14 January 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk
/www.newelectronics.co.uk