Gene Frantz
TI Principal Fellow and Business Development Manager, DSP

TIDC North America has come and gone. For those of you I met with there, let’s keep in touch. I had a great time talking with you and seeing the incredible applications on which you are working. For those of you who couldn’t make it, mark your calendars for next year. It’s becoming a can’t-miss event on the semiconductor dance card.

My dance card is full. I’m going on what amounts to a world tour over the next month, hitting the TIDC events in both Europe and Asia and meeting with existing and potential customers. We all can relate to the potential horrors of travel – airport delays, jet lag, missing your family – but I wouldn’t change my schedule for anything.

It is my contention that only by building strong relationships with customers can a semiconductor company, such as TI, continue to move ahead. Technological advances such as clock speeds and power dissipation can be caught up to by the competition within eighteen months. It is only by forging personal ties – understanding markets and needs for individual applications – that companies can thrive and grow.

That’s what TIDC is all about, no matter which continent it is being held on. In a smaller way, that’s what this blog is about. We, as a company, have to get to know what’s being created out there, what’s driving that creation, and how we can help take that creation to the next level. And we have to apply this to companies of all sizes because innovation generally occurs in smaller shops, though they may not have the resources to see their vision through to the end.

Those innovations are what keep me going. It’s wonderful to see what I have termed in previous blogs as the “Third Wave” of innovation — transportation, quality of life, security and education etc. – maturing and coming to the mainstream. It’s frustrating to have to wait to tell people about all I have seen in detail. But that’s the curse of the two-year design cycle and my lips must remain sealed, though I’ll try to keep you all up on the larger trends I’m seeing on this road trip.

That’s one of the benefits of travel: a lot of time on a plane where no one can reach you. I’ll have a lot of time to update this blog and send you greetings from around the world. For those of you in Europe and Asia, come see me at your TIDCs. I’m looking forward to meeting you.

I am in Shanghai right now. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to visit one of China’s major universities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. I met with many professors, including a long time friend, Professor Chen. I met him for the first time when TI helped them set up a DSP research and teaching lab back in 1997. It was good to see him again and talk about the future, and, yes, some about the past. Much has come out of this strong relationship both at a corporate and at a personal level.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 3:49 pm and is filed under TI Video360 Blog, DSP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.