Barriers To Innovation

A decade ago I listened to Richard Newton, the former dean of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a lifelong champion of innovation, at a small private function in Silicon Valley. One of the things he said has stayed with me: Innovation opportunities going forward will be at the cusps of different disciplines--biology and computer science, information technology and health care, semiconductors and medicine.
Richard Newton passed away from pancreatic cancer two years ago, but major efforts have been under way over the past decade at top universities to explore opportunities at the cusp.
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MIT set up a new department for brain and cognitive science research right across from the Computer Sciences and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) to help scientists straddle different fields. The entire field of computational biology that did not exist in the mid-'90s has now developed to become a major force in critical areas like cancer research. My friend Carlo Maley, who could not find an adviser at MIT for this field in 1995, today has his own lab at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia.
While scientists are experiencing strong support, the entrepreneurs trying to work at the cusp of different industries seem to still be having a difficult time. It is worth exploring why.
One of the fields close to Newton's heart was electronic design automation. Somewhere down the line--as Moore's Law drove semiconductors to increasingly miniature sizes while packing more and more functionality in them--it became extremely challenging to manufacture these chips. Yield started getting affected. Experts from both industries realized that chip design and semiconductor manufacturing, which were previously segregated, needed to come together. If yield can be improved by one percentage point, the savings involved would be $50 million or more.
So, a new field opened up that came to be known as design for manufacturability (DFM). But despite its potential impact on the future of electronics, it became and remains an esoteric field with a remarkably small number of people who understand enough about both chip design and fabrication.
Yes, you do find some technologists who grasp the cusp. But then you also need business people and investors to play their parts for an innovation to successfully make it to the market.