Video Interview: Arthur Chait of EOPlex Talks About Green Semiconductor Packaging

My article originally posted on TriplePundit

Electronics are here to stay.  Unfortunately, so is E-waste, and it’s only going to increase in the coming years. The separation of E-waste into useful materials continues to be a challenge.  The best way to reduce is, of course, is to put less into electronics to begin with.  The following interview from Going Green Silicon Valley with Arthur Chait, the CEO of EOPlex, profiles his new semiconductor package that promises to deliver lower waste and lower cost.   Traditional semiconductor packaging is made with etching and plating which involves polluting chemicals that can enter our water systems.  EOPlex offers a solution that eliminates the need for etching and plating and their associated chemicals, delivers thinner packaging with more leads and lowers total cost of ownership.   No new equipment is necessary to adopt this greener solution, accelerating potential rate of adoption.  What we need now is a collection of more green alternatives for the semiconductor industry to support our electronics need without destroying our environment.  Do you know of some? Watch the video below…


Interview with Arthur Chait of EOPlex from Connie Kwan on Vimeo.

Calculating Costs of Product Schedule Delays

For our third semester Products and Services class with Dariush Rafinejad, we are reading his book : Innovation, Product Development and Commercialization.  

Chapter 3 covers Marketing Management, arguably the most important aspect of successful product development.  Taking examples from his experience in semiconductor equipment manufacturing, Rafinejad writes about the importance of the whole product.   Successful firms provide an ecosystem of products and services to the customer.  When the customer pays for the purchase, the journey ends for the sales force, but the journey is merely beginning for the customer.  (Rafinejad, 2007) The customer takes tremendous risk in a purchase, thus, lowering that risk is instrumental to closing a sale.   One way to lower that risk is by establishing a whole product offering that includes not just presale and sales support, but a comprehensive post-sale infrastructure including product install, support, performance guarantees and related services.  

In addition to the whole product, product planning is crucial.  Rafinejad comprehensively discussed various components of planning such as marketing research and analysis methods, product adoption curve, pricing theory and product roadmap.   He noted the interesting face that project delays are often more costly than increased development costs.  However, his short example left me wanting more.  Thus, I did further research led by the question “How does one calculate the cost of a schedule delay?”  

The question falls under the category of Project Management, and many books are available to help answer the question.  The Lean Product Development Guidebook suggests three regions of different schedule sensitivity that looks very similar to a product adoption curve.  Region A products enjoy monopoly in the market space, and thus have high schedule sensitivity.  Region B products with many competitors have lower schedule pressure.  And Region C products have the lowest sensitivity.  (Mascitelli, 2006)

 

(Mascitelli, 2006)

Upon deciding on the region of sensitivity, it is time to calculate the NPV of a delayed project.  There are three factors to consider in the calculation.  The first is the higher burn rate.  A delayed project usually comes with added worker time on the project, thus worker salaries and other costs contributing to the burn rate must be included in the NPV_delay calculation.  The second factor is the delay impact on product price in the market.  If the product is trying to capture first move advantage, the cost of delay can be significant.  The penalty is also significant for missing a market milestone such as an important tradeshow, or the buyer’s buying window.  The third factor is lifetime sales volume impact from the delay.  The table below shows typically impact on various product types from schedule delays.

(Mascitelli, 2006)

A schedule delay is usually caused by avoidable risks, and it is useful to map out the hidden risks prior to project initiation.  I find the following graph a useful way to visualize each risk and its impact.

(Kendrick, 2009)   

An important part of product development is product planning.  Performing adequate market assessments and careful risk analysis helps ensure a robust and successful product.

References:

Kendrick, T. (2009). Identifying and Managing Project Risk: Essential Tools for Failure-Proofing Your Project. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn.

Mascitelli, R. (2006). The Lean Product Development Guidebook: Everything Your Design Team Needs to Improve Efficiency and Slash Time-to-Market. Technology Perspectives.

Rafinejad, D. (2007). Innovation, Product Development and Commercialization: Case Studies and Key Practices for Market Leadership. J. Ross Publishing.

Coming very soon: the spaceship console

I've always wanted to have a spaceship style information console with the nice female machine voice.  Now I can have it! Qwiki is a start-up working on quick audio-visual presentations for any topic.  A brilliant solution for the unsustainable information overload we are experiencing.

Sensational Speech by Hot Flat and Crowded author Tom Friedman thinks inside the box

Tom Friedman is an amazing speaker.  His speech at Stanford's GCEP yesterday filled the hall with clean energy researchers and innovators.  The speech is part of a tour for his new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded 2.0, a sequel to his 2008 version of the book. The insights he has gained in the last two years has led him to agree with many sustainability gurus such as Dana Meadows and Amory Lovins.  In fact, he ends his compelling hour long speech with an a excerpt from his book, a speech by Amory Lovins at the memorial service for Dana Meadow. While Friedman's conclusions may be nothing new, his delivery was impeccable and fresh, interspersed with new terminology and fun words in classic Friedman fashion.  While I agreed with most of his points, his statement on the energy innovation sector was short sighted.  First, let's highlight the agreement points.


In his speech, Friedman takes an American centric approach.  If the US goes, so goes the rest of the world.  US leads world culture, clearly demonstrated by wide adoption of the American Dream.  Population alone isn't the problem, it's the fraction of the population currently living or rising up to live American lifestyles that will destroy our planet.  These thoughts close echo Hunter and Amory Lovin's sentiments in Natural Capitalism.  Friedman goes on to say that the three factors leading to the downfall of the financial market (Bear Sterns) and our climate stability (polar bears), are the same three factors.  These factors are (a) underpricing risk,  (b) privatizing gains and (c) socializing losses.  Unfortunately, we are now the "generation of Noah," where we have to concern ourselves with saving the last two.  Loss in biodiversity at an unprecedented rate means that "doing it later" is no longer an option.

Using a photo of students in an airport parking lot in Guinea, Friedman then addresses the issue of the "energy poor." He asserts that the energy poor are most susceptible to climate change because they do not have resources to dig a new well, or invent a new cookstove that needs less fuel.  The energy poor are also keen to climb out of energy poverty.  Thus, the availability of clean, cheap energy would be the key to unlocking both climate change and social disparity.


Then, Friedman likened the clean energy age with the IT age.  He termed it ET - energy technology.  He was fast to point out that while the IT age presented users with unprecedented function, and therefore prices did not matter, the ET age is only triggered by the price signal.  And therein lies our disagreement.  First I contend that in the IT age, price DID matter.  True, new functions were presented.  But the functions solved existing communication point points, and delivered higher value at a lower price in a different way.  Secondly, I contend that while energy generation functions of ET is innovating over existing energy use infrastructure, and therefore subject to price signals, the wider set of ET innovations are not.  These include energy delivering, monitoring and consumption innovations.  In addition, innovations in energy generation and delivery have co-influencing price points.  Thus to simply state that the entire ET age is subject to by price signal triggers only, would be to think inside the box at a time when out of box thinking is most crucial.

The Presidio Difference - Business as Unusual

I'm often asked: Why Presidio?  What does an MBA in Sustainable Management mean?   I thought I'd address the question here.  In business as usual, sustainability has its own column.  A business erects a CSR department to address the "sustainability problem."  At Presidio, we see sustainability infused into every part of a business.  Remember when there were “internet” classes?  Nowadays, knowledge of the internet is simply a given.  In the same way, we believe that the word sustainability eventually becomes obsolete and becomes an essential part of everything we do.  Instead of a classic MBA program with an elective in sustainability, every class at Presidio explores the integration of sustainability principles in the subject matter.  Because business as usual is not sustainable, we believe in "Business as Un-usual."  

Presidio is at the forefront of the nascent sustainability field in the US.  There are no established laws on carbon emissions, and the experts are still debating about LCA standards and how to conduct impact assessments.  Yet, these are some very basic first steps towards a sustainable world.  Thus at Presidio, we spend time exploring and debating what sustainability means, and how it may manifest in business.  Sustainability thinking itself is not new. Indeed, our forefathers demonstrated what we now call sustainable thinking when they created the US National Park system.  Unfortunately, our use and toss culture in the last 50 years has put us in the current bind.  Recognizing that we inherit the system for better or for worse, Presidio is a gathering of passionate people bent on applying sustainability in today's business context.   

Stanford Tutorial on Carbon Capture and Sequestration

I've been a skeptic on Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS).  After today's tutorial at Stanford's GCEP, I remain skeptical, but open to the idea that at least some part of our population should continue to work on the problem even if the solutions today are prohibitively expensive to be a true solution.  Professor Sally Benson laid out a compelling case for CCS research.  Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes ocean acidification, which negatively impacts the growth rate of organisms at the bottom of our food chain.  If we do not get below 350 parts per million of CO2, then we risk runaway climate change.  Since energy demands are "up and to the right," and we need negative emissions to reach 350 ppm, we must investigate CCS.

The thought of a time-bomb of underground carbon is unsettling.  Professor Benson's contends that utilities have been storing natural gas as part of business as usual, and we can use these underground storage sites to store our CO2.  Apparently we have enough suitable storage sites to allow us to perform CCS for a hundred years.  Or up to 1000 years if we consider saline aquifers as suitable storage sites.

There are a few gaping troublesome spots though.  The only solution to underground water contamination seems to be avoiding water tables altogether.  This may be a good short term solution but the ground layers can shift.  In addition, the cost of CCS, typically at 50-100% of the electricity cost, is cost prohibitive.  At that price we can put in wind and solar infrastructure instead of investing in a new coal plant.  Since today's CCS technology can only sequester carbon from high concentration outputs such as the tailpipe of a power plant, it seems cheaper to simply retire carbon intensive powerplants and build new ones based on wind, solar and nuclear.

But the reality of negative emission need remains.  So CCS is probably sticking around.  Or perhaps a twist of CCS can address the cost barrier, such as these companies working on recycling of CO2.

Senior Year

Meeting the newbies this fall reminds me just how far I have come from my fresh faced self.  I am finally a senior at Presidio's 2-year full time MBA program.  We are getting into the application side of the curriculum, and it's fantastic.

Presidio's MBA is offered in four full time semesters.  Each semester consists of four classes, which accumulates to 16 by graduation.  One can choose to be part time, take on half the classes at a time, thus extending the program to four years.  I am currently in my third semester full time, the funny middle where the work load is just ramping up, the content is increasingly interesting, yet I feel ready to be done with grad school.  But despite my occasional exhaustion as a student, Presidio continues to engage and challenge me in unanticipated ways.

I invite you to stay tuned on the ups and downs of my MBA journey.