FROM EDN EUROPE: Celebrating innovation

Even in difficult economic times, some companies excel by creating innovative products. Despite the much-publicised troubles of the industry, we hear from all sides that the pace of product design and development is not letting up, and some of the companies that are suffering most in the financial markets are continuing to seek out and hire good engineers. History teaches us that an upturn will come, and, when it does, the winners will be those who are ready with a new generation of products. Is your company innovating its way to success? Is it introducing an innovative product this year? Do you have a truly innovative design engineer or design team that you want to tell the world about? Then click here to read all about our annual Innovation of the Year competition. The cutoff date for submissions is Nov 12, 2001, so don't delay.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Innovation Awards, EDN began this programme more than a decade ago to acknowledge and honour the truly significant innovations for each year. Over that time, the programme has become a major annual feature of EDN's North American edition, although European entrants have participated from time to time. It's time for that to change! We are operating in a global design arena, and European companies are innovating as energetically as any others are.

As well as recognizing innovative products, EDN's Innovation Awards honour the most outstanding innovator—or team of innovators—by presenting a $10,000 scholarship to the college or university of the winner's choice. We solicit submissions from across the electronics industry, and our technical editors select the most significant product entrants as finalists in 13 categories; the Innovator category makes 14. EDN will feature the finalists in its Jan 24, 2002, issue, at which time we will ask EDN worldwide subscribers and EDN Access users to vote for the winners online. After the votes are in, we'll tabulate them but keep the winners secret until the awards ceremony in March 2002. EDN will feature the winners of the Innovation and Innovator categories in the online and print versions of its March 21, 2002, issue.

The 13 categories include a variety of semiconductor products, instruments, design tools, and software, and they represent as inclusive a picture of the electronics industry as possible. In fact, last year, due to popular demand, we expanded the category count from nine to 13. We believe that by adding four new categories, we are providing additional bona fide entrants with a chance to win. The new categories are communication functions, multimedia functions, peripherals, and software.

Considering the breakneck pace of our industry's product and technology development, EDN believes it's increasingly important to pause and take time to recognise the truly outstanding innovations in our industry. By awarding a scholarship to the Innovator of the Year's university or college of choice, EDN is giving back a little something to the industry to which we all owe so much. With your assistance, I would like this year's entry list to more accurately reflect the international nature of the industry, with many more participants from European companies and from European divisions of multinationals. Click here to see last year's Innovation winners. And contact me at graham.prophet@cahnerseurope.com to receive an information and entry pack or more details of the programme. I look forward to hearing from you.

Author Information

Contact me at graham.prophet@cahnerseurope.com.