Innovation and Silicon Valley still aren’t dead

Well the nattering nabobs of negativity are back. This time it is Michael S. Malone, a pretty sharp guy that has two articles about the future. One article bemoans the loss of innovation in modern times. The other is yet another obituary on Silicon Valley. Well, sorry Mike, like Mark Twain’s death, the death of Silicon Valley is greatly exaggerated.

The article on the death of Silicon Valley is really strange. The deck states: “Things Are Quiet in the High-Tech World These Days With Relatively Little Competition”. But then he goes on to mention all kinds of competition with Google and Microsoft and Yahoo and others. It is as if he started writing the story, realized the premise was absurd, then wrote facts diametrically opposed to his thesis, and never bothered to change the title and deck.

The article on the lack of innovation lately is equally distressing. He says that the best time for innovation was in the decade from 1965 to 1975 and then gives example of the oscilloscope and vacuum tube, both of which were invented decades before. He quotes former Apple PR maven Regis McKenna, which is like asking Grandpa in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 what he thinks about meat packing innovation. Sorry, Regis is fabulously wealthy and he does not have to try or even get involved with innovation. Then Malone mentions talking to Federico Faggin, the guy that designed the Z-80. Too bad Faggin did not mention his latest start-up Foveon. It just tanked, so I guess Frederico did not want to bring it up. But innovation and start-ups are about failure. You don’t have to enjoy failure but you embrace it and keep trying.

I just had lunch with Robert Ford, a pal that worked at palmtop computer maker oqo that recently shut its doors. Robert said the bad economy had killed them and it was a shame because the latest model was really something. It used the Intel Atom and was faster than a netbook and still would fit in your hand. But Robert is not sitting around writing articles about the death of Silicon Valley. He is working on a biomedical instrument that will triple the speed of current technology. My buddy Joe Betts-Lacroix, one of the founders of oqo, is just starting his next venture, involving kid’s education.

So I am still having my morning coffee, but let me just ponder what some other pals are doing here is Silicon Valley. One is working at a solar panel startup that has found a completely novel way to make panels that does not depend on wet chemistry or crystalline silicon. They have just started their high-volume run. Another pal is working for Finesse, who uses optical measurements to improve yields in the pharmaceutical industry. My buddy John is working at Aerielle, a company that is leveraging their i2i product into new markets. My protégé Francis is doing electro encephalographs, not for medicine, but for relaxation therapy and game control. My friend Ken is at a pacemaker startup. My road-dog buddy Patrick just left a disposable hearing aid company and is now working on heads-up helmet display at Rockwell. Wayne Yamaguichi is still doing his LED flashlights, and that supports him better that the good job he had at Agilent. Todd Murchison is at ScanR, a start up that takes cell-phone images you send it, does OCR on them, and then posts them to a place you can access as well let you copy and FAXs them. Edison Fong just went to a company that recognizes gestures to control computers and machinery (Minority Report was prescient). John James is designing inertial navigation systems for very-light jets. Marc Tognaccini is over at Intuitive Surgical doing robots to allow doctors to save lives. Ricardo is developing touch-screens. Roger is over at GTronix, doing analog computing with floating-gate multipliers.

And those are just my pals. There are dozens and dozens of innovative companies that I see every week as part of my job. Zilker just got sucked into Intersil, so you can bet their digital power chips were doing good. In fact Intersil has leveraged their dielectrically-isolated process to make a new process that is perfect for precision analog. Powervation is doing cycle-by-cycle compensation of power supplies with their digital power chip. HVVi, Chil, CamSemi, Black Sand, and many others, and those are the just the new companies. Fairchild is developing compact florescent drivers and motor controls. International Rectifier is also doing innovative things in motion control. OK, those aren’t technically Silicon Valley companies. How about Linear Tech? They developed micro-modules for power supplies and RF signal paths. They are coming out with a neat new factory automation part in a couple of weeks, and that just builds on the new hybrid and EV car battery stack monitor and the voltage regulator that Bob Dobkin won an innovation award with.

Even the big companies are innovating like crazy. My buddies at Cisco tell me that they have to achieve performance and cost and that takes some real innovation. My pals at HP and Agilent tell me about the amazing things they are doing. Heck, Malone himself mentioned Google and Yahoo and maybe we should remind him of Marvell and Broadcom and the dozens of others. My libertarian fellow traveler TJ Rogers over at Cypress has kicked butt with his Sunpower solar panels as well as his PSoC programmable systems on a chip that do everything from touch sensing to UARTs. Lattice just came out with their programmable analog parts. I am getting more agitated as the coffee kicks in. I can’t think of a Silicon Valley company that is not innovating. National is doing a big push with its SolarMagic module, Affymetrix is doing gene sequencing on a chip. There is SiTimes doing MEMS oscillators and a FAE pal is working on a new sensor technology that will be able to identify bacteria such as eColi and anthrax.

I really respect Mike Malone, he has always been a good technology reporter. I think this time maybe has crawled a little too far out of the trenches or maybe ABC News just gave him and assignment to slag Silicon Valley and he held his nose and did the deed. But don’t worry folks, Silicon Valley and innovation in general is doing just fine. I just called PR whiz John Hamburger over at Linear Tech (to see if I can mention that new chip) and he told me that Tesla motors is moving down the peninsula to Palo Alto and that they canvassed the whole country and decided this was the place to be.

OK, I was going to stop ranting and foaming at the mouth, but then I looked over Malone’s articles again as I linked to them. He says things like:

“What software innovation we’re seeing today is largely in the form of applications … and one would be hard-pressed to name, say, an iPhone app that will leave its mark on history the way the vacuum tube or oscilloscope did.:”

Well software is about applications. And there is even plenty of work being done on operating systems. Apple went UNIX, and Linux gets better every day. Microsoft is not sitting still, their new OS is supposed to be pretty good. And why focus on iPhone apps when there are so many other really significant things that have happened in the last decade? Solidworks, TurboCAD and dozens of other CAD packages shook up the world. I can use Sony Vegas to do real-time non-linear editing of HD video. There has been so much software innovation it just boggles the mind and don’t forget to look at embedded software innovations. And software leads to IP and IP gets you ARM and all the other advances.

Sorry Mike, innovation and Silicon Valley have never been better. I am already hearing rumors of huge chip orders this fall and you can bet when we come out of this downturn house prices will go back up and that traffic well get worse than ever. I won’t have it any other way and neither would all the innovators than make the electronics and software industries their home. John Hamburger told me that Silicon Valley is as much as state of mind as a it is a physical place, and he is right.