Occasional Musings

The answer to life universe and everything else. Ever since I read Douglas Adams HHGTG, the number 42 has become such an interesting & funny reference to bring up in all contexts. Here is an interesting article from Sciam on various ways number 42 has captured the interest of sci-fi fans.

Few tidbits from the article

“…The author’s choice of the number 42 has become a fixture of geek culture. It’s at the origin of a multitude of jokes and winks exchanged between initiates. If, for example, you ask your search engine variations of the question “What is the answer to everything?” it will most likely answer “42.” Try it in French or German. You’ll often get the same answer whether you use Google, Qwant, Wolfram Alpha (which specializes in calculating mathematical problems) or the chat bot Web app Cleverbot”

“..The number is the sum of the first three odd powers of two—that is, 2¹ + 2³ + 2⁵ = 42.”

“The number 42 is the sum of the first two nonzero integer powers of six—that is, 6¹ + 6² = 42.”

A lot more references to 42 here: [The link]

How to organize an R&D team/department? There is not one answer, depends a lot on industry, culture, type of product, ..etc. An interesting article from McKinsey on some useful principles/guidelines.

• Clearly delineate responsibilities for systems and end-to-end work
• Keep functional interfaces across work sites to minimum
• Synchronize software and hardware development
• Strike balance between old and new technologies
• To be future-read, adopt new ways of working

More of this here: [The link]

An interesting conversation with Yole ceo about current trends in product development in semiconductors (ee design in general). Few snippets below

“..Meanwhile, product development is becoming exceedingly complex, both because multiple processes must occur in parallel, and also because many new products require disparate technologies combined in new ways. So agile companies commonly form teams that bring together specialists with distinct areas of expertise, and it is sometimes a challenge to get them to speak the same language to solve engineering problems at the intersection of different disciplines. ”

” Eloy: Companies try to hire people with the competencies that they lack, and interesting discussions start between people who just don’t understand what the other is talking about. They use the same words, but their meaning differs.

Integration is essential to collaboration, and multidisciplinarity is an essential contribution. If you put one person in the optics department, the other in the electronics department, you are dead, because they will stay in their own silo and not work together. It’s important to show teams working together, solving issues together, never bowed by the challenge of integrating photonics with electronics or whatever. “

“By putting together people with different backgrounds on the same project, you give them the same goal and help them work together. Not on big projects but on small projects where they can have fast results, and move from one success to the other success. It’s more rewarding than trying to climb a mountain where everybody gets exhausted after two weeks. Being successful together instills a team spirit.”

More of this here: [The Link]

Intuitively we are aware of what makes a good idea. It is good to visualize and articulate that explicitly. Here is good representation found in a McKinsey article.

More of this from the article here: [The Link] 

Also interesting, Eight Essential Aspects of Innovation

An interesting review of work from Imre Lakatos on the idea of  how theories/science fail? A crucial aspect for science to be progressive. Also check works from Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and others.

Here is an interesting excerpt from the article …

“…  Lakatos judged a programme to be ‘progressive’ if it is both theoretically progressive – the hard core plus auxiliary hypotheses predict novel empirical facts – and experimentally progressive: at least some of these novel facts can be tested. In contrast, a programme is ‘degenerating’ if it is theoretically degenerating – it doesn’t predict any novel facts – or it is theoretically progressive but experimentally degenerating: none of the novel facts can be tested.”

“….Lakatos merged the distinction between science and non-science, and between good and bad science. If a programme predicts nothing new or its predictions can’t be tested, then it is bad science, and might be degenerating to the point of pseudoscience. Empirical tests serve to refine the auxiliary hypotheses and a programme continues to be progressive for as long as new facts are predicted and new tests are possible. A scientific revolution occurs when a dominant programme has completely degenerated and is unable to respond to accumulating anomalies – creating precisely the crisis of confidence that Kuhn anticipated – until it can be replaced by an alternative, progressive programme. But, according to Lakatos, when the time comes, a revolution is driven by logic and method, not irrational mob psychology: ‘the Kuhnian “Gestalt-switch” can be performed without removing one’s Popperian spectacles’.”

More of this here: [The Link]1