TITEL

Towards an I-tech systems industry

SPREKER

Rob Fastenau, vicepresident marketing en technologie, Fei

ABSTRACT

New products are the main driver of revenue growth. Picking the right product at the right time for the right application is the critical step, as is marvelously shown by Steve Jobs of Apple. Some product picking examples in Fei, such as Phenom and Titan, and other high-tech systems companies will be discussed.

The intuitive product picking process needs support by strategic marketing data, such as the analysis of the growth of market segments and technology landscapes. The business success of the new product depends on critical strengths in technology, industrial design and marketing, where the Dutch high tech ecosystem provides differentiating strengths, as will be illustrated with Phenom and Titan. We will take a closer look at our ecosystem in these three areas and with one eye on Apple look for the transition of our high-tech systems industry towards an I-tech systems industry.

Our main challenge in technology is in systems architecture. High-tech products are smart combinations of hardware, software and the internet, providing high fit for use and after sales support. The speed of product renewal, product diversity and technology breadth creates major challenges for our systems architects, who are challenged already by hardware and software obsolescence and the rate of change in (software) technology. This important challenge is unfortunately largely overlooked in the Dutch public ICT world and provides a great opportunity to further strengthen our ecosystem.

Some challenges in industrial design will be discussed. Design focus moves from the box to the (remote) interaction of the user and the system. In our trend to go ‘beyond boxes’ we need designs for connecting products to each other, to the supplier and/or a remote user and still have our product designs support the brand.

As Fei has learned from Phenom and as emerging OEMs will experience, marketing and creating a global distribution system is a key challenge for starting companies or for existing companies to enter a new market. The current high tech ecosystem does not provide much support in this area. We will discuss some options for the ecosystem to improve in this area in a precompetitive way.

Another common belief in our ecosystem is the so-called linear approach to product and business development: basic research-advanced technology development-engineering-marketing-selling. This puts the challenging and time consuming marketing task at the end of the chain and generally does not provide the product picker the right speed anyway. The reverse order is not great either, so we need sequential phases to be done in parallel. That’s where open innovation and an ecosystem with high competencies in all three key areas are needed. Getting this right is the next phase in creating an even better I-tech systems industry.

BIO

Rob Fastenau obtained his PhD degree in physics in 1982 from Delft University of Technology. He tried to become an entrepreneurial scientist and business-focussed research group leader in Philips Research in Eindhoven and Sunnyvale with projects in CRT design, microsystems and thin film technology for new devices. In 1995 he started as head of R&D of Philips Electron Optics, which was acquired by Fei in 1997. He continued in Fei as a member of the management leading R&D, followed by general management of the Electron Optics division in 2000. Since 2006, as executive VP marketing and technology, he supports the change of a technology push semiconductor-oriented product company to a market pull multimarket instrument company - a business supporting scientists. Fastenau will exit Fei at the end of this year.

TAAL

Nederlands