The matrix model – how to share technology
06 August 2009
Author : Tim Fryer
Early August in Texas and I'm enjoying a hugely successful trade event. Admittedly it is not a Productronica or an oriental Nepcon, but as a tightly focused event with a captive audience it has a few parallels.
The event is NI Week. This year, over 2500 engineers from around the globe have paid (several hundred dollars) to attend a conference, training, networking, exhibition event that clearly plays an important part in the development of this select group of engineers. In fact, attendance for this year’s event is up 5% from last year and 28% from 2007, which is no mean feat in this economic climate.
There are a number of reasons for the success of the event. The most obvious is the success of the company behind it, National Instruments, who has taken a leadership role in many aspects of test since its formation 30 years ago. And then there is LabVIEW. NI Week was once famously described as Woodstock for LabVIEW. NI and its alliance partners produce some great hardware products but it is this software that has captured the hearts as well as the minds of a generation of engineers. There were great demos at the keynotes that added a bit of glitz to the technology, but it was really when the new features of LabVIEW 2009 were being unveiled that the audience started becoming agitated with excitement; spontaneous applause meeting many of the more notable advances.
But I think the success of NI Week is not about the event itself – more the expansion of the community that it accommodates. And this is a community. It is built on partnerships in the truest sense of the word. Usually partnerships involve a customer and a supplier. Dress it up how you like, there is always one side that is pulling the strings and we all know which one that is.
There is a different ethos around the NI community. It is a recognition that we all have a very important place to play in the electronics industry, so there is less of a food chain and more of a buffet that sustains everyone. I spoke to many of the independent exhibitors (there were about 80 of them) in the trade show part of the event and they all saw their relationship with NI, and often each other, as mutually beneficial rather than competitive. In that room there was the solution to virtually every engineering problem, but no one company, not even NI, could provide that solution on its own.
Another example of this mutual dependency was in the specialist ‘summits’. A Mil/Aero summit run across two days featured presentations almost entirely from customers who presented applications to share with the rest of the community. This would have been a great opportunity for NI to present its own solutions, but the willingness of the customers to come forward with real-life solutions added to the value and integrity of the event.
My overall impression was that this was not the typical supply chain type environment that we are all used to, but more of a matrix that becomes stronger and larger the more that people contribute to it. It is an interesting model and one that has broader merit. Is it beneficial for anybody in the long term if a supplier of placement machines, for example, tries to inflate prices because it knows a customer is committed to a certain platform? More relevant in this economic climate, is there any long-term value in the customer squeezing every ounce of margin out of its placement machine supplier, just because he knows the supplier needs to sell every machine it can just to survive? A third option is that customer and supplier work more closely together to develop the right solutions, with transparent pricing policies and with a healthy degree of mutual commitment. And from a technology point of view it might make sense to complete a circle between designers, manufacturers and equipment and material suppliers so that everyone can develop together. It is not that easy of course – as soon as there is a market for anything someone new will come into it and provide a cheaper option, but equally it is not as idealistic as it sounds.
Maybe all it would take is one of the major EMS companies or exhibition organisers to step forward and act as the focal point.
In conclusion, concentrating on specific areas of expertise and working with partners has resulted in this matrix-type segment of the industry; not that I am sure any of the participants would describe it in that way. But it does seem to work and also appears to provide the right platform for technological development.
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