Innovation—Where There’s a Will There’s a Way

Over my 28 year career in tech, I have learned that it takes much more than just an engineering degree to change the world. The people who succeed and advance in my field are innovators, who always find creative ways to solve problems and achieve their goals. But innovation and creativity doesn’t always have to be about re-inventing the wheel. Sometimes, it’s about leveraging existing tools, technology and techniques to reach the finish line or create a new product, like our CrossLink™ FPGA. With that understanding in mind, along with the passion for problem solving, I have set out on a journey to make a difference for my team.

Being part of the R&D organization, I recognize the importance of ongoing technical training for our team members’ development and success, and was looking for ways to facilitate a worldwide technical training. Additionally, after the acquisition of Silicon Image, our new R&D team had two groups of people with different technical skills and product expertise. This furthered the need for a training platform to bridge the knowledge gaps and strengthen our new team. With clearly defined goals, scope and schedule, I opted for a light weight process using available technology that could help us get the program off the ground as quickly as possible.

We implemented quarterly planning cycles to capture the global technical training plans. These plans were then shared with our global team via our internal site to bring awareness about upcoming activities. We utilized a video conferencing program to record the presentations and turned the recorded sessions into online courses as part of the corporate training platform available to our global team on demand 24/7.

The deployment of the new process earlier this year has helped unite us as a team by sharing knowledge with each other and has yielded positive feedback from team members worldwide. The technical training content has grown to over 100 hours of training in less than three months covering Lattice’s ASSPs, FPGAs, Wireless products, solutions and tools.

This simple and effective way of bringing continuous learning to any organization within a company will have significant impact on the team members’ development and strengthens the company as a whole. And all it took was an idea and willingness to find creative ways to achieve a goal. Now, all you have to do is to take a step towards making a difference. Good Luck!