Is there more to good fortune than just fate?

We often hear the names of up-and-coming companies, each with interesting (or hyped) capabilities or fresh market approaches. Ironically, those moments can prompt us to contemplate companies long gone and the factors that helped others survive. What enables success in our highly competitive, ever-changing, global industry? Is it vision, opportunity or luck?

Early in my career, I was with large, publicly traded “Fortune” listed corporations. For those just starting out, those are heady places to be. Corporate headquarters were full of bright people whose jobs were to find ways for all the many diverse plants, operations, divisions and “strategic business units” to be successful contributors to the corporate good. Top on their list was making sure all people in all facilities knew and understood that pithy document known as the corporate “vision statement.” Those succinct declarations attempt to do two things: first, to channel staff efforts toward company success, and second, to convince staff that senior management in “the ivory tower” was focused on the future.

As we come to the end of our run of articles excerpted from the 2017 iNEMI Roadmap, it gives us time to reflect on the nature of roadmaps in general and their value to the industry.

I’ve always been a fan of them. My history with the document dates to the earliest interconnect roadmap, developed by IPC in 1994. As a cub reporter, I covered the series of meetings that led to the first PWB roadmap. The energy was palpable. We really felt like we were saving the industry.

Subject experts acted as chairs for the respective working groups, each tasked with developing a chapter. Each chapter reflected the biases of those who developed it. That first tome ran a scant 172 pages and reviewed nine technology areas, primarily bare boards, assembly, packaging, and components. The development process hasn’t changed dramatically since then, even as the sheer volume of what is described has exploded.

And the path forward is all around us.

At industry events and when visiting with like-aged colleagues, I often hear reminders of “the good old days.” Such comments typically arise while discussing the difficulty finding, recruiting and retaining bright young talent. On one level I agree, especially when long-gone fun times and great friends come to mind. On a more focused, pragmatic level, however, I am thinking, “Things are exactly like they were in those days, and maybe it’s time that changed.”

Many of those old friends were, in their day, just as immature, impatient, all-knowing and audacious as the generation coming of age now. What’s changed is our perspective.

What’s in a name?

We probably ask that question about 10,000 times over the course of our lives. It often starts with our own. How many times did you complain – loudly or under your breath – about your own name? “Mine’s too common/uncommon/plain/weird,” etc. A name is just a name, but for many juveniles, it’s their introduction to branding.

I attended a parochial school for eight years. At one time, no fewer than five of the 20 or so boys in my class were named Michael. And “it wasn’t me, it was the other Mike” could only fool the nuns for so long. At one point, probably around third grade, in the faintest of hopes to distinguish myself, I remember telling classmates and teachers to call me by my middle name: John.

That didn’t take either. And so went my early attempts to raise my “personal brand.”