Today I Learned a New Word
Today I learned a new word. Sycophant.
This new word made me reflect on how open software defined (Capital Equipment) platforms are adopted into the marketplace. Thirty-Years ago, it was not unusual in Semiconductor Capital Equipment sales to witness sycophant sales campaigns. Fortunately, today, Customers, Partners, and Suppliers expected reciprocity from most-trusted advisors within the Semiconductor Test Supply Chain.
It has been interesting to follow this shift between 2010 and today.
Initially when our software defined (Capital Equipment) platform was introduced to our (our battle call to NI most-trusted advisors) Semiconductor ATE Customers & Partners … we embarked together on a Journey from Fan => Follower => Friend.
It is not an easy feat to disrupt the status quo.
Especially in pragmatic risk-adverse world of Semiconductor ATE Production Test.
Fortunately we had lots of Fans in Lab Characterization (using LabVIEW and PXI) advocating that NPI could be greatly improved (Lab => Fab) by improved leverage of common hardware software platform best practices. We also had lots of Fans in Semiconductor Production Test quietly using LabVIEW and PXI to deploy high-performance low-cost Semiconductor Test Cells.
The “Big Question” on everyone’s mind was how Industry Followers would react. How would Semiconductor Test Engineers and Product Engineers who had spent their entire careers on Legacy ATE choose to react? Would they inspire to learn new skills to properly leverage modern graphical software, COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) technology, and Open Platforms.
It has been great to witness (over 7 years) a surge in adoption for NI Semiconductor Test System (STS).
Personally, I believe this is because the Semiconductor Test Supply Chain is full of many Friends (Customers, Partners, and Co-Workers) who choose to not merely Follow (new technology trends), or consider themselves Fans (of new technology trends), but instead trust and reciprocate (as Friends) as NI Advisors. Friends share requirements in open dialog to close adoption gaps. Friends celebrate new approaches that radically reduce semiconductor cost-of-test. And friends together accelerate semiconductor NPI (Lab Characterization => Production Test).
Today I first-heard the word “Sycophant” in church. Google Search (Sychophant “Technology Adoption”) yields many interesting reads. Fortunately, for STS, not so much. Thank You – NI Fans, Followers & Friends!