What's Good About Innovation at Cadence? – It’s Alive and Well and Increasing!

I'm switching gears this week from my regular SPB technical product posts to focus on an annual Cadence event - Cadence Innovation Day.

Today Cadence will honor the 2008 recipients of the Excellence in Innovation Awards. This year, 35 winners will be celebrated amongst their peers from all geographies and organizations - 13 of this year's recipients are from locations outside San Jose.

Adam Sherer is one of this year's recipients and a fellow blogger - so send him
congratulations on his Blog.

Cadence has been a consistent leader in innovation since its foundation 21 years ago. One measure of innovation is the number of patents issued. With more than 800 U.S. patents issued (an additional 150 international), Cadence holds far more patents than any other EDA company in the world.

"The Excellence in Innovation Awards program recognizes our best inventors and most significant inventions," said Interim Chief Technology Officer Charlie Huang, "These annual awards are a reminder of just how innovative Cadence is. We want to recognize our company's great spirit and tradition of innovation with a day of celebration and appreciation."

"The Excellence in Innovation Awards program was established to encourage, promote, and recognize the wealth of innovative, internally developed technology," said Mike Williams, Vice President and Associate General Counsel, and program manager.

Our customers rely on Cadence for innovation leadership. "Leadership in innovation is fundamental for customers to choose Cadence as their trusted design partner," said Tom Cooley, Sr. Vice President, Worldwide Field Operations. "Innovation is and must always be part of the Cadence brand."

Bringing innovation a bit closer to my own organization - the Global Field & Customer Support (GFCS) team - we've initiated a web based idea submission and management approval system (called iInnovate) for GFCS employees late last year. This Wiki based site contains all the details for everyone to review and measure - submissions, ideas approved and implemented/referred, awards presented, process info, etc. It's a very easy and comprehensive innovation enabler!

The goal that Dan Rourke, VP Customer Support established was to cultivate a sustainable innovation engine among all GFCS employees to empower us to submit ideas and increase the value-add we provide to both our external and internal customers. A team within GFCS was formed to look at innovation best-practices among companies and deliver a web-based approach to streamline all aspects of delivering innovation across the GFCS team. There are several categories available on the web site to help focus innovators in key areas - among them being Customer, Process, and Technology. Everyone in GFCS can view ideas submitted, check on the status of the ideas, and see how the iInnovate review team and GFCS management has dispositioned each submission. There are inspirational quotes updated periodically, and the GFCS management team updates the site with new directions they'd like to see employees focus for a period of time (usually 3-6 months). This allows everyone to think within the current strategic focus and provide new ideas to support these efforts. More than 40 new ideas have been submitted through the iInnovate site since we began with more than 15 ideas implemented or referred to other teams for implementation.

Some of the GFCS's ideas that have been implemented are:

• Enhanced videos/screen casts on Cadence Online Support
• Cadence Online Support product release schedule updated
• Added an “All Products” choice in the Cadence Online Support search selection

It's great to work for Cadence where innovation is recognized at the corporate level and employees are energized within my own group to continue to explore new innovative methods to improve how we work with our customers.

As always, I welcome your suggestions and discussion on this topic.

Jerry "GenPart" Grzenia