Contemplating Disruption

It’s New Year’s Eve. Another year passed, whooshing by like the Shinkansen, Japan’s venerable bullet train. The New Year is hours away, a fresh start, still crisp with potential. We celebrate the coming of the New Year, and the passing of the old. It’s a time to be with family and friends, to enjoy traditions.

There is something comforting to me about our family traditions, and reassuring: parades, our traditional New Year’s Day dinner, football games. Some people take down decorations, but we never do. It’s our tradition to leave them up for a while and let the afterglow of the season fade slowly.

Now, I’m taking time to stop and reflect about the past year, and maybe the past in general. I’m also thinking about the coming year. In the past I made New Year’s resolutions about things I wanted to stop or start doing. I don’t do that anymore—it just didn’t work for me.

This New Year’s Eve, I’m thinking about things differently. I’m grateful for many good things in my life, and for the many opportunities I’ve had in 2013. And, I’m contemplating disruption. Discontinuity, fracture, irreversible change. For the better. Change for change’s sake? No. Rather, a different way of doing things, of thinking. One thing may be enough.

What do I mean by disruptive? I mean changing the way we think about things. For example, CRTs (cathode ray tubes) are done—it’s all FPD (flat panel display) now—a disruption enabled by large-scale thin-film technology, and committed community. It’s game changing. Now we all expect high-quality flat panel displays on our smart phones. Perhaps we can all disrupt our worlds in some way.At AE, we’re introducing a new way to think about power for dual magnetron sputtering (DMS), urging users to take back control of power parameters and get access to more information from the process. Putting more capability in the user’s hands, enabling them to disrupt the world with their new products.

Have a wonderful New Year's celebration!

Dave