The semiconductor industry is witnessing mobility surfacing as the critical technological trend; as people prefer to stay connected, and there exist several mobile devices such as tablets or smart phones facilitating this predominant desire. The succeeding year is estimated to witness about 90 percent of these devices adopting cloud technologies. With development of smart technology, that can make decisions instead of merely addressing basic functional requirements like speed and capacity, large amounts of data is being stored, managed, processed, and transferred which requires increased bandwidth, advanced memory management, and smart data processing algorithms. In addition, emergence of cloud storage calls for advanced data security systems to protect data integrity. The more recent 3D scaling, implanted to meet application space requirements, applies to memory as well. These technological trends and requirements are driving the necessity for enhanced memory systems and significant increase in memory demand. It is an exciting time to be in the memory industry amidst active transformation of memory systems from mere commodity to valuable complex systems.

Micron Technology, for more than three decades has been redefining innovation - designing and building some of the world's most sophisticated memory and semiconductor technologies in sync with current requirements. As one of the leading memory technology development and manufacturing company, Micron is focused in meeting these new memory system requirements. We continue to drive technology scaling, both 2D and 3D scaling at silicon and packaging level, to increase memory cell performance, cost, and quality. At the same time to meet these emerging requirements, advancements in memory systems including firmware, software, and controllers is also being pursued.
In spite of these technological advancements, the industry is still short of faster innovations in mobile applications that can address the demands of enterprises. Enterprises face significant challenges in dealing with diverse devices and systems, managing IP, enabling enterprise applications that can seamlessly integrate with backend IT, and providing experience that is on par with customer level applications. Most of the mobile applications and device ranges stay directed towards individual customers or small businesses, and lack proper alignment and standards in terms of fast mobile application development that meet enterprise needs. This is due to less-effective collaboration between enterprises and developers which comes as an obstacle while adopting innovative mobile applications.

"As I put on my semiconductor memory manufacturing hat, I see an unique challenge emerging" says Naga Chandrasekaran. Memory technology development and the manufacturing industry have consolidated into three or four major players. Semiconductor equipment manufacturing is also consolidating into a handful of big players. In order for technology innovation to continue in the semiconductor industry, a strong working partnership needs to be formed between equipment and materials providers with the semiconductor manufacturers without compromising on intellectual property. This is a key to the success of both partners. "If I have to pick one technology challenge in the semiconductor industry and more specifically to memory industry, it is improving the inline characterization of complex materials and structures" continued Dr. Chandrasekaran. With the shift in the industry toward 3D scaling and advanced materials-based manufacturing, we are seeing an emerging technology development area where characterization and ability to measure the required metrics during manufacturing are significant limiters today.

While there are several unique technology challenges facing the memory industry, a global manufacturing and customer footprint also presents unique challenges and opportunities.

Facilitating across-the-board team management

Establishing a balance in an organization's day-to-day operational activities with long term strategic activities comes as the biggest challenge for the senior leadership. At the same time, there should be good understanding of people and organizational pulse to maintain focus and faultless execution of organization's tasks by understanding customer's needs. In this regularly changing fast-paced global market, it is a constant challenge to understand and predict customer's needs and drive these requirements towards product development roadmap. Business leaders need to gain a better understanding of changing customer landscape, evolving new customer need in a global setting, evolving quality requirements. Micron, during the last decade has established a strong global presence, which is a huge strength of Micron and we value this diversity in our workforce. To extract the value from such a diverse workforce, a global outlook on team management and local implementation work style has to be in place. In short, irrespective of the location, every team member should be able to establish a connection between their work and organization's objectives.

Innovation and talent management often go hand-in-hand; therefore, organizations and leaders need to focus on hiring the brightest, retaining them by keeping them engaged and helping their professional growth. Throughout the process, their innovative spirit has to be retained.

Continued innovation helps maintain an edge

Innovation practices, centered on few people is not sustainable, instead the transition should be to an innovative organization from conventional thought process. "I define an innovative organization as one that values innovation as its core behavior, which then identifies distributed ideas across the organization and brings them to fruition. When right behaviors are at the core of an organization, processes not only help but actively facilitate innovation to happen. At our R&D, we try to bring these two aspects to the right balance", says Naga Chandrasekaran, VP, Process Research & Development at Micron.

The diverse workforce at Micron- from different geographies, backgrounds, ethnicities, knowledge base, and experiences- has been extremely supportive in driving innovation with different yet sensible perspectives. We facilitate debates and encourage a questioning environment and support our senior leaders and engineers to take risks and not be afraid of failures. On the business processes front, several processes have been implemented to encourage and facilitate innovation by connecting innovative strategies to critical business needs.

The innovative strategies adopted should be responsive to inventive ideas irrespective of their origin, outcome, and impact, rather than highlighting bigger or successful ideas, a prevalent trend among many people.

Micron Technologies, in their tenure have developed outstanding services for computing, networking, and server applications, to mobile, embedded, consumer, automotive, and industrial designs and looks forward to a great future. (As told to Anitha)