Axian executive interview series
Fall 2003

Axian pros assist in Planar's high-speed
Quantum Program
Roy Siegel, director of business development for Planar Systems Inc., is the first in a series of executive interviews we are featuring in our new e-Newsletter, The Axian View.

Beaverton-based Planar is one of the bright spots in Oregon's still rather lackluster technology sector. The company just reported strong quarterly results and is well positioned in the rapidly expanding flat-panel monitor market.

One of the ways Planar is growing is by spurring internal development of new products by creating small entrepreneurial teams inside the corporation to rapidly bring innovative solutions to market. This interview with Roy Siegel explores one of Planar's Quantum Programs.

Meet Roy Siegel
Roy went to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received a BS in computer systems engineering in 1986. Thereafter he moved to California and went to work for GE's medical systems and nuclear energy business in the San Francisco Bay Area. As part of GE's three-year Edison Engineering program Roy completed his MS in electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley in 1989.

He and his wife moved to Oregon for quality-of-life reasons, and he went to work for Tektronix in 1989. Roy was a senior engineer, a marketing project leader and a software group manager within Tek. Then he became director of software engineering for the oscilloscope business unit, which had 85 engineers. He found the work interesting and enjoyed the process of creating hardware/software systems, as well as the business issues he faced.

Some of the most fascinating work involved making digital O-scopes that display information like the older analog scopes. Roy was awarded patents in their architecture, algorithms and user interface. His work involved visualization techniques to simplify the complexity of the measurements being done.

In 2000 he left Tek to take some time off and enjoy his newborn son, and he completed an MS degree in computational finance at the Oregon Graduate Institute. Roy joined Planar in 2002.

He picks up the story from there.

Planar's Quantum Program
"In 2002 I joined Planar's incubator environment, called the "Quantum Programs."These programs use a formalized approach to aggressively pursue new sources of revenue. I was hired to conceive and lead new programs that involve software and systems content and are also out-of-the-box.

"I came in and looked at what was here, where the world was going and what the markets were needing, and tried to assimilate that into a couple product ideas. The projects we started involve novel display-based systems with software content in highly visible application environments. That's when I first started leveraging Axian's services, because the projects had a software and systems emphasis. This was relatively new for Planar, and I needed senior talent so we could hit the ground running on our requirements, architecture and design with the latest technology.

"One project addresses retail applications with a unique approach. The other project is a security-related device I can't discuss quite yet."

Roy's teams leverage software professionals from Axian.
"Outsourcing made sense to us for a couple reasons. Axian helps us with software engineering, architecture, requirements, design and Windows and embedded expertise. They provided us with very senior people so we were able to put together a really first-class team. Axian saves us from having to fully invest in fixed costs and manpower until we get past certain milestones. This gives us a much more graceful and pragmatic approach to gradually building our team.

"The other way Axian makes sense is the way they can work with us by providing full-time or part-time engineers and can even help with training. I've taken classes from Scott Davis. Their education capability helps give us confidence that as we transition to more full-time people Axian can provide training and mentoring support that our people might need.

"Our Quantum teams focused on quickly developing display-based systems that solve customer problems. We will leverage the improving brand recognition of the Planar name to earn a position in the marketplace."

Building-block approach to concurrent development
"We're leveraging powerful building blocks for constructing sophisticated, cost-effective systems. These systems will use powerful processors, touch screens and peripherals for storage and communication that are all available at low and falling prices. There will be a continued commoditization of hardware from offshore suppliers, and the maturity of available hardware and software building blocks allows for faster assembly and productization of new ideas and/or technology.

"What we're doing is moving up the food chain with the integration of these commodity building blocks with value-added software and hardware pieces, much of which can be outsourced.

"We try to work with as many real customers and real deals as we can early in the process so we're not depending on blind faith that there will be customers later. We talked to a lot of customers, not only to get validation that it's a good idea but also to make sure that we've built a sound solution and a good business model.

"Ten or 15 years ago, putting together a new system meant much more internal custom development and higher complexity, which translated into big teams and long development cycles. And that meant higher costs and bigger risks than we take today with Planar's Quantum Program approach."

The importance of know-how
"You've got to be fast and smart about how you put things together. You can have and maintain an advantage by putting together better solutions to customer problems. My job is to use speed and know-how in solving customer problems. Today you can go to the customer with an idea for a solution and say ‘OK, I'll take a little Windows embedded, and a little Wi-Fi and a single-board computer with a touch screen' and all of a sudden you've bundled an integrated solution. So we can quickly put together solutions that meet the needs of customers.

"We're also leveraging partnership and collaboration so we can use our partners' strength in distribution or key technologies so we can leverage their connections and know-how. That way we can bring marketing, engineering and system design together early in a very concurrent, collaborative manner to get something out there quickly. We then validate and verify our work and quickly adapt improvements along the way. It's a boot-strapping model.

"What makes it work is having a novel approach that does a much better job than what's out there today. You're motivated to get into the market because you believe that you're solving this real problem that no one is addressing, or addressing effectively. I have to sell the ideas and get support internally here at Planar as well as working with our partner companies like Axian in delivering successful new products to the market. It's quite a ride."