Barking up the right tree!

It’s not common for something truly new to appear on the market. Often, what looks new is a variation on a theme presented as ground breaking, because that’s what makes people listen. If you look closely, the ‘new’ aspect can be found and, just because it isn’t truly ‘new’, that doesn’t mean it isn’t innovative. Ultimately, it’s semantics: what’s new to one person may be innovation to another and it – whatever ‘it’ is – will be valued subjectively. An example comes from a company which has established itself as a leading provider of obsolescent integrated circuits and which is now positioning itself as a supplier of a new breed of microcontroller. The company in question is Innovasic and it would be reasonable to deduce that it applies innovation in the field of asics. Its established business model involves beating the problem posed by obsolescence by applying its asic skills. Innovasic provides ‘drop in’ replacements for any device that is no longer available from the primary supplier – a kind of ‘new for old’ approach. Obsolescent replacement can be big business and there are other companies that offer a similar service. What sets Innovasic apart is that it has applied its design expertise and market knowledge to create a different kind of microcontroller, one which it believes addresses all the issues faced by the industrial control sector.