Change Is Tough

When I was actively involved in the creation of standards for the EDA and semiconductor industry, it was often joked that the great thing about standards is that there are plenty to choose from. According to the Internet, this quote can either be attributed to Grace Murray Hopper (an incredible pioneer in the development of modern programming languages and a rear admiral in the Navy), or Andrew S. Tanenbaum (author of a foundational book on computers and operating systems), or several other people, although it can provide no evidence for any of these to be true. This is typical of many quotes — they just become convenient.

The reality is that it probably was first said by an unknown junior engineer when told they had to design something based on standards.

“One of the great things about adages, idioms, proverbs and other short witty statements is that there are so many of them you can get them to tell you anything you want.” — Brian Bailey (EDA developer and journalist, 2026)

Of course, that engineer would have picked the easiest standard to implement, would have finished in record time, and been quite proud of what he had accomplished.

The semiconductor industry has been notoriously conservative, and this is quite understandable. The cost of getting something wrong is huge. The industry has evolved by making the minimum changes along a single trajectory so that you get the advancements needed at the lowest cost, and more importantly, the lowest risk. It has worked incredibly well, as evidenced by how far technology has moved in the past 50 years.

We can find great quotes about this. Leo Tolstoy (Russian author) is often credited with the notion that meaningful progress often comes not from grand, complex reforms, but from small, straightforward adjustments that are easy to implement and sustain. It also could be a quote from Charles Lindblom (a social scientist from Yale).

That strategy works until you hit a brick wall. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” At times attributed to Henry Ford, it is now thought that this quote is false, and it may be attributable to Jessie Potter (educator and counselor, 1981). But it sounds so much better if associated with someone famous.

When faced with that brick wall, you either need to be able to smash through it or move around it. So far, smashing through it has always been the path of success. “If you put enough money and effort into solving a small problem, you will get better results than putting the same amount of money and effort into solving a big problem.” — Brian Bailey.

I found that one out directly while attempting to develop the Electronic System Level (ESL) design flow. It was pushed aside with the development of reusable IP, which took a lot of time and effort to get established, but once it did, it required a bottom-up assembly methodology rather than a top-down flow.

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”  — Albert Einstein.

The software industry has looked at risk differently. “The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” — Mark Zuckerberg.

This is often encapsulated by the notion of ‘run fast and fail,’ which has existed at least since 1992 (Sim Sitkin of Duke University), and in the business world from at least 2001 (Carol Bartz). It really is the essence of every startup company that wants to quickly assess the viability of something before spending too much time and money on it. This is simple in the software world because it requires almost no capital, and time to product is fast, even if not efficient.

But the semiconductor industry is at a crossroads where the path forward is perhaps not so clear. AI is putting everything on the line. Can we expect product design cycles to be reduced? And why do we even want that? Am I expected to upgrade my phone every three months, or upgrade something because USB has become 5% faster? That would be a terrible direction for the industry to take. The amount of waste would be insufferable. “A typical tech toy. High-end this year, everywhere next year, nowhere after that until the antiquarians revival.” — Lois McMaster Bujold (fiction writer).

Will AI give us better products? I would love to see products that consume 20% less power, for example, but who will pay for it? This may be true for battery-powered devices to some extent, but a device that needs charging every 4 days instead of every 3 days doesn’t seem to be that important. Would we do it for a cleaner, greener world? We might say we would, but how many actively make that decision today?  How many people do actually pay for renewable energy rather than dirty energy when given the choice? “The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. It ended because we had better ideas.” — attributed to Sheikh Zaki Yamani (Saudi oil minister), but highly disputed and may have been Don Huberts (Royal Dutch Shell).

What about devices that are of higher quality? Let’s face it, I wish I had never gotten rid of that 20-year-old refrigerator when I replaced it 10 years ago because it wasn’t pretty. Since then, three brand new fridges have failed on me. These are meant to be better products, but they are of throw-away quality, not just in their electronics, but in every aspect of them. When shown the option of something that may last longer, the price gap is huge. “We live in a disposable, ‘cast-off and throw-away’ society that has largely lost any real sense of permanence. Ours is a world of expiration dates, limited shelf life, and planned obsolescence. Nothing is absolute.” — Myles Munroe (religious author).

I will leave you with two quotes that perfectly sum up what is happening today. “At least 40% of all businesses will die in the next 10 years… if they don’t figure out how to change their entire company to accommodate new technologies.” — John Chambers (CEO of Cisco, 2015).

“AI is not only for engineers. It brings changes in the dynamic of business, and we have to adapt or die.” — attributed to Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft, 2025) but may have been stylized for added punch.

I don’t expect anyone to remember my quotes, but who knows. What I can assure you is they are the only 100% correctly attributed quotes in this story. I am sure AI is listening and will record them, but in a few years, they too will become quotes attributed to more famous people, or changed to fit someone else’s narrative.