Real-time math can spur innovation

What a difference a year makes. You can apply that statement to just about any scenario in the automation environment, but it really applies when you go to user group meetings from year to year.
“It’s been an incredible year on the financial scene,” said Dr. James Truchard, chief executive and co-founder of National Instruments during today's keynote address at the company’s annual NIWeek 09 Worldwide Graphical System Design Conference in Austin, Texas.
“We have seen a lot of headlines on some of the reasons the crisis took place virtually everyday in the newspapers. Now, the books are even coming out. There seems to be a consensus forming that the models used by the Wall Street traders were too simplistic; they didn’t take into account the real world.”
One of the books came out and said the mathematical theories were part of the problem.
“I believe we have created a new way to use mathematics. Real world mathematics.”
Talked about in the last decade we have not had enough innovation in the United States. Truchard said innovation is what will get the U.S. back on track.
Talking about the NI users, Truchard said the trend was quite different.
“You guys here have been very innovative and counter to the trend to the overall U.S. industry. You have spurred innovation that has been definitely needed.”
With NI’s new product releases, “we now have a nice platform to deploy math in the real time.”
John Graff, NI’s vice president of marketing and customer operations, agreed innovation is the key to help get out of the recession.
“The financial engineers have really screwed this up,” Graff said. “It is now time for the real engineers to step it up.”
-- Gregory Hale