The company is also pursuing the medical device market through its Songbird Medical technology venture, which is trying to develop the world's first disposable hearing aid. The key barrier to wider use of hearing aids is cost and battery life. Today's custom-made hearing aids are designed to last five years and therefore cost retirees on fixed incomes a small fortune. Songbird hopes to introduce a disposable device later this year designed to last 30 days before being replaced. Moreover, none of Sarnoff's new ventures would be possible if it hadn't maintained its own flexible fab, company researchers emphasized.
Somebody has to put their ego on the line and make it happen.
One reason RCA-Sarnoff researchers could move a risky technology like CMOS from the engineer's bench to the production line was that they all worked under the same roof, often just down the hall. Now, of course, design engineers attempt to recreate that type of collaboration virtually through concurrent design projects. The difference is one can't look a colleague in the eye to accurately gauge his response to a new approach. Those days, Carnes said, may be gone forever as the nature of technology research increasingly shifts from centralized efforts to more scattershot product development. Carnes, who maintains close ties with his alma mater, Pennsylvania State University, said that's as it should be.