"In fact, the rule book of how electronics design is done, that has served designers well over the past 40 years, is now increasingly inadequate in the face of globalization.

"These old rules increasingly struggle to cope with the new programmable devices, wireless technologies and increasing processing power. The risk to designers is that the old way of doing electronics design will deny them the new opportunities afforded by the convergence of these new technologies.

"The old rules require a divide-and-conquer approach: divide the process into smaller chunks, and conquer the complexity. The problem is that this approach, of reducing the intent and broader view of the design to a set of smaller, granulated problems, kills innovation at the higher level.