Topic: Innovation

“What you want to do will define how you get off the ground. When you make and sell physical goods, you begin to trade […]

Prototyping with rendering software used to require specialized design and coding skills. But new developments in 3D programming have taken the technical work out of rendering and made the tool more accessible for […]

Young, bright and fresh out of engineering school, Hardi Maybaum was sure of two things—the engineering process was too slow and complicated, and the only way around it is with more collaboration in the engineering […]

It sometimes feels like software companies get all the attention from early investors. It might feel this way because software companies, unlike hardware, are usually easier and cheaper to get off the ground. […] read more

Andres Morey and Samuel Wurzel are changing the way you shop for electronic parts.

Andres and Sam, who studied physics together at Brown, then pursued PhDs in astroparticle physics and plasma physics respectively, […]

If you’re part of an organization that’s scaling to production, we’ve got you covered with our scalable cloud PLM solution.

But what if you’re just starting out? You need to capture and document parts, but without […]

What if you could download and print a physical component directly to your printer? The Pirate Bay (TPB) is confident that this will soon be a reality.

With 80% of people residing within 50 miles of a coast, it’s not surprising that efforts to better understand and protect our oceans get a lot of attention. Our customer, Liquid Robotics, has been all over the news […]

2011 was a year full of smart technologies. We met Siri, snuggled up with the Kindle Fire, worked up a sweat with the Fitbit Ultra and even discussed the possibility of a robotic takeover. It was a busy year, yet […]

Whether a 6 a.m. jog around your neighborhood sounds like an ideal start to your day or the furthest thing from it, most techies can agree that incorporating the year’s most innovative and well-engineered gadgets into […]

Building a HeathKit was no great feat of engineering—it came with a fixed list of parts and the schematic—but it helped you understand how electronics work by letting you assemble your own electronic products. And […]

I love a good opportunity to brag about Arena customers, and so I’d like to thank Lytro for giving me something to talk about.

IRX Innovations, a Dutch-based developer of highly specialized e-paper and e-ink technology, knows first-hand that timing is everything when launching a product in a new industry. As a branch of Royal Philips […]

Mobius is a small company, with fewer than 20 employees, yet it’s been able to scale by strategically using its resources. Since its launch in 2005, Mobius has survived a recession, a period of rapid growth and a […]

It’s easy to make the assumption that a successful business requires robust infrastructure, surplus funds and a large amount of manpower. While that may be true in some cases, size and money are becoming less […]

When it comes to product management, standard processes and theories work 90% of the time, but the last 10% is certainly an art.

In the last fifteen years, manufacturing in the United States has undergone a fundamental shift. As millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost to outsourcing and automation, output has steadily continued to […]

Like most of us here at Arena, I am a huge fan of “the next big thing.” If you are developing new technology for the purpose of innovation, nine times out of ten I’d like to be your friend.

It’s been a satisfying couple of months for the Arena product team. We went live with the Summer ’11 release of our core application. We launched several new applications including Arena PartSaver, Arena PDXViewer and […]

At one of the most recent companies I worked for, a start-up in Silicon Valley, this quote was written on the wall to remind us that we were just one good idea away from fame and fortune—and that we needed to come up […]

One of the best parts of working at Arena is supporting the people who bring some of the world’s most innovative products to market.

Historically, manufacturers haven’t had a lot of online networking opportunities. That’s why I was so excited to discover Manufacturing Chat (mfgchat)—a bi-weekly Twitter chat about all things manufacturing. Hosted by […]

Do you ever feel like “innovation” is the perpetual buzzword of the week? For many, innovation has become synonymous with progress, and in all job roles employees are increasingly focused on the next big thing. […]

December can only mean one thing: holiday gift shopping. In the effort of constructing my own wish-list, I’ve spent the past few days browsing through a variety of unofficial guides denoting this year’s “must-have” […]

*Lightbulb* You’ve just conceived a brilliant new invention. Now what? A recent post in the MFG.com Mojo blog offers suggestions to help you navigate the early stages of “bringing your creation to life.” MFG.com’s “4 […]

A recent post in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) blogs tells the story of a product launch gone wrong: “The market failure of the Michelin run-flat PAX tire illustrates the common mistake of failing to realize that […]

For his final project in the University of Montréal’s design department, product designer Christophe Robillard asked, “If the bicycle is the standard bearer for sustainable transportation, shouldn’t the object itself […]

A robot learning to flip pancakes from Sylvain Calinon on Vimeo. Even if you put science fiction aside, it’s not hard to imagine a seemingly endless number of real-world applications for robotic technology. But have […]

Here’s another one in the category of products that *really* make a difference in the lives of users. Atomic physicist Joshua Silver has developed “Adspecs”—fluid-filled adjustable eyeglasses—and with his […]

The betacup is a recently completed competition to re-imagine a coffee cup with reduced environmental impact. As many as 58 million coffee cups are discarded every year in the United States alone, and along with most […]

Have an idea for how to clean up the massive amounts of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico? The X Prize Foundation (known for spurring technological advances through the offering of large sums of prize money) has […]

AMR Research has just released its 2010 Supply Chain Top 25 list, and for the third year in a row, Apple is in the #1 spot. The annual report’s goal is “to raise awareness of the supply chain discipline and how it […]

If you’ve never seen the SawStop table saw in action, it’s worth watching this video for the sheer engineering vision it took to pull this off…. This is magical product design that changes lives. P.S. The story of […]

According to UNICEF, in Ghana 25% of deaths in children under 5 are caused by diarrhea. In Northern Ghana, where more than half the population gets its water from wells, ponds and streams, this percentage is even […]

Earlier this year, I posted a video of the production process for the revolutionary Adidas Jabulani soccer ball to be introduced at the upcoming FIFA World Cup. Now, on the eve of the tournament, several players have […]

Joe gave some great advice in his series of posts on how to gather and apply useful product feedback. Quirky, a “social product development start-up” that builds and sells consumer products takes it a step further. […]

Two Rice University students have created a low-cost product that could allow doctors to save lives in developing countries. Sophomore Lila Kerr and freshman Lauren Theis assembled a working centrifuge out of a salad […]

If you have ever purchased a DVD, you may have noticed a sticker with a barcode and a metallic ring of some sort attached to the DVD or packaging. That sticker is an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag, and this […]

At Arena our customers make such a wide range of interesting products that it’s always fun to learn what each new one does. For years we’ve been adding a growing number of customers in the clean technology and clean […]

Chris Anderson has written a phenomenal article about the democratization of manufacturing in a recent issue of Wired magazine. I cannot recommend the article enough, if for no other reason than the chance to learn […]