Avner believes everyone has an opportunity to be an innovator. Innovators emerge when people are given the right environment and encouragement to step out of the box to try new things.

Encouraging innovation is a big part of what Avner does today. Recently, for example, he led a TI team developing new ways for people to interact with mobile devices and tablets using natural user interfaces. While touch-screen technology is the most common mode today, sophisticated advancements using hand-waving, gesture recognition and camera functionality to visually detect objects are emerging in products and software frameworks.

Avner is also driving TI's efforts to take OMAP technology, which was originally created for smartphones and tablets, into a much wider range of areas, including automotive infotainment, advanced driver-assistance systems, robotics, video conferencing and industrial end equipment.

It's been very rewarding, he added, to see how the team has taken technology developed for one market and made it better or suitable for other markets. The team is achieving this by asking tough questions, challenging the status quo, revisiting the value proposition frequently and understanding the competition.

Every issue and challenge is an opportunity for innovation, he says. For the semiconductor industry, he thinks the biggest problems demanding solutions are cost-effective silicon scaling on the one hand and dissipating excess heat on the other. Near-term innovation for him, though, will continue to be focused on improving the user experience and how we interface with machines.