Too much innovation can be just as bad as not enough, according to Duy-Loan, a TI Senior Fellow.

The development team for TI’s first high-performance 90-nm device, for instance, originally considered creating the chip from the ground up. Concerned about the complexities of innovating simultaneously within both the chip architecture and the new node against the specific market window, though, Duy-Loan (pronounced ZEE-lon) convinced the rest of the team to scale an existing chip instead.

She calls it balancing innovation and practicality, and the results spoke for themselves: The chip was delivered on time, allowed TI’s key customers in the base-station market to stay ahead of their competitors and became an important product for TI.

Duy-Loan’s responsibilities today range from overseeing the launch of key embedded processing products to advancing TI’s business in Vietnam’s emerging economy. She also follows industry trends closely, and she believes two are particularly important.

One is the astronomical expense today of developing new manufacturing nodes. She thinks this provides great incentive to extend the life of a given node by developing innovative new packaging technologies, system architectures and other design techniques.

Another concern is the pace of change brought on by intense global competition. Sometimes, she said, innovation requires time to dream, to think, to perform trial and error, and to gradually advance toward your goal. So how do you reconcile market demands for rapid action with the traditional gradual approach to innovation? She’s been wrestling with that question lately.

What she likes most about her job is that it not only provides her with the opportunity to make a difference in a variety of areas but it also includes both intellectual stimulation and a great deal of autonomy.

Outside of work she actively supports two organizations devoted to children’s education. She wants to help every child have the chance to get an education, she says, because she thinks that would go a long way toward solving the world’s problems.