Although he loves his job, Steve G. knows exactly what he'd be doing if he weren't working on next-generation DLP applications: he'd be sailing. Getting the most performance out of a boat in the sailing conditions that prevail on any given day, he said, is a lot like driving performance in technology.

As technology development manager in DLP Products, Steve fosters innovation among others – and he's particularly excited about a couple of his team's current projects, which are transforming DLP technology beyond visual display and toward use as variable capacitors and MEMS switches.

Think of it as using the DLP chip's mirrors to channel signals and power instead of light. It's a radical departure from today's most common use of DLP technology in projectors, and it's demanding a series of enabling innovations.

One of Steve's most rewarding previous projects also required a great deal of innovation. Creating the early DLP Cinema meant combining three DLP chips – each handling one primary color – and then seamlessly integrating their output to produce one bright, gorgeous, full-color image.

The payoff came during a demonstration in Los Angeles around 1998, when Hollywood first experienced the impact of an all-digital image – and then started the journey to replace film.

According to Steve, producing such landmark technology often starts with asking the right questions. That means going beyond, “What do you want?" and asking questions like, “What are you trying to do?"

In the cinema project, for example, studios didn't just ask for digital cinema. Cinematographers' particular concern was maintaining the color and image quality of their original vision of a movie at every showing at every theater. That required several years of work to meet and then top the look of film, and cinematographers then became a driving force for digital cinema, not a roadblock.