Chapter 10, Problem 68DQ

Summary Introduction

Case summary:

Located in Haifa on the Mediterranean coast, Intel's Israel Development Center was established in 1974 as the company's first development center outside the United States. Israel Development Center (IDC) has employed engineers for almost 40 years. The technology behind the highly successful Centrino chips for laptops came out of this lab.

During the initial design stages of Centrino, the focus, as always, was on processor chip speed. But the reality is that fast chips consume more power and shorten battery life/ and when designing a product for use in wireless computers, that's not a good thing. An engineer at IDC came to the team leader and suggested that by giving up half the chip speed that power consumption could also be cut by half as well.

Characters in the case:

No prominent characters in the case.

Adequate information:

Another benefit of having design groups thousands of miles away from headquarters in Santa Clara, California (some 28 percent of the company's R&D employees are located in more than 20 countries outside the United States), is that these off-site locations don't suffer from bureaucratic inertia associated with constant meetings and committees.

To compare:

The team characteristics described in the case against the characteristics of effective teams as shown in Exhibit 10-6. Which team does the IDC team appear to have.