Verdant Electronics founder and president Joe Fjelstad has more than 40 years of international experience in electronic interconnection and packaging technology in a variety of capacities from chemist to process engineer and from international consultant to CEO. A well-known author and magazine columnist writing on the subject of electronic interconnection technologies, he has more than 180 US patents and another 100-plus international ones to his name. Prior to founding Verdant, Joe co-founded SiliconPipe, a leader in the development of high speed interconnection technologies. He was also formerly with chip-scale package developer Tessera, where he was appointed to the first corporate fellowship for his innovations. Joe speaks with Mike Buetow about the Occam Prize, a new award for design innovation.