Pinto's Points:
How to win in the automation business

Pinto's Points covers management topics, globalization, sales and marketing, technology trends and futures, and far-out technology visions. It closes with whimsical humor and Pinto's poetry, which I hope you'll enjoy. It's 270 pages, with 174 "points" in 6 different parts, each introduced by a "luminary".

Table of ContentsSee Table of Contents (below)

Pinto Podcast on Pinto's Points Pinto Podcast - MP3 Audio file 850 KB 3 1/2 mins.

Back-cover kudos

  • “Jim is not afraid to take on conventional thinking. Jim will quickly catch your eye and force you to think. You may not agree, but you will think.”
    – Gregory Hale, Editor, InTech magazine.
  • “Pinto’s Points help develop strong leaders in the industry. They foster thoughtprovoking conversation and allow leaders to put themselves at the forefront of industry trends.”
    – Jack Bolick, President,Honeywell Process Solutions
  • “Jim Pinto’s e-news (has) got plenty of personality; at times it’s fairly lengthy, because he has something worthwhile to say; it’s informative, clear and interesting. It’s avidly read by thousands of people.”
    – Perry S. Marshall, marketing guru, author, speaker, and consultant.
  • “Jim goes beyond the face of technology to look at the implications of technology and how they change the game. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did.”
    – Harris (Hesh) Kagan, Director of Technology for New Business Development, Invensys Process Systems
  • “When you read Jim, you have the feeling that you’re looking through a telescope’s magnifying end. With Jim, you get to use the telescope with the microscope in the right direction: you see clearer, and you see things you cannot see with the naked mind.”
    – Richard E.“Dick” Morley, known as the father of the programmable controller and a leading visionary in the field of advanced technological development.
  • “Jim Pinto is a stylist, with the uncommon knack of brevity, stimulation, and timeliness. While each topic is interesting, he has carefully selected the data to be informative and memorable. Who could ask for more?”
    – Joe Coates, world-renowned thinker, writer, and speaker on the future
  • “Like a breath of fresh air in the frenetic ‘rush-rush’ of the world of automation burst Jim Pinto. With an incisive mind and a superb gift of observation, he earned the title of Poet Laureate of Instrumentation and Automation. Everything he touched was fun.”
    – Eoin Æ Riain, of Read-out, Ireland’s instrumentation and control journal, and Instrumentation Signpost

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Table of Contents

  • About Jim Pinto
  • Preface
  • Introduction: Gregory Hale, Editor, InTech

Part 1 - Management & Leadership:
Pointing the Way through New-Age Confusion

  • Introduction: Jack Bolick, President, Honeywell Process Systems
  • Section A: New-Age Management—Agility & Creativity Wins.
    1. You Need Agility to Manage Change
    2. The Next Society—How We Must Manage It
    3. To Grow—Stop Solving Problems
    4. Pay Your Dues Daily
    5. Enterprise Decision-Making
    6. Automation Futures—Not Just Extrapolation of the Past
    7. Breaking Away from the Old Industrial Mindset
    8. Regain Your Competitive Edge—Invest in People
    9. Save Your Company—Save Your Good People
    10. Beware When You Look to RIF
    11. The Art of Leadership for Engineers
    12. More Engineers Must be Leaders
    13. Company Startups: Guru Advice for Engineers
    14. Investing in Engineering Start-Ups
    15. Attend MIT—for Free

  • Section B: Managing in the New Global Economy
    1. The New Global Job Shift
    2. Hard Truths about Globalization
    3. Drucker on Offshoring & the New Economy
    4. Offshore Advantages—More Than Just Cheap Labor
    5. Think Global—Go Local
    6. To Stay Competitive, Keep Innovation, Export Low-Value Jobs
    7. Automate, Emigrate, or Evaporate
    8. Focus on the Benefits—Outsource the Tools
    9. The Roots of American Innovation
    10. Become Proactive in the Global Environment
    11. Where Are the New Manufacturing Jobs? Growth in Unexpected Places
    12. Cannibal Economics—The Patterns of Growth & Decline
    13. What Your Grandfather Could Teach You about 21st Century Survival

Part 2 - Staying Competitive:
Points to Survive & Thrive in the New Age

  • Introduction: Perry Marshall, Perry S. Marshall Associates
  • Section A: Marketing: Act Smart, Think Unique
    1. Guidelines to Generate Growth
    2. Industrial Marketing or Real Marketing:Your Choice
    3. New Growth & New Markets for Automation
    4. Pick a Role: Product Manufacturer or Service Provider
    5. The Internet—Who’s Succeeding? Who’s Failing? And Why?
    6. Automation Systems Integrators Usually Hit a Growth Ceiling
    7. Automation Companies—The Second Tier
    8. Pinto’s Law of Market Confusion
    9. The Dichotomy of Open Standards
    10. Automation ‘Patent Trolls’ Prey on Innovators
    11. Copyrights for Industrial Automation Products
    12. The Well Curve
    13. Electronic Signatures Coming of Age
    14. Have You Read an E-Book Lately?

  • Section B - Sales Tips that Really Work
    1. Use FABs, Not FUDs
    2. The Business E-Card
    3. Never, Never Be the Lowest Bidder
    4. Don’t Cut Margins, Add Value
    5. How to Increase Industrial Automation E-Biz
    6. E-Mail Speeds Up Business
    7. Information Access Obsession: Break the Bad Habits
    8. Avoid Disintermediation—Become a New Age Infomediary
    9. Think Smart, Be First, Run Fast
    10. What You’re Really Buying and Selling Is Time
    11. Don’t Ever Discount Yourself
    12. If It Ain’t Broke, Fix It Anyway
    13. Check Your Value Equation—Regularly

Part 3: Tomorrow’s Hot Technology:
Pointing to New Growth

  • Introduction: Hesh Kagan, Business Development, Invensys
  • Section A. Nanotechnology & MEMS:
    The Very Small Is Becoming Very Big
    1. Nanotechnology: A New Revolution Is on the Horizon
    2. Nanotech Promises BIG Changes by Getting Small
    3. Nanotechnology—Today’s Promising Applications
    4. Nanotechnology Provides Energy Solutions
    5. Nanotech Manufacturing Is Just Around the Corner
    6. Nanotech and Self-Organizing Systems
    7. NEMS Now Making the Scene
    8. Fast-Expanding Markets for MEMS
    9. MEMS Accelerometers for Motion Detection
    10. MEMS—Micro-Miniature Sensors, Actuators, and Machines
    11. Sensor Networks Counter Terror Threats

  • Section B - Wireless Networks Everywhere: Playing Hide & Geek
    1. Emerging Wireless Technologies Are Changing the Way We Live
    2. Wi-Fi Goes Mainstream
    3. WiMax—The Next Big Thing for Wireless
    4. Bluetooth Is for Nearby Devices
    5. Sensors Everywhere, Computers Invisible
    6. Pervasive Wireless Sensor Networks
    7. The Wireless Car of the Future
    8. M-Commerce:The Wireless Web

  • Section C - Robots on the March: More Practical Applications Every Day
    1. As Robots Get Smarter, the Future Looks Brighter
    2. Intelligent Robots: They’re Coming! They’re Coming!
    3. Robotics Is Expanding into Significance
    4. The Great $1 Million DARPA Robot Race—No Winners Yet
    5. Robotic Parking Systems Make Sense
    6. Robot “Swarms” Can Solve Problems
    7. Robot Vacuum that Does Real Work
    8. Robot Toys & Gadgets
    9. BIO-Bugs: Robots that Learn
    10. Problem: Robots Without Ethics

Part 4: Surfing the Technology Waves:
Pace-Setting Points

  • Introduction: Dick Morley, R. Morley, Inc.
  • Section A - Tracking Technology Trends
    1. Technological Innovations Continue to Change World
    2. The Technology Laws Define Growth Rates
    3. Technology Continues to Have a Positive Impact
    4. Tracking Emerging Technologies
    5. Technology that’s Already Here
    6. Technology Forecasts—Hit or Miss
    7. PC Circa 2010—And What Beyond?
    8. Software that Breaks Away from a Computer
    9. What Will the Internet Bring?
    10. The New M2M Revolution
    11. How Do You Get Your News?
    12. The Big Cheap Revolution
    13. The Impact of Cheap Memory
    14. The Information Glut

  • Section B - High-Tech that’s Getting the ‘High Five’
    1. The Future Factory–a Reality
    2. Fully Automated Factories
    3. Directed Sound Beams
    4. For Analog, It’s Back to the Future
    5. Segway Human Transporter Makes the Rounds
    6. RFID Technology Spreading Fast
    7. When Autos Come Alive
    8. Goodbye Gas Guzzlers; Hello Hybrids
    9. Self-Organization—A New, Old Idea
    10. P2P and Distributed Computing
    11. Bandwidth Abundance
    12. Mind Streams—for Those Who Have Info, but Don’t Know Where
    13. Antiterrorism Technology
    14. Humans in Combat—High-Tech Weaponry
    15. Top 10 Innovations for the War on Terror

  • Section C - Software, Computers & the Internet—What’s Next?
    1. The Future of Personal Computing
    2. Using Unused Computer Power
    3. Tapping the Deep Web
    4. The Anatomy of Search Engines
    5. Looking for Google’s Successor
    6. Copyright Wars Rage for Music, DVDs
    7. Digital Rights Management
    8. Superior Downloads with ‘Swarming Distribution’
    9. Computers Under Constant Attack
    10. The Battle Against Spam E-mails
    11. Spam Wars Escalate—Can E-mail Be Saved?
    12. Deliberate Internet Crime on Upswing
    13. Untangling Software Code
    14. The Pervasive Internet

Part 5: Futurist Visions: Pointing to the Future

  • Introduction: Joe Coates, Futurist
  • Section A - Tomorrow’s Marvels & Perils
    1. The Future Is Closer Than It Appears
    2. The Problems of Scarcity and Abundance
    3. The End of Snail Mail
    4. The 3-D Copier
    5. The Future of Paper
    6. Super Thin Batteries
    7. Talking with Your PDA
    8. Custom Drugs Provide Tailor-Made Medication
    9. Communicating Virtual Aromas, Tastes
    10. Human Skin as Network Medium
    11. Wearable Cell Phones
    12. Disposable Cell Phones
    13. Jewelry that Keeps You Informed, Fashionable
    14. Humans Evolving Towards ‘Media-Peds’
    15. How Are You Wearing Your Electronics?
    16. Real Uses for Computerized Clothing

  • Section B - Predictions and Prognostications
    1. An Odyssey Continues: Predictions for the 21st Century
    2. A Day at the Office in 2013
    3. In a Troubled World, Think ‘Utopian’
    4. Fast-Depleting Oil Resources
    5. Energy, the Bottomless Well
    6. The Singularity Is Coming
    7. Erasing Language Barriers
    8. The Merging of Mind and Machines
    9. Measuring Spirituality and the Human Brain
    10. Fusion of Human and Machine
    11. The Genomics Revolution
    12. Quantum Computers: Revolutionary Jump In Processing Power
    13. A New Kind of Science
    14. Low Speed and Frozen Light
    15. Do We Need a Technology Moratorium?
    16. The Future Needs Us

Part 6: Fun Stuff: Points to Entertain & Amuse You

  • Introduction: Eoin Æ Riain, Instrumentation Readout, Ireland
  • Section A - Interesting Stuff
    1. Pseudoscientific Constants
    2. Google Calculator Really Adds Up
    3. Dead Horse Wisdom
    4. Wisdom According to Dilbert
    5. Try Aaron, the Computer Artist
    6. The Cyberspace Atlas
    7. Awesome Images of the Universe
    8. Take a Moment and View Earth’s Lights

  • Section B - Pinto’s Poetry
    1. The Legal Mugging of Microsoft
    2. An Ode to Angel Investors
    3. The Perfect Funding
    4. You Are Old Father Big Blue
    5. The Fieldbus Fiasco
    6. PC-WOCKY
    7. My E-mail Christmas

Afterword

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Copyright 2003 : Jim Pinto, San Diego, CA, USA