FINDING THE ADDED DIMENSION
“Innovation begins with the perception of a previously unnoticed additional dimension in a given frame of reference. It results from grasping a property of the status quo that’s been missed, and then following through on this changed awareness to implement either a solution to a problem or an enhancement of value,” explains Dr. Simin Cai, CEO of Go!Foton. “The change may sometimes be a small one, but great innovations are capable of creating orders-of magnitude improvements. In either case, though, innovation emerges from seeing the same things everyone else sees, but imagining them from a newly found and completely different perspective that animates a crucial insight.”
He picks up a pencil. “If you look at it, most people will see a long, thin yellow object, a geometric line. But if there is a hole on the table and you want to drop the pencil through the hole, this ‘line’ perspective of the pencil would prevent you from doing so. If on the other hand you stare at the pencil from the point head on, it’s just a dot, a geometric point. This ‘point’ perspective will enable you easily to drop the pencil into the hole.”
“Einstein’s Special Relativity adds the time dimension to three-dimensional space and explains why wave-based light can propagate in a vacuum, an enigma that could not be understood in Newtonian mechanics. And his theory of General Relativity takes a further step by asserting that this four-dimensional space-time is not flat but actually curved, thereby reconciling Special Relativity with the Newtonian Theory of Gravity.”
Go!Foton’s own innovations are driven by this intuition of an added dimension. The PEACOC® High Density Fiber Management Platform is the company’s award-winning solution for the growing epidemic of connection clutter faced by central offices and data centers as accelerating demand for broadband access and bandwidth necessitates continuing densification of optical fiber in the network. Representing a revolutionary advance for both inside and outside plant physical architecture, PEACOC (Platform with Enhanced Access for Compact Optical Connectors) enables telecom operators to navigate the densification-induced chaos of optical
connectivity by directly addressing a multiple challenge that has vexed the industry for years: namely, how to enable human fingers, often stout and sometimes clumsy, to manipulate flawlessly the tightly-packed connections between delicate cables of optical fiber (itself sometimes as thin as a human hair) without interrupting traffic and without using special tools in the field, while minimizing the footprint of equipment filled racks and cabinets through which the cabling must be routed. Go!Foton answered these challenges by adding another dimension to traditional fiber patch panels, allowing the connection ports to spread out like the feathers of a peacock so that even the largest hands can switch connections quickly and efficiently.
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Another example of Go!Foton’s instinct for practical innovation is provided by the company’s SELFOC lenses. These lenses feature a gradient refractive index of the glass medium, enabling lensing power with flat surfaces instead of the curved surfaces required for lenses with a uniform refractive index. The flat geometry of the SELFOC lens confers significant advantages for end users: it not only facilitates the mounting of the lens, but also permits applications requiring multiple lenses and/or optical filters to be attached together or to an optical fiber. Such applications include small form-factor optical communications devices and insertable medical probes.
Dr. Cai even applies his model to economics. “For healthy and sustainable growth, innovation itself is the added dimension. Go!Foton is one of many companies in New Jersey following proudly in the footsteps of Edison, Einstein, and other science and technology pioneers from the Garden State. With its rolling hills, extensive shoreline, and dense forests, New Jersey has always been a wonderfully three dimensional place. Our mission at Go!Foton is to Bring Light To Life and add a dimension by contributing as much as we can to the vitality of this great state through innovations in optics and photonics.”
Dr. Simin Cai has served as CEO of Go!Foton since 2009, when he founded the company after leading a management buyout of NSG Group’s telecommunications business. Prior to joining NSG, Dr. Cai worked for several start-up optics and optical instrumentation companies before participating in the founding of Avanex, now part of Lumentum. Dr. Cai received a BS degree in Applied Physics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China. He has a Master of Engineering degree in Engineering Optics and a Ph.D. degree in Physics, both from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.
