Hybrid and heterogeneous integration are becoming strategic levers for the next generation of photonic technologies. For decades, Moore’s Law defined progress in electronics, and photonics quietly sustained it by enabling chips to become smaller, faster, and cheaper. However, that curve is now flattening. The current era of “More than Moore” is about integrating diverse electronic and photonic components into coherent systems that deliver higher performance, lower power, and new functionality at scale.
Thinking about this shift from optimizing single devices to building complex integrated systems, I see the bottleneck not only in physics but also in how we organize work and develop talent. Hybrid and heterogeneous integration transform photonic products into tightly coupled systems in which multiple technologies and data streams interact. No single discipline can manage that complexity effectively. Of course, physicists will remain the vital core, but they need to be complemented by experts in electronics, software, data, systems engineering, and product management who can bridge the gap between diverse technologies and real‑world use cases.
Let me take a step back and share a personal experience that shaped my view. One of our team members had a PhD in entomology and was an expert on insects, not optics. On paper, he did not fit the “typical” profile for a photonics group, yet he became a highly valuable contributor. He attended conferences, filtered information through a different mental model, and came back with application ideas that the core photonics team had overlooked. This experience serves as a good reminder that if everyone in the room shares the same training and assumptions, you get very efficient execution on a narrow path, but you may miss opportunities beyond that path.
If you look back at the great inflection points in technology, the same pattern shows up. Think of Bell Labs under Mervin Kelly, major advances such as the transistor and information theory came from deliberately mixed teams of physicists, chemists, metallurgists, engineers, theoreticians, and experimentalists collaborating on shared system problems rather than isolated tasks. Integrated photonics now need a similar model of combining deep expertise with structured collaboration across disciplines.
Building these teams requires making deliberate choices. In our own work, this means staying close to universities and research institutes while looking beyond titles. It means asking: Does this person see connections? Are they curious? Will they speak up? We give our teams opportunity and space to deepen their craft and to learn about AI, data science, systems engineering, and project management to collaborate without walls. Conferences, trade fairs, training programs such as our internal “AI Academy”, and events like our “Innovation Days” with experts from industry and academia are not just soft extras; they are part of the operating system that keeps teams aligned with the latest technologies.
To me, hybrid and heterogeneous integration are not only engineering challenges; they are also coordination and mindset challenges. I see human integration as a strategic priority, because great solutions often emerge when the right people focus together on a shared problem.
