First, innovation and reliability are not mutually exclusive concepts. They often complement and strengthen each other within the telecom industry. Many innovations are specifically designed to enhance system reliability, performance, and resilience. Reliability should always be a fundamental requirement in any telecom system, regardless of whether the technology is innovative or traditional. My approach is to ensure reliability by thoroughly considering and planning for exceptional use cases and abnormal scenarios. This includes identifying potential failure modes, implementing failover mechanisms, and designing for graceful degradation. This way, even when innovating, the system remains robust and dependable under various conditions.

Reliability in engineering components is obtained through three principal pathways. The first is to build for long cycle life with large safety factors, as in industrial robots or control valves in process plants. The second is to build redundancy of pathways so failure of an element does not cause system failure (ex: bulbs in traffic lights). The third is to build systems with tight specifications and small safety factors as seen in race cars or aircraft, combined with much regular monitoring and maintenance. Now it is in some cases possible to have both reliability and innovation if adequate sensing is built into the physical system combined with prognostic health monitoring algorithms to diagnose and track incipient failure.

This is a topic worthy of more than a few bullets... It depends on the needs, goals, and objectives RBDs and fault-trees only take you so far The environment and the level of automation are significant factors. Even for human environments, always consider time and graceful degradation

To balance innovation with reliabiliy: - Set clear reliability goals and metrics from the outset, ensuring they're aligned with stakeholder expectations - Integrate rigorous testing and validation protocols into the design process, simulating real-world scenarios to identify potential failures - Foster a culture of collaboration, involving stakeholders in decision-making to ensure diverse perspectives on reliability concerns - Prioritize reliability in trade-off decisions, recognizing its impact on overall system performance and user trust - Continuously monitor and learn from system performance, refining reliability standards and testing protocols accordingly.