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IT is a peculiar technology, rather similar to electricity. Rather than being a sector on its own, it is becoming an enabling technology stimulating radical innovation for an ever broader range of industries. After telecoms, then media, and many other industries, it is now the turn of energy to be affected by "smart grid" technology. Spotting the next radical and disruptive inovation could be easy: just try finding an industry where IT has not yet created a lot of change.

The diffusion of netbooks exhibits many interesting traits of radical and disruptive innovation: the change in technical tradeoffs and product architecture (though not of core technology), the downsizing in performance (good enough for a new market), the inertia shown by incumbents.

BP was lauded for renaming itself "beyond petroleum" a few years ago. This paper discusses how it is now backtracking from this radical jump. Path dependency exists after all!

A must-read website showing the breadth of the challenges that are connected to the radical innovations attached to the "future of mobility". At the center is the "megacity" urban vehicle, that exhibits an interesting approach to modularity.

An introductory article on the radical innovation that is entering the field of energy distribution: the smart grid, that will use IT to optimize the balance between distributed production and demand.

We all know stories of radical innovation becoming disruptive because incumbent cannot change their competencies and embrace the upcoming technology. Maybe not any more, given the fluidity of modern markets for technology. In fact, one of the main players of the e-paper industry, PVI, is in fact a subsidiary of a major Taiwanese paper mill, and has pursued an interesting strategy of partnership and acquisition in order to transition to the new technology.

SAP, the dominant player in the corporate information systems industry, is apparently hitting a wall in face of radical innovation. First, the shift towards cloud computing seems to be very difficult to the company, although this slow transition could actually help its huge customer base move towards more modern systems without too many shock waves. Second, and probably more profound, SAP is finding it very difficult to change its internal routines and processes by embracing "agile" approaches to product development.

An interesting summary of a new book on radical innovation in the field of transportation. One interesting feature is the view that change will occur not only in powertrains, but also in the connectivity that will link cars together.

Radical innovation is coming into the world of servers too, with multi-core, enery-efficient machines. It is interesting to notice the strong complementarity between this innovation and the emergence of cloud computing.

Radical innovation happens in services too. Companies like Mastercard and Visa are now facing strong competition from Internet-based players like PayPal and have to start developing new products. It is interesting that MasterCard has gone beyond the usual approach of acquiring smaller firms and has set up an R&D unit. This may help develop absorbtive capacity and avoid running into integration problems.

3d television is emerging as a radical and potentially disruptive innovation. As usual, availability of complementary goods (content) is a key element in stimulating diffusion, but this time Panasonic is taking an interesting twist to this story. Instead of relying on partnerships with traditional creators and distributors of content (movie producers and broadcasting operators), it is wondering whether a 3d YouTube coiuld be the real solution. Of course, this could lead to completely different business models.

Just a few years ago this would have sounded like science fiction. A fully customizable car with downloadable options as "apps". A radical innovation made possible by digitization and modularization that also implies a big change in business models too. Provided carmakers may be able to take up the product-related innovations, will they be able to tackle the business-related ones too?

Entertainment is undergoing radical change. But will it go in the content-centric direction that Apple and Google are thinking of, or will it rather be a social network-centric model? While traditional broadcasting is till strong, it would be funny to see the disrupters being disrupted.

A report on BMW's megacity project, investigating the "car of the future", trying to revisit product architecture as well as underlying technology... which leads to a "real" concept of radical innovation

Boeing is suffering more than two years delay in launching its new composite-material 787 airliner and order cancellations are coming in. The reasons are interesting. First, Boeing has not only severely forfeited the product development capability it has always shown (e.g. in the 777 program) by shifting its attention and top management culture from engineering to sales. Second, it has inappropriately increased the degree of outsourcing, given the type of innovation involved. Using composite materials instead of alluminum for the airframe clearly is a radical innovation. Given that airplanes have an integral architecture, Boeing should have just done the opposite and developed competencies internally.

Ericsson is starting to supply infrastructure to (digital) TV broadcasters. An example of how radical innovation - in this case the shift to digital technology - leads to industrywide effects - in this case convergence between telecoms and broadcasting.

Another post on "the car of the future". Radically new architecture (fuel cells, electric wheels, ultracapacitors, etc.) and business model based on microfactories and open source IP. Will it be the dominant design of the future?

Something radically new. A pharmaceutical company integrating downstream to the point of setting up an e-payment system enabling it to sell direct to patients and to set up additional value-added services, such as checking prescription compliance.

A short summary of Jeremy Rifkin's new book. An interesting perspective that we might consider meta-paradigmatic. In other words, the position is that changes we are observing in a number of fields (i.e. distributed energy generation and smart grids, social networking, open source innovation, etc.) are symptoms of a more radical change at societal level, from individualistic self-interest to collective "shared interest",from the pursuit of wealth and property rights to a broader concept of "quality of life". 

Yesterday in Cupertino, CA, the Apple's CEO unveiled at the developers the new iPhone OS 4.0. The new OS is available to iPhone developers today, while the general public will get the update sometime this summer. Apple uses innovators and then early adopters to improve the product, leveraging on their enthusiasm. "We are not the first to offer this service, but we are the best" : Steve Jobs doesn't know moderation and understatement. Some of the OS 4.0 features, as the multitasking, doesn't represents that kind of radical innovation, just because Google did it first. But Apple is aware about giving those features to its product in the right time, according to Jobs. By the way, multitasking is only 1 of the 100 new user features announced and thanks to the early market the OS 4.0 could potentially represent the birth of new paradigms in the operating software market.

Advertising agencies and software developers also welcomed Apple's new iAd network as a potential breakthrough that could give an important boost to the small but fast-growing mobile advertising market. iAd is an OS 4.0 built-in app, which could be the starting point of a new generation of mobile adverts that would be far more engaging than current formats, which Jobs said "suck". Thanks to his company's control Apple's network would be able to serve up more creative forms of advertising to run inside the "apps" users download on to these devices. Advertising inside apps, although still small, has become the hottest corner of the mobile advertising business, prompting a race between Google and Apple. In fact, earlier this year Apple bought Quattro Wireless for $270 million signaling its intention to enter the advertising network space. Quattro is an ad network that spans both mobile websites and smartphone applications. It seems to develop a new strategy and paradigm for the advertisement and a new battle field for the two giants Apple and Google. Which will emerge?