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.

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.

Smartphones are about to overcome traditional "feature phones" in the US. When inovation happens so fast, with new product generations emerging at intervals that are roughly twice the average replacement lifetime of a product, it becomes difficult to understand whether we are operating within a broad s-curve (mobile phones) or within a succession of s-curves. Could be an interesting topic for research.

The iPad has finally been launched. It will be interesting to see whether this new type of product will carve itself a niche along to existing products (smartphones on the one side, PCs on the other) or whether it will become a substitute to them. Of course, this doesn't only depend on its own merits, but on features like connectivity, availability of applications and content and - not to be neglected - performance of the supply chain.

3D visualization is probably going to become a disruptive innovation over the next few years. This is true for movies and TV sets, but also for gaming on both TV-based and hanheld devices. As usual, the question is whether the disruption will be at the level of device makers or for manufacturers of the component (i.e. screen).

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.

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". 

Cloud computing is quickly becoming the dominant design for IT systems and could do the same to games consoles. This is quite striking, given that the trajectory followed by Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft has up to now been the opposite, with huge computing power distributed in users' living rooms, instead of concentrating it in providers' data centers

A few examples on the eternal dilemma between being leaders and followers when a new paradigm arises. Not a deep analysis, but it does appear that immature technology and liquidity problems are often dangerous for leaders.

TV sets are exhibiting a technological revolution after another. Flat screens (LCD and plasma) have overcome CRTs, and now 3D TVs seem likely to define a new paradigm over the next few years. Of course, this heavily depends on the availability of 3D content and on consumers' desire to experience it beyond movie theaters. 

2010 seems to be a key year in the paradigm shift from traditional to future (electric?) vehicles. Even if the sales figures are still likely to be low for the next years, most carmakers are committing substantial investment in the new "dominant design". However, the competitive landscape will probably be shaped by new entrants and by startups, that still have to emerge above the horizon

Talking about changing paradigms on the Internet, it is becoming clear that in the world of social networking the idea of privacy is changing (if not disappearing at all). One of the most extreme cases is Blippy, a seemingly successful Twitter-like service that captures all of your expenses and shows them to all on the web.

HTC is probably becoming an important player, since Apple has decided to sue the company for patent infringement. The real question is whether Apple is really concerned about unfair competition by HTC as a smartphone maker, or whether it is trying to cripple the supplier of hardware to the "real" competitors at the level of operating systems (i.e. Microsoft and Google).

Talking about s-curves, we now have an s-curve that is not going up. The shfit from DVDs to online movies seemed to be a no-brainer because of evident advantages in the overall economics and convenience. However, the industry is getting tangled up in the issue of multiple and competing DRM standards and devices, and customers are sitting on the sidelines.

The story of Zai, makers of luxury ski equipment, is interesting and typical of firms who plan to work on a differentiation strategy and carve themselves a niche with little competition, at the same time solving technical tradeoffs in a different way than done by "traditional" competitors

Interesting to see that the choice of protecting innovations by relying on secrecy and speed isn't only for small firms, but also for a giant as Google. Of course, this lack of transparency is attracting complaints by other firms and antitrust authorities.

Renault-Nissan probably is the most outspoken carmaker supporting the shift to electric vehicles. It is interesting to notice its understanding of the role of complementary goods (i.e. recharging stations) in supporting diffusion, and of the value of high vertical integration during the fluid phase of innovation (e.g. batteries).

An interesting comment on the future of reading and publishing, and on the dominant design of the devices that will allow this revolution

 A story from an often neglected industry: shipbuilding. A new technological trajectory seemed to emerge during the last decade, with the launch of large and extremely fast (30 knots) container ships. Unfortunately, the economic crisis and a new vision onsustainability has changed the tradeoffs between vessel speed and operating cost. Technology is definitely shaped by demand.

Good by to privacy. Google recently launched Buzz, a social network platform trying to compete with Facebook. Interestingly, it made the choice to include millions of Gmail users and to automatically create links between people who had corresponded via e-mail (and without asking for consent). The immediate lesson is (i) privacy probably is a value of the past, since complaints were relatively weak, and (ii) in the current paradigm the real power is no longer in software or operating systems, but in owning data on people and relationships. Google as the next Microsoft?