Innovation Management

The Tata Nano was thought to be a groundbreaking product, able to revolutionize carmaking both in the developing and in the developed world. Pity that nothing of the sort happened. Customer choice still remains difficult to foresee and - in this case - the product simply was not attractive to any customer segment

Modularity in cars is increasing. It used to be a relatively simple approach for making assembly easier and exploiting economies of scope. Now it is becoming a transformational technical approach that will change product architecture and business models

A short reflection on open innovation and its impact in the business world

Photovoltaic technology is an interesting case study. Americans firms have pushed their way in thin-film technology, but are finding it difficult to scale up manufacturing. Meanwhile, the Chinese have invested heavily in reducing manufacturing cost of traditional technology. Though it is still early to understand which is the winning bet, it shows that it is not easy to make such far reaching choices

Now that all phone makers have left Symbian, Nokia is doing the only sensible thing, i.e. taking full control of the operating system, creating a stronger integration between hardware and software, possibly improving customer experience and quickening development

The user interface for games consoles has dramatically changed since the Nintendo Wii. Now, in order to be in the game, console makers had to provide motion detection technology. Looking at Microsoft, will this R&D race pay off, maybe in terms of spillovers to other business lines, or only lead to defocusing?

The last pasenger has abandoned ship. Sony Ericsson has now moved to Android, officially making Symbian a Nokia-only thing, though still the one with the largest market share. It is understandable that phone makers didn't want to hand themselves to Microsoft, but is it a wise bet to do the same with Google?

Google's innovation strategy started out with mostly internal developments, then moved to related acquisitions - mostly to speed up innovation - and is now moving towards loosely related investment. However, this effort is not viewed as diversification but as getting a foothold in fields that now seem unrelated, but might not be in the future, giving the ubiquity of information technology

Innovation sometimes creates new and "hybrid" industries. In this case it is "nutraceuticals", a blend between food and pharma. Drivers are customer demand for a more healthy life, food companies looking for higher added-value products, and pharma companies finding it ever more difficult to find new drugs rewarding the huge R&D effort required

Microsoft is trying to claw up market share in the smartphone industry. Really not an easy task, also because the traditional strategies used by the company are not so applicable in the current "cloud-based" paradigm, and would also bring close scrutiny from public authorities

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

An article highlighting issues that carmakers will have to tackle in the future, with electric vehicles, self-driving technology, and a new concept of mobility. The challenge is not only related to technology but also to business models.

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.

Actual usage of electric cars is still a big unknown. Will "range anxiety" be an issue? Where and when will people recharge their vehicles? These uncertainties are critical, given the huge investment that will go in defining future dominant design and infrastructure.

It seems clear that cars are going to go electric ... but when and exactly based on which dominant design? Apart from this there is a huge issue related to time. While in high-tech change is very fast and there is a clear strategic case for being fast, this might not be true in "hard" manufacturing, where diffusion is likely to be slow and painful for early movers, and subject so a significant "sailing ship effect". 

Nokia's once established dominance in smartphones is a distant memory, due to iPhones and Android based devices. It is true that being an early mover is key to setting standards, but it is not enough if dominance doesn't remain when one moves along the s-curve from early adopters to the early majority.

Same as in the previous post... the changing nature of the TV set as product, user experience and... business model

Quite thought provoking. TV sets are being deeply changed by enabling technologies such as 3D and Internet access. However, what is the product, the viewing experience and the business model that will become dominant, based on these enablers?

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?

A short comment on the key dilemma that Nokia must quickly solve: stick to its guns with Symbian or jumping on a better and more popular OS? Pity that the first one requires lots of investment to improve execution, while the latter would mean giving up margins.