Innovation Management

Yet another move by Google... becoming one of the first providers of NGN (Next Generation Networks) services, allowing ultra-fast connectivity and a new generation of services to emerge. Understanding the business logic behind such moves is of course difficult, but we are accustomed to the fact that Google quite often gets it right!

Apple seems to be inarrestable. A dominant position in digital music, a potentially winning entry in the e-book industry (thanks to the iPad) and it is now looking for ways to disrupt television. No surprise that Apple's market capitalization is now bigger than Google's.

Another article on e-book readers and related business models. Will the dominant player be a distributor such as Amazon or Apple? If so, what will be best distribution agreement be? Or will neutral devices emerge, allowing a greater share to publishers? And, most of all, what will the role of a publisher be, if printing and distribution become a non-issue due to electronic delivery?

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.

Interesting take on open vs. closed operating systems. Apple's iPhone is a strange mixture that - though technically open - is however subject to close control over which applications are allowed to run on it. This raises some issues over openness of markets, well beyond the issues that people had with the monopolistic temptations often observed with Microsoft

There is another paradigm shift that is currently coming out. Incandescent lamps are getting to the end of their lifecycle, and we are observing competition between low-power fluorescents and LED lights. If progress in LED lights will be fast enough, it is likely that they will become the dominant technology. If not, they might remain confined to niche applications.

When dealing with e-books, the reader is not everything, of course, since you need content too. The problem is that with digital goods there is a huge risk of commoditization and of consumers feeling entitled to "free" content ("marginal cost is nil, so why shouldn't I get it for free"?). This explains the reason publishers are pushing to retain control over pricing decisions instead of leaving it to distributors.

An interesting portrait of the founder and CEO of SAS and of the corporate culture he created at his company, completely geared towards well-being, work-life balance. .. and somewhat less at financial wealth. As it appears, it seems to be a good way to extract commitment and productivity from highly-skilled knowledge workers.

Apple's iPad has opened up yet another element of uncertainty on the future "dominant" IT device. In addition, given that a major application of the iPad is likely to be book-reading, uncertainty is there concerning file and DRM formats for e-book. What will the prevailing strategy be? Proprietary formats, or open formats with proprietary DRM systems, or completely open formats? The problem of course is portability of content, which may or may not be valued by consumers. However, given that I currently can lend a book to a friend, what will happen when a Kindle-using friend will want to borrow my iPad-based novel?

One of the interesting elements in Apple's new product line - the iPad tablets - is the fact that the processor is not sourced from suppliers. Developing a microprocessor in-house is not a trivial thing at all, but the integrated nature of the product evidently suggested Apple to make this step in order to optimize performance and - possibly - to keep a stronger grip over a key component, thus avoiding commoditization.

Nokia has decided to place free mapping and navigation services on its smartphones. A reaction to Google's decision to do the same on Android-powered devices and a big blow to makers of dedicated devices such as Tomtom and Garmin. But this also implies a different business model that has yet to be defined. In the meanwhile, it certainly is good news for customers.

Tablet PCs have been recently been proposed as the big innovation in the PC arena. But the problem - as usual - is going beyond technology and into usability. Will people really accept something that is larger and more expensive than a handheld, smaller than a notebook, with a touchscreen but no keyboard? Will the devices be attractive per se, or will it be necessary to integrate them into a wider ecosystem? Of course, past experience tells us this last question suggests different potential winners (the PC camp in the former case, Apple in the latter).

Small high-tech firms are universally considered to be key for stimulating innovation and economic growth. But what if these companies do not grow, due to limited entrepreneurial ambition, premature acquisitions, limited access to market? This is a key problem for policy-makers, but also for the stakeholders of these firms.

The emerging BRICs are partially changing the "demand" side of innovation. Instead of simply producing (or engineering) products targeted to the needs of developed countries, Indian companies are now rolling out a number of products targeted to the needs of the country. Journalists have come up with the term "Indovation". Scholars and managers might start questioning whether this might change the way technological trajectories emerge.

India is the only place in the world where you can find huge amounts of engineering graduate recruits. Companies from all over the world are flocking there not only for offshoring menial engineering work, but also for innovation and R&D centers working on important projects "end-to-end". This is not only because labor is available and relatively cheap, but also because this is the way to come up with the products needed by developing countries... which are the only ones where sales growth is likely to occur over the next years

Palm, once clear market leader in the "palmtop" segment clearly has lost ground in the shift to smartphones. Now it is attempting a revival, based on its web-oriented operating system. Will this be enough to fend off competing solutions from Apple, Microsoft, Nokia/Symbian and Google/Android? The answer depends on whether there something specific in Palm's business model, acting as differentiator and potentially as a source of competitive advantage.

Motorola is a bit of a maverick in the field of smartphones. Originally a supporter of Symbian, it then switched sides for Microsoft and is now firmly grounded in the Google Android camp. The problem is that it is not clear whether dominance in the industry will depend on the device, the operating system, or in the wider ecosystem (e.g. apps and services) that rotates around it, or in the integration between the three (provided that integration is an issue at all).

Another take on e-book readers. We definitely are in the fluid phase of innovation, with a flurry of competing alternatives coming out, sales growing, price slowly decreasing (but still far from the level acceptable for mass diffusion)... but absolutely no agreement on dominant design. Will it be black-and-white, or must we wait for color? Will it be dedicated readers or tablet PCs?

What will paradigms for TV sets after HDTV is a bit of a question mark. On the one side, it might be 3D technology. On the other, it might be convergence with the Internet. TV-set makers are playing big bets on both possibilities, and convergence is of course dependent on the existence of content and software that can make it interesting in the eyes of customers. As is currently happening for smartphones, content need not be generated internally, but through app-store mechanisms. Will this strategy pay off?