Innovation Management

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.

Large corporations such as Microsoft and Amazon are making huge investment in data centers for cloud computing all over the world. These are mostly sunk costs, which make it very likely that while capacity will overshoot, competition will drive prices down to marginal cost. A good prospect for the paradigm to become dominant... maybe less so for the companies involved (at least at first).

In the past decades, most watchmakers have decided to source core parts from suppliers. This has led to the quasi-monopoly of the component manufacturer ETA, owned by the Swatch group. Now this strategy is backfiring, with ETA creating stricter conditions to its customers, the latter complaining about unfair business practices but fundamentally unable to find alternative strategies. As one executives states, "it's not ETA that has created a monopoly, but others, by not investing".

Product liability issues are always quite tricky for companies. Even though child buggies are not really high-tech products, and safety problems should not come out unexpected, even established companies often mismanage the process.

Since decades, diffusion of operating systems depends on the avilability of the complementary asset called "applications", and allowing independent developers to work on them can help a lot. Now Samsung is realizing they are late to the game and are going to open up their OS. However, they might still have a chance because they are competing on the still uncrowded low-end segment.

Even though Second Life is no longer in the headlines, virtual worlds and networks, with virtual currencies being used when paying for virtual goods are well alive and growing. It is evident that innovation is not only about products and services, but also experience

The Skype saga is getting closer to its end. The recent lawsuit with the founders' IP company is going to be settled, with Skype getting hold of the code... and the founders receiving shares of the company. Founders definitely made a very clever set of moves when setting up their company.

E-mail is the predominant paradigm for electronic communication and cooperation, despite its obvious shortcomings. The article discusses a few alternatives that are currently emerging, but the picture of what will the future paradigm be still is very confusing

Short article commenting on the role of markets in allowing experimentation, chaos and ultimately innovation... sometimes that planning and government intervention cannot properly achieve. Nice reading.

The battle for smartphone OSs is no longer between Symbian and Windows. RIM and have become strong contenders, but now Google-sponsored Android seems to have a very high growth rate. What are its key points? Technical superiority, as is being boasted in ads? Or will it be better integration with the plethora of online services being developed by Google?

Toyota is maintaining its ambitious targets on the diffusion of hybrid cars. Some competitors are pushing the full-electric concept, guess why?

Windows 7 will enable touch-screen control of PCs, and PC makers are introducing devices with this feature. This is an interesting topic since tablet PCs, precursors to this technology, were mostly a flop a few years ago. What will happen this time? In case acceptance will be higher, will it be because of better performance of hardware and software? Or will it be because consumers are now accustomed to using touch-screens on smartphones?

An article on the way with which electronic publishing is challenging traditional paper-based books. It is interesting to notice how the outcome will depend on the way with which the market will values the ratio between fixed and variable costs of each medium - besides obvious differences in functionality.

The market is progressively embracing the cloud computing paradigm, since it perceives pros to be greater than its cons. However, we should remember that technological superiority of a paradigm on its competitors is not an absolute. As this article suggests, cloud computing makes users particularly vulnerable to data loss.

Carmakers traditionally considered on-board devices as closed, proprietary systems to be sold as options at very high margins. The wind is changing, and a new paradigm for infotainment is emerging: the car as a peripheral to personal computing devices.

The article reports on Project Better place's vision of the "car of the future", i.e. full electric cars being sold to end users with a "battery swapping" scheme. Will this be the "dominant design" of the cars we will drive 10-15 years from now?

Another twist to the eBay-Skype saga. Skype's new owners (a group of investors who recently bought a majority stake from eBay, plus eBay itself) are being sued for copyright infringement by Jotlid. Jotlid is Skype founders' IP warchest and is the real owner of the core code on which Skype runs ... under a seemingly quite restrictive licence. When IPR is central to M&A, doing due diligence definitely is not an easy affair!

What will the dominant design of next-generation cars be? Renault probably is the most daring automaker, with its decision to bypass hybrids and go straight to full-electric. The business model is changing, and they are partnering with Project Better Place so that people will use batteries on a pay-per-use base.

Defence suppliers have shifted their business model from simply selling products to ensuring the avaialibility of the related functionality (or "outcomes"). The article provides an overview and a few examples of this change.

The article does not directly have to do with innovation, but provides an interesting perspective on the strategic challenges that luxury carmakers have when dealing with macro-trends such as an ageing customer base, emerging markets, downsizing (and low margins), etc.