Innovation Management

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

Amazon's 1-Click has come under a lot of fire over the years from critics who question whether such a broad technology should be patented at all. It refers to the process by which online shoppers make purchases with a single click, having previously entered their payment and shipping information. Amazon's patent on one-click shopping has survived the scrutiny of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In an official notice published this month, the USPTO declared its intent to issue a reexamination certificate affirming the validity of Amazon's amended version of the patent. The amended version has a slightly smaller scope, limiting the patent's coverage to online shopping cart systems rather than all one-click e-commerce. In its statement today, the USPTO declared that the new version of the patent is valid, despite the fact that it has no functional difference from the original version. This outcome, which took four years to reach, reflects the deficiencies of the reexamination process.

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.

Internet è nata come uno strumento di ricerca. con i Social Network ha assunto anche il ruolo di strumento di sociale. L'uso sempre più diffuso dei Social Network sta forse cambiano lo scopo originario dei Internet? Si sta andando verso una nuova direzione?

The Netflix contest was significant as a test case for new ideas about how to efficiently foster innovation in the Internet era - notably, offering prizes as an incentive and encouraging online collaboration to tap minds worldwide. The lessons of the Netflix contest could extend well beyond improving movie picks. The researchers from around the world were grappling with a huge data set - 100 million movie ratings - and the challenges of large-scale modeling, which can be applied across the fields of science, commerce and politics.

Interestingly, Canon is changing its usual stance of focusing on its own core competencies. With its takeover offer of Océ, it aims to be a key player in the photocopier and printer industry. Quite different from its former approach of focusing on the inner engine of such products, selling or licensing it to other firms, and attempting some limited forward integration in order to avoid double marginalization. It is likely that Canon is recognizing that future value lies in services, and not simply in manufacturing

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?

The paradigm shift to electric cars and to the "smart grid" in electricity distribution is happening.What is particularly interesting is the complementarity and potential convergence between the two innovations, if V2G (Vehicle to Grid) technology develops as promised. In this case, the batteries in parked cars could become distributed accumulators of surplus energy and feed it back into the grid. 

The field of navigation devices is interesting, because it is focused on product-services, which makes it difficult to apply the usual concept of "dominant design", and also because the business model can by quite tricky. This is especially true when a pureplay like TomTom must confront itself with competitors who have a much wider range of services and who can easily subsidize free navigation apps through its other businesses, such as Nokia and Google. In any case, TomTom made a smart move in 2007 by acquiring a critical and potentially monopolistic supplier of mapping data such as TeleAtlas.

Augmented reality in 2010 is a typical technology in the "incubation" phase. The technology is there, the basic building blocks (e.g. GPS-enabled smartphones cum camera) are already widely diffused... but it is now necessary to find a real application that people will be willing to pay for.

It seems that someone around the world has come up with some interesting applications in the field of gaming! Check out these links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZvxIjdyyII, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lHOHYhp6b4. Simply …uaohhh!

Yet another take on e-book readers, this time looking at the impact on magazine publishers, whose business model is likely to be impacted more than for book publishers.