archive for the ‘business of breakthroughs’ category

What’s in a Name? A Lot. PARC, a Xerox company

16 April 2013 | Amy Hawman

By many measures, last week was an amazing week of visibility here at PARC – Tuesday’s New York Times Science cover article on our amazing chiplet technology by John Markoff, Wednesday’s expert interview on American Public Media’s Marketplace program, and Thursday’s PARC Forum discussion featuring Larry Vincent and Eric Kuhn from the United Talent Agency moderated by the illustrious Kara Swisher of AllThingsD. Ok, Kara gave us a little Twitter beef about being “too quiet” and we weren’t on 60 Minutes (yet), but we’ll take it anyway.

And yet we had to remind NYT that we are “PARC, a Xerox company” not “Xerox PARC” when the article went live on Monday evening, despite multiple visits and interviews, so we’re definitely not where we want to be or need to be yet. It may seem like a small semantic issue, but to those of us chartered with building and maintaining the ...

Recharging Japan’s Dominance in Lithium-ion Batteries

19 March 2013 | Leon Wong

Japan has an incredibly strong history of innovation. Yet the country too often starts out with dominant market share only to lose leadership as the pace of innovation quickens.

For example, its world market share of Lithium-ion Batteries (LiB) for mobile and portable devices declined ~60% in 19 years. Solar panels ~30% in 4 years. DRAMs ~55% in 15 years. DVD players ~70% in 9 years. LCDs ~80% in 7 years. Car navigation systems ~80% in 5 years. In none of these industries has any meaningful market share loss been recovered. Now, their world market share in Lithium-ion batteries (LiB) for vehicles has dropped ~20% in the past 5 years. While Japan’s share is still a robust ~80%, Japan’s track record forebodes an unhappy ending.

In light of this history, I recently attended the Battery Japan 2013 conference (part of Japan’s World Smart Energy Week 2013, which drew over 75,000 ...

What We’ve Learned at PARC About the Business of Innovation

14 March 2013 | Stephen Hoover

The business of open innovation is something PARC has been continually refining since we incorporated in 2002. Mastering the process of innovation is about far more than developing new technology; it requires a deep understanding of human behavior and context, and the ability to invent new business models to take the resulting products and services to market. We’ve found common themes. Three of them illustrate how we’ve been innovating at PARC over the past decade.

2012 Golden Acorn Awards Recognize PARC Innovations

15 January 2013 | Editor

In 2012 PARC celebrated 10 years of practicing open innovation, a major milestone since being incorporated as an independent subsidiary of Xerox in 2002. That same year PARC also instituted the Golden Acorn Awards, an annual award program to recognize excellence in patenting. The awards reflect the significance of intellectual property to PARC’s business model and the importance of individual leadership in its creation.

PARC is a place where the “entrepreneurial scientist” thrives — people with that rare combination of a passion for deep research, a pioneering spirit, and the business savvy of an entrepreneur. Nominated by a peer-based group and then selected by PARC’s senior team, the recipients of the 2012 Golden Acorn Awards truly embody our culture with their groundbreaking and industry-leading work.

The following PARC inventors have made considerable contributions to PARC’s intellectual assets and demonstrated excellent patent practice and are recipients of the 2012 Golden Acorn ...

Why Making Things Still Matters

14 November 2012 | Stephen Hoover

Innovation and the desire for innovation are nationally and globally pervasive. But by any measure of geographic or economic density, most of us still see Silicon Valley as the leader and lodestar of innovation.

It’s interesting to take a moment and reflect on the very name Silicon Valley. It is, after all, named after a chemical element and a technology for making things. At its roots, Silicon Valley was about making transistors, integrated circuits and chips, and, of course, the application of these for computing and software.

Today much of Silicon Valley is focused on the evolution of software and computing innovations, which take the form of Social, Mobile, Big Data, Cloud, and App economies. These are in fact tremendous innovation opportunities that can and will deliver great value—and we need it, all of it. This trend is pretty much true across U.S. regional technology centers. However, all of this ...

Heads Up, Hands On

22 October 2012 | Editor, on behalf of guest contributor

By Nicole Daphne Tricoukes, Senior Maverick in charge of the Motorola HC1 Headset Computer program

What does it take to bring an innovative idea to life?

Well, first a great idea. Then, it requires a proven framework and resources to help champion it through the development process. And sometimes, external expertise helps turn the concept into an actionable, revenue-generating opportunity.

Our idea? To redefine hands-free mobility and change how people interact with their mobile computers by creating a new category of device. One that is lightweight, stylish and intelligently allows users to access and view business-critical documents and complex schematics with just a simple voice command or turn of the head; or to quickly and simply collaborate with remote team members. No hands, laptop or fixed mobile workstation required.

That’s the power of the new HC1 headset computer from Motorola Solutions. This exciting new mobile computing concept delivers true ...

What PARC Learned About Executing on Open Innovation

16 October 2012 | Lawrence Lee

The concept of open innovation has moved from business phrase to business reality over the last ten years.

When PARC became a for-profit subsidiary of Xerox to practice open innovation in 2002, Henry Chesbrough had not yet published his book Open Innovation and the concept was not well understood. Companies knew how to engage a design firm, license IP, and form joint ventures, but few knew how to truly co-develop innovations with external partners, such as PARC.

At that time it was hard for PARC to understand how much we needed to invest in a new technology before approaching partners to work together in commercialization. We always wanted to get a partner sooner rather than later, in order to share risk and learn more quickly. However, we learned the difficult lesson that unless we could clearly articulate the maturity level and value proposition for a new technology within the context ...

How the U.S. Can Reinvent Manufacturing

10 September 2012 | Stephen Hoover

‘Manufacturing 2.0’ is a radical shift already underway, and many key elements are taking shape. As technologies and business models evolve, we have an opportunity in the US to create and own the future of manufacturing. That means the opportunity for a resurgence of US manufacturing, creating big changes in the economy and revitalizing US cities across the country.

To realize this vision, businesses must start exploring new manufacturing technologies and business models, and US government needs to begin developing coordinated policies to support R&D, public education, and further investment in this new approach to manufacturing.

There is great enthusiasm about exciting new developments in manufacturing including 3D printing, robotics, and printed electronics. These are important technologies, but we believe they are elements of a larger, end-to-end change in manufacturing, representing a radical shift from traditional approaches.

A whole new ecosystem is arising, which will include social design, social funding, ...

Defining (and practicing) ‘open’ innovation

9 July 2012 | Stephen Hoover

'Open innovation' has moved from business phrase and concept to business practice and reality. But what does it mean, really?? Simply put: open innovation means drawing on resources and/or working with people outside one’s organization to fill in gaps and accomplish your goals… whatever they are. Because one of the biggest mistakes you can make in today’s innovation landscape is assuming that all the best people in the world work for you. They don’t. So open innovation is a way to leverage others’ expertise, assets, and resources for your needs, whether you’re buying or selling (or both). There are many ways to do this – think of a spectrum, ranging from unfettered to orchestrated, all of them loosely categorized as open innovation. But for PARC it’s not as simple as "open" + "innovation" -- it’s about more than the sum of these parts.

Defining (and spotting) ‘disruptive’ innovation

9 July 2012 | Lawrence Lee

John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out that "The iPhone is not and never was a phone. It is a pocket-sized computer that obviates the phone. The iPhone is to cell phones what the Mac was to typewriters." His point is that the iPhone wasn’t a disruptor of mobile phones; instead, the iPhone was a disruptor of portable computers, and that’s how we should have viewed it all along... and foreseen its evolution into the iPad and its resulting impact on the computing industry. First: a quick clarification. A 'disruptive' technology typically starts at the low- (or under-served) end of the market – not perceived as a threat to incumbents – and eventually displaces the existing market. But don't the incumbent companies see what's happening? Sure they do. But it’s hard to see competition from disruptive "substitutes" outside one's industry, and even harder to figure out what to do about it. However, those of us who work in innovation need to recognize such blind spots and exploit the opportunities presented by them as often as we can.