archive for the ‘business of breakthroughs’ category

The cartoon says it all (well, kinda)

27 May 2011 | Editor

In which we suggest a little weekend reading & roundup of links. And then, the title of this post will make sense.

From creation myth to the reality of innovation today

13 May 2011 | Editor

On the surface, Malcolm Gladwell’s latest article for The New Yorker, "Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation", is a story about the mouse and how inventions travel – and evolve – across time and place. But examined more deeply, the article is really about the factors that determine whether you end up with an invention or an innovation. The story of PARC – and for that matter, any other innovative company – is indeed a mix of hopeful inventions, world-changing innovations, and missed opportunities, as Gladwell observes. But there's more – in contrast to his thesis that there’s a clean split between invention and innovation, and that companies are structurally limited in their innovation opportunities – we believe that there is now a framework that allows companies to innovate beyond their comfort zones and existing infrastructures. It's called open innovation.

We want to invent the next killer app

13 May 2011 | Tamara St. Claire

[contributed post to Front End of Innovation] I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard this or its equivalent (just insert your industry’s killer app in instead of “iPhone”). Because most companies have incremental and next-generation innovation down – it’s the disruptive, non-core, “next big thing” innovation that eludes many and presents the most challenges. Yet this type of innovation is a necessity for any business that wants to access new markets, create a new line of revenue, or re-invent themselves in anticipation of future directions. So here’s my question: what happens AFTER you conceive the next iPhone (or killer app for your industry)??

Ubiquitous Computing: For business

19 April 2011 | Bo Begole

There’s a big gap in publications about technology business. There are technical books that explain the low-level details of technologies, how they work, and how to piece them together. There are vision books that describe how the world will change dramatically and inspire us to think beyond what we see today. Then there are business books that explain how to manage and operate technology companies. While such books provide comprehensive and complete explorations within their genre, they tend to gloss over the important aspects of the other genres. Technical books leave business readers wondering why a capability matters, business books lack technical novelty, and vision books leave us all wondering, “Um…okay. Now what?” With Ubiquitous Computing for Business, I try to bridge these gaps by describing a set of innovation case studies around ubiquitous computing and the business implications thereof...

Managing research as an investment portfolio

22 February 2011 | Lawrence Lee

[contributed post to Xconomy] How do we balance the seemingly conflicting goals of long-term research vs. short-term profits, of creating breakthrough innovations vs. providing client services, of diversifying research into many markets vs. developing critical mass in just a few?

Building an “ecosystem” to fulfill a novel technology’s promise

16 November 2010 | Jennifer Ernst

Just how do novel technologies evolve from concept to market? Let's take the example of printed electronics (and its evolution at PARC), which may provide some insight into this question. Besides displays, printed electronics enables new applications from lighting and photovoltaics, to RFID, batteries, memory, and sensors. Given the diversity of applications, how do we move from the fundamental research that unlocks new possibilities, to the market impact of addressing what's needed? Especially when you don't really have a market, but an enabling technology. Especially when each of the players in the market has different technical demands, different distribution and support requirements, and different adoption challenges. And especially when considering that for enabling technologies, there’s a special challenge – you have to choose which markets to concentrate your efforts on, while remaining flexible enough to change as market conditions dictate. So how does one move from establishing expertise and demonstrating feasibility, towards commercial impact?

CCN now supports Android

4 November 2010 | Jim Thornton

Yesterday's network architecture simply does NOT suit today's proliferation of multimedia, data, and mobility in a broadly connected world.

The best way to invent the future is to predict it

5 October 2010 | Editor

[various guest contributors] "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." PARC researcher Alan Kay is widely attributed as having said this here. However, we don’t know this for sure; as Bob Metcalfe aptly shared with us recently (and he was quoting Alan Kay who in turn was quoting Robert Heinlein) – good stories are rarely true. But we're not trying to share a story with you here... what we want to share is a glimpse into what PARC alumni, employees, and invited friends of PARC predicted that we as a company would (or should) be working on in the future… the next 40 years. There’s also a separate 4-minute video with luminaries sharing their predictions with us in person. Because why can’t the best way to invent the future be to predict it??

The secret sauce?

30 September 2010 | Tamara St. Claire

In the world of open innovation, there are companies out there seeking the panacea that will save their business, or that will magically transform them into the “next big thing”. What this really reveals, however, is how people consider the role of innovation in addressing their commercial needs. I’ve noticed that many of the conceptions people have about the function and future of innovation are also closely tied to how people may perceive PARC... One of the first things some companies ask us is, “So, what’s your secret sauce?”...But as anyone in the business of innovation knows, innovation isn’t a noun; it's a process, a culture, an ecosystem. Let's examine the usual suspects.

Innovating when you don’t know what you don’t know

16 August 2010 | Mark Bernstein

[contributed post to Xconomy] Innovation is everywhere. So then where does differentiation come from? Most directly, competitive advantage comes from creating new business propositions in a disrupted environment. (If compelling enough, a novel offering can itself be the source of disruption.) Startups, especially in Silicon Valley, have been glorified as the vehicles of disruption and creative destruction. Yet… the reality is, when corporations are innovating incrementally, there’s probably not much difference between acquiring a startup, licensing a patent or two from a university, or building a technology with internal R&D. Because in all these cases, the company clearly knows what it wants. The market has signaled what features are desired and getting there is a matter of tactics—identify the right startup, patents, or internal team/expertise. But what happens when the market doesn’t exist yet? Or when it’s too time-consuming and expensive to absorb a startup into your corporate culture—let alone to compete with your competitors to court the targeted startup?