Innovation - What Is It?
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Last week I wrote an article about Silicon Valley and what some seem to feel is a lack of innovation coming from the area. [See article here.] So over the long three day weekend, as I read about how Google was coming out with their own browser Chrome, I thought to myself is this innovating or not?
I think of innovation as not only something that is new, but also when products are improved or are being introduced for a specific purpose. Take the Apple iPhone. The cell phone itself has been around for a long time, the Internet also has been with us for quite some time and the touchscreen interface is nothing new. But when the three of these are put together into a small unit that offers so much, would this not be innovative?
Computers themselves are basically the same since 1985 incorporating a motherboard, CPU, RAM and video card. But would one not think that Intels new quad core processor is not innovative? Have the major improvements over the years with faster motherboards, faster CPU’s, faster RAM, bigger hard disks and so forth not be considered innovative?
Getting back to Google’s browser. Since browsers have been around since Mosiac was first introduced, do we discount the new Google browser as not being innovative just because we have other browsers to use?
Do we discount Microsoft’s Windows Vista as not innovative since Windows XP and previous versions have been around for awhile?
How would you describe innovation?
Comments welcome.
One Comment
mike
September 2nd, 2008
at 10:59am
My own opinion about what innovation is and is not is basically this: improving on an already existing product is enhancement at best–not innovation. Innovation, by definition, is the introduction of something new by way of experimentation and testing.
Computers are nothing new and creating a faster processor or more support for RAM or whatever is simply improving on an existing product or item. There’s NO innovation in that regard.
Frankly, I don’t think this country is able to “innovate” in this type of business environment where invention and new ideas are squashed by big business when it is perceived as a threat to their bottom line. Farming jobs out to other countries doesn’t help innovation either.
Innovation will come in the form of alternative energies and resources in my opinion. Making sea water a form of fuel..now that would be innovation, using algae as a form of energy is innovation, even using cooking oil as a form of energy is innovation in some respects.
Innovation on the computer side would be seen more on the application side as opposed to the hardware side unless the innards of a computer were to be radically changed from the 1985 design as you referenced.
Innovation, in our current time, is probably a casualty of efficiency and convenience. No one cares about newer ideas…they simply want to do things quick, fast and yesterday and move on.
peace!