IT Innovation - Looking For Outside Help

Innovation has become a critical ingredient for success. This holds particularly true in the field of Information Technology, where change is rapid and sweeping. Many companies have had difficulty keeping up, and sometimes run out of ideas to solve their needs and resolve problems.

As a result, some companies are looking to Innovation Networks. These are essentially alliances that focus on issues faced by its members, and seek out ideas for resolving them. The idea has worked in many cases, because it brings in more brain power, along with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and experience. Collaboration is one of the defining characteristics of modern society and Innovation Networks fit this model well.

Wharton recently had a conference on this trend, and some commentary of the results are posted on the Knowledge@Wharton Website.

Mobile Technology

Many experts agree that cell/smart phones wil be the dominant means of connecting to the internet in future. They could also become a dominant means of payment at stores, kiosks, etc. Two things need to happen. The software for the phones needs to improve. For example, search engines on phones are poor right now. However, new software is coming out that will change all that. There is even a fledgling start at the use of voice recognition software that will enable people to search the net by speaking into the phone. That is bound to be popular, when it becomes good enough. The other thing that needs to happen is that people need to accept this use of phones. They already do in Europe and Asia. But North America has been lagging in this area. Nevertheless, the European and Asian experience shows that people will accept these new usages of phones, so when the new tools and softwware come to market, watch for a big change in the way we interact with the web. This month, Technology Review has a special section on Mobile Technology that discusses these and more issues.

Twitter is taking the business world by storm, but people are jumping in without understanding what Twitter is and what the risks are. One of the risks is that a tweet could cost the Twit's (which Twitter users are known as) job. Another perhaps more critical one is that tweets might compromise a company, from a competitive or security viewpoint. An interesting article in CIO Today spells out some of the pros and cons of Twittering in business.

The Slow Death of Books
by Gerald Trites

Slowly, inevitably, books are becoming obsolete. Advances in technology are wreaking their damage, and sometime in the future - five years, ten years, books will be sold only in musty, dingy little stores on side streets and back alleys, perhaps in Art Galleries. They will be bought as historical art or as collectors items, not as critical elements of modern communications.

There has long existed two basic kinds of reading - informational and recreational. Informational reading means reading a book simply to get information that might be needed to perform a task or to build something. It includes most newspaper content, textbooks, most business books, how-to books, reference books, and so on. Recreational reading includes reading novels, poetry, any reading that is done for relaxation or for an artistic experience.

Informational reading is already a dying activity. The internet has seen to that. Google has delivered the final coup de gras. It's just so much easier to find information on the web than it is to find the right book, buy or borrow it and search through the pages for the desired facts. Informational books still exist, but they are no longer an economically viable form of information delivery.

Recreational reading has been dying a slower and, to many, a more painful death. There are still many people who love the idea of "curling up" with a good book. TV off. Computer off. No noise. Existing in a more elemental and satisfying world. Transported to another world created by a creative author, but largely accomplished by ones own imagination rather than by the blare and screech of technology.

But even this last sanctuary of the Gutenburg era is suffering the blast of technological development. Digital readers like the Kindle, new technologies that port digital text onto paper-like materials, a mass of new portable devices, very popular with a mobile and increasigly technological savvy society are all conspiring to bring about the demise of paper based recreational reading material.

The purveyors of the paper books are suffering increased economic dificulty, finding their old business models, as with so many other industries, just don't work any more. Some of them will be able to make the transition to a technological world. Many others will simply disappear.

Some of the populace will miss the old musty paper world. Most will not. The new technologies will offer up a neater and more versatile product. And a more convenient one. People will still read, but in a non linear fashion as they do now with informational reading, jumping from one area of interest to another through links of commonality. From War and Peace to Gone with the Wind to a History of the Crimean War. Treating knowledge as they have information, as a product to be consumed on demand and integrated with all other knowledge rather than consumed discretely. A new world created by the reader, not by the author.

A commentary on the difficulties facing publishing can be found in the London Times Online this week.

Gone Fishing
by Gerald Trites

Social networks have posed a new opportunity for many people, to keep in touch with friends, to network for business, to collaborate, to showcase, to message and converse. They have also presented an oppportunity for thieves.

That's because many people post their vacation plans on places like Facebook. And they like to post entries from whever they are - whether it be Paris or New York or wherever they can get an internet connection. "Having a wonderful time in London - We'll be back home in ten days."

A thief could read that, look up the vacationers' home address on any number of sites, get the directions to go there on Google Earth and head out. Numerous people have found their house broken into on their return. Sometimes, there is evidence that the break-in was a professional job (select items gone, house not ransacked), which indicates that there's a burgeoning industry out there.

It's something to keep in mind, when making arrangements to have the lawn mowed, stopping the paper delivery, and taking all those other precautions when going away for a while.

The less information we publish on the internet, the better. Check out this article on Technology Review.