Comments on: Innovation axes in IT…

By: admin

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:09:34 +0000

Thank you for the feedback. I am happy to see any improvments in power management when it comes to Green IT. All power usage reductions help, and move us away from the power-hungry days of the past. In those terms I hope it will help. Whether it would be considered a paradigm shift, however, is another discussion.

By: MSFT_AlexT

MSFT_AlexT — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:19:04 +0000

Hi there,
I was impressed by your post. I read Windows 7 news all day but your post is refreshing! Very interesting points you make in regards to innovation categories.
I also agree with you regarding “green IT” perception positioning. I think the fact that Windows 7 is being packaged as a green(er) OS than previous ones is a good thing though because it brings awareness to the topic. Even if you may argue that the power management changes aren’t lifechanging (although I think they are!), they constitue an example for the rest of the industry to follow.

In any case, I don’t know if you read the comment section, but if you do read this, I encourage you to say hi to us on Twitter (if you’re there) and tell me what you think. We’re @CIOsConnect

Hope to hear from you and read more posts!
Cheers,

Alex
Microsoft Windows Client Team

By: admin

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:52:35 +0000

I suspect that the original author (as a Management person) wanted all the points to begin with the same letter. I think the idea behind “Pardigm innovation” was the idea of managing the market into a shift for competitive reasons. If you can force a shift by making the environment correct for the shift to happen then that is, in effect, an innovation in itself. To take you example, whoever made PAYG mobile phones cost effective may have done so because they were more able to compete on that basis than the big players at the time. I don’t know engough about the history of the change to say it did happen that way. I can see that if you want a flood you could start by drilling a hole in the dyke.

As for Green Wash, if you define innovation as a application of new ideas in a useful way then I see your point. I’m not convinced it is useful as a whole.

By: ben

ben — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:28:02 +0000

Hi David
Innovation is not invention: innovation is bringing something new to an activity (but it need not be new in itself).
I agree mostly with the four, but would possibly reword as follows:
- Functional innovation – same market niche, new function
- Process innovation – same functions, applied to the same niche but in a different way. Can include a change in process that significantly improves time to market, or (e.g.) logistics/supply management (Tesco – by joining till data with supply logistics)
- Marketing innovation – same functions but positioning to address a different market niche. This can include pricing based innovation.

A paradigm innovation I would suggest does not exist as an innovation – a paradigm shift occurs when the previous paradigm is no longer stable due to an accumulation of innovations (or, more rarely, one big one). The proximate cause of a paradigm shift might be a sufficiently disruptive innovation – an example would be PAYG mobile phone contracts (removes adoption barrier), introduction of SMS (changes private chat communication from synchronous to asynchronous) , the introduction of ‘clickpay advertising’ (drops risk of paying for web advertising to near zero). But the paradigm shift is not the innovation, it is the change in the mindset of the user population. ref – EJ Dijksterhuis, Mechanization of the world picture (paradigms et al) John Maynard Smith and George R. Price (1973), The logic of animal conflict. Nature 246: 15-18 (evolutionary stable strategies and their disruption).

Greenwash is an example of defensive adoption of a changed market position. It isn’t actually innovation at all.

I would agree that should you wish to create a disruptive change in the market without triggering a backwash of defense, then you should try and avoid the perception that your innovations will be associated with a paradigm shift – i.e. minimise their perceived disruption. But if the existing paradigm is no longer stable, then it will shift whether people want it to or not. Bit like a small breach in a dyke – once it starts to flow, it will all go whether you like it or not.