Not a new story per se, but just posted at Always On.
At the Silicon Valley 4.0 conference, hosted by Garage Technology Ventures, host Bill Reichert quizzed SRI CEO Curt Carlson about the [innovation] hurdles facing the IT industry.
Reichert: Give us a quick Reader's Digest version of what the key driving trends in IT are right now.Carlson: Well, at SRI, we look for what we call "colliding exponentials," where, for example, computing runs into communications and creates the Internet. So we focus on the real important problems that result when that type of intersection happens, because usually, when it does happen, it changes the ecosystem. It breaks things apart and creates lots of new opportunities, both for technology and also for licensing and venture deals and basic research...
And on corporate innovation:
Carlson: The history of big companies in these revolutionary times is not good. I keep on talking about the exponential economy, and what that means is that if you're on one of these curves, you have to double the performance of your product every nine to 36 months... We all know that there's a crisis right now in corporate research. The rapid changes happening in our knowledge-based economy are making traditional corporate research obsolete. So corporations are having trouble. They have to reinvent the way they work; so who's going to do the research? I don't know. But I do know that there are a lot of startup opportunities.Reichert: So in this rapidly changing technological environment, how do big companies transition? Can they transition?
Carlson: We work with major corporations all over the world, and I've seen that it's a real issue. One example: not long ago, I was sitting with two executives for a $10 billion Japanese company. One gentleman was in charge of strategy; the other headed R&D. We were having a very slow conversation, as is typical in Japan. Finally I asked, "Are you happy with the ROI that you're getting out of your laboratories?" These two senior distinguished fellows fell over their chairs. They said that essentially, nothing was coming out.
Reichert: Were they laughing or dying?
Carlson: They weren't laughing. They were concerned and they were upset. They realized that they were losing their edge because there wasn't a discipline of innovation within their organizations. At SRI, we take innovation seriously. We think the world really is moving faster and that we have to innovate in a much more disciplined and thoughtful way to be successful. A lot of big companies are having a hard time doing that. So I don't know, we'll see.
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