Google – threats and opportunities 2014

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One of the more popular blogs that I have written was about Google.  It was written back in March of 2012 and because this industry moves so fast it seems like I am overdue for an update on where I see Google’s opportunities and threats today.  I have actually written a couple of blog posts about Google (Threats and Opportunities and The Google Decade) and they are already starting to look a little dated.  In the world or technology that is not surprising, we are moving from decades to half decades. I thought it a good time to update what I see at one of the world’s leading technology companies.  In the two years since I wrote my initial blog, Google has continued to create industry excitement with its work in wearable technology, Google Glass and in robotics, with its efforts around creating a robotic vehicle.   It is rumored to be creating its own watch to potentially compete with the iWatch.  I say potentially because nothing has been released yet by any major player.  When we review what I wrote and where we are there are  a few updates.  A few new opportunities and new threats.

There is the obvious competitor and then the not s0 obvious co-opetition.  The obvious is Apple.  With the immensely popular iPhone it is the most direct competitor to Google’s Android platform and when we talk about consumers this is direct competition as we have come to know and love.  However this states the obvious, probably more relevant is the threat from its largest partner: Samsung.  When Google made its Android platform open-source and easy to license I imagine it saw a field similar to what Microsoft had created with its OEM platform, a huge ecosystem of partners competing with one another.  However an interesting thing happened along the way, Samsung took more than its fair share leaving the competition in the dust.  Unlike Microsoft’s ecosystems, in Google’s ecosystem one company has come to dominate.  Samsung will use it’s position as leverage against Google, that is for certain, otherwise they would not be a very wise in their future outlook.  How Google manages this relationship will be a big part of its future failure or success..

When we talk about consumers we quickly can get in the Social Media aspects of consumers lives.  Google’s foray into this space has not been an instant media darling as would have been hoped.  Google Plus launched and got some initial traction but has certainly seemed tp slow down to the point it is rarely even mentioned.  The two big threats to Google’s business are Facebook and Twitter.  Around a year ago, just after Facebook’s IPO, Mark Zuckerberg commented that Facebook was making a billion dollars in their search business, without even trying. Since that time Facebook has focused heavily on generating revenue from it’s mobile business.   Twitter is the pulse of the internet.  If you want to know what is happening right now in the world the best place to go is Twitter.  More than anything Twitter had become digital democracy.  With each revolution the main place to get news is on Twitter.  Google makes money on eyeballs on the internet, when another company comes along that takes those eyeballs they threaten revenues, which make Twiiter and Facebook two of Google’s prime competitors.

Robotics is an interesting area.  Google’s interest in Robotic vehicles is not a “humanitarian” act.  If you think about it the first things you do when you get in a robotic vehicle  is give it directions.  Let’s see, who does this better than anybody else?  Why of course it would be Google Maps, which is nicely tied in with Google search, and there you have it.  Google could make money every time you are in your car.  To me, though, Robotics is not just what we have come to now and love in film and books, it’s the new mobile future.  Despite the freedom we have with out tablets and smartphones, we are still in some shape or form physically clinging to our devices.  Robotics is the promise of removing the umbilical cord and providing us all we have today with out the need to be tied to a device. That vision will play out as hybrid of robotics and the cloud.  Google will play in both if it chooses.  That opportunity will dwarf everything we know.

In addition to robotic vehicles Google has what is known as Project Moonshot.  These are essentially where Google comes up with big ideas and then tries to figure out what it can do and if there is a future for Google in what ever Project Moonshot comes up with.  Robotic Vehicles and Google Glass are two such things that have come our of this en-devour.  Now Andy Rubin, of Android fame, has his own Project Moonshot underway focused on simply Robots.  I think what is best about Google and where it shines is with the efforts it places in Project Moonshot.  They come up with futuristic and really big idea and garner attention and admiration for what they do.  Having spent time at Microsoft and seen the billions put into research and development, it seems like the return has been very little, and I think a large part of it has been the inability to see new markets and to try to fund project that will fill the void.  The opportunity that Google envisions and creates in Project Moonshot can potentially yield huge financial upside for Google, while more importantly keeping Google a relevant technology company.

The browser war’s continue to tilt in Google’s favor as their share seems to have only increased since I wrote my original blog.  Google’s business depends on the internet.  The more eyeballs on the internet the more revenue for Google.  It only made sense for Google to invest heavily in the market that provides the windows to the internet.  The latest market share stats show a slow and fairly consistent trend upwards.  Google has launched Chrome based netbooks to challenge Microsoft’s traditional dominance in the PC Manufacturing space, should this take  off it would have a significant impact on the bottom line of Google and of Microsoft.  There are certainly other competitors in this space, such as Firefox and Apple’s Safari.  Firefox shows the limitations of open source as nothing speaks to pressure like an earnings report.  Something the folks at Mozilla seem to be missing, thus relying on the communities passion of the community, who can leave whenever they want.  Safari is too tied to Apple’s product line to be the “biggest” threat.  It will be relevant but in the short term I do not see it being the dominant player.

A lot of Google’s success can be tied to their indirect model of using cash revenues from search to fund other businesses at Google. One such beast is Google Docs.  It is still far behind the 800lb gorilla, Microsoft Office, but unlike previous competitors Google Docs is funded.  It is making headway with younger generations who do not need all that Microsoft Office has to offer.  My kids use GoogleDocs at school, in fact I rarely if ever see or hear about Microsoft software.  It may not hurt Microsoft today but if could tomorrow and considering the over ten billion in revenues it means to Microsoft I am sure Google has thought, “what if we get 20% of that market”?.  As usual Google is able to tie in Search and Chrome as part of the overall experience, thus increasing revenues and talking browser market share.  Cloud based productivity is here to stay and growing quickly and Google Docs will be a big part of that market.

The natural competitor to Google’s traditional search is Microsoft’s Bing search engine.  Despite its enormous financial resources and talent, Microsoft’s Bing has failed to become a serious threat to Google’s search business.  The fear Google should have here is not that Bing within a year or two will take serious market share from Google. A bigger concern is that they will go away all together.  Seems odd, but with the uncertainty at Microsoft these days around who the next CEO will be, some talk has begun that whomever takes over will either sell or kill off the business.  If that were to happen the competition for Google would shrink significantly.  We would have Yahoo, Baidu and a few other foreign competitors, but it would raise anti-trust fears and may make Google “lazy”, not having a competitor to wake up and focus on each working day.  Ironically you see rumblings by Microsoft about the anti-trust.  It seems human nature to hate the government until you need them.

Information everywhere is a powerful driver of revenue and in the end that means we are always connected.  Google drives its revenue from the internet, and despite its already enormous size it continues to grow, foster new innovations and by default new opportunities.  Despite the recent hype around the “cloud”, we have always thought of the internet as being  in some virtual non-physical location.  It is digital, not real.  Google has been at the forefront.  But looking to the future that ethereal environment is about to take on a more physical appearance as that information stored in the cloud will be relayed to communicate with a whole host smart and robotic devices.  There are plenty of great opportunities, not just for Google but the industry to capitalize on.  Perhaps it will be one or more of the existing players and likely their will be several new entries into the market who will become big fast.  The only thing for sure right now at Google is the future has never looked brighter or more ominous.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann December 6, 2013

Microsoft’s OEM Disappointment

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One of the great business partnering stories in history is the relationship Microsoft has had with its Original Equipment Manufacture’s.  It was a business built at the dawn of the PC revolution and it generated billions in revenues for all who participated.  The companies were legendary Dell, Compaq, Gateway, Acer, etc..Then there were the big boys IBM and HP.  At the center of it all was the company that created the magic, the software behemoth: Microsoft.  They created the licensing models that allowed anyone who wanted to start a PC company could participate under Microsoft’s terms.  The relationship had its ups and downs, but as long as revenues were followed by growth and profits, all was well.  However since the turn of the century things have started to change very rapidly.  And relationships that were once supported by a solid foundation have started to fracture and crumble.

Starting in the eighties and continuing up to current times Microsoft had  a powerful and unique relationship with its OEM partners. The OEM’s were dependent upon Microsoft to make the investment in operating system improvements to help drive the next wave of PC purchasing. They were very interested and engaged in Microsoft’s launch plans.  Desiring to be on stage with Bill Gates when the next OS wave of innovation was released.  It became “modus operand” for both Microsoft and its OEM’s.  It would be nice to say that Microsoft worked closely with its OEM’s in designing the latest  hardware breakthroughs, but that would not be exactly true.  Of course testing was done to make sure everything worked but the look and feel of a PC was left entirely up to the OEM’s.  It was more or less Microsoft would release the latest version of Windows and throw it over the wall to all the OEM’s.  It was up to the OEM’s to create the hardware magic.  In hindsight this should have been an early indication that things were headed in the wrong direction, because no matter who the partner the end products all looked pretty much the same.

As time passed the relationships became strained, as all partnerships do over time.  Both Microsoft and OEM’s became guilty of waiting for the next Windows 95 moment.  In doing so they viewed the industry business models that had been created so far as eternal in an industry that never rests on its laurels.  All the while a generation of youth were growing up with technology and wanted to push boundaries, as every generation of young adults has done since the dawn of man.  It seemed as if the OEM’s could never push limits of design as much as Microsoft hoped they would.  Microsoft had strategically stated it was not a hardware company and wanted its partners to takes Microsoft software and create something breakthrough.  As a result Microsoft was not very interested in getting too involved in hardware design.

Microsoft would try to take its OEM business model further as it pushed into the mobile phone space.  The difference here would be that there were already incumbent phone manufacturers and the competition would prove fierce.  Part was competitors creating their own eco-systems of developers and applications. There was strong competition from the likes of Nokia and RIM.   A second factor was that many OEM’d and ODM’s had learned from the PC model not to cede too much control to Microsoft.  They had options and used those   as leverage in negotiations.    Despite all this up until 2007 Microsoft was making headway and it seemed on the verge of another great success

This stated to fall a part with Apples successful iPod franchise as digital music and Apple became synonymous with one another. Despite many efforts and a lot of talk that “x” device was the iPod killer, the focus was never quite there in the OEM channel or at Microsoft as the margins on these low-end devices was not the same as a PC.  If you looked at the time a few simple design elements went along way for Apple.  Namely the “wheel”. Billboards  popped up all over the country with kids, color and iPods and most importantly they looked like they were having fun.  Even Bill Gates buddy, U2 front man Bono was bought in.  Young people like to have fun.  What seemed to go almost unnoticed was the money being made on a service called iTunes.  For every $.99 spent on a song, Apple made $.20 as I learned in my meetings with Universal Music.  When you sell over a billion songs that starts to add up.

The launch of the iPhone was simply that dagger that changed everything and put the competitive market place into warp speed. Since that day the market place has heated up with a number of companies providing new smartphones and tablets.  Probably most disappointing to Microsoft has been there OEM partners in ability to create or design anything of market interest. But then that is how the Microsoft OEM channel was built.  Not to think.  In the old days you could have any PC color you wanted as long as it was beige.  But things stated to change quickly, first with rather mundane things with color.  The MAC had lime green and tangerine.  then smartphones (not that OEM’s cared  about phones) and finally tablets.  Apple  then launched the immensely successful iPad. Now Tablets were a problem.  Because they interacted with customers in a different way and it was a different way that consumers really enjoyed.  It was not anticipated.

When the iPad and hit the market, followed by Android based devices it seems like the OEM model could have been re-invented.  A tighter and closer relationship was needed between Microsoft and its traditional OEM’s.  Microsoft understood the software and the OEM’s understood the hardware, specifically the hardware supply chain.    They could have basically selected several OEM’s and created a tight working relationship via an incubation project.  Combining engineering teams on both sides.  But perhaps it was the large numbers Apple was posting every quarter, with 30 million iPads sold.  Android was increasing its share.  The OEM’s continuing to create a variety of form factors that no one was interested in.  In the end all these things led Microsoft to abandon its long-standing partners in favor of building their own hardware.

In the end I think the model of throwing the software over the wall led to the undoing of Microsoft’s traditional partners.  I believe that a lot of the blame does lie with them as they never seemed to get out of the mode that had made them so successful and update their business models to better anticipate and understand the consumer.  It started simply with music player but as time passed it evolved to challenge the netbook and laptop markets, and Microsoft’s OEM’s did not seem to be up for the challenge.  Because of this failure, it more or less forced Microsoft’s hand to enter the business of building their own devices (and acquiring Nokia).  This will create new challenges.  Microsoft needs to construct a supply chain, as has often been said in business “building a product is easy, building a supply chain is hard”.  Case in point Apple is investing $10.5 billion just in its supply chain (read Bloomberg article).  For Apple the supply chain already exists, the $10.5 billion is incremental investment in its supply chain.

Microsoft had such great hopes and a strong belief in its OEM channel.  It’s amazing that not one of them could do better.  Not one has pulled a Samsung.  It was as if they were waiting for Microsoft to provide them guidance  on what to do next, rather than investing and more importantly understanding the changes underway in consumer markets.  I can only surmise at this point that many senior execs at Microsoft were very disappointed in what their OEM’s were able to deliver to the market with each subsequent release of Windows. There is plenty of blame to go around, but OEM innovation is high on the list and now we are left with could have, would have, should have.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann November 14, 2013

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YouTube Music Awards 2013 – Brilliant

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No this is not a review of the award show. I follow music and have since I got my first records (John Denver and Glen Campbell). I love music. I love award shows. But to provide a review of the award show would not be my forte and would be a departure for me. I am, however, interested in how well it was perceived and received and what it means.  The YouTube Music Awards did get free coverage on the “Today” show.  More importantly the YTMA shows the convergence of entertainment and technology in a way that not only the entertainment industry makes more money but the technology industry will indirectly generate billions in revenues.  In my humble opinion this is a highly entertaining way to generate more revenues for Google. Specifically more ad revenues for Google. It will also challenge the status quo of television programming as more content is delivered “over the top” versus traditional agreements with the Cable (Comcast, Cablevison etc ) providers and their content partners (Disney, ESPN, Fox, etc..).

When you think about it, it is not too hard to see how this came about.  Technology and Hollywood have always had a very close relationship.  When the digital revolution started to take off one of the first industries to feel the effects was the music industry.  It first started with the development the compact disc, however that was pretty much business  as usual for the industry.  Vinyl was simply replaced by the CD.  Then two things occurred.  The internet and the iPod.  The iPod made the playing and purchasing of music a completely different experiences.  Today with 80gb iPods I can store more music than I ever could hope to own pre-iPod and internet.  Then the idea of streaming video started on the internet (Remember the Real Networks video player?). Then YouTube became the place to watch music video, killing the need for MTV.  I could not watch the video I want without waiting.  The world of on-demand was starting and changing the face of television programming.

The YouTube music awards cater to the younger audience.  This is how they consume a lot of content.  New artists are introduced on the web, not on cable networking anymore.  Because it is the web the artist are introduced to larger and global audiences. The Ryan Lewis and Macklemore video for the song “Thriftshop” has been viewed over 448 million times.  The YTMA winner Girls Generation video has been viewed 74 million times.  Justin Bieber started here. YouTube has become the place for new artists to get their name out and by-pass traditional music industry channels.    It was just a matter of time before it made sense for them to have their own Music Awards show and do it over the internet, thus bypassing the traditional television channels.

The real winner in all this is the company that had the foresight to predict and bet on this shift: Google.   It Is not hard to fathom that every time a Google exec watches traditional TV it is viewed as lost revenue.  No search capabilities, limited interaction with television set.  Since the days before the internet there were those who were betting in interactive TV.  Former Microsoft CTO, Nathan Myhrvold believed that to be the future.  It may still happen but if it does the internet will be its backbone.  The thing to keep in mind about this is Google makes money on search, but in order to make a lot of money in the search advertising business you need traffic.  Google is using YouTube to expand its potential audience for search.  In the end however it is all on the Worldwide Web.

A lot of Google’s success can be contributed to indirect selling models.  The YouTube Music Awards are yet another example of where Google will leverage viewer eyeballs to generate more search advertising revenue.  As time goes by and the viewer ship increases so will Google’s ability to monetize those net new viewers and increase the average revenue per user (ARPU).  They will then funnel this money to other ventures that will either contribute or fail, but Google will always be pushing the needle.  If the YTMA is a big commercial success could we see scenarios similar to what Netflix is doing and have Google generate its own premium content?  I would guarantee this scenario coming to fruition.

When Google bought YouTube some viewed as a poor purchase, one that would spend most of its time in litigation, but Google obviously saw a brighter future.  Now with the success of the YTMA one can start to envision what this will be.  One of the holy grail’s of consumer technology has always been cracking the code to utilize and monetize the last great user interface: television.  It turns out what was needed to make this happen was a connection to the internet.  Then once you have this internet connection  how do you drive traffic to where you want it?  This gets back to the old axiom “content is king”.  If you have the right content they will come.  It is also important n this day and age to get younger audiences engaged as they are the first consumers of technological shifts.  With YTMA awards and other new internet content (primarily from Netflix) we could see the age of interactive TV finally begin to be realized.

This is a brilliant idea and move by Google that will garner them a lot more of positive press and attention to their brand.  It also threatens to leave their competitors in their wake as they struggle to create an even tighter relationship with the entertainments up and comers and its elite.  Apple has the relationships but the integration between the device and the web is not nearly as tight as Google (Search, YouTube, Android, Chrome etc..). Microsoft may be better positioned with the XBox and its gamer community.  More importantly many of these games are going Hollywood as games are turned into major motion pictures.  Where Microsoft is hurting is it has a weak music story and poor track record in the industry, plus it is way behind in the devices landscape.  Google is leading this decade as they right now are in the zone where they have more foresight into the future and where things are headed.  It is rarefied air that they exist in right now.  Having been through this before the danger is thinking it will last forever.  As long as you are scared of the future you stand a chance of success.  When you take the future for granted you are doomed to failure.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann November 8, 2013

Tidal Waves create Innovation

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In my last blog I talked about innovation. Which got me thinking again. I apologize that I again will reference Microsoft, but as it is my heritage and a relevant point of reference I shall go there again.  When we look at the big misses at Microsoft over the last decade it’s easy to say they got clocked by Apple and the iPhone. That they missed on the tablet.  But as I alluded to innovation is not often in the product unless you are there first.  Ballmer said his biggest regret was Vista. But in my humble opinion the bigger miss was not understanding a technology movement that was under way and envisioning how big the possibilities could be.   More than anything it was the inability to truly understand mobility that killed Microsoft,. In short they never did think big enough.

In any big shift there is a movement that occurs and then there are the innovators who take advantage of the movement.  In the early phases of the PC industry, the movement was the idea of a personal computer.  There where may companies who innovated based on this movement.  Intel created the microprocessor that powered the PC.  Microsoft jumped on the operating system with DOS and then Windows.  More than any company Microsoft understood the value of the software that created the experience for the PC.  Give Intuit credit for changing how we did our taxes. There where hardware manufacturers that popped up all over the place, like Gateway, Dell and Compaq.  There was a lot going on in the space and the competition was brutal.  It created a lot of wealth and a very affluent younger generation, who profited on this tidal wave.

These grand movements would continue with the birth (or maybe re-birth) of the internet.  As companies moved in force to get online and establish a presence in a global virtual real estate play with the creation of a website.  This again would drive innovators to start creating new opportunities along with new business models.  A second movement that coincided with the internet was the rise of mobility.  More accurately mobility was about freedom.  The ability to have access to our technology but not be connected to a wall.  Underlying all this was digital convergence as everything we had known from our music tour television and film, books, catalogs etc….  was being digitized.  I could access all this content from my PC, laptop or smartphone.  A new are is the cloud, which  in my opinion is not a new tidal wave, but more innovation built on the back of the internet.  All in all, these movements have fundamentally changed how we all lived and worked.

The list of examples of companies who rode these grand movements to success is a list of small companies who have become tech giants, with the exception of Apple, which made a grand comeback.  In the internet Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Netflix etc.. are but a few examples of companies that leveraged this new medium.  In many instance mobility created an expanded market and new opportunities.  In the case of Twitter it helped them become a global beacon of democracy and human rights.  Mobility projected Google and Apple to new heights as they drove new devices to new sales models.  For Google they used Android (and iOS) to extend the reach of their search engine.  There were companies that burned brightly only to fade, i.e. RIM and Nokia

If I look around the industry and try to predict the next industry movement, my eyes and ears always gaze to robotics.  There is a lot of work being done today that is far more advanced than anything we have seen before and in some cases hearkens to our favorite science fiction novels, film and television series.  If you take Google’s foray into robotic vehicles, it is visionary while making sense.  If you have a robotic car and you need to go somewhere, what is the first thing you will need to do? You will need to give it directions, “Bing” (not intended use of Bing but funny in any case), who makes great mapping technology?  More importantly it takes the most dangerous piece of driving out the equation, humans.  This is but one example of something that will come to pass.  Prosthetic’s will move from plastics and metals to having intelligence and a more human like appearance.  Anyone remember Steve Austin, aka the Six Million Dollar Man? I think robotics will combine all three of the previous tidal waves while creating a new one that removes humans from a number of traditional equations.  These movements do not happen without consequences.  It will be interesting as robotics evolves to see how it will impact the movement of labor.  If a robot is picking our apples will we have need of cheap labor?  Robotics will take off and have a bigger impact than mobility or the internet, as it is physical in nature, not virtual.

The excitement and disaster of these “big” movements is they are like tidal waves.  If you catch the wave early on you can ride the wave to extreme success.  However if you are late the wave you risk catching it as it crests and comes thundering down on you.  For the start-up these sometimes seem obvious as many gamble on the next big thing. Youth Is rampant in this area and like so many young generations they are more idealistic and dream of a bigger and brighter world, ignorant of the consequences, but driven none the less. For the incumbents that challenge is often much more daunting.  They may have been part of an earlier movement that still drives big revenues but makes them blind to the future, until they find themselves on the crest of the wave, looking down in horror at what has befallen them.

These changes are what makes the world today so exciting as when these “tidal waves” occur it has a material and social impact across the globe.  If you think about how internet has brought us all closer together and made communications across boards easier than they ever have been through out the history of mankind.  When these changes occur, for companies in the tech space and across other industries it is important to bet early and often, if one is to survive.  They come very fast and with great velocity, that those who do not anticipate quickly, they become a legacy to history, they become yesterday’s news.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann October 24, 2013

Innovators Dilemma

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I was watching Microsoft COO Kevin Turner speak about all the innovation Microsoft has coming out this year, Office 365, Skype, Visual Studio, XBox One, Surface Tablets, Windows Phone, Bing etc ..In reality, in saying it, he was confusing products with innovation, but who knows maybe Bing, Skype, Office 365, Surface Tablets, Windows Phone etc’.have some features in them that will be considered innovative.  In KT’s defense and the one exception may be Xbox one, which has done in the past innovative things, like Kinect. But maybe  this goes to my post a couple of weeks ago on Apple (Apple is Dull).  In the Apple 5s and 5c we have cool devices.  Are they innovative? Short answer: No.  Are they successful? They sold over 9 million devices in a weekend.  Short answer is innovation does not equal success. My fundamental question would be, “What is innovation?”  What does it take to push the bar higher.    Here are some of my thoughts on this most important subject.

If history has taught us anything it is that the greatest innovations often do not mean success.  It does not mean that those who innovated were failures.  In many instances they are legends.  But often it takes others to fulfill their greatness.  As much as Steve Jobs loved to rail against Microsoft’s inability to innovate he nor Woz had much to do with the GUI that made the Macintosh breakthrough technology..  That work was done over at Xerox Parc labs.  As written in Jobs biography (I highly recommend), it was during a visit that this piece of innovation caught his attention and imagination.  As much as one person fought against selling this technology to Apple, Steve prevailed and the rest is history.    Where Apple did innovate was popular devices such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad.  Were they the first in any of these categories? No.  They just created a user experience that was fundamentally better and then created an ecosystem around those devices in iTunes and applications.

When I think of what Kevin mentioned, though the products may be improvements, in fact they may even be significant improvements, but are they transformative?  Do they fundamentally alter and improve the experience that I had before?  I guess it is time we make the ground rules for what can be considered innovation and what cannot.    From a corporate America standpoint rule number one is you have to be able to monetize your innovation.  Apple did not invent the smartphone, but they certainly took the idea and created a transformative experience for all to experience.  Anybody who tried to browse the web on a smartphone prior to the release of the iPhone had a very painful experience.  It was slow. No one had really figured out the user interface and how to display it properly on the phone (this is where Apple controlling the end to end experience really paid off).  We can go further back in time to Microsoft and the release of Windows 95.  WIndows 95 was innovative not so much in technology but in price as it created an affordable PC experience that was on par with the superior MacIntosh.  It’s important that innovation extend to the masses.   Shortly after it was followed by the web browser, Netscape Navigator.  This launched the World Wide Web into hundreds of millions of homes.  The creation of the web belongs to Tim Berners Lee, but the mass consumption belongs to Marc Andreesen.  No one really knew how to monetize it until Google came along with search and search advertising.

There are bigger innovations on the horizon in the pipeline extending from robotics to travel to alternative energy.  Areas that will have a significant impact on our economies and in how we live our day-to-day lives.  The innovations coming down the pipe will come at a pace faster than anytime in human history (not sure when the future ever really slows down).  The only limits on consumption of these innovations will be the human factor.  Though what we create will improve significantly in a relatively short amount if time, we as humans have not changed a whole lot in the past two thousand years.  Physically the advent of robotics may change us (think Six Million man), certainly the human genome project has extended our knowledge of how  we as humans are constructed and work.  If I can ravel from Seattle to Sydney in under 2 hours would that be transformative?  It would shrink eth world in a heartbeat.

Mot importantly true innovation in the tech sector transforms society in ways yet to be imagined.  Many times they happen organically, like Facebook    Originally designed for students at Harvard University, it spawned a new way of interacting between people.  More than any company it created the concept of social media.  As mentioned earlier Xbox Kinect transformed the gaming experience.  Twitter pushed social media higher as it became an outlet and voice in the world for Political change in places like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.  It will be exciting to see how the next generation of innovation changes society.  For all the debate around Obamacare, and for those who believe free markets will solve everything, I can only add that in my view neither your government or your private insurance companies can solve these issues.  However I do believe that technology has the ability to create something innovative that will help with self healthcare can offer us a, dare I say, bipartisan way out.  One of the biggest costs in healthcare is unnecessary emergency room visits.  What if I had a device that could help tell me when I need emergency care and place the call for me?

Innovation is a big challenge and opportunity for companies.  It requires bright minds with a different way of thinking about specific problems.  Taking the less walked path to new discovery.  Every company struggles with it, knowing that if they do not innovate and seize the opportunity before them they could be histories next lesson.  In today’s world you see old technologies being thought of in new and different ways.  A company called Nest Labs is rethinking the thermostat and smoke detector.  Appliances that have not changed a whole lot in the last fifty years.  What next?  The refrigerator?  What would that mean to GE?  This is an exciting time in history as technology once confined to the PC is exploding into new territories with a high degree of regularity.  Unlike my title it maybe Is not so much a innovators dilemma, but a innovators death threat for those who do not participate.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann October 9, 2013

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