Archive for 'Innovation'
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 06 Jun 2005, 9:57 AM - 1 Comment
People are innovating like crazy and it’s getting exciting everyday. I saw this great piece about a SF based startup Current taking citizen journalism to TV (link: San Francisco Chronicle) this august.
Citizen journalism is the new wave where the general public participate
in creating news and also participate in selecting the news (by voting)
that they want to see.
The company Current is now seeking public to upload news videos that
they can air on their satellite channel once it goes live in August.
The company plans to pay about $250 for every video that is aired.
Former Vice President Al Gore is the chairman of Current.
It is hard to predict how successful Current will be but I am sure
other news networks (with traditional crew) are watching this closely.
This is a game changing move and will set higher standards for everyone
in this business.
All the best to Current!
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 02 Jun 2005, 12:01 AM - Leave Comment
What a pleasant surprise from Microsoft. Our company CIGNEX is heavily focused on Open Source so it’s hard to complement Microsoft (philosophically) but today’s announcement
(link takes you to blog entry of Brian Jones, program manager for Word
at Microsoft) about opening up Office in the next version is definitely
a bold and commendable move.
Basically, the new version of Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) will
store data in an XML format. This opens a whole bunch of possibilities
for developers to build solutions based on office applications. Besides
portability enhancements, the ability to manipulate content at the
server level is huge.
Many ISVs will love the fact that integrating their software with office will become a breeze moving forward.
It’s an innovative approach. Hats off to Microsoft!
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 01 Jun 2005, 11:39 PM - 2 Comments
Amazon announced their search engine A9 a few months ago. Now, they are offering a discount of (1.57%) for regular users of A9 search engine.
In order to continue to be eligible for discounts at Amazon, users need
to at least use A9 once per week (eligibility criteria might change)
and you need to sign in before using the search engine (otherwise how
will they know that you were using the search engine)
No other search engine that I know of requires a login before
searching. No other big-name search engine pays their users either. By
offering a powerful incentive (money!) Amazon is getting users to
reveal what they are looking for using the search engine and I am sure
ultimately this information will be used to present the right set of
products while they are browsing at Amazon. Neat!!
There is an innovation war going on between Google and Amazon and hats
off to both companies for setting higher standards for each other and
every other company in that space.
Posted under Business Models, Compelling Offers, Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 31 May 2005, 9:45 PM - Leave Comment
Microsoft wants developers to contribute their enhancements to OneNote (a note taking software from Microsoft) and win prizes.
Microsoft says:
It’s your opportunity to influence the future of OneNote. It’s your
chance to wow a global audience. And it’s your shot at winning one of five
Toshiba Portégé M200 Tablet PCs.
Open Innovation is a model where everyone wins. Open source software
has been adopting this model (with no prizes attached, though) for
quite sometime. Corporations are now applying this model effectively to
reduce R&D costs and also win on the “time to market” front.
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 27 May 2005, 9:29 AM - Leave Comment
I saw this interesting story
about a bank in San Ramon coming up with an innovative mortgage banking
product offering. Mortgage banking is mostly commodity stuff and most
commodity offerings compete solely on price
CMG Financial Services, the company that came up with this innovative
product bucked the trend. The idea as I understand it is that with this
offering mortgage loan is tied to a checking account. When your payroll
check and any other checks are deposited to this account, they are
directly applied as credit towards the principal of the loan. As you
write checks, the loan amount increases and an interest is charged to
this loan amount. The final interest at the end of the month is added
to the principal owed. Interesting and different concept from the
traditional way mortage products operate.
They charge a steep premium for this (about a percentage point higher)
My point is not to make a case for this product but to point out that
whatever be the product, you defy commoditization and you get two
things:
a) you make news
b) you can charge a premium
Something to think about in our own professions. What could we do to de-commoditize ourselves?
Posted under Business Models, Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 24 May 2005, 9:32 PM - Leave Comment
Last month I wrote a short article titled The world is your R&D unit. Many of you wrote back about examples other than the ones I mentioned. Thank you.
Brad talks about Nike shoe design contest. Take a look how Nike is engaging with designers outside of Nike to come up with eye-catching designs.
Way to go. My friend Steve Shapiro has a term for this kind of innovation – Open Innovation. Sounds cool!
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 18 May 2005, 11:38 AM - Leave Comment
Even if you have a great product you can’t rest on your laurels. Apple’s iPod is great but there is now competition from PalmOne.
The new Lifedrive from PalmOne looks cool. They are creating a new
category called “Digital Lifestyle Device” and want to launch a flank
attack at iPod. Interestingly, observe that they are also commodotizing
many of their own organizer products to demonstrate a giant leap.
Lifedrive is a cross of
* email client
* browser
* mp3 player
* organizer
* video player
* mobile hard drive
and many more.
PalmOne just launched the product so the jury is still out. My
only point is that innovation is not a one time activity. It has to be
woven into the fabric of our personal and professional lives. We can’t rest on our laurels.
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 27 Apr 2005, 10:29 PM - Leave Comment
We have talked about this multiple times – if you want to have a
competitive advantage, you need to innovate. What if we have no
resources to invest in R&D and innovation. No problem. The whole
world can be your R&D unit 
There are several examples where companies have used outside help
(paying in the range of $0 to hundreds of thousands of dollars)
Lego Mindstorms:
I think it was in 1999 that Lego introduced the Robotics Invention
System. In simple terms, they opened up the SDK for programmers to
create their own games. And they did. There were almost hundreds of
games and variations of existing games that programmers created out of
this system. Lego would put up a catalog showcasing the outside
inventions.
Innocentive: Innocentive
connects the world’s top scientists with the toughest R&D
challenges out there. One of the solutions will win the money but as a
bonus company gets to see all other entries and approaches to solve the
problem.
Technorati: Last november Technorati launched their first developer’s contest.
They were looking for innovative uses of Technorati API. The Grand
prize winner got $2,500 and the runners up got an iPod. Once again, the
company got to see the hundreds of other cool entries (I think)
Top Coder: When I last saw it, there were more than 54,000 members in this community. Top Coder posts design challenges
and the members can participate and win. Once again, one person wins
and the company gets to see the designs of several other folks.
Isn’t this cool? I love the model as long as there is a win-win approach.
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 15 Apr 2005, 7:06 AM - Leave Comment
Brad Feld writes about ordering custom printed M&Ms.
If you can order customized computer products from Dell, you can now order custom printed M&Ms from Masterfoods.
I am confident that others will follow but hats off to Masterfoods for taking the lead!
It seems like an obvious extension now, doesn’t it? Again, most innovation projects are that way.
Posted under Business Models, Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 09 Apr 2005, 11:51 PM - 1 Comment
First read about this at Robert Scoble’s blog yesterday. Paul has done a phenomenal job of combining the power of Google Maps and Craigslist.
Google maps is on one extreme of sophistication and Craigslist is on
one extreme of simplicity. Paul is brilliant in combining the
sophistication and simplicity to display how this combination can take
usability to the next level.
Once you see it, you will think that this was obvious. Most innovation projects are that way.
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
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