By I.J. Hudson
HTC’s slogan is roughly, “innovation doesn’t mean anything unless it means something to you.”
I suppose that’s true in one sense. If you “get” how a device or product with help you or change your life, it does mean something to you. If the product could change your life but the company does a poor job of explaining it – it won’t mean anything to you. I’m not suggesting that HTC is doing a poor job of anything. I am saying that the phrase, when directed to the right individuals, is very strong; to a larger group of people or researchers, I think it misses the mark.
Innovation successes can be a matter of timing, teaming with other emerging technologies, changes in society, or a combination of all three. The highway to acceptance is littered with great ideas that never made it to the forefront. A lot of these ideas were in an age of slow communications. Now things can succeed or be labeled a failure very quickly.
Take the Apple Newton PDA. Yep, I tried one at a preview. Its graffiti would not recognize my left-handed writing worth a darn. Some cited it as a big flop, but others argued the failure prompted researchers to think about what was possible. Actually, that’s what they’re supposed to be doing anyway.
That’s part of innovation. Another part is deciding whether to improve the existing device, or making something entirely new that both fixes the original snag, and incorporates other features that address the core problems consumers want solved. The mix of ideas, technologies and business models that comes together to make a product successful is not linear in nature. Sometimes they mature together, sometimes they don’t. When they do, the tech world changes; the combination is disruptive almost overnight. Everyone sees it, even the trenchers. Wow! Not only does the “idea” lightbulb come on, (like in the comics) but it’s a CFL bulb.
Trenchers? I have a trench theory of gadgets: A lot of tech people are early adopters. “Yeah, I’ll try that because it’s cool, it’s the newest. I’m not sure if it works any better than what I have, but it’s new and improved – ergo, what I have is ‘old and unimproved.’” The trenchers, by contrast, are those who wait until they see real value before exchanging what they have that works for the next new thing. “I am not willing to give up what I like and know for something just because it is new.” The new thing may be a year old before they try it; or the trencher may have consulted with friends and seen it in action – finding out for themselves what the true value proposition is for them. In short, the gadget must let them do something they want and need to do that the old device won’t.
Unmistakable advantage trumps the trencher’s comfort level with the status quo. “If I’m going to have to unlearn how to use that stylus on a smartphone and learn how to use my fingers on a touchscreen, it had better be worth it. That’s pretty basic. The really smart early adopters will argue that THEY see the value of things earlier than most people. Maybe so.
The takeway from my ramblings is that innovation can mean a whole lot, even if it does not mean something to you. As our sharing of ideas gets faster, innovations brewing thousands of miles and years apart can now meet up much more quickly to make the next big thing happen.
The innovations will be there and either recognized by the marketplace as important now, or mix with other innovations to be important later. The innovations will keep coming at us faster. It’s up to us to recognize what’s important.
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