Inovations - Out of box thinking

There is a lack of innovation in the big companies. e.g IBM, Google, HP, etc.
Let’s talk about Google; the core innovation in Google was from two friends, who develop a search code in the beginning. I do not know any product or service which was developed after that. Only other popular products from Google are acquisition of small innovative companies. The same pattern you can see across the board in all major companies. This is not specific to IT only. We can see this too in other industry segments too.
I think the main reason for this is due to the close company structures. Most of the big companies have a big R&D center and every body working in the R&D center is getting monthly salary for doing an innovation. An innovation never happened in this way before and will never happen in future. Most of the R&D center just improves the product to the next level. For example Intel Processor is always a processor and it is not an innovation to just increase the speed and decrease the size of the processor. The main technology behind it stays same.
Look on Automobile industry; nothing had changed from last 100 years. Around 100 years before you had a car with 4 wheels, one staring, few gears, 2 or 4 door on the side and today you have the same just the speed and comfort changed.
For innovation; out of box thinking is required which could not grow in the legacy form of top down management of business. An innovator can not be judged on his capability to innovate some thing in a specific time period.
I think two things need to be changed to have innovative business. First the company structures should change from top down management to flat structure. Second is to create pool of intelligent people without giving them any target to achieve. Of course an R&D center will be still required to improve the innovation.

Think Cloudy

Business application for sharing business resources. Every big corporate have number of fixed computers with a lot of storage (P2P) and processing resources (Cloud computing). Why not using them together to make it bigger storage and process CPUs. Time shift in the world can help them to use idle resources from one to an other place.

This is some thing where Google, IBM and others are currently working. But in my opinion a new startup could gain the market much faster and easier as compare to big giants due to lack of innovations in the big companies.

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=152754

Electric cars - New origin of Innovation

Kathmandu, Nepal, has one of the highest per-capita rates of electric vehicles in the world.
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2008/05/25/rivers.nepal.rickshaw.cnn

The most interesting part is the use of patrol stations as charging stations. Looks like a transformation which can not happen in developed world due to domination of Oil companies and Car manufacturers.

Electric car hits the road in fuel-starved Gaza
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-genius-helps-beseiged-city-survive-a-year-of-israels-blockade-846258.html

Video over IP "Open"

IP as protocol for services create challenges for service producer and distributors. The only advantage of IP platform is for end users. In the form of WWW first time in history end-users got free access to general information. Second step was voice communication, which is got now almost free inform of flat rates or skype kind of applications. Internet also changed the music industry and now it is going towards video's future. Companies with open agenda for video will have alot to win in future and the companies with walled garden video deployments will face challenges competing in the market.
Some Telco companies are already moving in open IP platform and other's are trying to understand their possible position in future of communication industry. One example was the presentation of Telekom Austria at Sofnet:

http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?id=20a7a68a-2059-4789-b41e-300f9df23236&vidid=2824&view=video

Some other activities are going on for IPTV standardization. Few links for more deeper information:

http://www.openiptvforum.org/index.html
IPTV open standard from ITU-T
http://www.atis.org/iif/

Ideas for increasing ARPU

Internet access, email, and messaging are among the applications that are pumping up data revenues in general. Lehman Brothers analyst Inder Singh writes in a research note issued Wednesday that the operator's users of "integrated devices" -- of which the Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL - message board) iPhone is arguably AT&T's flagship -- deliver twice the data revenues generated by customers using other phones.

http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=151734

Internet - Who should pay the price?

I think that Internet should be part of infrastructure of a country and Govt. should pay for it same like they do for roads, railway and other utilities.
Value add services can be provided by Service providers. There are a lot of success stories for Service providers buying a wholesale infrastructure service and doing retail to the customer. In this way a service provider can really concentrate on service and customer instead of infrastructure.
This also provide fair open market for main telco companies without going in to regulatory problems of monopoly.

IPTV or Video as service

We have seen during last months that TV Channels start providing content directly over internet. This trend will goes on further and soon we will see most of the TV channels will be available online with option of VOD and new features. In future it will be a great challenge for Telco to position IPTV solutions with customer. Why an eye bowl will go to Telco if the content can be available from first hand?

Few examples:

USA:

NBC Universal

Fox Broadcasting Co.

CBS Corp.

ABC Inc.

Germany:

www.zdf.de (ZDFmediathek)

www.rtlnow.de

www.premierleague.com (offer for the subscriber)

UK:
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer (Currently available for UK only)

Most of the big media companies opening their content over Internet. Some of them have restrictions that the content is only viewable in a specific country but this will also change in future. International Intellectual property copyright is one reason for the content not available all over the world, which might also change with time.

Telco companies have to look for some other way to get in the video market. One of the other problem most of the Telco companies face is lack of experience with end customer in video content market. I think that closed network video will have a short life span as previously thought or predicted. Their will be users subscribe to pay-TV services but they can get the content directly over Internet or with legacy technology. Premier league (Football) is one of the examples.

Young audience with high-speed connection to internet is increasing rapidly and most of this audience use Internet only for their free time entertainment.

Bionade vs. Beer / Innovation vs. Commodity

BIONADE Corporation is a young, innovative and privately owned German company producing and distributing organically manufactured non-alcoholic refreshment drinks under the BIONADE trademark.
The company was established in 1995 on the occasion of the invention of BIONADE, the world’s first and still unique non-alcoholic organically produced refreshment drink. Borrowing from age-old brewing techniques, BIONADE is produced through a completely organic fermentation process.

The inventor of this drink had a brewery and seen that Beer is getting a commodity and with just decreasing prices or increasing production will not bring enough revenue. Invention of BIONADE is an example how out of the box thinking brings new products.

I think this is a good example for any Telco/IT/Internet company to re think about their ideas and start thinking different in order to produce new and innovative services.

IPTV on its best

Slowly but IPTV is getting reality. France is leading as country for IPTV deployments and acceptance from customers. TV and Video content will come over IP transport it is just mater of time and innovation on productizing side. Following table have a top ten list:

Table 1: Global IPTV Top 10 Carriers (by subscribers)

Ranking	Carrier	Country	Number of IPTV subscribers*	IPTV middleware platform by vendor
1	Iliad (Free)	France	2,170,000	Homegrown
2	France Telecom	France	975,000	Thomson SmartVision
3	PCCW	Hong Kong	818,000	Homegrown (Cascade, owned by PCCW)
4	Neuf Cegetel	France	600,000	Homegrown
5	Telefonica	Spain	469,067	Homegrown (Imagenio, now managed by Alcatel-Lucent)
6	Chunghwa Telecom	Taiwan	358,000	Orca, Alcatel-Lucent
7	China Telecom	China	310,000	UTStarcom
8	Belgacom	Belgium	249,434	Nokia Siemens (Myrio)
9	TeliaSonera	Sweden	216,000	Homegrown
10	Fastweb	Italy	170,000	Homegrown
* Most recent available data from carrier

Source: Light Reading

Silicon chips stretch into shape

Silicon chips can be starched find by US scientist. Is this is the possibility to use silicon chips in human body or other movable objects?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7313203.stm