SLIDE 1
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Two phases:
Creation Delivery
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Creativity Comes Naturally
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A Little Talent Helps
Vincent Van Gogh, age 9
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SLIDE 2 How innovative?
Long term vs. short term Research vs. advanced development Leap vs. step Directly determine how broad the net
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Have a Vision
unrealistic read sci-fi watch movies philosophy dream customer problem direction
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Understand the Actors, and their Motivations.
Page 7 of 34 Beyond the edge
Design for today => instantly obsolete Start with todays exotic: tomorrow's standard
Xerox Alto
Moore's Law Invention then product
Selling futures crushes the present and the future
The Osborne Effect
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SLIDE 3
Taking Risks
Demand failure Insufficient failure => insufficient innovation Success through diversity IBM: 1-5% of projects enter products Sun: 10-20%
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Reckless?
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Or Inspired?
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Even failures are useful
Don't get upset, Learn!
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SLIDE 4
Serendipity
Discovery by accident
The color purple Penicillin
Inspiration happens when it happens Manufacturing Luck
Being in the right place at the right time Have a gut feeling (vision) that there's something there What they call in the stock market "a diverse portfolio"
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Start Small
Big groups are
expensive bureaucratic Inflexible
Small groups are
inexpensive creative flexible limited in power
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Isolation
Away from the old ways Away from the narrow vision Away from the infighting
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Perspective
Overall view Investigate the opposition Investigate tangents
eg Java & CE
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SLIDE 5
Craziness
Creative people are crazy Feed the craziness Let the train jump the tracks But there are limits...
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Design & Implementation
Inseparable No such thing as an "architect" The Devil is in the Details Iterate up and down the levels of abstraction Throw everything out at least three times
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When you've finally got something...
What do you do with it?
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Don't confuse:
Hacking together a demo Engineering a product
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SLIDE 6 Politics - Internal
Organizations develop antibodies Bend new things to look like the old Territoriality Close-mindedness
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Technology Transfer
Create new
and let the old die out
Infect the old
and transform into the new
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Obsolete yourself
If you can invent it, someone else can e.g.. 68K => SPARC
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Don't fight the Genetic Code
Organizations do what they do Small steps work Large ones don't
company
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SLIDE 7
Politics - External
The usual competitive pressures Extreme forms in software Consortiums - NeWS Free software - Emacs Economies of scale - Microsoft
Engineering: large; Unit Cost: tiny Page 25 of 34
Wanting Too Much
Big piece of a small pie vs Small piece of a big pie Or no pie at all
NeWS Beta
It is easy to be seduced by tales of riches
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Launch
Motivate! Explain why it's interesting
in 10 seconds at a deep level
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Continuity of passion
The People must follow through Researchers can't just do research Papers
ideas only re-develop to incorporate OK for very long term/abstract
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SLIDE 8
After success...
Cope with growth Morale Overwork Creating a community It's not a small communal affair anymore
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Summary
Innovation is (relatively) easy Transfer to a product is hard
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Standard Failure Modes
Cool, but who cares? Not a big enough leap Too big a leap Boring Killed
company competition
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As Time Passes
Project size & cost increase Uncertainty decreases Risk transforms: tech to business
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SLIDE 9
Few solid rules
Many failures Success is rare Every success unique But success is sweet!
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