No More Next Big Thing?

CthuluOverlord writes "CNET News.com is reporting that Nicholas Donofrio, Big Blue's executive vice president of innovation and technology, made a declaration on Tuesday in an interview with ZDNet Asia. 'The fact is that innovation was a little different in the 20th century. It's not easy (now) to come up with greater and different things. If you're looking for the next big thing, stop looking. There's no such thing as the next big thing.'" Donofrio goes on to explain that he sees innovation as being services or social changes nowadays, rather than simply a better moustrap. What's the verdict? Is tech innovation dead?

Comments

Yes Next Thing

[denissmith]

The idea that tech innovation is dead implies that we will now recycle the same tech in slightly modified form, because we have discovered every useful thing. I THINK NOT. What is more likely is that Mr. Donofrio suffers from failure of the imagination. Usually, when someone make a claim this outsized and this ludicrous, the next big thing is literally right around the corner. Mr. Donofrio can't see it - maybe none of us can. But it will come, and its implications may be good or may be bad - tech is like that, but it won't stop until we can control matter directly with our minds :-D

Re: Yes Next Thing

[BongoBen]

It is preposterous to claim that everything has been invented. And as an engineer, I find that slightly insulting. I personally think that robotics and nanotech are coming up pretty quick. Nanotech especially, given another 10-20 years, is going to be VERY big indeed, and if it lives up to what the researchers and dreamers today think it will, it will likely revolutionalize the way we live.

Re: Yes Next Thing

[AKAImBatman]

What is more likely is that Mr. Donofrio suffers from failure of the imagination.

What I think he's really suffering from is a sensationalist headline (he never used those words) and a poor usage of terms. The Slashdot headline has neatly turned a complex issue into a "yes or no" question, when it is nothing of the sort.

First, let's define some terms here:

Innovation is the practice of making technology work better than it did before. e.g. Plastic soda bottles are an innovative improvement over glass.

Disruptive Technologies are rare technological discoveries that result in a complete change in the way we do things. e.g. steam power, trains, cars, airplanes and computers all resulted in sudden shifts in market ability.

After a disruptive technology hits the market, a tumultuous cycle of new businesses and old businesses betting their livelihood on the new technology is created. They compete fiercely for the attention of the early adopters, and very few emerge to be winners. Nearly everyone in this cycle "loses", but this is often ofset by the competitive advantage the technology provides in other areas of business. This was were computers were a decade or so ago. Before that, microelectronics were the disruptive technology that put Silicon Valley on the map.

Innovation, on the other hand, is usually about solving people's problems by applying technology in new and "innovative" ways. Most consumers may not think that a squeezable ketchup bottle is "innovative", but then they probably don't remember using a knife to get a flood of ketchup onto their plate.

The problem that Mr. Donofrio has is that he's using "innovation" to describe both innovative ideas and disruptive technology. Specificly, he's saying that computers are no longer a disruptive technology, and have entered a more stable period. He's basically correct.

Unfortunately, he doesn't understand that "the next big thing" will be a technology that probably has nothing to do with his business. For example, someone could invent an anti-gravity device tomorrow. The result would be another major disruption as shipping, transportation, space travel, and other industry raced to keep up with the disruption caused. So it will come, but he won't be able to predict its arrival.

Re: Yes Next Thing

[Valdoran]

And don't forget, 640k should be enough for anybody.

Re: Yes Next Thing

[AKAImBatman]

Not really if you look at the example of cars and airplanes. They really where hobbyist creations until WWI. Cars where not big business until Ford and his Model-T.

I have no idea where you're getting this from. Ever hear of Benz? Daimler? Maybach? Oldsmobile? All these companies were producing hundreds of cars before Ford ever entered the market. Even Cadillac (formed out of Ford's first, failed venture) beat Ford Motor Company to the market, netting itself about 2000 orders a mere 4 months after the first vehicles were produced.

As for airplanes, there were dozens of inventors who were competing with the Wrights to be the first to achieve powered flight. Even after the Wrights' flight, competition remained fierce as these different companies tried to build better planes to achieve sustained flight. Prizes like the Coupe d'Aviation Ernest Archdeaco and Grand Prix d'Aviation spurred development of the airplane to produce vehicles like Santos Dumont's 14-bis. By 1907, the first helicopter had flown.

By 1908, the Wright Brothers were offered to direct a French Flight School in Sarthe département, and later in Pau. They then returned to the states in 1909 and accepted a military contract for $30,000 to produce a plane that met the military's standards. Of course, they were by no means alone in the market. Here's a list of the pioneers and manufacturers who made early airplanes.

In other words, the car and airplane were hughly disruptive technologies. It took several years for critical mass to be reached (thus make it to the general public), but they were hot areas of research with tons of competition.

After WWI the aircraft manufacturers shrank back to small businesses.

The surplus planes from post WWI were flooded the market and temporarily met its needs. But by the mid-20's, investments into new technologies from Howard Hughes, Boeing, Lockheed, and others took hold in the rapid mail and passenger transport businesses. By the time of WWII, aircraft were far larger, more powerful, and capable of transatlantic flight.

Oh yeah, I've seen predictions like this before...

[eldavojohn]

From the sound of this article, they should add another one to the list.

This is just like Albert Abraham Michelson announcing (in 1896) that physics is dead and complete with nothing left to discover. Since then, I think there have been some shocking advancements.

I tire of articles that basically say, "Look, look, we found a person who holds an important position in the corporate world and they said something without thinking (possibly just to make shock value news)! Let's all point and laugh."

WTF!?

[cataclyst]

::cough::


BIOTECH!?!?!
What about the up and coming functional genomics?!?

Innovation stifled

[Neil Watson]

Innovation may be stifled but it's not for lack of ideas. The coporate influence in copyright and patent laws are the choke point.

The Next Big Thing Is... Already Here...

[__aaclcg7560]

As one of my college instructor told me, the next the big thing has already been around for at least ten years before anyone bother to take notice. The Internet been around since the 1970s but no one noticed until the web browser and general access became available in 1995. The concepts for a lot of late 20th century technology (i.e., TV, radio, radar and microwave ovens) that we take for granted today was developed in the 1900s through 1940s. The next big thing may already exist right now, we just don't know about it until it appears on Slashdot. ;)

Exactly.

[SatanicPuppy]

Everyone thinks that progress is going to come to an end, because they can't imagine what the next big thing could be, but that's their failing, not progresses.

Re:Exactly.

[networkBoy]

Really?
I didn't know we had the ability to interface with the human mind yet. I know we have some rudamentry ability to sense and stimpulate nerves, but nothing to this level. I think it is coming fast though, and when it does it will be like an avalanche.
-nB

Give the guy a break

[rcastro0]

He is quoted out of context, and is hard to know what exactly he meant
by "stop looking for the next big thing" quote. As far as I know, he may be saying that his job is not to hold a crystal ball in hand and try to predict the next big thing (neither should you). And he does *not* say there is nothing new to be discovered. He only says it is harder to come by these things in the tech world today. Elsewhere in the article it stands out clear that he is busy seeking to enable innovation, instead of getting worried about what the "next big thing" will be. So clearly he does not discard the power of innovation.

One cental remark he makes, that "innovation today is more about services, process, business models or cultural innovation than just product innovation" sounds *very* well put, IMHO. Let us not forget which sort of innovation Google, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Orkut, LinkedIn, Napster (the original), iTunes, and even Slashdot itself, among others, brought to the world -- hint: it is not technical.

Stop looking

[john82]

...and you'll certainly stop finding.

How did this guy get that high up in an IBM research org?

Stupidity

[CrazyMik]

Learn from the past man. Didn't IBM once say that there was only a market for 5 computers in the world?

This is a very sad statement. IBM still operates one of the few corporate R&D lab operations, but have been shifting theri focus to consulting. Yes it can make more predictible returns. But where will the next atomic force microscope come from?

IBM should find a PR person to babysit this guy.

superconductors

[N8F8]

flexible, inexpensive room tempaerature superconductors.

Re:Oh yeah, I've seen predictions like this before

[OwnedByTwoCats]

I thought the Michelson quote had another sentence: "now, if we can only figure out why these salts fog our photographic plates..." Or was that an ad-lib by my Physics Professor? (Dr. Thomas Eck, CWRU)

The thinking was that to the room of physics knowledge in 1896, the radioactivity door led only to a small closet of additional knowledge, rather than opening out into the wide, wide world.

In 1896, noone knew what made the sun shine. Now we do.

IMHO, precision chemistry (e.g. nanotechnology) will lead to some amazing things, but not at all the ones that people expect. K. Erich Drexler's universal manipulator will not happen, and a space elevator is a lot more likely. Precision fibers and laminates will do surprising things. MEMS and biotechnology will shake things up.

As fossil fuels dwindle and become more expensive, energy conservation will become more important, as will turning plant material into liquid fuels. There will be much innovation in how to do things using less energy, or less fuel. The accelleration in processor power will slow down, as thermal and quantum effects become more and more important and harder to overcome. But storage technologies, hard disk and flash will continue improving.

All of the changing ratios of relative costs will keep innovators busy finding better solutions to the changing problems.

no breakthrus recently

[Wansu]

Maybe he does lack imagination as some have said but he's got a point.

Consider the field of electronics. Most of the engineering work during the past 50 years has been refining the fabrication of the transistor and it's application. Regardless of whether you're talking about TV, audio equipment, computers, defense systems, industrial controls or any other product made of electronics.

It's all been about the transistor. The nobel prize in physics was awarded to 3 engineers in 1947. It took more than a decade to get the transistor into a form that could be used in prodcution. Since then, there have been many refinements including printed circuit boards, integrated circuits and lots of miniaturization of systems. We've gotten lots of mileage out of the transistor because of it's versatility as a controlled source. It can be used as a switch or as an amplifier. The mother of it's invention was the need for a better way of performing these switching and amplification functions than vacuum tubes could provide.

Transistor technology is mature. Discrete transistor circuitry is already considered as quaint as tube circuitry. Soon, we'll regard standard ICs the same way.

But where are the glass or plastic light based circuits on Star Trek and 2001 Space Oddessy? The answer is that awaits a breakthrough in physics of the same magnitude as the transistor was.

Since most of the people reading Slashdot are programmers rather than EEs, I will point out that much of the software we develop runs on machines made of this 50 year old transistor technology. Having machines based on light or water or living tissue or whatever form they'll eventually take is bound to change this.

But this breakthrough in physics hasn't happened yet. It might be next year or it might be 30 years from now. Look at the time it took us to progress from vacuum tubes to transistors. It's hard to predict. But there will be a certain transition period between transistor technology and whatever replaces it. Only then will we have some idea what the next big thing might be. Whatever it will be, it ain't in sight yet.

Obligatory BillG quote:

[inKubus]

"No one will ever need more than 640K of RAM"

I think that this is probably going to be the most exciting 50 years ever--so many new advances and new problems facing the world. I think that this guy needs to stop letting nostalgia get to him.

When in history have: so many people had the ability to share and communicate ideas
When in history have we actually had to worry about the carrying capacity of the planet.
When in history have we had one world government coming into power?

Ok, those are all social changes. Tech? Shit, too many to list: NANOTECHNOLOGY for one, will change everything from computers to cars to carpet. GENETIC ENGINEERING/BIOTECH will probably create a drug that stops the aging process (in the next 50 years), clones, etc. SPACE, humans will again turn their eyes towards the sky once we are mostly living peacefully around the world. Mars, Venus, probes, space stations, space tourism, space elevators (see NANOTECHNOLOGY), MORE.

Yeah, it's not as "easy" to innovate, but when was it ever EASY? Edison worked for years on the light bulb and his other inventions, which is probably one of the simplest things we use each day.

I mean, sure, most innovation today is happening either at a really large scale or a really small scale and so to the "average human" it doesn't seem very cool or sexy (it's not "human sized"). But once people see that these things will create human sized changes in the world, they are going to take notice.

IBM should FIRE this guy if he's the VP of Research.