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

no way

[Madman]

A while back the head of the US patent office declare it closed because according to him all possible inventions had been thought of, there was no room for any more innovation. The office was re-opened shortly after that moron had been removed. We're millions of patents past that now. It's an attitude of small-minded people, I'm looking forward to the future.

The Patent Office agrees with this

[paiute]

"The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end."

Henry L. Ellsworth, Commissioner of the Patent Office, 1843

he's an idiot.

[acroyear]

I'll take Cringely's take on it: people overestimate change in the short term and underestimate change in the long term.

thinking there's "no big thing" coming totally misses the fact that *most* people never saw the "next big thing" except those actually making it.

There will be a next big thing, and like every "next big thing", nobody will see it coming. That's the whole point. If you can see the next big thing, YOU go make it.

jackass has no imagination left.

about all I can say about "next big things" is that there are so many developers out there that it can be easily cloned within a matter of days, open-source or not.