Innovation Needs To Lead Events

Today`s and , most probably, this week`s favourite quote comes from Paul Saffo`s article about ways to rescue Yahoo, published in The New York Times, and it goes like this:


"Ultimately, innovations need to lead events. Trouble begins the moment a company is forced to respond to events, and the greater the lag, the greater the potential for disaster." 

Paul is a forecaster who explores change and I stumbled upon him through twitter (he was tweeting about Nasa`s discovery of the first planet in the habitable zone of a solar system similar to ours, which was pretty interesting to further investigate).

Back to the quote: the fact that innovations need to lead events is proving ever more true today, when technological progress,  interconnectivity over networks and the growing influence of communities have raised the bar high, making competition fearsome, bloody and unforgiven. Paul is talking about Yahoo, but also look at RIM, the manufacture of Blackberry, the hit phone and the competitor to the iPhone only a couple of months ago. The innovation it brought to market, its USP, is quickly fading. No "new, cool stuff", no honey. Their tablet business looks to me as an example of following the events rather than dictating them, and the results are showing: the reality failing to match their growth and revenue forecasts. RIM needs to fix its organizational structure and sit down at the design table/screen and think about the next great thing it can bring in mobile.

This is an interesting time as well: you can not hide behind past laurels any more. The digital plus the crisis have thrown all of us out of our comfort zones: starting with the job market and how you approach your career to the rise and advance of the open, shared and increasingly participatory business models and non-traditional ways of leading and managing companies. Take the newspaper industry: the past years have witness the decline in advertising revenues in the Western world by approximately half! Old players that have been around for decades where thrown into a downward swirl reversed only by those who caught up rapidly with today`s change/consumer habits.

Some went digital or partly digital, some re-enforced their quality and usefulness while others went against market trends and forecasts proving that given the right formula, digital is by now means a threat. Still, most are following trends trying to respond, but few are setting them and we all know which one is better.

Innovations need to lead events. Today, we have all the tools, ever more than a couple of years ago, to break rules, create and  redefine conventions. In this aspect, it becomes quite simple.

4 different ways you can learn about wireless networks on the web

If you have a mobile phone or a computer chances are you heard about  wireless networks. If not, then this post will help you learn more about it. Here are a couple of resources on the web that I found useful.

• wikipedia

Start with open source encyclopaedia, a succinct summary of wireless networks, citing cambrige.org and the GSM Association amongst other sources, that gives you an idea of types of wireless connections, their uses and some environmental concerns. 

• International Telecommunications Union

ITU shortly, is dedicated to connecting all the world`s people; they allocate global radio spectrum and satellite orbits which is pretty cool.  Their glossary is written in an accessible technical jargon. On networks, I found the Cellular Radio entry which defines the technology that has made wide scale mobile telephony possible. The Cellular Radio family includes the first generation FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access) systems, the basis for the first generation cellular radio systems, TDMA and CDMA, the current generation digital technologies that support high bit rate voice and limited data communications and 3G systems,  that support voice and high bit rate data allowing mobile multimedia applications. 

The glossary must have been written some while ago as in the 3G entry it says:"It will be the basis for a wireless information society where access to information and information services such as electronic commerce is available anytime, anyplace and anywhere to anybody." Some of us are already living in this information society while a good chunk is slowly getting there.

• wisegeek

WISEGEEK has some useful tips on 2 and 3G networks, how they work and how to find out whether your carrier is offering a 3G network or not (the UMTS standard for example ). They say that globally, 3G systems have been operational since 2005, for a whole picture, jump here. 

• slideshare

For those who like graphics, slideshare has a bunch of presentation done on this topic, you can start with Wireless and Mobile Networks that gives a good outline and lots of illustrative material to help you sort out the technicalities, although I have to admit, it assumes some prior telecommunications knowledge.


While also surfing slideshare, I found a presentation on UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) by Guoyuo He at the Helsinki University of Technology, that, was quite tough worded  for my level, but from which I subtracted 2 slides for this post to show what is it that the 3G and the future 4G networks are bringing to the table:

...and if you know other sources that are accessible for the non-technical pleb, share your link below.

Contributing to open source-an idea worth spreading

Hey you open source fanatics, watch this revealing and instructional video about a farmer who built his own tractor in 6 days while also setting a solid brick on the foundation of open source hardware.

PS: future belongs to open source, and here is a non-Android example that proves it.

The Future in Mobile Business Model is ...Now

Now that  vacation time is over there isn`t a better way to start the routine  than with a brilliant idea, namely  Blyk`s Business Model Innovation in the Mobile Industry. Blyk is a company that basically offers calling minutes to users who choose to receive ads from them. Simple, ethical and profitable. Take a look: