Category Archives: Innovation

All posts that talk about innovation theory and technological innovations

NASA

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I’ve gotta say, it’s hard to be a lover of space, NASA and scientific exploration right now. With the end of the shuttle program around the corner, and a new bill to cut a huge amount of funding from NASA (article) things are looking rather down right now. Basically this would kill the James Webb telescope. I think this would be a terrible thing.

Why should we invest? Well, the US prides itself on being number one in everything, even if we aren’t actually number one. Without continuing to push the frontier of research we will fall behind eventually. The article above, or another article mentioned congress killing the Super Collider in Texas, it would have been able to produce the novel results that the Large Hadroc Collider is producing now. The US would be the world leader in particle physics. We are starting to fall behind. Europe is going to be the world leader, and in the future we will be reading articles written by Europeans. We could be excellent teaching centers for particle physics for years to come, but the best of the best will not be in the US.

The same could happen with astronomy. The Hubble Telescope led to over 9,000 scientific papers being published. Yes, that may seem like we were probably spending more money on research than just the money that we spent on Hubble, but remember we were also producing jobs to support those scientists that were writing the papers. The Webb Telescope is going to be significantly more powerful than Hubble. We have had some amazing picture of space and the universe around us because of Hubble. Pictures of the Crab Nebula, Pillars of Creation and the Rose Galaxy. See below.

Top Left Crab Nebula, Right Pillars of Creation Bottom Rose Galaxy

For me, these images instill a feeling of awe and wonder. Through the Hubble we’ve expanded our understanding of how the universe works and how dangerous of a place we live. The rose galaxy, or galaxies, are two galaxies colliding with each other. Our galaxy is actually predicted to collide with the andromeda galaxy in a few million years. We know this because of Hubble.

We are also starting to realize that what we’re learning at the particle level may interact with the origins of the universe. For example, string/M theory also is a theory about how the universe was started. We need to be able to keep seeing back in time to understand how these theories interact with each other.

The Power of Old Technology

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So most of what I post about is about innovation and how that can impact the economy. However, these innovations can take years to hit the larger part of a given market let alone the greater population (either in a country or in the world). I think it’s pretty obvious why it takes so long for technology to diffuse in a given area, but I’ll list some. I think the two biggest adoption slow downs are price and lock-in. I think price is fairly straight forward, if you can’t afford it you can’t buy it right away. You have to wait until the product reaches a price point you can afford. This may mean that you bought an original iPhone when the iPhone 3GS came out or something along those lines. Lock-in is a little bit more complicated. There can be a couple different types of lock-in. Keeping with the cell phone example, you are locked into a specific network based on your contract, and in some cases with the difficulty in taking your number to the new network with you. The other type of lock in is the fact that you are already using a phone. You may already really enjoy using your Blackberry, because you use Blackberry messenger, so you’re going to continue using Blackberry phones even if it is a lesser product.

Most of those examples are from our developed world. Most of the time we don’t think about how the rest of the world uses technology. In parts of India people are still using those old Nokia phones we had about 10 years ago. They were sturdy phones that were able to call and text. In those areas were the only connection is a mobile phone that is powered by a solar panel these old technologies are important. The problem with mixing new technologies like solar panels with rural farmers that still mostly use a hoe for farming is that they have no abilities to fix or deal with a broken solar panel. While most people in the developed world do not either, there are people that do have the experience and they are only a phone call away.

Old technologies also have a habit of making a comeback. Look at the recent explosion of LP sales. This technology was basically dead during the 80’s and 90’s, however it’s extremely popular now again. This is partially because of other effects. The fact that when you purchase many LPs you are able to get a digital version of the album makes it less risky for you to buy the LP. I say risky, not that there is much risk, because without that most people would result to downloading a copy of the album and with the copyright system the way it is, you risk lawsuits etc.

There’s an interesting book on this topic. It’s called “Shock of the Old” by David Edgerton. It’s a great read, pretty fast to get through it too. There’s some surprising numbers in there. For instance, the Nazi’s used more horses in WWII than the British did in WWI. While they were used for carrying supplies, it’s not something we see in movies or video games. Apparently even the US had 1 horse for every 4 men.

Are there any old technologies that you’ve seen a resurfacing of, or that you’ve heard of being used today?

Innovation and Software Patents

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Whenever a new type of product is released there are a lot of difficulties with intellectual property. This is being played out in biotechnology and software. As recently as last year it was possible to patent human genes in the US. See this link for the recent verdict against it. The ACLU also had a write up from 2009 when this case was still ongoing about the history of genetic patenting. Software is another case of this. Many people argue that since software is an algorithm or series of statements that leads to a result it should not be patentable. This makes sense as mathematical proofs are unable to be patented. The argument is that for proofs these are discoveries and more natural processes than creating technology.

In the EU it is not possible to obtain a software patent at all. They claim that with software there are multiple different methods to obtain the same output. Software patenting is a very recent trend. The most famous example is the Amazon.com one-click to buy button. Which, if you don’t know what it is, basically allows you to store an address and a credit card and automatically buy whatever product you’re looking at. Fairly simple right? Well there was a lawsuit against a major competitor, Barnes and Noble about this in ’99. Some how this patent managed to survive the re-review, even though it’s a fairly obvious idea and could be implemented in about a billion different ways. On the billions, I’m not even exaggerating. There would be so many different interactions that could make the actual implementation totally different. These range from database types, information request, how the data is actually stored in the data base. There could be nothing similar between the implementation at all, yet Amazon ones all the methods to do this. In terms of patents this is effectively an amazing patent.

Let’s put this more simply. If software patents had been allowable in the 70’s when software first started to take off we would be living in a different world. BIOS have been owned by IBM until 1990 or so, which would have made manufacturing computers a two horse race between Apple and IBM. Microsoft or Apple could have patented the Operating system, and then the graphic user interface. IT innovation would have been non-existent. Think of this, some one could have patented data sorting. There are a many different ways to sort data in the CS world and all of them would have been covered by a single patent. Then some one could have decided to patented sorting on a multi-core computer (by then sorting as a patent would have expired).

Software is more like a mathematical proof than it’s like inventing the computer.

Innovation in the software world has been amazing because it has been something of a free for all. However, there are drawbacks to this lack of IP protection. In the most recent version of iOS, iOS5, Apple has been accused of lifting many of it’s new “innovations” from apps that have been rejected from the app store, or that have been selling in the jailbroke iPhone app store. Here’s the link for the article. How do we deal with cases like this, either Goliath stealing from David or David stealing from Goliath? There needs to be some sort of protection.

Potentially copyright should cover this, or a registered design. Perhaps in the case of the app stores a non-compete agreement should be signed if the app is rejected by Apple. Meaning Apple won’t steal it. However, there is no easy solution. Software design thefts are going to be very difficult to manage and deal with.

Patents and Innovations

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So, I think that the news that Apple and Nokia decided to drop lawsuits against each other is a good starting point for this discussion. Here’s the BBC article discussing the decision. Basically, Apple decided to license several patents from Nokia. Which in itself has some implication for innovation within the Smart Phone market.

I plan to do several of these types of posts. However, in this one I will focus specifically on smart phones. This will extend to many other product spaces, but not to software or business models.

So first what are some implications of this agreement by Nokia and Apple? Well, the most obvious is that they aren’t suing each other any more. The less obvious is that neither of these cases was heard by a judge or a jury. This doesn’t allow us, the observer, to actually know if these patents were valid or not (see my post on patents to see what a valid patent is). In some cases the patent office, whichever office, may approve a patent that is invalid. This could be due to prior art, like the PB&J sandwich described in my patent post, or that it’s an obvious invention. The only way that a patent’s validity can be overturned is by a jury or a judge. Let’s say that Nokia is also suing HTC over the exact same infringement. HTC doesn’t believe that the Nokia patent is valid so they were also counter suing saying that it’s an invalid patent and HTC has the reasons why. So, this case goes to trial and Nokia is now able to say that Apple is currently licensing this patent from them. This claim will give a great deal of credibility to Nokia’s claim. At this point HTC may have to decide to license with Nokia to avoid the potential of a huge fine.

In this case Nokia has a tract record of being an innovative firm. What happens when the firm isn’t an innovative firm or has no products though? Well, these cases happen all the time. For instance a few years ago RIM, the maker of BlackBerry was hit with a lawsuit that would have effectively shut down the Blackberry network, or prevent emails. Here’s a link to when it started. While at the time it was a $60million fine, it eventually got up to $612.5 million. The firm suing BlackBerry NTP, doesn’t actually produce anything. They are a patent management firm. In other words, a patent troll.

So what does this do to our economy when it’s based upon innovation. Patenting is supposed to protect innovative firms from competition so they can exploit their invention. It’s supposed to grow the economy, as these firms can license out the patent and allow other people to manufacture the product. Well, in this case it took $612.5 million from the pocket of a firm that was innovating and creating a product and put it into the pocket of a firm that doesn’t produce anything. That’s not the best for innovation.

There are some good things about the patents though. For instance, once the Xerox patent expired for the copier, there was an explosion of innovation in the field and Xerox nearly lost all market share. It had to sprint to catch back up. How did this happen? Well, you are allowed to work on a patented technology for research and development. Xerox’s competitors didn’t sit idle while Xerox was dominating the market. They were waiting until they were able to sell a product and then unleashed pent up innovation onto the market. This was an excellent thing for consumers. We can thank the fact that this patent ran out for our 3 in 1 printers.