Jeffrey Phillips summed up some main reasons why firms can’t or won’t innovate:

1. The Tyranny of Today. Yes, I know that most fifth graders may not fully understand the word tyranny, but they understand the pressures of delivering “today”. Most businesses are so focused on delivering this week, or this month, or this quarter that they simply cannot or will not think beyond some corporately directed and reinforced time horizon. I’ve written before about the use of scenario planning and future forecasting to identify opportunities that are beginning to unfold. Very few firms use scenario planning effectively and most are comfortable reacting to market changes rather than being the “leader”.
2. The Safety of Sameness. Innovating requires that you create strategies, products and services that make you different from your competition. As a firm gets larger and industries or market mature, being “different” seems risky or threatening. I was driving by my bank branch recently and it struck me that all bank branches look exactly the same – a squat square building with few windows and exactly three drive up alleys. I’m sure most are exactly the same on the inside as well – exactly three teller windows, a velvet rope alley to guide customers to the tellers, with offices along the periphery. Why is every bank and every branch so similar? Because there is safety in sameness.
3. Inevitable inertia. Innovation is change, and as we all know change is difficult. One of the reasons change is difficult is simply overcoming the inertia of the way things are currently done. Even when change makes a lot of sense, overcoming the inertia that sets in around the way things are done is difficult. Since innovation is typically risky change, the inertia is even more pronounced.
4. Creatures of the Culture. An organization runs on unwritten rules and informal processes we lump together in something we call culture. Corporate culture guides and dictates our thinking, and encourages activities and discourages activities and perspectives as well. We are all creatures of the culture of the organization we belong to. A culture can encourage innovation or discourage innovation.
5. Fear of Failure. No one likes to fail, but innovation simply requires the ability to fail and keep going, incorporating the learning from the failure rather than punishing the failure. If the organization promulgates a fear of failure, it can’t innovate.
6. Containing the creativity. Innovation requires creativity and divergent thinking. Any company that doesn’t promote creative thinking stymies innovation, since all ideas seem so similar to existing products and services.
7. Cannibalization Concerns and Turf Toughness. Many organizations are afraid to innovate because the new product or service may undercut or obsolete an existing product or service. So these firms defend the existing products at the expense of new ideas and new products, and are disrupted by another firm. Additionally, a new idea may intrude on someone else’s “turf” – that is, someone else believes the idea should belong with their team and they resist it. Don’t underestimate the power of a bureaucracy that feels threatened.

Knowing these barriers and keeping them in mind while managing innovation should be one of the most important steps to resolve them.

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Peter Smith wrote a very interessting comment on facebook’s F8 Conference at PCWorld: Facebook Plots its Future: Will it Be Our Overlord?
I agree with Peter in nearly every point – especially I share this approach to 100%: I prefer to keep my professional and personal lives more or less separate. Although I also make business with some of my friends, I’d like to save a bit of my “schizophrenia”.

In my point of view there is (only) one thing that can … or I’d say will herald the downfall of facebook: overload. facebook want’s to become the all-in-one service suitable for every purpose. This won’t work!

Maybe you will disabuse me in a couple of years …

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NPR is featuring, at its site, an excerpt from The Shallows titled “The Very Image of a Book” [...]. [It] describes how pundits have, for about two centuries now, been eagerly proclaiming the imminent death of the book. And, over and over again, they’ve been proven wrong.
(Nicholas Carr)

There’s life in the old dog yet.

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The swiss association GWWK has built the first hydropower plant with water swirl technology. This way of energy generation is especially desinged for small constructions with drop heights starting from 0.7 meters. The originator of the technology called “gravitation water vortex power plant” is from Austria: Zotlöterer

How does it work?
According to Daniel Styger from GWWK you can imagine a filled bath tub. Opening the drain automatically leads to a swirl in the water while draining off. This phenomenon caused by the gravitation is the basis of this patented technology.

One more fact is remarkable about the plant in Schöftland (Switzerland): it’s a collaborative project financed by 100 private sponsors.

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On computerscienceschools.net you can find an interesting list if the 10 tech milestones in the past 130 years.

I largely share this view – except the iPod. To my mind this device is just a consitent enhancement of Sony’s good old cassette-based Walkman based on today’s technology – although I have to admit that the Apple’s success is impressive. I would trade the iPod in for a technology from the energy sector like the battery or solar cells or perhaps already photovoltaics.

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