innovative

Vinnie Mirchandani writes provocatively on his Deal Architect blog that Oracle's penchant for acquisitions may be hampering its ability to innovate in-house and write code:

In existing Oracle internally developed and acquired products in the last five years, Oracle's enhancements have been anemic.

Oracle, in my opinion, has forgotten how to develop code. Its top executives are deal makers, not technology visionaries. Worse, when it comes to their acquisitions, they cannot retain or easily replace the entrepreneurial talent...The rapid pace of acquisitions has also had a significant impact on Oracle support.

Customers report frequent and confusing changes … Read more

I’m no patent expert, but it’s clear after a little research that patent laws were put into place for two reasons: 1) they want to encourage secretive inventors to stop stashing their cool ideas under a mattress somewhere and make them public and 2) they want to rock the boat. Apple has never been accused of keeping new ideas under wraps, but by securing their new patent for “multifunction” touch technology like pinch, rotation, and swipe, they have certainly rocked the boat. We won’t know how or if the boat will be … Read more

Everyone's talking about the new Kindle, but here's a product that may present an even more radical innovation in the e-book sector: The Talking Book, created and distributed by the non-profit Literacy Bridge, is a low cost audio player/recorder with special features for Knowledge Sharing and Literacy Learning. It was developed entirely by volunteers and costs less than $10. The device involves an ecosystem to produce and share locally relevant audio content, allowing users to record their own messages and distribute them within local networks through a device-to-device copying capability. Other features include slow play for reading … Read more

Microsoft earlier this week celebrated its 10,000th patent. Implicit in that announcement is the supposition that "patents = innovation." However, a quick look at Microsoft's last five years demonstrate a company that is struggling to copycat the best the industry has to offer, rather than innovate.

Take, for example, Microsoft's decision to open retail stores. Never mind the fact that most technology companies have failed to successfully launch retail outlets, as CNET's Charles Cooper reminds us, and never mind that Microsoft's primary products like Windows 7 are likely to come pre-bundled with new computers, … Read more

When I had dinner with my former boss and mentor in Paris a few months ago (formerly vice president of marketing at a US-based enterprise software company, now CEO of a French enterprise software company), he shared a dirty little secret with me: "Forget about marketing," he told me, "it doesn't really matter. I spend 80 percent of my time on HR, finance, operations, and sales. Branding, marketing communications, PR - not my priorities." A few weeks later I came across a working paper called "Getting Marketing Back in the Boardroom," and seeing … Read more

The day started with a soothing performance by Deepak Ram, master of the bansuri, an Indian wooden flute. But the meditative state didn't last long as day two of the often mind-blowing TED got under way. (In case you aren't familiar with TED just click here.)

On Thursday there was a mix of physical and computer artistry, film production techniques, and clean-energy invention on tap with a focus on looking beyond current models of innovation. The ideas abound at TED, and it can be a rather dizzying experience. Every time you turn around another luminary is discussing their … Read more

To call TED "elitist" makes it sound like snobbery. Not so.

Instead, imagine a gathering peppered with dozens of futurists, artists, CEOs, and scientists--plus a few more folks who defy categorization. They get all together for several days (February 3 to 7) to listen to mind-blowing talks about everything from population trends to sea creatures. It is an intellectual Mardi Gras. The presentations are filmed, and they're so compelling that they almost instantly go viral online.

This is the annual TED or the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference (those in-the-know just call it "TED"). Think World … Read more

By Nick de la Mare, Associate Creative Director, frog design

There's a saying I remember from when I worked in advertising: "nothing kills a bad product faster than a good ad." That seemed to make a lot of sense when I heard it, but the more I look back I realize that it's defining things so narrowly as to be absurd. What IS a product anyway? A service-based thing like a house cleaner or a mechanic? A single-minded tool like a cup or hammer? Something digital and deeply nebulous like a Wi-Fi network? And what does &… Read more

Google is pretty fast-moving, as company cultures go, rolling out new products on a regular basis. And yet its popular Gmail service is only just now getting around to providing offline e-mail access, a feature that open-source Zimbra has had for nearly two years.

Excuse me, therefore, if I stifle a yawn at Google's announcement. While Google may claim nearly 70 percent of the search market, its rival, Yahoo, which acquired Zimbra in September 2007, is outpacing it in e-mail innovation.

It has ever been thus. Google's heart appears to be in search, not in alternative services like … Read more