1. Creativity Comes Naturally
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A Little Talent Helps
Two phases:
Creation
Delivery
Vincent Van Gogh, age 9
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2. How innovative?
Long term vs. short term
Research vs.
advanced
development Understand the Actors,
Leap vs. step and their Motivations.
Directly
determine
how broad the net
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Have a Vision Beyond the edge
Design for today => instantly obsolete
unrealistic Start with todays
read sci-fi exotic:
tomorrow's
watch movies standard
philosophy Xerox Alto
dream Moore's Law
Invention then
customer product
problem Selling futures
crushes the present and the future
direction The Osborne Effect
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3. Taking Risks Or Inspired?
Demand failure
Insufficient failure =>
insufficient innovation
Success through diversity
IBM: 1-5% of projects
enter products
Sun: 10-20%
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Reckless? Even
failures
are useful
Don't get
upset,
Learn!
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4. Serendipity
Discovery by accident
The color purple
Penicillin Isolation
Inspiration happens when it Away from the old ways
happens
Away from the narrow
Manufacturing Luck
Being in the right place at the right time vision
Have a gut feeling (vision) that there's Away from the infighting
something there
What they call in the stock market "a
diverse portfolio"
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Start Small
Big groups are
expensive Perspective
bureaucratic Overall view
Inflexible
Small groups are
Investigate the opposition
inexpensive Investigate tangents
creative eg Java & CE
flexible
limited in power
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5. Craziness
Creative people are crazy When you've finally got
Feed the craziness
Let the train jump the
something...
What do you do with it?
tracks
But there are limits...
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Design & Implementation
Inseparable
No such thing as an
"architect" Don't confuse:
The Devil is in the Details Hacking together a demo
Iterate up and down the Engineering a product
levels of abstraction
Throw everything out at
least three times
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6. Politics - Internal
Organizations develop
Obsolete yourself
antibodies
If you can invent it,
Bend new things to look
someone else can
like the old
e.g.. 68K => SPARC
Territoriality
Close-mindedness
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Technology Transfer Don't fight the Genetic
Create new
and let the old
Code
die out Organizations do what
Infect the old they do
and transform Small steps work
into the new Large ones don't
eg. Xerox - a copier
company
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7. Politics - External
The usual competitive pressures
Extreme forms in software Launch
Consortiums - NeWS Motivate!
Free software - Emacs
Explain why it's interesting
Economies of scale - Microsoft
Engineering: large; Unit Cost: tiny
in 10 seconds
at a deep level
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Wanting Too Much Continuity of passion
Big piece of a small pie The People must follow
vs Small piece of a big pie through
Researchers can't just do
Or no pie at all
NeWS research
Beta Papers
It is easy to be seduced by ideas only
re-develop to incorporate
tales of riches OK for very long term/abstract
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8. After success... Standard Failure Modes
Cope with growth Cool, but who cares?
Morale Not a big enough leap
Overwork Too big a leap
Creating a community Boring
It's not a small communal Killed
company
affair anymore competition
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As Time Passes
Project size &
Summary cost increase
Innovation is (relatively) Uncertainty
easy decreases
Transfer to a product is Risk transforms:
hard tech to
business
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9. Few solid rules
Many failures
Success is rare
Every success unique
But success is sweet!
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