Innovation for innovation's sake

Innovation. The concept has been driving management principles for years together now that it has almost become a cliche. Entire industries have spawned in the last few years, with self-proclaimed creativity consultants and experts helping out corporations lacking the edge to beat the competition in the race for the most innovative product out there.

Many people equate innovation with business success and use them synonymously. It is almost as if innovation or the lack thereof alone can make or break a company. This innovation fever comes with its many cousins - lateral thinking, thinking out of the box and creativity. Of course, these should be, by no means, discouraged for only this vitality can churn out the next iPod or Post-it notes. But when a company gears itself for innovation and creativity alone and forgets how it affects the bottom line, you can know for sure it is headed for trouble. Innovation, for the sake of innovation, is simply not worth it.

The very concept of innovation, successful innovation that can affect your company's future, may not be what it seems. In a very insightful article on the topic, Carleen Hawn dissects the history of Apple and its corporate culture which teems with innovation and creativity. Hawn recalls how Apple almost single-handedly created the personal computer market, only to be taken over by IBM and its clones, powered by software from the then lesser-known Microsoft. What happened after that is history. Apple's decision of not to open up and license its operating system could have also considerably contributed to its low market share in the global personal computing market. As she puts its, technological innovation is what drives Apple, not business-driven. And that is the problem.

To take the exact opposite of Apple, we need to look no further than Microsoft. Technological innovation has not been the company's strongpoint. But when it comes to business-models, Microsoft is second to none. Gates and co saw an opportunity to bundle their very first operating system (which wasn't designed by them, as a matter of fact) with IBM's PCs, thus getting access to a very large customer base, with virtually no investment in distribution. What is more, Microsoft got paid by IBM for every PC that shipped with MS-DOS. The growth from a startup started by a college dropout to the software colossus that it is now is not a freak incident, it was business strategy and execution at its best.

So the next time you hear another preacher touting innovation as the only thing that can keep you going, just remember this old but very relevant quote:

"Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two, and only two, basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." - Peter F. Drucker

The jargon of technology

Research from Nielsen/NetRatings, Britons using cutting edge technology are not as savvy when it comes to jargons, reports BBC.com. For example, 40% of online Brits receive news feeds, but are not familiar with the official term Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

Some more examples:

• Only 57% of online Brits knew that acronym for instant messaging was IM.
• 75% did not know VOD stands for Video-on-Demand.
• 35% have heard about podcasting but didn't know what it meant.

That is all very well, but does any of these statistics matter? If people are already using technology but just don't call it by its popular name, does it mean they are any less technologically inclined? In a world where technology is obsolete the second after it is invented and only the ubergeeks can keep up, doing that would be next to impossible.

A rose by any other name...

I am pretty certain the findings would be applicable throughout most of the world, not many people who actually use technology would be aware of the different names it is known by. That is because there is no need to. That is because being able to use the technology for betterment of our lives is infinitely more important than keeping track in the acronym jungle. If you now how to use newsfeeds and read them daily, why bother with the "official name" of RSS anyway?

Link: BBC

Nokia N95 - Pushing technology further

If you happen to be one of the millions of mobile phone owners who have just upgraded to the latest Nokia N-series 'multimedia devices', this article can be quite depressing. Yes, you have been just rendered obsolete.

Nokia has announced the latest member of the N-Series family, the mighty Nokia N95. The first Nokia phone to have integrated GPS functionality (with maps of over 100 countries), the N95 comes with a 5 Mega-Pixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens. More notably, it has a 2.6 inch QVGA screen and runs the Symbian S60 OS. The device has a TV out feature and support for Universal Plug and Play technology facilitating connection with a compatible TV. Also supporting HSPDA and EDGE technologies for high-speed network connections, it also has integrated WLAN.

With 8 GB hard-drive that can carry almost all your favourite tracks, the device has built-in stereo speakers with 3D stereo effect and a standard 3.5 mm audio jack. This very well could be the nemesis of the new generation iPods.

A few posts back, I had written about the innovation wave and how I try to cope with it. I had just jumped from Nokia 6670 to the N-70 (not much of an upgrade anyway!) but technology just beats me to it. When Nokia terms their products 'high-performance multimedia devices' instead of just phones or even smartphones, I think they maybe right.

Get more details at the Nokia N95 site. For the more technologically inclined, the technical specifications are also available.

Free and legal music downloads from SpiralFrog

In what could change the music industry since the launch of Apple's iTunes service, a startup company called SpiralFrog will offer music downloads for free. Supported by the vast catalogue of Universal Music which backs the service, this model hopes to make its revenue through advertisements. The users of the service will have to watch advertisements and the downloaded music will be copy protected to prevent being passed onto others. The advertisements will be a 90-second block which has to be watched before the content will be made available.

This move could be even more critical when the music and film industry is fighting a losing battle against piracy and illegal sharing through peer-to-peer networks. Almost every copy protection technology that has been employed recently has either landed the publisher in hot soup (Sony's DRM woes) or has been broken (FairUse4WM breaks Microsoft DRM).

Although not the first service of its kind to offer free content supported by advertising (Napster is already doing it and Kazaa is expected to follow suit shortly), SpiralFrog will offer actual music which can be stored on the user's computer, whereas Napster provides a streaming service, which can be heard only once. The likely option for Universal's cut would be a share of the advertising revenue generated through the service.Initially, the service will be available in the US and Canada, and may branch out to other regions depending on the success of the venture.

Web analytics revisited

Just like research into customer behaviour is vital for all businesses, websites today cannot do without Web analytics. Simply put, Web Analytics is the collection and analysis of data on how users behave on a particular website. Web analytics can help you in deciding what users look for and see in a website, whether they are interested in staying on or decide to move on and so on.

After investing a lot of money, effort and time into building traffic to a website, it is really important to check your return on investment, and web analytics tools helps in doing that. Web analytics solutions can tell you which pages are the most popular on your site, what content users find more appealing and where they skip off to other destinations. They can also tell you which pages referred users to your site or what keywords in search engines led them to you.

Such kind of information is vital for webmasters and marketers because it helps them in tailoring their site content and design to cater to the needs of the users. When users find more relevant content during their next visit, they are sure to stick on. Besides, the solution can also tell you where users leave off, hinting at where your content or design needs modification to make them stay on.

There are lots of web analytics solutions in the market and depending on the features and benefits offered, the prices range from free to several thousands of dollars. I have been using Google Analytics (formerly Urchin) for sometime now, and I find it extremely useful, not to mention, it is free as well. Google Analytics has just been released for free sign-ups from the invitation-only mode and I would recommend getting an account to get started. It is extremely simple to use and gives you more information than most of us bloggers would need.

Web analytics solutions are not something that you can use just for the fun of it, it is something that is critical to measuring user behaviour metrics on your website. Anybody serious about developing a website as an online business or even as a hobby should definitely take a look into them. By creating more compelling content and improved design, you offer a better reason for users to visit your site again, which is a critical factor in deciding the success of the website.