“The way Robert Newhart II sees it, the only resource America has left to capitalize on is one the nation has been known for since its beginning — its power to innovate,” Cathy Carroll () writes for The Bend Bulletin (Bend, Oregon). “Innovation is America’s economic engine, but it’s sorely in need of a tuneup, according to Newhart, chief executive officer of the Oregon Innovation Center in Bend. He’s on a mission to create a national dialogue about innovation. When Apple Computer created the iPod, Nike created the waffle-soled running shoe, Microsoft launched Windows and NASA put a man on the moon, they clearly were innovating.”
MacDailyNews Take: Interesting, uh, hold on, what was that, again… What? What? What?! (in our best Sheila Broflovski voices). Sorry, we can’t let this revisionist history just flow on past, especially with the Apple reference right there in the same sentence. The only innovation Microsoft brought to Windows was copying as much of Apple’s Mac graphical user interface (albeit backwards and upside down in an attempt to avoid a lawsuit) as they could and getting away with it. Windows 95, arguably the first semi-usable version of Windows came eleven (11) years after Apple’s Mac OS debut in 1984. We’ll rewrite the sentence correctly now: “When Apple Computer created the Mac and the iPod, Nike created the waffle-soled running shoe, and NASA put a man on the moon, they clearly were innovating.” There, that’s much better.
Carroll continues, “Most companies and individuals don’t innovate, but anyone can learn how, Newhart said. He intends to spread that message to the world with a new film he created with Cliff Joyce of PureBlend New Media Design Group in Bend. ‘Free Radicals of Innovation’ includes interviews with more than 50 innovators — from musicians to scientists, inventors and software developers. It also includes methods on how to use creativity and savvy to accelerate solutions for businesses, communities and families.”
“A prime example of an innovator is Apple, with its iPod, because it’s changing the rules of the game Sony invented. It did that by innovating in what Newhart has outlined as the ‘six Ps’ of innovation: people, price, promotion, product, place and process,” Carroll writes.
MacDailyNews Take: With Windows, Microsoft was obviously following the “six P’s” of Microsoft innovation: plunder, pilfer, prevaricate, parrot, poach and profit.
Carroll continues, “The iPod is an example of innovation on those fronts because it changed the process of previewing, buying, organizing and listening to music. Its iTunes software makes it easy for people to organize and play music on their computers, assemble playlists and quickly transfer music to their iPods. It solved the music industry’s piracy problem by providing a new place, the online iTunes Music Store. There, it changed pricing, selling songs online for 99 cents each.”
Full article here.