innovation playground Idris Mootee

Apple Vs Samsung - The Verdict Is A Wake-Up Call And Shaping The Very Nature Of What Competitive Strategy Means.

Here I am the first day in our new office - the building is officially named Idea Couture Place and I took the opporunity to talk about who we are and what are really good at to our people. There are still a lot of people that don't quite understand what a strategic innovation firm does and why it is not just another industrial design, strategy firm or creative house.

Now the move is over but it will take abother 2 months before we are really settled as many furnitures and equipment are still shipping from Italty, Belgium and China. I can't wait to see the fully finished office. For now, everyone is really happy. The roof top patio will look like a boutique hotel.

What exactly does Apple’s victory means for many other companies? The overwhelming patent infringement victory over Samsung is shaping the strategies of many and everyone is getting a wake-up call and now they need to revisit how they approach strategic innovation.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook told his employees about how Apple values originality and innovation and pour their lives into making the best products on earth. They do this to delight their customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy.

The result of this court case actually shapes the playing field of competition and the very nature of competitive strategy. Samsung, Motorola (Google), HTC, RIM, HP, Nokia, RIM, Microsoft, Xerox, Sony, Amazon and IBM . All have quivers full of patents and armies of retained patent lawyers ready to go to court to protect their interests and raise the barriers of entry for new players.

If you look at any new or old product categories, product and user experiences will become more andmore similar over time. Look around you and you realize a lot of cars looks the same and drive the same way. And over time, most phones, laptops or tablets will have similar designs and behaviors, just like TVs, cameras and typewriters. Switches and buttons whether they have rounded or rectangular corners or whatever shaped icons and the overall look and feel aren't likely the key points of differentiation. It has always been part of the commoditization process and companies will continue try to innovate with new ideas.

Every great innovation attracts copycats and it is hard to say whether we are promoting innovation by offering protection or deterring innovation by raising the barriers. There is no easy answer to this one. What’s next? If you’re a small start-up you will have a hard time to make it big as once you gain some attention and market success, you will then discover that you may be infringing on patents even though you think you’re not.

Can anyone realistically come up with an idea that can past the patent test of Apple/Google(Motorola)/Cisco/Xeorx/RIM/Sony/Microsoft and Intellectual Ventures (the world's biggest patent troll) when everone is waiting to collect royalties for what you were pretty sure was an original idea or invention.

I can’t wait for a day when Apple is suing Google and Google is suing Nokia and HP is suing Apple and Samsung is suing HP and everyone is suing everyone – one hell of a party. In the end, it's more likely that these crazy entanglements will result in more cross-licensing agreements than to massive payouts – one big happy family and everyone is getting a check.

As for now, my phone hasn’t stop ringing as every company needs to “out-innovate” and wants Idea Couture to bring Design Thinking to them. Now no one is safe. Welcome to the crazy world.

Smart Phone And Health Impact Warning? It Could Take Decades To Fully Understand The Risks.

There were been suggestions for years about health risks regarding using mobile phones. The city of San Francisco is legislating retailers to give outhealth warning material. CTIA attorney is fighting back asking the judge to freeze city ordinance requiring phone retailers to disclose possible health risks. The city stands by its law and believes people should be educated about ways to reduce risk.

The law was adopted two years ago and retailers need to inform mobile buyers the risks. Due to the rise of smart phone adoption in our everyday lives, there have been several questions posed on the safety as a result of radiation as well as heat. Mobile phones use electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range and people believe that this may be harmful to the health of human beings. There are large bodies of research involve both epidemiological and experimental and both on humans and non-humans but no definitive conclusions.

Back to the ordinacne, funny they call it a fact sheet. Is it really a fact? Not until we can prove someone die from radiation as a result of talking too much on your cell phone, can you make that claim now? We are used to health warnings that may not be truthful but of good intent, on the other hand it is hard to have definitive evidence and often scientific studies can prove either way. It could take decades for us to understand whether the risks are real or not.

Lawyers gave an example from Starbucks, which has to post a warning since a chemical produced in the coffee-making process is known to cause cancer. If we use this standard, we will be getting 100 “fact sheets” a day from drinking, eating, reading and simply walking into a store or getting into a car. May be someone can develop an app for that; there’s the unmet needs. The other innovation opportunity is for a low radiation and shielded smart phone, Motorola, Samsung, Blackberry, Nokia.. anyone interested?

I think we get more harm from watching TVs, it is the number 3 activity following sleep and work. According to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers, prolonged TV viewing was associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and premature death. The study first appeared in the June 15, 2011, edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. I think this conclusion has a lot more merits. I think all TV programs should have a health warning including physical and mental health implications. I think many programs can reduce our ability to think if you know what I mean.

Another innovation opportunity is to have breaker to limit how each individual spend in front of a smart TV. And it will point you to the gym once you’ve spent more that you are allowed and will monitor your exercise through your iPhone. Isn’t this a cool idea? Need to go to sleep. 5am tomorrow heading to the airport.

It Is Time For China To Think Real About Innovation And What Policies And Practices Can Propel China Into The Next Century When Labor Cost Will Double In A Few Short Years And Intensified Talent Shortage..

It’s election time in the US and everyone is talking about China. China bashing happens before the election and after it’s over, people will be back to business as usual. The fact is US trade deficit is due to domestic factors and not Chinese policy and we need to address the very core of "structural competitiveness" rather than these nonsense talk. We should be focusing on innovation on a large scale and reinventing industries of tomorrow. US will always procure from low cost countries whether it is China or others.

China is an integrated part of the US (and the world) economy and no one really has any idea of the true implications of rising Chinese labor costs and what does it mean for China, the US and the world? I’m traveling across Western remote China (I was in India last week) this week and visited dozens of companies and trying to understand development even in the remote provinces, so it’s the perefct time to write this blog post about innovation in China.

Labor costs in Guangdong province (in the southern part of China which is sometimes called the factory of the world) have been rising at 13-15% a year and with rising costs for logistics will at some point make China less attractive. China has tremendous competitive advantage even with rising costs.

First, the extreme flexibility and scalability of workforce is unmatched by any other country in the world. For them, if they need to ramp up a factory in 2-3 days with an additional 1,000 workers that are prepared to work 14-16 hours a day to meet a production deadline, they can do it.

Second, it’s a tightly integrated supply chain eco-system, the main reason being that companies are not moving their factories inland to save costs is the speed-to-market. Consider that a strategic innovation in industry structure by design.

China are constantly “playing” with the idea of “process innovation” by incrementally improving the way they make things and adapt to market needs. It is a matter of time that they will start to think how to capture high value opportunities going up-stream in the value chain, which resides in the design and technology development. Currently designers, engineers and marketers are the ones who create and capture most of the value from innovative products. Policy makers in China understand this (no surprise) and are pouring massive dollars into research and development. The five-year plan calls for “indigenous innovation”, which the government thinks it can foster by subsidizing “strategic” industries and strong-arming foreign firms to transfer intellectual property to budding national champions.

And smaller companies are happy to copy and learn from whatever they can get their hands on by working with their customers. The question is can China truly develop its own innovation capability beyond absorbing know-how from international companies, which are under pressure to protect their IPs, and trying to bring in as many jobs home as possible? Can innovation be orchestrated by the state? And is the education system and workplace training support the needs? China does not understand innovation. It is just way too difficult for any Chinese innovative ideas to move from the lab to the marketplace, there is a lacking of complete view of market dynamics and infrastructure.

Policy makers in China is taking a very short-term view and they need to balance between research and development as well as lack of market orientation and design capability. And they have no clue how the system works in the Valley and government bureaucrats will not tolerate the complete free market system that works in the Valley. “Favorism” is still the dominant way of big investments for obvious reasons and antitrust and competition laws are clsoe to non-existan or not-enforceable.

So that alone creates big barriers for start-up challengers. I don’t think China has done enough on new product innovation alone, not to mention strategic innovation on a larger scale. Product innovation is often the most important driver of growth. In most cases over 50% of the growth of many categories from snacks to drinks and electronics came from just a single new product.

China is a far friendlier place for product innovation than the developed markets because the cost of going to market is not as large and consumers are more forgiving when innovation products are on constant beta. And when products fall into grey area of regulations, China is the best place on earth to launch products and don’t need to wait for permission, and they might never need to. Combine with a big domestic and uneducated markets, this creates the ideal environment for innovation.