- Start Date:
June 14, 2011
- Event Start Time:
11:00 AM
- Event End Time:
12:00 PM
- Organizers:
Gene Fiorini
- Seminar Series:
REU Seminar
- Presenter(s):
Swarup Acharya - Alcatel-Lucent Bell Laboratories
- Event Location:
DIMACS Seminar room
- Abstract:
Companies invest in R&D to create new, innovative products to help grow revenues. Research and innovation has historically followed the Olympics motto of "Citius, Altius, Fortius" of pushing faster, higher and stronger, the limits of what is feasible as the means for disruption. However, studies appear not to show any correlation between the size of R&D investments and growth of revenues. We will argue that the primary cause of this discrepancy is the enormous technology advances over the last decade which has fundamentally scrambled the nature of innovation. The availability of (relatively) cheap, off-the-shelf computing and communication components has enabled commercial solutions that were, heretofore, simply not technically feasibly and/or financially attractive (such as a mobile payments system for users with ARPU of a few dollars, or, a wireless glucose monitoring system for diabetic patients that eliminates pin pricks). However, disruption in this new environment requires not technical superiority but technical agility that can balance complex business, customer needs and other societal factors. In effect, for R&D to be effective going forward, the more appropriate model for innovation is not Olympics but the X-Games, where the rules for sports such as BMX Bike Racing and Snowboarding are rough and tumble and success requires multi-faceted excellence. We will provide examples of such innovation and also highlight new opportunities for wireless access in emerging markets where by rethinking how to innovate for local conditions, one can fundamentally disrupt the market.
