Future Innovation Trends

By Ken Westray, PE, NPDP

Focusing on innovation today is important but are you thinking about innovation in terms of the future?

An interesting story in Wired revealed six trends affecting business globally:

• "People Power" - appears in peer reviews in Amazon or entries in Wikipedia.
• "Video Wherever" - drives Apple video iPods and GE's NBC TV online.
• "Personalized Production" - demonstrates itself in personalized medicines Genentech develops or individualized recommendations available with Netflix.
• "Clean Technology" - emerges in Toyota's hybrid engines and BP's alternative energy initiative.
• "Buy it Now" - is the preference some established companies have to buying pre-assembled solutions to developing their own from scratch. Microsoft had 24 deals in 12 months as of mid 2006.
• "Open Solutions" - boost efficiencies and bottom lines for eBay via custom storefronts and Salesforce.com with online enterprise software.

Which of those trends do you see in your business? What ideas do you have about using them as a way to innovate existing products? Answers to those questions will say a lot about your business today and 12 months from now.