US Patent Changes!

Having written about patents in general, see here, here and here, the new changes USPO are creating excitement!

From Yahoo News, details here:

"The most substantial change brought about by the bill would be to switch the United States to a "first-inventor-to-file" system for patent applications used by all other industrialized countries rather than the current "first-to-invent" system. Supporters say the first-to-file system would put American innovators on the same page as their overseas competitors, making the process simpler, more certain and less expensive."

From The Hill, details here, the reader comments are enjoyable.

From The Wall Street Journal, details here:

"The Patent Office would also gain power to set its own funding, a move that is likely to mean higher application fees but also greater resources to process an application backlog that exceeds 700,000."

From The New York Time, details here:

"... the House is unlikely to take up a patent bill anytime soon, and people with an interest in the patent system say they expect its bill to be significantly different."

"Many smaller companies and inventors opposed the change, however, arguing that it favored companies that could hire legions of lawyers to quickly file applications for new permutations in manufacturing or product design."

"A consortium of technology and computer companies are already lobbying House members to resist addressing procedures to re-examine patents in their bill. The Information Technology Industry Council, whose members include Dell, Google, I.B.M. and Microsoft, said in a letter to Mr. Leahy earlier this month that it opposed the bill’s provisions to alter how patents could be re-examined, asserting that this would increase litigation rather than reduce it."

Gaming - Xbox vs. Wii

Natural motion without invasive hardware helping Xbox grow:

Google: The Democratization Engine

Google is the "Democratization Engine" for the world's shoppers and consumers.  Let's talk Android - 

I am leaving the charms of the iPhone and the Apple!  If a few decades in the technology industry has taught me anything, it is that closed systems have revenue spikes when they deliver on the unmet need, though quickly lose it as competitors emerge with more standardized and open systems.  It is more so at speed now as the consumer is empowered.  Sounds cliche because marketers have used "we are empowering the shopper/consumer to make intelligent choices", yet today, the marketer has a tough battle on had.  The shopper/consumer are empowering themselves.

My foray into Apple's world was with the Lisa... then came the standardization driven through the IBM PC compatible running DOS and Apple products took their niche spot in the market while a somewhat open and driven towards standardization system of the IBM compatible allowed a world of inventions to become innovations, from hardware, firmware to software.

Can history repeat itself? Yes, it can and will.  It is not a claim but reality that the Android based smartphones will trump the iPhone in growth and market share.  Unless - Apple decides to change "some" thing(s) in its approach.  Its differentiation is diminishing due to competitor offerings, while its lock on distribution through AT&T will be ending in the USA.  Its partnership with AT&T perhaps will add to iPhone's decline as Consumer Report recently rated AT&T as the worst wireless service provider, see here.  Also, the Consumer Report has declined to recommend the iPhone as well, details at Consumer Reports here.

The activations of Android based devices is growing at 110 million, 5X what they were 10 months ago.

Andy Rubin, head of Google's mobile software recently said, "We are web-centric."  This is the reason to believe that Google will be successful against Apple and Microsoft.  He further added, "We really understand distributed computing - and I think Apple really understands desktop computing."

For those who may have forgotten or don't know, Google quietly acquired Android, Inc. back in 2005, see Business Week article here.

Core to this transformation in the market will be, as Financial Times quotes Andy Rubin "Leaving developers free to create new versions of their apps, rather than forcing them to "jump through hoops" to seek approval each time, as Apple does, echoes the web's approach to rapid iteration and improvement."

See FT article here.

Next on Google's democratization list, my guess - The SmartGrid!!!  I will write more how it can accomplish it soon.

Innovation in Emerging Market: Data Points

"The engineering gap" in the January Economist states:

"According to the [Aspiring Minds, India], only 4.2% of India’s engineers are fit to work in a software product firm, and just 17.8% are employable by an IT services company, even with up to six months’ training. A larger share could cope in business-process outsourcing (call centres and the like). These findings are even gloomier than the 25% figure for employability that has been bandied about since 2005, when McKinsey released the results of a survey of international companies."

Download the complete report here.

The article "Grow, grow, grow", in Economist's recent report on innovation in emerging markets here, states: "McKinsey reckons that only 25% of India’s engineering graduates, 15% of its finance and accounting professionals and 10% of those with degrees of any kind are qualified to work for a multinational company."

The emerging market growth is fantastic, yet reviewing the thorough report from the Aspiring Minds raises or should raise questions for the multinationals. Also, curious if this level of employability applies to the Indian scientists as well?

In the report on innovation in emerging markets, the following statistics provide food for thought:

"The number of companies from Brazil, India, China or Russia on the Financial Times 500 list more than quadrupled in 2006-08, from 15 to 62. Brazilian top 20 multinationals more than doubled their foreign assets in a single year, 2006...

Multinationals expect about 70% of the world’s growth over the next few years to come from emerging markets, with 40% coming from just two countries, China and India...

Fortune 500 [companies] have 98 R&D facilities in China and 63 in India. ... General Electric’s health-care arm has spent more than $50m in the past few years to build a vast R&D centre in India’s Bangalore... Cisco is splashing out more than $1 billion on a second global headquarters—Cisco East—in Bangalore... Microsoft’s R&D centre in Beijing is its largest outside its American headquarters in Redmond... a quarter of Accenture’s workforce is in India."

The State of Business Process Management (BPM)

Good friend Rashid Khan, the inventor of the term BPM (Business Process Management) continues his educational blog on the industry, see here.  From one of his entries I found valuable:

"So what is the state of the BPM industry today? Here are some revealing facts:

• No pure-play BPM vendor is big enough or strong enough financially to go public, though several continue to threaten for several years now that they will soon. It does not happen, even while every year the analysts continue to forecast rapid growth in the industry and among the leaders.
• We keep hearing every other year that the big players such Oracle, Microsoft and SAP will make major inroads in to the BPM market, but that also has not happened.
• Gartner, after having pushed BPM, simulations, “round-tripping”, and SOA, is now on to a new gig called “Pattern Based Strategies” to further confuse their already confused customers, which is always good for their business. (see http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/11/18/how-will-bpm-deal-with-pattern-based-strategies-pbs/ )
• All this while Gartner admits that the most important “hot questions” their clients ask are basic BPM 101 questions such as “1. What are the benefits of BPM?” and “2. How should I get started?” (see http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/10/26/what-are-the-hot-questions-in-bpm/ ) Makes one wonder why companies are paying Gartner money for answering such basic questions, unless they are totally confused!
• There is no slowdown in the number of new entrants to the BPM market, which indicates that the market is still largely open with no strong leaders, and no sign of consolidation, contrary to all predictions. "