Brian Roy’s Blog

America’s Innovation Deficit

Friday, August 29th, 2008 | Innovation | Comments

Judy Estrin - former Cisco CTO - has written a book entitled Closing the Innovation Gap.

She is Featured today in a article at Wired.

America is facing an innovation crisis. To fix it, corporations need to find new ways of funding fundamental research into physics and environmental sciences.

There is no question this is true. If you operate outside the echo chamber of the Bay Area you know this is the case. We have completely abandoned fundamental research in basic science. With China and India churning out advanced degrees in science and engineering at fantastic rates the numbers in the US continue to decline. While we continue to price our children out of higher education while other countries seek to educate their way of third world status.

It is even worse in the corporate world:

“Corporations focused on efficiencies and productivity started to make research more short term and tailored to the company’s needs,” says Estrin in an interview with Wired.com, “with the result that most research done at corporations now is applied research.”

…

Neglecting research in basic science also has big repercussions for computing and other applied science areas, because many innovations, such as the transistor, originated in basic research, not applied research.

So new innovation models have to be created to fill the vacuum created by the cutbacks in corporate research spending, says Estrin.

The net effect of this is that the base innovation fired by research is being done outside the US. Most of our large established corporations are openly hostile to innovation (see the behavior of the telecoms where VoIP is concerned). Our patent system has become a significant barrier to research and innovation - not because you might get sued by a patent holding company, but because of the risk injected into the process of innovation.

This is what happens when you are so busy protecting what you have that you fail to recognize what comes next.

Read the article and the book…

Tags: innovator, innovator dillema, science, Tech

Another solution to avoid Automated Call Hell

Friday, August 29th, 2008 | Analysis | Comments

There have been many of these over the last few years… none all that successful. The problem (as I see it) is that you don’t know when or why you’ll need to call one of those annoying toll free numbers… and at that point it is too late for the application/service.
That being said… as someone who worked with Fortune 500 companies building those annoying IVR (interactive voice response) systems - I have to ask… when will you learn? They should be for the customer - they should offer what the customer wants and needs, not what you want them to do. The problem is the standard IVR pushes what the company wants you to do and hides what you really want to do…
It is simply poor design. What I’d love to hear about is the companies that have really well designed VUI(s) (Voice User Interfaces) that their customers love to use. Or, is that simply not possible using voice?

Add this to your list of must have iPhone applications. Direct Line (iTunes link) is a service that helps you automatically navigate phone trees to get right to an operator (exactly what companies don’t want you to do).

Install the application, browse of search the included companies, and select the one you want. Direct Line then calls the number and preselects the appropriate choices to get you to an actual person.

The service operates much like Bringo, which we wrote about in 2007, but since it works directly from your iPhone it saves you the extra steps. In my testing it mostly worked, although it failed to get me through to operators at two companies (Air Canada and AT&T). No worries, though. Just send creator Michael Schneider an email at support@thisistech.com and he’ll update the database.

It’s well worth the $0.99. Direct Line joins DataCase on my list of must have productivity apps for the iPhone.

[From Direct Line Saves iPhone Users From Automated Call Hell]

Tags: customer experience, ivr

You get what you pay for

Thursday, August 28th, 2008 | Uncategorized | Comments

From Seth Godin this morning…

If you don’t want spam in your inbox, never respond, never buy anything. Not even if it’s a good deal.

If you don’t like TV commercials featuring loud aggressive announcers, don’t buy what they’re selling. Ever.

If you don’t want people ringing your door asking for donations, don’t give, no matter what.

If you think politics is too nasty and not focused enough on creating value, then don’t donate to a candidate that’s nasty, even if you agree (and even better, call or write and tell them why).

If you don’t like bait and switch marketing, where promises don’t match the product, don’t buy it.

If you don’t like snarky, angry blogs, don’t read them.

If you deplore the lousy service at big chains or certain airlines, don’t shop there, even if it’s cheaper.

There’s a new asymmetry, with loud consumers able to connect and actually have an impact.

We’re all hypocrites, and we get what we pay for. The market is astonishingly quick at responding to what consumers do (and incredibly slow at reacting to what we say).

[From You get what you pay for]

Nothing to add here… Seth hits then nail squarely on the head.

Tags: customer experience, customers, marketing

Republican, Democrat… doesn’t matter. This is worth celebrating.

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 | Uncategorized | Comments

Today, August 27th 2008, Barack Obama was nominated by the Democratic party to be President of the United States.

CNN Link

It is also worth noting that his chief rival for the nomination was a woman.

It shouldn’t matter what your political affiliation is; this is an historic achievement and is worth celebrating.

I would encourage everyone to sit back for just a minute and think about what this means for our country, our children and our future. It doesn’t matter that Hillary Clinton wasn’t the nominee; what matters is she easily could have been.

Tonight, when I look my daughters in the eye and tell them they can be whatever they want provided they are willing to work for it… I can really mean it.

Tags: breaking barriers

ASU CAPSTONE project for cosinity

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 | AZ Tech, Experimentation, Innovation, cosinity | Comments

As you may know (from reading here) I’m involved with ASU Polytechnic’s DEAC industry advisor group.

I’m happy to say that cosinity will be sponsoring a Entrepreneurial CAPSTONE project this year with ASU Poly and the Morrison School of Management

You can read the cosinity press release here.

This will be an excellent opportunity for ASU students to work on creating an innovative solution leveraging cosinity’s communications applications platform to deliver real value for our customers. Not only is it an opportunity for ASU students to learn, but it is an opportunity for cosinity to expand it’s services and potentially hire top notch graduates - or at least convince them they do not have to immediately pack for Silicon Valley the day after graduation.

Tags: AZ Tech