Innovation requires less talk, more action

10/31/2012 2:27 PM EDT

Fail fast, fail cheap. Startup Incubators like TechStars have had some spectacular successes, but clearly those have emerged from many, many more failures.
It makes sense really... you can't innovate unless you are doing something new, and if you're doing something new, you don't know if it's going to work, or what problems you might face. Takes a few "fails" to get something good out.

10/31/2012 3:01 PM EDT

An advertisement for snake oil in the guise of an article. Bravo EE Times

10/31/2012 6:56 PM EDT

Bah humbug.

My take on this is that the trade press gets it wrong on this subject, most of the time.

"Necessity is the mother of invention." Innovation happens out of necessity. The trick is to see innovations evolving that way, instead of seeing them as a sudden "new thing." This certainly includes PCs, tablets, cellular telephony, smart phones, and all the rest that people like to gush over. Even airplanes and cars, for that matter.

One recent example might be that robotics article in EE Times. Robots are nothing new. It's the same old household or work applicances, being evolved into doing more of the chores. Robots don't have to be thought of as looking like R2D2 or R2PO, and doing so will only limit one's perspective on these matters.

Necessity. For example, how do you provide personal communications for everyone, a la Star Trek "communicator"? Answer: you have to employ a scheme that allows for a whole lot more RF frequency reuse than what was already being done.

It's not like frequency reuse was unknown before the 1980s. It was fully understood. That's why the FCC limits transmit power to different degrees, for different category of devices. Now that concept had to be taken to a new level, where range was short enough that retuning to a different frequency had to be automated. And where the real "heavy lifting" was relegated to a cabled backhaul network instead of to the RF infrastructure.

That's how cellular evolved. From necessity. And then that opened up the possibility for all manner of new devices.

11/1/2012 6:56 AM EDT

I concur that the real innovations come not from the people in suits in conferences or, "initiatives", (regardless of their lip service to action, their very premise is contradictory) but from folks in labs and shop floors wearing sneakers and jeans who just need problems to solve. The suits follow the fruits of the sneakers.

11/1/2012 10:12 AM EDT

Hopefully this fares better than the local invent/startup gatherings which occured here a few yeas ago. A bunch of 20 somethings gathered with their iDistractors, gossipped, tweeted, and texted, then disbursed. After a few such gatherings the event was cancelled.

11/1/2012 11:52 AM EDT

No one is claiming this approach is a panacea, as some of the knee-jerk reactions above imply. It's likely that little will come from this initiative. But if one new startup emerges from it, then it was well worth the effort.

Which is the point: Try it and see if anything comes of it. Then try something else. Make something happen.

11/1/2012 12:12 PM EDT

The reason that most publicly successful startups are done by young people is that they aren't crippled by a life full of picking up "risk aversion" baggage. They don't listen to all the nay sayers. Anybody who has had children knows how little most young people pay to advice from "old-folks.

My point? To be successful at any age you have to set aside your risk aversion. Be willing to fail. Believe in yourself. Avoid listening to others saying you are wasting time.

Thoughts from an old guy.....

11/2/2012 3:35 PM EDT

I'm not so sure about this VC thing to start up. Rather it has been my experience that one MUST start on their own, their own money, and get to the point where a customer likes their idea. Then the VCs are great as essentially a bank that accepts high risk on "loans".

Almost all major startups I can think of did their first product on their own money (i.e. savings, family, or boot-strapping from a job working nights and weekends). It wasn't much of a product that was cobbled together, but it attracted customer interest and that is the document you take to the VC-bank.

Certainly if you want to startup with a capital intensive business there is little possibility to do this without VC-type money. But then that's not necessarily the domain for first-time entrepreneurs. Need a little grey hair to start a business with the first VC check for $100 Million.