Europe and innovation at DLD

I have been invited by Burda Media to a two-days gathering of "thinkers and innovators from media, business, science and art" in Munich, Germany, on January 23-24. It is chaired by Hubert Burda and Yossi Vardi and it goes under the name Digital Lifestyle Days 2006. They are bringing 200 or so people together to "discuss the connected worlds, the digital consumer and Europe's role in innovation". The list of speakers is pretty impressive, including philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, EU commissioner for information society Viviane Reding (I hope to hear her make a honest assessement of the Lisbon Agenda: in 2000 the members of the European Union laid out a plan to make the EU "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy by 2010", we're past mid-way and very little progress has been made), SixApart's Loic Le Meur, eBay's Philipp Justus, several young entrepreneurs, and many more.
I'm thinking of my contribution to the discussion and I think I would like to bring up two things:

1) the notion that one of the defining features of innovation is that it remains new for only a short period of time (before it is bounced off the market by competing or newer technologies or - worse - before it rots because it's not turned into products and services). That has a corollary: Transforming innovation into value, jobs and wealth requires putting ideas to test quickly, compressing the product development cycle and the time to market, and facilitating a company's growth and expansion. It requires an ecosystem geared towards speed. Value-creating innovation requires speed. And that's a ranking where Europe doesn't get good grades. I remember Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, telling me in 1999 or 2000 already: "it's no longer the big that eats the small: it's the fast that eats the slow". With people tendentially adopting new technologies faster than the previous ones, that axiom is becoming more true by the day.

2) we're starting into the year of unhindered wireless ubiquity. Take that with a grain of salt: I'm not saying that every corner of the world will have broadband wireless for cheap or free (although some African countries have better cell phone services than some US counties). I'm saying that increasingly larger portions of the world's population are becoming connected and untethered at the same time, and we ain't seen anything yet. There is a "cloud of connectivity" invisibly growing around us, made up of many different technologies (GSM, CDMA, GPRS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, UMTS, NFC, etc.) that's rapidly approaching practical ubiquity, and 2006 will be the year where that reaches a tipping point. What is Europe gonna do with that? The continent has been a leader in the second generation of mobile telephony (thanks to GSM, Nokia, Ericsson, etc). Third-generation leadership has mostly shifted to Asia. What would it take for Europe to regain its foothold in the "cloud generation" of mobility?

Any suggestions/comments?

Comments

[Nicolas]

I think you should talk about the leapgfrogging concept since it nicely fit into the global picture you're sketching here. Especially because of the notion of fast evolution.

According to worldchanging: "Leapfrogging" is the notion that areas which have poorly-developed technology or economic bases can move themselves forward rapidly through the adoption of modern systems without going through intermediary steps

The best-known example of leapfrogging is the adoption of mobile phones in the developing world. It's easier and faster to put in cellular towers in rural and remote areas than to put in land lines, and as a result, cellular use is exploding.

I would also ponder this by talking about the problem generated by this "cloud of connectivity" : it's going to be tough to have a true always-on connectivity in this context: the interoperability between all those network won't work so easily and designers should keep this in mind.

[Nicolas]

Well, the definition of leapfrogging has not been but into bracket (the html parser did not get my tags?), it's not my word but Worldchanging's: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001743.html

[BG]

Thank Nicolas for your input. Leapfrogging is a key concept in the development of the majority of the world that is not online nor connected yet; I believe however that the DLD gathering will be focusing on Europe, that's why I limited my thinking to that. Your point about the interoperability issues is spot on: the problem will be with us for a while. However, my contention is that the need to truly be "always-on" is very limited. The real need is to be "always-under-the-cloud", independently from which of its components is more or less active at that specific location an time. If connectivity is interrupted for a short time, or if I have to switch from one vehicle to the other, it's a disturbance but it is not really significant as long as my device (HW & SW) is designed for that (clearly if I have a phone that works only with GSM and there is no GSM coverage, I'm in trouble). I've recently seen a couple of neat technologies that automatically switch you from UMTS to Wi-Fi to GPRS without losing the session. And I look forward to Martin Varsavsky's talk at DLD to learn more about FON. We're slowly getting there.

[Fabien]

I would be careful not to take the "could of connectivity" in the real world for granted. The telco world is made of walled gardens and not public parks. There is an enormous number of players. Governments, vendors and operators act on their own interests, pushing for their own technologies and services with rare technological (in terms of specifications) and economical (in terms of data plans and roaming) interoperability.

I am wondering what it will take that ever bring homogeneity in that wildlife in order to reach the big picture of unhindered wireless ubiquity? The technological (what is takes to have a devices and to comply with the cloud of connectivity?) and economical (who supports the infrastructure, the maintenance and the harmony of the cloud of connectivity?) challenges are deeply interconnected.

[Nicolas]

Back on my comment Bruno, I was not considering leapfrogging in Third World countries (I quoted the cell phone example there only as an instance) but really in europe.

There is an article about mobile internet in the eastern country (in the IHT/NYT): http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2006/01/11/business/ptend12.php

" recent survey of how the Internet is being used in Europe shows that in some key areas, the east is ahead. It's a symptom of the "leapfrog effect," in which technology laggards skip a couple of middle steps that mature markets take, according to Alex Burmaster, European Internet analyst at Nielsen/Net Ratings.

For instance, a higher percentage of Internet users in Lithuania - 42 percent - access the Web from portable devices like mobile phones than in Britain, where the figure is 25 percent, the Net Ratings survey showed.

The same is true for instant messaging, looking for a job online"

That's something really new and interesting for Europe.