Monday, January 29, 2007

Follow-up to Innovation Killers

Here's a follow-up to recent post I did on how too much knowledge kills innovation.

Warning: Success Hampers Creativity

The question that emerges from this post at Businesspundit, is really how to reverse the trend since most inventors or developers of products tend to work on refinements of their innovation rather than move on to new projects. It is answered here in this post by another blogger at A List Review.

When I think how too much knowledge or too much success hampers innovation, I often think back to the browser wars between Microsoft's Internet Explorer an Netscape Navigator. After a heated battle for market share, Microsoft's Internet Explorer won out over Netscape Navigator to be come to dominate browser. For years, the browser was stagnate. No refinements. No innovative new features. Nothing to keep users interested. Why innovate when you are king of the mountain? Then came Mozilla Firefox. It features such as tabbed browsing provided a whole new experience for web surfers.

It wasn't until this new browser hit the scene and became very popular (I, being one of many converts) that Microsoft knew it must change its browser in order to remain competitive. You can see now with the new version of Internet Explorer (IE7) that it features tabbed browsing and RSS features that some say rival Firefox.

So here's to knowledge and innovation. Just don't let it go to your head!

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