Getting on the Innovation Bandwagon

Editor's Note

February / March 06 By: Bob Cochnar Volume 4 Number 1

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Although in some quarters, evolution is a word to be used judiciously so as not to offend, I'm going to use a form of it in an effort to explain what we're up to, here at TechComm. We are, you see, evolving, as any magazine must do if it wishes to remain relevant.

The issue you're reading is our 15th. Volume 1, Number 1, was produced way back in October 2003 and was distributed to some 5,000 individuals. This issue is going to about 13,000. (Yes, TechComm is free, but you do have to request it.)
What we try to do in each issue is to pay some attention to what we claim to be: the National Journal of Technology Commercialization. Thus, we're always scouring a number of national laboratories (the list is growing) in search of technologies that could make it in the marketplace, with considerable help from canny investors and determined entrepreneurs as well as Fortune 500 companies.

In this issue, for example, we've got articles on how startups and established corporations are working with laboratories and commercializing interesting technologies. We're also focusing, in another set of articles, on several of the incredibly inventive and innovative scientists that inhabit the labs.

The cover story asks some prominent venture capitalists to tell us what they considered to be the Big Ideas of 2006 and beyond, ones on which they are likely to place big bets. Interestingly, most of them liked mobile communications and, more specifically, cellular technologies that are making those ubiquitous little phones a good bit more than phones.

Regular readers will have noticed that we are paying regular attention to the broad subject of innovation, which is surely the handmaiden to technology commercialization. In the previous issue, we reported on the study issued by the National Academies of Sciences called Rising Above the Gathering Storm that proposes measures that improve America's ability to innovate and compete. Although the study seems to have met with bored indifference in the media, the Senate has taken notice. The Protect America's Competitive Edge Now, or PACE, Act, that implements the study's findings has been introduced (see the item in UpFront, Page 5). You might also be interested in legislation called the National Innovation Act.

We like the definition of innovation offered by Sam Palmisano, IBM's chief executive, in an article published in TechComm (October-November 2004) by Kathleen Kingscott, IBM's director of innovation policy:
"Innovation begins at the intersection of invention and insight. It is the application of invention—€”the fusion of new developments and new approaches to solve real problems. Let's not confuse invention with innovation. Both are of great value, but the difference is important."

The commercialization of technologies created in national labs for other purposes strike us as good examples of innovation. They are "eureka moments."
And so if TechComm seems to be evolving into a magazine of innovation, you know why. It's where we ought to be.

With this issue, we introduce a new column, "The Culture Chronicles," by Paul Short, the former CEO of Innovasic Semiconductor and currently entrepreneur in residence at Verge, a VC fund. He's interested in corporation culture. As he observes, "What's holding back ideas is not technology, but the shortage of entrepreneurs with the combination of technical savvy and people skills."
We welcome Paul to our pages and hope you find his column interesting and provocative.