Through this post, I want to coin a term for a phenomenon that I have observed in the Information Technology space. This term refers to the decentralization of inventing new technologies or products from a few big companies to a large number of globally dispersed set of individuals interested in creating something of their own. I call this term "Democratization of Innovation".
The term is an amalgamation of two of the most used and abused words of our times - democracy and innovation. Here, I define innovation as the emergence of something new which helps solve problems and issues for a large number of people. By democratization, I mean that now, the onus of innovating has essentially been crowd sourced i.e. it has shifted from a few large companies to a huge set of common people like you and me across the world.
The greatest example of this phenomenon is the concept of "Apps". Now there are apps for mobile applications, for browsers, for desktop applications etc. And most of these applications are invented by just a small group or sometimes a single individual. This I believe is truly phenomenal. Because apps are supposed to do one thing well rather than a mega application like "microsoft office" for example, they can be invented by a very small number of people. This way, people with different needs are able to locate pain points in their lives and create something to eliminate those.
Apple Inc. like always, has a very big role to play in this regard. They started the concept of an apps ecosystem and now it has been replicated by everyone else in the field. What it has also done is that now, small start-ups are able to create apps that do a dedicated task exceptionally well, beating solutions from big companies. The big sharks then just purchase these start-ups - thus the amount of successful ideas which are native to the big companies is steadily on the decline.
All in all, the existing ecosystem opens up a realm of possibilities. I would like to see it spreading to the electronics hardware space as well.
The term is an amalgamation of two of the most used and abused words of our times - democracy and innovation. Here, I define innovation as the emergence of something new which helps solve problems and issues for a large number of people. By democratization, I mean that now, the onus of innovating has essentially been crowd sourced i.e. it has shifted from a few large companies to a huge set of common people like you and me across the world.
The greatest example of this phenomenon is the concept of "Apps". Now there are apps for mobile applications, for browsers, for desktop applications etc. And most of these applications are invented by just a small group or sometimes a single individual. This I believe is truly phenomenal. Because apps are supposed to do one thing well rather than a mega application like "microsoft office" for example, they can be invented by a very small number of people. This way, people with different needs are able to locate pain points in their lives and create something to eliminate those.
Apple Inc. like always, has a very big role to play in this regard. They started the concept of an apps ecosystem and now it has been replicated by everyone else in the field. What it has also done is that now, small start-ups are able to create apps that do a dedicated task exceptionally well, beating solutions from big companies. The big sharks then just purchase these start-ups - thus the amount of successful ideas which are native to the big companies is steadily on the decline.
All in all, the existing ecosystem opens up a realm of possibilities. I would like to see it spreading to the electronics hardware space as well.
