Usability starts Innovation

Moshe Rappaport of the IBM Research Lab in Zuerich can look back at about 40 years of IT experience, but still, his speech at the 2009 Future Network Conference started with a rather vague "Something is happening in 2009". - And it was great. Rappaport touched current trends like Social Media, Outernet, Augmented Reality, Crowds - and came to his conclusion: The road of innovation does definitely not start with technology anymore. The road of innovation used to lead from technology through business to social impacts. Now it is the other way round: We have social changes, requirements, sometimes there is a business behind, sometimes it's just cool and we don't really know where business could be - but good thinhgs are never about technology. Technology might provide great solutions - but that's worthless, if the benefit that technology could provide is actually not wanted. IT projects have to start with usability. If we don't know how and why we want to use it (and if we don't like it), we should not build it.
Innovation does not start with on great idea, it starts with a problem and a need. It's not done by a genius, innovation happens in a big and complex ecosystem.
One big challenge with that: the ways to deal with innovation are still old; projectmanagement methods are still from the seventies. The real change that is needed in the business world is to develop ways of communication and cooperation that represent networks and function in compplex unstructured environments.

Business shifts towards social factors

Close to that was another important aspect that Clemens Cap highlighted in his presentation (Clemens teaches computer science at university Rostock; he also contributed to the Trust Exchange Research). Not only innovation shifts, the focus of business is also moving towards social. Economy used to be about goods, then it was about attention and now it is shifting towards moving people to do something, to participate. You can have everything, you can ship everything everywhere within decent time, it's easy to arouse attention, to be noticed - but that is easy for everybody nowadays, everybody can make noise, that does not make a difference anymore.
But how do you get people to do something?
The internet used to spread information and create attention - outernet and augmented reality create action. They have a more direct connection to the world, they are "there", they adapt and they use the power of the context to build value and opportunities. Outernet Media and augmented reality are always "there" "now", they have the strong context to create sense and meaning. - They touch the deep philosophical problem of the preconditions of understanding, and the long way from understandinig to action.

Both thoughts, to me, sum up to show the importance of situations and environments: We are not alone - and we don't do anything. Things happen, we are spectators, and we help to create meaning. But it's getting more and more difficult to decide on something...