Читать книгу Immersive Technologies to Accelerate Innovation - Simon Richir - Страница 16

The challenge of innovation is to survive or to maintain one’s advantageous position. This is not new, of course, but innovation is even more crucial today than it was yesterday because we have entered a regime of intensive innovation (Hatchuel et al. 2000). On a global scale, the number of patents filed and scientific publications is constantly increasing. While it took more than 60 years to go from a 17 cm vinyl to a 12 cm CD, it took only 5 years to go from a digital music player to a subscription-based streaming service. This example illustrates the accelerating pace of innovation. MPO, the European leader in vinyl records, became the European leader in CDs and then DVDs after a successful technological transition. Moreover, the reduction in the number of vinyl records on the shelves has not disrupted the expertise of companies in this field, whereas the arrival of online listening platforms has made other media obsolete. This is the second characteristic of the era of intensive innovation: innovation is increasingly radical. Not only do disruptions happen more often, but they are also more brutal. Companies are therefore more and more subject to the risk of seeing their market disrupted and must adopt methods that allow them to transform this risk into an opportunity. Incremental innovation remains essential, but does not protect against the emergence of a disruptive competitor.

It is possible to prepare oneself to face this obligation of innovation, either through methods or tools. Innovation is a way of transforming ourselves to absorb the revolutions underway; the digital revolution in the broadest sense (including artificial intelligence, immersive technologies, supercomputers, etc.) is the one we are currently dealing with. It is also a way to adapt to the new constraints linked to the consideration of ecological issues, with a set of opportunities to be seized.

The impact of innovation as a process is considerable in the long run, but innovations as an outcome of the process are often small, incremental steps. We only hear the stories of very dramatic innovation, but most innovations are not. They are not original, nor technically complex, and often look like common sense in hindsight.