On The Cutting Edge — Inspirational Innovation: Solving Problems and Protecting IP

The Evans Data Corporation's Global Developer Population and Demographic Study estimates that there were 12 million developers worldwide in 2006. That number is expected to grow to 17 million by 2009 and 19 million by 2010, with most of the growth coming from emerging markets — not from North America.

On a parallel line, more than 12% of the developer community worldwide is expected to break into the business of creating mobile applications. A forecast from Informa indicates that mobile applications should generate about 160 billion dollars in revenue by 2012.

With so many developers entering the mobile applications space, success depends directly on innovation and differentiation. This innovation starts with integrating new technologies to meet the demands of mobile users. There is still a huge opportunity in the continued advancement of established application technologies such as messaging. However the demand for new and unique applications, content and services cannot be ignored.

No matter what angle you take on the mobile picture, expect revenues to explode in the next couple of years as development moves into a variety of as-yet untouched areas and more applications are converted from PC-bound fixtures into ubiquitous, truly mobile experiences. That fact keeps me diligent in my quest to find innovative ideas and applications that take advantage of the tremendous need for new mobile solutions.

I recently met with Maria Thompson, an innovation and intellectual property (IP) expert in Motorola's Law Department. Maria both practices and trains others in creative problem-solving to generate-and protect-high-quality ideas. With almost 30 years of experience in telecom/software innovation, Maria is a strategic thinker and is well known in the industry. I wanted to get her thoughts around innovation and how developers can find a spark for their own creativity.


Q: What do you do and why is IP important for Motorola?

A: I have two jobs: one is managing all intellectual property tools and systems; and the other, which I'm passionate about, is coordinating and facilitating directed-innovation creative problem-solving sessions to generate focused IP portfolios.

Motorola's intellectual property is a core asset.... Our patent portfolio historically has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to Motorola's bottom line, due to our extensive IP licensing program. There's lots of press lately about huge settlements in IP lawsuits (e.g., RIM vs. NTP). Motorola has historically mitigated risk in IP litigation by building a strong portfolio of patents that offensively and defensively protect our current and future products and technologies.

Q: What do developers need to create the next generation of innovative applications?

A: First, all developers should become trend watchers, not only of the latest technologies and applications, but of the latest and greatest problems that user communities are struggling with. What new functions might we provide in the wireless space to make these problems disappear? How might we lessen the depth of problems our users are facing? What problems or inconveniences are current non-users of our technologies struggling with that we might be able to eliminate by providing or enhancing functionality with our technologies?

Q: What are the resources that developers should leverage for innovation?

A: Your children, your families, your friends, and anyone you observe going about their daily endeavors on the street, at work, on the train, in the car, at the hairdresser, in bars, in coffee shops, in stores, in their homes, in their neighborhoods, at their schools - this is your inventing "team".

What functions would make them more productive and efficient in these settings? What are they doing and how are they doing it? What decisions are they making, and what decisions would benefit from them having more accurate accessible (and private!) information or services readily available? Start viewing your world through function-oriented glasses, and translate those functions into applications in the mobile space. Leverage the Internet to improve and broaden your original idea, as well as to ensure that your idea is novel before investing too much labor to prototype and commercialize it.

Q: Is IP important in the mobile application space?

A: Definitely! If you find your idea is novel, the last thing you want is to find out someone else is going to be privy to your earnings because they were quicker to file for a patent on the implementation before you did. Protect your current implementation, alternate approaches, and potential future implementations with at least one broad patent. Make sure that you design your solution in such a way that it is enforceable: is it easy to detect whether someone else is using your implementation? Your patent won't stand if there are several ways to work around your solution that result in effective implementations.

Q: What reading would you recommend for those of us who want to improve our innovation skills?

A: I recommend a couple of key books and Web sites to enhance your creative problem solving and functional thinking skills:

Books

Internet sites


So, as a mobile application developer - how are you getting ready to create the next innovative application? What is it that makes your idea the one true killer MOBILE app?

In the end, simple observation may be the best way to get ready. Instead of trying to think up the "wave of the future" on your own, spend some time watching an end user work with a mobile phone. Listen to the complaints — and the compliments — and let those spark your imagination.

Remember that the consumers are always looking for the next-generation user experience, but there's a limit to the amount of adventure they'll tolerate before giving up and moving on to the next app. The key to success is to give the mobile consumers what they need, rather than try to force them to have what you want them to have. The revenues are always there for innovative applications, and so it's up to you as a developer to Think, Create and Innovate!

– Asokan Thiyagarajan, Motorola Technology Evangelist

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