To paraphrase Monty Python
And now for this weekend something completely different.
From
spectrum.ieee.org
Five to thrive
For this report, Spectrum picked five electrotechnologies favored by some of the world's biggest R&D spenders-favorites they hope will pay off big within the next five years. An exploration of each of these new technologies reveals that the same competitive pressures that foster what Baumol calls an R&D "arms race" among firms also drive them into each others' arms, resulting in joint research projects, licensing arrangements, and standards-setting efforts that help disseminate new technologies.
How and when these alliances arise is often a function of the nature of the innovations being worked on-whether they are what economists call complementary or more radical, substitute innovations. If companies are striving to improve an existing category of computer system, for instance, they might soon decide to collaborate on standards to facilitate software interoperability across enterprise networks. Conversely, if companies are working on a basic departure-a substitute technology-that will change the way people light their homes, say, rivals will race each other to the patent office before forming alliances to advance the technology.
The Semantic Web effort is a textbook example of a joint attack on fundamental impediments to the further development of an existing technology. Too often, the billions of pages on today's Web frustrate searches or yield only inconclusive results. Better search mechanisms and personal agents that could automatically perform searches for you would be a boon even to successful e-commerce sectors like travel-currently a $20 billion-plus category that could exceed $63 billion by 2006, according to Jupiter Media Metrix (New York City). Described in "Weaving A Web of Ideas <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/sep02/sem.html>", Semantic Web research is spearheaded by the World Wide Web Consortium and its 500 university and corporate members (35 of which are also to be found in the Top 100 R&D Spenders).
In portable electronics and flat-panel displays, upstart organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays soon will give liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) a run for their money. As discussed in "-Just One WordPlastics <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/sep02/org.html>", over 50 companies from a variety of industries have sunk resources into OLED R&D, trying to get in on the ground floor of a market seen as growing from $84 million today to $1.6 billion in 2007. Cross-industry R&D alliances are sprouting to meet a vast array of technical challenges. Giants in electronics research such as Motorola (13), Xerox (73), and Lucent are collaborating with chemical powerhouses E.I. DuPont de Nemours (54), Dow Chemical (65), Bayer AG (40), and even paper companies such as International Paper.
Enabling a computer system to diagnose and optimize its performance and allocate its compute and storage resources automatically should increase efficiency and boost an already mammoth market, as discussed in "Helping Computers Help Themselves <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/sep02/auto.html>". According to Gartner Dataquest (Stamford, Conn.), the revenues worldwide from information technology (IT) services, which cover hardware and software support and professional services, will reach $557 billion in 2002 and rise to $696 billion by 2005.
Yet despite this rosy market outlook, IT is facing a crisis: barring a revolution in the way computers are maintained, upward of 200 million IT workers will be needed in the next decade to run the world's computer systems. No wonder Big Blue is pushing for open standards and marshalling its research organization and marketing teams to generate a host of new labor- and cost-saving products. But this 800-lb gorilla is on everyone's R&D radar screen, and IBM's competitors, among them Hewlett-Packard (30), Sun, and Microsoft, all have similar initiatives, a follow-the-leader strategy that Baumol says is exactly how competitors wind up continuously upping the R&D ante.
If nurturing innovations complementary to existing technologies spurs companies to collaborate, the promise of raising a new market by overthrowing an entrenched technology can tempt firms to go it alone, at least at the initial stages. As described in "Let There Be Light <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/sep02/lite.html>" gallium nitride is the semiconductor basic to white-light LEDs. These are poised to claim a large chunk of the $12 billion-a-year market for sources of white light, now the sole property of makers of incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent tubes.
In the emerging market, the leader, Nichia Corp., is taking on the leading lights of conventional lighting, including General Electric Co. (43), Osram-Sylvania, and Philips Lighting. But these "old-timers" are not standing pat. Each has engaged in strategic joint ventures or alliances in solid-state lighting: Philips Lighting with Agilent Technologies (58) to form Lumileds Lighting LLC; GE with Emcore Corp., to form GELcore; Germany's Osram Opto Semiconductors working with Osram Sylvania in the United States; and Tokyo's Toshiba Corp. (31) working with Toyoda Gosei Co.
So far, few industrial collaborations have coalesced around speech recognition, the fifth technology that Spectrum has chosen to highlight in "Talk to the Machine <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/sep02/voic.html>". Replacing keyboards, pushbuttons, and knobs with speech recognition could transform human-machine interaction. You could dictate memos into your PDA instead of scratching illegible notes with a clumsy stylus, or adjust the air conditioning in your car without taking your eyes off the road.
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