Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Business Innovation in an On Demand World

When the Internet era was born, one of its more appealing qualities was the sense of individual empowerment and freedom it gave us all.  The chief factor enabling the Internet to empower users in this way is, I believe, the culture of standards that the Internet brought to the IT industry.  Before the Internet era, technology companies competed with each other to try to establish control points with their proprietary interfaces and protocols.  The Internet showed everybody how much more valuable IT becomes when you can connect and access everything regardless of vendors, and started the IT industry on a whole new strategy based on embracing open standards.

US-Japan Innovation Summit

Last week I attended the US-Japan Innovation Summit in Nagoya, which was co-sponsored by the US Council on Competitiveness, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and a number of other organizations.  The Summit included talks and panels on the various efforts going on in the US and Japan to promote innovation and economic growth.  I was a keynote speaker, and in my talk I reviewed the findings and recommendations of the National Innovation Initiative (NII), as well as the major forces which are driving innovation around the world.

Mid-September Baseball Update

On the flight from Tokyo to New York, I watched a very cute movie, Fever Pitch, which is basically a romantic comedy about the budding relationship of Lindsey and Ben, played by Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon.  Ben is a rabid Boston Red Sox fan with season tickets to two very good seats in Fenway Park which he inherited from his uncle.  During baseball season, his whole life is consumed with  the Red Sox, and the movie takes place around the 2004 season when the Red Sox miraculously beat the Yankees on the way to winning the World Series.  The complications in the relationship between Lindsey and Ben revolve around Ben's conflicts between his love for Lindsey and his love for the Red Sox.

Meetings in Japan

When I travel, I like to meet with government officials around the world to talk about strategy and policy issues around science, technology, innovation, and related subjects.  So, on my trip to Japan to attend the US - Japan Innovation Summit, I took the opportunity to meet with Japanese government officials to discuss these matters. 

Some Early Reflections on Katrina

Next week I will be in Japan attending a joint US-Japan Innovation Summit, co-sponsored by the US Council on Competitiveness, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and a number of other organizations.  The conference will focus on strategies to promote innovation, national productivity and overall economic growth and is intended to foster a dialogue among private and public sector leaders in the US and Japan on ways in which the two countries can share ideas on innovation. 

The Internet Ten Years Later

The Internet era was born around this time ten years ago.  Netscape went public on August 9 1995 and caught the world by storm.  To many people, myself included, the Netscape IPO marks the passage of the Internet from a network primarily used by universities, research labs and geeks in general, to the platform for worldwide innovation that it has since become. Roughly around that same time, an IBM team was put in place to see how to accelerate our efforts in what we then called Network Centric Computing, and align them with the emerging Internet forces. The recommendations of this team led to the creation of the Internet Division in December 1995, with me as general manager.

Hits and "Misses"

I recently read in a news story that movie theater box office receipts have been lower this summer than they were last year.  The debate over the causes of the box-office decline revolves around whether it is because movies are just not as good this year, or whether people now prefer to watch DVD's at home, or some other reason.