The eureka moment

Supporting innovation

Reasons to foster innovation include the following:

♦ Innovative processes can be adapted to the task and the user; they enable a dialogue

♦ Personalization for devices and users’ preferences

♦ Contextualization

♦ Flexibility

♦ Operating in an ad hoc and real-time manner, making it easy to integrate new information sources

♦ Security

♦ Connecting to contiguous processes

♦ Enabling serendipity with visualization, autocategorization, natural language processing

♦ Supporting collaboration

There may be reasons for fostering innovation, even in an economic downturn, including the following:

♦ Increasing revenue

♦ Diversification

♦ Avoiding stagnation and possible leapfrogging by more agile companies; attracting inventive staff

♦ Preparing a product pipeline for economic upturn

♦ Retaining valuable personnel

♦ Developing and testing tools to streamline the innovation process

♦ Protecting your franchise by understanding why your customers value your products

Is AI a threat?

We are hearing a lot of hype about AI as a threat. Will it replace workers and cause job loss? Can machines steal jobs from workers? That’s certainly possible. But buggy whips became obsolete when they were no longer needed. Judicious use of new technologies should not replace valuable old ones.