Darwin and the Demon – insight from Geoff Moore

My VORTEX 2004 co-producer Geoffrey Moore has written an excellent article on innovation that appears in the current issue of Harvard Business Review. Titled “Darwin and the Demon,” the piece explores various forms of innovation – from the touted ‘disruptive’ sort to process and marketing innovation, among others – and how each is more or less relevant in the life cycle of your company and your products.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

Albert Einstein

Dear Vorticians,

As it relates to stupidity, I must confess to an error in my last missive. I incorrectly stated that the U.S. was celebrating its 208th birthday when, as a number of wiser readers pointed out, last July 4 marked the 228th anniversary of the nation’s founding.

Vortician Jeff Engel wrote, “That bad math just blew up in my hand! 2004-1776 = 228.  After correcting for warpage in the time/space continuum due to global warming, we get 208.  No wonder the time between July 4th seems shorter every year: it actually is!”

Well, Jeff, this is the sort of thing that happens when matters mathematical are left in the hands of journalists. Apologies to all of you, and to Uncle Sam. I promise to use a calculator for all future arithmetic operations.

Speaking of Geoff (different spelling), my VORTEX 2004 co-producer Geoffrey Moore has written an excellent article on innovation that appears in the current issue of Harvard Business Review. Titled “Darwin and the Demon,” the piece explores various forms of innovation – from the touted ‘disruptive’ sort to process and marketing innovation, among others – and how each is more or less relevant in the life cycle of your company and your products.

I highly recommend the article, which you can read by racing out to purchase a copy of HBR or you can download for a mere six bucks – less than you’d pay for one of those giant caramel macchiatos you’d get at Starbucks – at www.hbr.com. Be sure to enter “Geoffrey Moore” in the search engine to find the article. The author is invisible on the site if you type in Geoff Moore.

And, speaking of VORTEX, Geoff and I are nearly finished with the October program. I’m thrilled that we’ve been able to gather a roster of top-notch speakers that brings our original vision for the conference to life. Our goal was to gather the leading voices in the industry to explore the future of enterprise IT – from gorilla companies that currently dominate the market to CIOs, innovators, investors and analysts.

We’ve done just that. Our lineup includes senior executives from Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP, EMC, Cisco, HP, Juniper, Sun, Verisign and other leaders, and we’ve got CIOs from some of America’s top corporations.

Since we last spoke, we’ve added Dr. Fran Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputing Center. Dr. Berman, cited by “Business Week” as one of the top women in technology, is on the cutting edge of IT innovation and her insights into the future of computing dovetail neatly with our theme.

Also, we’ve added a special panel on the Future of Enterprise Software – a timely exploration of the upheaval in the software industry that will be led by Fortune Magazine Senior Editor David Kirkpatrick. We’re convening executives from top companies in the software business to explore the impact of open source, consolidation, pricing pressure and other forces on the shape of the market. More on this in an upcoming edition.

For more information on VORTEX 2004, or to request an invitation, go to www.vortex.net.

Before I wrap up this week’s edition, I want to take a moment to thank Sandra Gittlen, who has wisely and graciously edited this column for quite some time now. Sandra, Network World’s events editor, is leaving our employ today and I’ll miss working with

her. Bon voyage, Sandy.

Bon voyage to all for this week. As always, you can reach me at jgallant@vortex.net.

Bye.