News Roundup: From the World’s First Computer Programmer to Mainstream Adoption of IoT

Editor’s note:  We’re taking a look at recent stories that have intrigued us here at PARC.

MIT Technology Review – Driverless Cars Are Further Away Than You Think
By Will Knight
Knight’s fascinating journey into the future of the driverless car – and the actual experience within one.  “If all else fails, there is a big red button on the dashboard that cuts power to all the car’s computers. I practiced hitting it a few times.”

Strategy + Business – The Global Innovation 1000: Navigating the Digital Future
By Barry Jaruzelski, John Loehr, and Richard Holman
From Booz & Company, an in-depth study of R&D spending and digital tools, including video and infographics. Also lists “top 20 publicly-traded companies worldwide that spent the most on R&D each of the past nine years.”

The New Yorker – Ada Lovelace, the First Tech Visionary
By Betsy Morais
An amazing group of emerging women leaders working in STEM fields and participating in the TechWomen program recently visited PARC. It was an incredible reminder of Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.  The New Yorker shares the intriguing history of Lovelace.

San Jose Mercury News – How Tech Redefines Us – Part One:  TIME
By Katy Murphy
PARC CEO Stephen Hoover contributed his perspectives. But it had all of us thinking about our connection to technology, the rise of Internet of Things, and “time.”

Innovation Excellence – Giving Open Innovation a Chance to Work
By Kevin McFarthing
A great encapsulation of the ongoing challenges with open innovation, a new report from Henry Chesbrough and Sabine Brunswicker, and an academic paper by Luca Berchicci. McFarthing also includes an insightful list of how to optimize.

GigaOM – A Major Challenge for Marketing the Internet of Things? Explaining Why It Has Value
By Signe Brewster
Experts, including PARC’s Mike Kuniavsky, “estimated the Internet of Things will gain mainstream acceptance in about five years.”

Wired – Welcome to the Programmable World
By Bill Wasik
Great combination of guide to the Internet of Things and future cast of how the growth in distributed programmable hardware, big data analytics, and standards evolution will give us all the power to make smarter and automate—or not, as may be equally valued—many brain-fogging daily tasks.

The New York Times – A Takeover Bid for BlackBerry Collapses, and Its Chief Executive Vacates His Post
By Ian Austen and David Gelles
Another sobering tale of hubris prolonging the agony for shareholders long after the strategy (and as it appears, the remaining assets of the entire company) is past its “sell-by” date.  This is a tale of early market leadership cementing a worldview about handset technology that subsequent incursions by Palm, Apple, and the Android camp could not unfreeze, turning this erstwhile vanguard player into first a niche product provider, then a has-been. RIM misjudged the slope of the decline curve, and now faces an embarrassing fade to oblivion. The message: it’s great to be a pioneer, but use the time of dominance to invest in uncovering the next wave of market needs.