Technology Intersections and Growth from a Downturn  |  April 16, 2009  

I mentioned a while back that the next wave of computing will appear to be a product of the financial downturn. One of the reasons for this is not just the continued new technologies developed during the downturn whose deployment is delayed; it is the intersection of those technologies with other advances that will make the new innovations useful.

We've probably all seen how technology advancement in one space can intersect with the technology and need in another area to produce a whole new business; for example, computing capabilities and graphic advances intersected with the entertainment needs to create a computer gaming industry. The systems developed to power those games are available at a relatively low cost so that consumers can purchase them. Those techniques are now being reapplied to create new powerful, low cost computers that can do the parallel processing that used to only be possible on super computers.

Even if the number of innovations grows linearly, the number of intersections grows exponentially. This growth is likely one of the reasons that when funding begins to flow the advances are so rapid.

Charlie Bess
EDS' Next Big Thing Blog