IT-based innovation in the 21st century

Innovation is an act of introducing something new in the form of an idea, method, or device. Innovations are intended to do something better, with a substantial improvement over existing products, services, or processes. IT-based innovations are the incremental or radical development of information technology and its use for the betterment of society. IT-based innovations are also seen as a major driver of the economy. This article covered the key driving forces, market environment and systems initiatives for IT-based services and innovations and where society and the economy are heading with these developments, in the 21st century.

The best innovation of the 21st century, so far, is the introduction of the cellular processor. The cell processor is the microprocessor architecture jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. The first major commercial application of the Cell processor was in Sony’s Play-station. It can process and render 3D movements in real time at a very fast speed. This has been the tremendous improvement over the gaming experience. The second best application that has introduced radical change in the field of medicine is the use of cellular processors in MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). MRI provides an unparalleled view of the inside of the human body. Using traditional 20th century processors, it took almost five hours or sometimes a day to produce an image. With the invention of the cell processor, the same can be done in a fraction of a second. This has made it easier for surgeons to follow the movement of the body in real time during the surgery.

One of the best innovations of the 21st century is the development of computer systems. In the early phase of computer development, the computer system was viewed as the mere combination of storage, printer, network, and software programs. Gradually, the system improved with the advent of gigantic centralized storage. The decentralized storage is then delivered to the data center shared by various business units and departments. In addition, it was expanded to “End-to-end Enterprise” with IT infrastructure such as web-based applications and services. Today this revolution becomes a Global Digital Economy where people, processes and information are invaded in a single ecosystem. Not only big giants like IBM, Sony, GM, but also small industry and suppliers are part of this ecosystem. In today’s system, everyone is connected to everyone else. Small suppliers are part of the ecosystem of large companies. And it seems that we are integrating everything as part of a single global ecosystem. Building such a complex system requires mature development tools. The real challenge is that the tools are very primitive for that. The solution to that is to view the entire ecosystem as the junctions of several small components. The whole world of the system has very unpredictable characteristics, as the focus now shifts from machines and procurement to people and services. For example, designing a hospital system has become more complicated than building a Boing airplane. The individual engineer can build a Boing as long as a BOM (bills of materials). But it is extremely difficult for an individual to build a functional business system that involves people and services and has unpredictable behavior.

This evolution of the system can be presented as the pyramid, starting with the Application on the ground, followed by the Product and at the top ending with the technology. This means the amount of jobs we have in each phase. Today we have advanced so much in technology that we need very fewer people to research improvements on existing technologies. There are more jobs in the market for developing products that use these technologies rather than innovate existing technology. At the bottom of everything we have Applications. Those who can use technology components and help design a business system have the maximum number of jobs on the market. The application of technology in companies has more scope than innovative technology for people.

All of these IT-based innovations have created information overload. In today’s ecosystem we have a lot of information available through computer systems, applications, web, email, instant messaging in the form of text, audio, video and interactive multimedia. This information is useless if it does not help you make decisions in real time. More attention is paid to semantic analysis and search for information based on personalization. The most prominent application that uses real-time and semantic analysis is personalized medicine. This system not only makes the decision based on the symptoms of death, but also uses the genomic makeup of the individual to prescribe the appropriate drug. Sometimes the machine suggests multiple options and it is extremely difficult to choose between them. The solution to that is the advent of social media. With that, the people in the similar occupation can help each other using web 2.0 applications, so that the action of the people helps to improve the application and the decision.

To conclude, we can say that “On the threshold of a 21st century business revolution is affected by technological innovations, the participation of people and the automation of business processes.”