Something new under the sun

Innovation, long the preserve of technocratic elites, is becoming more open. This will be good for the world, argues Vijay Vaitheeswaran alent of 100 miles-per-gallon using alternative energy. The charitable arm of Mr Page's rm has already taken hybrid petrol electric vehicles, like the Toyota Prius, and turned them into even cleaner plug inn versions which can be topped up from an electric socket. Mr Khosla believes clean cars, using advanced biofuels or other alternatives, will come about only through radical innovation of the sort that Big Oil and Big Autos avoid. Risk and acceptance of failure are central to innovation, he argues, but the dinosaurs typically avoid both. Big companies didn't invent the internet or Google, and much of the big change in telecoms also came from outsiders,, he adds. Coming from almost anyone else such talk would sound preposterous. But Mr Khosla and Mr Page are not ordinary businessmen or armchair revolutionaries. Mr Khosla helped to found Sun Microsystems, a path-breaking information-technology rm, and he went on to become a partner at Kleiner Perkins, a venture-capital company that was an early backer of Amazon .com, America Online and many other pillars of the internet economy. Mr Page's Google is one of the internet's biggest success stories. At 34 he is a multi-billionaire. But these men are from Silicon Valley; and Silicon Valley is not America. It is tempting to dismiss such breathless talk of Revving up How globalisation and information technology are spurring faster innovation. Like management methods before it, innovation is turning from an art into a science. The move toward open innovation is beginning to transform entire industries. The best thing that governments can do to encourage innovation is get out of the way. A CRISIS is a terrible thing to waste,, Vinod Khosla laments to Larry Page. The two Silicon Valley luminaries are chatting one evening at the Googleplex, the quirky Californian headquarters of Google. The crisis which Mr Khosla is concerned about is caused by carmakers' addiction to oil and the consequent warming of the planet. The energy and car industries have not been innovative in many years because they have faced no real crisis , no impetus for change,, he insists. The two are plotting what they hope will be the next great industrial revolution: the convergence of software and smart electronics with the grease and grime of the oil and car industries. …