Technological Innovation: What it is and what it isn’t…

Serious coverage of technology is a hard business, demanding a lot of the reader, and more of the writer. Explaining technological innovation means describing something new in words people can understand. More importantly, it means describing it in terms of the model previously set up for the publication — in other words, a business magazine editor would likely interpret technological innovation in terms of the financial developments it generates for the companies offering technology related products and services whereas a science editor would want to see the advancement in terms of it’s science. Popular science magazines outline the latest gizmos, from the obvious to the pipe dream category. True technological innovation really uses basic existing subjects, like software and semiconductors, in new ways, and most often is found in research and development or specialized subject journals. It’s important to understand the difference, because ultimately this difference is going to involve your pocketbook.

What technological innovation is involves using previously defined knowledge to propel a field forward. An example, in the January 2007 issue of IEEE Spectrum News, in an article called “At the Ace Awards, Engineers Party Hearty” (www.spectrum.ieee.org/apr07/comments/1772) cites Innovative Silicon’s new superdense memories — which basically promise to boost the performance of all kinds of microprocessors, and lower their cost. Innovative Silicon is a company based in Lausanne, Switzerland who received the Emerging Technology ACE award in 2007 for this innovation, which was named the Z-RAM, for zero-capacitor dynamic random access memory. Why did it win? Because with it you are able to put 5 times the megabytes of RAM “into the space occupied by a single megabyte of conventional embedded memory”. Ultra-dense memory technology is an emerging reality. That is a true innovation, one which in the two years since the award was granted has begun to generate whole industries accomodating the innovation. More on Innovative Silicon’s accomplishments can be found at their website at www.innovativesilicon.com — in fact, in 2008, the company placed in the finals for the 2007 EDN Innovation Award in the Digital ICs, Memory, and Programmable Logic category. Companies like this are the source of innovation and drive technologies forward.

What isn’t a technological innovation are the gizmos and pipe dreams you read about — usually ideas that offer immediate types of gratification to gadget freaks, with no firm basis in existing science. These days, it’s insufficient to not stay abreast of what is working and what isn’t, because money is tight. Knowing what technological innovation is and what it isn’t can go a long way towards helping make good decisions on how to spend your money, whether it be on product, service, or investment.