They’ll start in July of 2010 providing every person one-megabit of broadband connection with full intention to increase that to 100mb by 2015. This is an enormous first step towards a future of unbelievable connectivity. Obviously, we would all say that the world is extremely well connected today, but if this law were to be passed in other countries I believe we would see unparalleled positive effects.

The amount of people that would benefit from a program like this around the world is staggering and it’s exciting to think about the increase in thought, sharing, innovation, productivity, and yes, entrepreneurial effort that would occur because of a change like this. A few startup pioneers are pushing for something called the Startup Visa. My opinion has yet to be made on this issue but I sincerely believe that a “broadband for all” effort would dominate that effort in it’s affect on innovation in the States. I’d like to see those same pioneers push for something similar to this here in the US.

In my humble opinion, I believe that Umair Haque is one of the most innovative thinkers of our time. But, to be consistent with his own arguments, that doesn’t matter. What matters for Umair is ‘awesomeness’ and he gets that through his ability to deconstruct complex thoughts. Innovation, he claims is not enough for success today, but awesomeness is. Umair is the Director of the Havas Media Lab, a company that works to strategically advise investors, entrepreneurs, and those working on strategic innovations awesomeness in business models and management.

Umair writes regularly on the Harvard Business Review under the title of ‘Edge Economy’ and he truly is on the cutting edge of thought. In his recent article Umair argues that in this day and age, innovation will not be enough for success. What is required now is awesomeness.

In thinking about the economics of innovation there are 3 emerging concepts that are expressed in this article.

1. Innovation makes yesterdays goods and services obsolete, thus the result of innovation is recession and depression.

When Apple released the first iPhone it didn’t have copy/paste functionality. It was a easy feature that everyone immediately realized it was missing. But Apple waited over 18 months to release an iPhone that included this functionality. Do you really believe they didn’t know how to include this feature? How easy it would have been for them to push a software update just like they did with 3.0 and give everyone the functionality a month or 6 months after the release. But that innovation would not have been economical. They waited so that they could extract all the value possible from the original release, then maximize the value of said software upgrade. Innovation is not enough economically speaking, but I think we’ll all agree that copy/paste aside, the iPhone is awesome, thus it’s success.

2. The challenge of the 21st century isn’t entrepreneurial it’s creative.

Bijan Sabet wrote a post recently about how his friend had the concern that VC’s aren’t funding technology problems but only companies that solve market/customer problems. Because that is what VC’s are funding, that’s what entrepreneurs are focusing on. People aren’t innovating, they are reorganizing, scheming, and ‘middlemaning’ to create businesses. This is a long term problem.

The larger problem that our society is facing is how to keep up with the innovation curve that we’ve seen over the last 20 years in the next 20. Our economy is now heavily reliant upon technological developments and will continue to rely on those developments for growth. If this trend of slowing core innovation continues we could be in a tough spot 10 years from now.

3. Innovation isn’t always innovative, and can be harmful.

Innovation means, naively, what is commercially novel. Yet, as the financial crisis proves, what is “innovative” is often value destructive and socially harmful. Financial “innovation” turned out to be unnovative: it has destroyed trillions in value

Innovation: sometimes it inspires, but often it harms, and through such a critical lens you can see that maybe innovation isn’t enough anymore.

Intro to Awesome

If innovate was the old business mantra, awesomeness is the new one. If innovation is not enough for success as show above, then what is it that businesses need. Mr. Haque says that awesome is necessary for success now. I had a short convo with Umair via Twitter about awesome and here’s what he shared.

In my view the best way for an organization to become awesome is to focus on the awesomeness of the individuals that make up that organization. Take Threadless for example. The founders of Threadless were first great web designers before entrepreneurs and thus the culture at Threadless is design focused, artistic, and extremely creative. Culture starts with the founders. So if you want your company culture to be awesome, you better be awesome as the entrepreneur!

Awesome, in it’s most basic form is something people talk about, something that drives conversation and cannot go unnoticed. Mint.com selling for $170 Million after only 34 months of operation…that’s awesome! DubFX making unbelievable music with just his voice and a loop machine is awesome (that’s why it’s the most popular post on this blog!). There are so many examples of awesome that it seems simple to repeat, but that’s far from the truth. Awesome is extremely difficult for companies, so hire people, surround yourself with people who are awesome and it will grow from within, it must grow from within. I sincerely look forward to Umair’s next book on awesome.

image via konaboy

Late last year I started thinking a bit about gen-Y and what my generation means to the workforce. I wondered how we would affect the way businesses hire, how they’d treat employees, what opportunities companies would create for us, and how we would create opportunities for ourselves even when companies wouldn’t (or couldn’t). Those thoughts lead to the other side of the coin, how will companies react to my generation, and future generations as customers and adopters of their products?

I started by looking into the official names of past generations:

1900-1924 – G.I. Generation
1925-1945 – Silent Generation
1946-1953 – Baby Boomers

Added thanks to yw600′s comment: 1954-1965 – Generation Jones
1965-1979 – Generation X
1980-2000 – Millennials or Generation Y
2000/2001-Present – New Silent Generation or Generation Z

The names of Generations have been extremely non-descriptive since 1965. I believe that the next generation will have an effect on the world in a large enough capacity to warrant a name more exciting and more descriptive that just, ‘Generation Z’. As the speed of technology innovation increases, and as the effect of that innovation increases exponentially, I believe that the next generations ability to adopt new technology will be significant enough of a characteristic that they will be named after it.

Individuals who adopt technology or other new developments in society are called ‘cutting edge’ or ‘early adopters’. If you were on Twitter before Ashton, then you’re an early adopter. If you knew what Friendfeed was before Facebook bought them, you’re an early adopter. If you let Mint.com manage your financial accounts, you’re an early adopter. The next generation will be comprised of these types of people. This ‘early adoption’ characteristic is ingrained in many Gen-Y’ers and will surely be part of the make up of the 2000 and beyond generation. I contend that this Generation should be called The Early Adopter Generation. I understand that these individuals are at the most only 9 years old, but I’m excited to see how their ability to constantly adapt to new technological development helps them take over the world.

30 years ago there were very very few 25 year old CEO’s running and selling businesses. Today startup founders are as young as 15 years old and that trend will only continue. The ‘Early Adopter Generation’ will take jobs away from older co-workers because of their ability to continually find new productive ways to get things done. What’s best is that the ‘Early Adopter Generation’ will force companies to innovate even faster. They’ll realize that adoption curves will flatten and their innovation lag will speed up very quickly. This is the traditional adoption curve:

In the future the Early Majority category will decrease feeding many into the Early Adopters category. On the whole I believe that this next Generations mentality towards trying something new, especially technology will be extremely willing. Personally, I love trying new technologies. I’m definitely an early adopter in my generation, but my willingness comes from curiosity. The ‘Early Adopter Generation’ won’t just accept new technologies because they’re curious or “tech geeks”, their adoption mentality will come from an understanding that it’s necessary for survival.

A dramatic example: Today’s job market is shitty. When a company has an opportunity to hire somebody they start by looking within the company, it’s always cheaper to promote internally than to hire externally. The next stage of the hunt will likely be through talking to colleagues and current employees asking for recommendations (this is why it’s about who you know, this is also how I got my current job w/ GE). Then when they take the search external they’ll get bombarded by applicants and the filtering begins. How will they filter? First by the resume (which will soon be practically worthless), then by a Google search. If you search my name, ‘Ryan Graves’, you’ll find as the first result, a link to ‘THE DREAM IN ACTION.com‘. I’ve worked hard so that this search would lead to my blog, and encourage that as I openly refer to it as an extension of my resume. The early adopters who have embraced a web presence and a digital resume will be one step ahead. Currently, this will help an individual with a job search, in the future it will be absolutely essential. The Google search on an applicants name will continue to be higher on the priority list for employers and it will be a survival tactic to control what content is out there.

So, as a Baby Boomer, Gen X, or Gen Y’er what can we do to keep up? Easy. Continually push ourselves to adopt new technologies. Not blindly, but with an inquisitive spirit and a intellectual curiosity that will help us become more productive and more competitive as individuals contributing to our companies and the world. Have fun with technology. Don’t look at it as something that causes you problems or a head-ache, but as a puzzle that there is a solution for. See technology innovation as a necessary progression and an opportunity to make normal, daily tasks easier and more valuable. Dive in, become an early adopter, before your kid takes your job.

Mozilla says that the goals of this new tool are:

“Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)

Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone (not just Web developers) to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)

Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility.

Extend the browser functionality easily.”

This demo shows a few easy example of how Ubiquity can be used to simplify your web experience. This is innovation made simple.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.