Software Innovation - Optimize Magazine Square-off

Optimize Magazine asked me to provide commentary on whether innovation is lagging in the technology industry, especially software. Here is my column. The opposing viewpoint in the Square Off comes from David Thomas of the Software and Information Industry Association.

My points:

a) we are actually seeing a lot of innovation - Florence during the Renaissance
b) CIOs are, however, in a dark mood as most of their spend is on utility v/s innovation
c) the big software vendors,  however, are only spending 15% of revenues on R&D
d) most of their R&D is going in to "tinkering" - as even Steve Ballmer of Microsoft acknowledged recently. Most of the innovation has come from smaller software vendors.
e) CIOs should negotiate hard to get an "innovation dividend" from the vendors and assign that instead to their own innovation "tiger teams" as I have profiled in my category Innovative Business Uses of Technology

Enjoy the cheap seats!