TITLE: Creative Recombination of Existing Ideas
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: April 04, 2014 12:43 PM
DESC: 
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In a post on
<A HREF="http://blog.jonudell.net/2014/04/02/shiny-old-things/">
   his move to California</A>,
Jon Udell notes that he may be out of step with the
dominant view of the tech industry there:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 And I think differently about innovation than Silicon
 Valley does.  I don't think we lack new ideas.  I think
 we lack creative recombination of proven tech, and the
 execution and follow-through required to surface its
 latent value.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

As he found with
<A HREF="http://elmcity.cloudapp.net/">
   the Elm City project</A>,
sometimes a good idea doesn't get traction quickly, even
with sustained effort.  Calendar aggregation seems like
such a win even for a university the size of mine, yet a
lot of folks don't get it.  It's hard to know whether
the slowness results from the idea, the technology, or
the general resistance of communities to change how they
operate.

In any case, Udell is right: there is a lot of latent
value in the "creative recombination" of existing ideas.
Ours is a remix culture, too.  That's why it's so
important to study widely in and out of computing, to
build the base of tools needed to have a great idea and
execute on it.
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