What are the interesting relationships that will drive us to the future ?

I am a firm beleiver that there is in fact a paradigm shift happening that will drive a lot of the innovation starting now and taking us well into the future. The players that we are all comfortable with (IBM, HP, Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Cisco, Oracle etc.) will be joined by the new generation of players that will make us think differently about just what are the possibilities?

This paradigm shift needed to happen because innovation sometimes comes from shaking up the norm and putting it back a different way. There are a lot of interesting discussions happening from companies such as Amazon, Google, Yahoo and others that have stopped talking about computers and started talking about how to improve life with innovative ways to deal with information.

I get a much different outlook on life when I listen to Jeff Bezos (Amazon) talk about the future then I get from listening to Mark Hurd (HP) or Scott McNealy (Sun). Not that Mark and Scott are not interesting (they are) it is just that Jeff talks about how my life is going to be better and then shows me how he is going to do it even if I don't buy anything from Amazon.

We are becoming a world that is inundated with information, so much so that we are not going to be able to absorb it all. We are going to have to get better at organizaing our lives and the information that runs them. Who ever makes my life easier is generally who I am going to do business with, I don't think that is a big surprise. Information will become a commodity that needs to be diced and sliced to make it easy for me to consume and that is where the next generation Internet is going to shine (it's already starting to look good!).

Linkages between the media and the information that I deal with every day is going to make life easier. I will tell you that the media industry is starting get wise to this and understand how to take advantage. One prime example is "Food Network" which has figured out how to make food a complete experience with its TV Network and Web Site (Foodnetwork.com) you can get a great combined experience without even knowing how to cook. I can watch an interesting program on TV and then read and research all kinds of interesting follow up information with a couple of mouse clicks.

So the paradigm shift is happening but you might have to look in places that you would not have normally found innovation for technology. You need to look closely. Next time you are in the supermarket look around and see all the "tie-ins" to products and the internet and TV. It's fascinating to see where this is going. I think it will be a great ride !