Is there a crisis in innovation? Will less venture money flowing into startups mean less innovation?
With the reduction in venture capital, there’ll be less investment money, and that means less R& D, and less R&D means less innovation. But my belief is that’s an interim thing. We’re very much in the middle of the evolution of technology. Technology has been evolving since 1900, and there’s no end in sight as far as we can tell. Q: Are there any stumbling blocks that you see on the horizon? A: Whenever you look out 10 years, you see things that you don’t know how to get around. That doesn’t mean the problems are insurmountable. It just means we don’t know how to solve them with what we know today. But think about how quickly PCs and computer-processing power have developed. Technology isn’t slowing down. A PC today has the brainpower of a lizard. In 20 years, a PC will have the brainpower of a human being. So in the next 20 years, we’re going to go through 100 million years of evolution, from dinosaurs to human beings. Q: That addresses the issue of new-product innovation. But the dot
