The Race to Innovation

“Your time is limited…”. Steve Jobs inspired us with these words which were heavily broadcasted following his death. His full awareness of this fact became his motivation to challenge the norms, create, achieve, impact…and he did all of that. What separated Steve Jobs from other technology icons is that he strived to create new tools rather than enhance existing ones, in a magnificent exemplification of the word innovation.

Innovation was and still is a race in the sense that everyone remembers the innovator and frowns upon the copycat. We tend to magnify and glorify the achievements of those who dare to swim against the tide and we walk by those who don’t bring anything new to the table. Bing was seen as another search engine, so it failed to come close to Google and remains till today largely unpopular.

Innovation is the result of many factors but one that I see of imminent significance is time. Those products that claim to be innovative stand the test of time and remain a necessity to the larger communities with time. Facebook with over 800 million users has grown to become a connector to people across the globe. Twitter wants people to share their interests and follow people who are interesting to them. Google+ is yet to prove what it is there for. The hype that Google+ enjoyed when it launched and when it opened to the public were short lived and the non hardcore users were left puzzled with a question that Google is yet to find an answer for in their mighty engines:” Why do we need Google+”?