Three kinds of situations of science and technology innovation

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Not long ago, I attended a technology and art of Cross-border activities, the famous painter Mr. Chen stepped up and said, he this person has no imagination, no creativity. I asked myself whether I was creative or not. I thought of my conversation with an Intel academician who asked me how many patents I had, and I said controlled. Then he asked, how much did the controlled patent make for Intel? I thought about it, I didn't make much money. And the company invests hundreds of thousands of of the money to apply for and maintain these patents. So he told me the difference between invention and innovation: invention is turning money into ideas, and innovation is turning ideas into money. Fortunately, there are a lot of scientists in our institute who are doing real innovation, and I'm going to talk about some of the situations of innovation.

The first is the importance of experience. After years of exploration, I became increasingly aware of the importance of experience. Intel's first emphasis on performance, then on power and connectivity, and then on reliability, continues to focus on the experience today. Once we recognize the problem, we begin to invest heavily. We have created a system of discourse based on user experience, let society and the environment "know themselves"; Forget about the battery, forget too many twisted wires, really "release yourself", be more comfortable "express yourself", connect with people, with things, and with the environment.

I learned a lot about it, but I didn't realize it until one day when I saw something, but the experience was simple. It was a cell phone with seven speakers on it, and the loud volume allowed the carpenter to still enjoy the music in the noisy environment. This invention you can say it is a cottage, and Shanzhai often overlooked is the user experience of innovation, with strong technology to solve the user's pain point, and then a single point of breakthrough, this is the user experience of innovation.

I also wondered how the Intel-traditionally considered a chip-making company could do something cool to solve the pain point of the user experience. So we do pocket Avatar, for video conferencing pain Point, the first occupy a larger bandwidth, traffic quickly ran out. The second is a privacy issue, and if you take a mobile phone to a video conference, you'll know where the participants are, because there are scenes in the background. The third is a subtle experience, especially for some young ladies, who may have just gotten up and have a fluffy hair, and she doesn't want to be a figure.

For such subtle ideas, Pocket Avatar app was born. It captures any subtle expression or action on the face and turns it into a 3D model that synchronizes with your actions. This 3D model may be an sprouting goat, or an orange, or Obama, or a avatar like you do. This solves the few pain points that just said: 3D model occupies a small bandwidth, the background is free to choose, there is no problem of bad image.

But is this the only solution? Not necessarily. In the Intel Research Institute I work for, there is another team working on a different solution. For example, in a video conference, the display or you, but your background may be replaced by the sun, Beach, Blue sky, the sea, which not only solves the problem of privacy, but also because the background of this part of the data does not need to transfer, saving bandwidth. But also can carry on "hairdressing", your lips are redder, the face is thinner, the nose is taller, the eye is bigger ... This is another way to solve the same problem. A slight regret is that pocket Avatar has not yet entered China.

We are wondering if we can do something more close to China's experience innovation. We think of porcelain. The Chinese name is China, which represents the traditional manufacturing industry. Is it possible to transform the traditional porcelain gene to make it a new user experience? At this year's CES consumer Electronics Show, we showed a porcelain cup with embedded Edison. When your hand touches the surface of the glass, after a warm, silky feeling, the glass is lit, and then you can start a very wonderful, cordial, interactive journey with this cup.

The second is disruptive innovation. Beijing has a serious haze problem, unfortunately, we can not use the experience to solve it, Beijing cloth Dozens of points, each point deployed nearly million RMB equipment to monitor air quality. But the problem is that this point and I may be too far away, and it only one hours to publish, so I still do not know the situation in this scene I breathe the air is what.

How do you solve such a problem? We used a cheap sensor, less than 100 yuan, so we can do more testing equipment, deployed to various places, or carry. It is real-time, it reflects the situation under this scene of the air, but its problem is too low precision, inaccurate data. But large data do not have to worry about the absolute accuracy of individual data, through multiple sources, the complete collection can be approximated to the truth. These devices may not have a single data, but they can be made more accurate by pooling data into the cloud and then by multidimensional modeling.

But the low price destroys the innovation to let the technology democratize, often can bring the flywheel effect. The above example, its ultimate goal can not just become more accurate, when there is more data, we can predict the weather as the quality of the air, we can not analyze how the pollutant formed, how it spread. This low price disruptive innovation has brought greater coverage, resulting in more data and open space for greater innovation. This is the second kind of situation.

Another manifestation of disruptive innovation is the creation of new markets, which require 10 times times the innovation of speed.

Our industry is changing too fast. "Only in the paranoia to survive," Grove wrote, "Our society, our industry, is full of 10 times-fold change." Amalafa pointed out that we tend to overestimate the short-term impact of technology, but underestimate the long-term impact of technology. Intel in 90 launched 486, now is 2014, 24, guess how many times the CPU performance increased? More than 40,000 times! We may not feel it at all.

Bill Gates once made a very interesting analogy, if cars like the computer industry, so now we can only 25 dollars to buy a car, a gallon of petrol can run 1000 miles. Of course, GM also has an interesting response: If a car is like a computer, it may throw two of anchors a day without a reason, it may suddenly shut down when turning, cannot re-start, needs to reinstall the engine, and a dialog box appears before the airbag pops up, asking you to confirm it. This joke brings two layers of revelation:

First of all, we are in the information technology industry, 10 times times the change is the normal, so need 10 times times the speed of innovation. 2006, the entire company turned to multi-core, the product department is looking at the two cores, so we are thinking about 10 times times the possibility of the speed? Can we do 20 cores, or even more nuclear chips. So we made 32-core chips. Innovation always has the Volt, the 32 nuclear chip itself has not become the star product, but by it evolved the Xeon melts the nucleus to help our China's Tianhe second to become the super computer three consecutive times first. 10 times Times is, when the whole industry is thinking about the two cores, we want to 20 nuclear, 32 nuclear.

The second revelation is that the physical world is 10 times times more beautiful, but less successful than the information industry. Why? Now the car can run 50 miles a gallon, and we tend to do research with the idea that we're going to design a gallon of cars that can run 60 miles. The result of this thinking is that you have to slowly modify the existing infrastructure, you will encounter a lot of problems, you are framed in this mind-set. In fact, in another way, if the goal is to design a 500-mile-gallon car, you can jump out of the box completely, and you'll think again, how to design the car?

The three scenarios that I've just talked about, one that looks small, is innovation in micro-innovation, experience, and the second is through low price disruptive innovation. Through the democratization of technology to bring the flywheel effect and new innovative space. And the third is the biggest, is 10 times times the speed of innovation. In these innovations, I have seen things in common, and these common things can be described in biological metaphors.

We all know that biology has a history of more than 3.5 billion years on Earth, from the inorganic to our present society, has undergone a lot of innovation.

The first is death, at the genetic level death represents the disappearance of outdated ideas, the emergence of new genes, new ideas. Many companies in the transition, will let the people with old ideas away, so that new ideas to survive and expand the space.

The second is mutation, every gene is selfish, they want to copy themselves as much as possible, but in the process of duplication will produce errors, that is, mutations, mutations bring new ideas, create innovation. Based on similar mutation rates, the mutation rate of bacteria is 500,000 times times faster than that of our animals. That's why small companies are quicker to innovate than big companies, while big companies need to innovate dynamically through a small team of organizations.

The third is breeding, and if genes are selfish, breeding is a compromise between selfishness and creativity. By reproducing half the genes of their parents, they enter into a new individual, creating innovation. Now, the so-called Cross-border mix and remix, is this type of innovation. We are also engaged in innovations in information technology and communication technology integration.

The fourth is invasion, invasion is a more intense than breeding a combination of innovative ways. More than half of the genome in the human body is a remnant of the original virus invasion. In the course of the virus invasion, if the individual did not carry it will disappear, and the carrying of the introduction of some new ideas, so become more powerful. Internet finance is the invasion of the Internet to finance, we in the research and let the financial invasion of large data, the data pricing.

The last one is to adapt, regardless of natural selection or exhaustion of waste, must adapt to the environment. There is a very interesting story, the premature death rate in Africa is very high, so the company made a very expensive, very advanced baby incubator sent to Africa, the first year is very good, but the next year a large number of failures, no one can repair, and no parts can be replaced, how to do? To adapt to the environment. The company's designers found that the place in Africa is full of Toyota cars, so they used the parts of Toyota, redesigned a baby incubator, not only solve the problem of spare parts supply, not worry about no one repair. In fact, technology companies are now doing such things, such as cooperation, mergers and acquisitions, which is the fact that the company is adapting to the environment, in this environment and the ecosystem better symbiotic and common development.