The Essential Elements Of Successful Innovation

It has become a truism that innovation in the information and communications technology (ICT) fields is occurring faster than ever before. This paper posits that successful innovation requires three essential elements: a need, know-how or knowledge, and favorable economics. The paper examines this proposition by considering three technical areas in which there has been significant innovation in recent years: server virtualization and the cloud, mobile application optimization, and mobile speech services. An understanding of the elements that contribute to successful innovation is valuable to anyone that does either fundamental or applied research in fields of information and communication technology.