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Tuesday, January 5, 2016

The Age of Innovation

This is the week that everyone wants to predict the next Uber for Healthcare, the new Amazon for the Patient, the ...

Last year, the next big thing was ...

And this year it will be ...

Well, you get it.

The new kid on the block, by the time most of us are reading about it, has usually been around for quite a few years, and is just now getting noticed. Let's look at the age of some innovative things from our past that we see talked about in the headlines as being icons of innovation:

Twitter is 7 years old, it just entered First grade, and sits right next to Uber.  The iPhone is 8, no, 9 years old -- several years away from Middle School age.  Facebook at 10 years isn't even old enough to have its own account, let alone a page. Amazon is studying for it's learner's permit. REpresentational State Transfer (Fielding's original paper giving RESTful architecture its name) is old enough to drive. The MP3 player is a decade older than the iPhone and is old enough to vote. The Innovator's Dilemma is just a bit older. Windows 95 is old enough to drink.  Big Data is a thing.  It has been for decades.  It's been around long enough to collect a master's degree (probably in data science).  The web is about the same age as Big Data.  e-Mail is positively middle-aged.  And if your in-box is like mine, showing it around the middle girth too.

Innovation, true innovation, takes time to be successful.  The next big thing (e.g., FHIR), has already been around for half a decade.  It's younger than Twitter, Uber, Facebook, Amazon and all the REST (pun intended).  It's not just the next big thing. It's the next big think, and I cannot wait to see what it becomes when it grows up.

   Keith


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