A very small Innovation

Small is beautiful when it comes to cell phones and MP3 players.

For instance, the new Motorola Pebl cell phone, which weighs about 3.8 oz and is about the size of a credit card.

Or the new cell phone from a company Pantech offered by Cingular - the Pantech C300. It weighs only 2.5 oz (about the weight of a "C" battery), and is 35% smaller in size than a credit card. It is the world's smallest flip phone. And then the obvious question comes to mind? Does it pack a punch? Does it have the cool features? The answer is Yes. It has all the standard features of a cell phone and then some. How about a VGA camera with flash, multimedia messaging, tri-bands, instant messaging, speakerphone, MP3 and Music tone ringtones and more. And 35% smaller in size than a credit card. A very small Innovation that consumers are racing to buy, use and enjoy.


How about a new MP3 player? It is smaller than the size of an iPod Shuffle. According to PC Magazine, "The bite-size MobiBLU DAH-1500i is the smallest, most impressively full-featured flash player we've seen yet." The new MobiBlu DAH-1500 MP3 player is less than an inch in length, width and height. It has a OLED display (read cool lights) and sports a 20 hours playback time. It features a FM tuner and the headset plug doubles up as the data connector. It has 1 GB of memory for all those songs, and even makes its own recordings. And it is made by a relatively new player in the MP3 marketplace, Hyon Won Inc. Well not for too long. Another very small Innovation that has become a must-have for all the MP3 fans.

New advances in semiconductor, power storage, composites, processing and interrelated technologies are making these very small disruptive innovations possible today. A cell phone or an MP3 player is a sum of all the miniature innovations that goes underneath. It appears that Moore's law may be holding true for these most innovative cell phones and MP3 players in the same vein as the microprocessors and memories. And this is only the beginning. With superior advances in technologies across the board, it will be a matter of time when we will have really cool electronic devices made by new players in the market place smaller than the size of a dime. And all for a reasonable price. Very small innovations causing disruptions in perception, making, buying, adoption and image. Amazing indeed.

Selected references:
Leading eBook on Creativity and Innovation in Business
Creativity and Innovation Best Practices
Creativity and Innovation Case Studies
The Innovation Index
Top 50 innovative companies in the world