10 Reasons Why This Is A Great Time To Invest In Innovation

This is a great time to invest in innovation:

- The next big thing always comes out of downturns.

- It is easier to find great people.

- Salaries are lower.

- Office space and other resources are more plentiful and less expensive.

- Capital startup costs are lower.

- IT costs are lower thanks to cloud computing and web services.

- Programming languages and development tools of various kinds are simpler and more powerful.

- Marketing costs are lower (if done right).

- Work can be virtualized across time zones and regions.

- Most importantly: As bad as this recession will get, the upturn that follows will be even larger.

The next upturn will be led by what I call New Rules Enterprises, these are organizations that are highly efficient and have made the most of the economies of Internet 2.0. More on this in future posts.

Unify Behind Obama - Reduce Perceived Risk - Accelerate Growth

Despite the negative economy, I'm been optimistic about the trends. Here's why.

What's the Problem?

What caused the dominos of the downturn in 2008.

• Rapid rise of oil prices
• Upsetting over-leveraged financial markets
• Incompetent president
• Problems accelerated by the contentious election, zealous pundits, and chicken-little forecasters
• Viral web that instantly spreads the word among billions
• Loss of confidence
• High perceived risks

What's Happened?

• Oil prices declined rapidly, a first in economic history
• Interest rates reversing, following admission by the Fed that they made the wrong call on inflation
• Food and product prices will follow the downward trend with a lag
• Global financial markets gaining trillions of aid
• Incompetence removed
• More stimulus coming

The remaining, primary problem is global uncertainty among businesses, consumers, and policy makers. 

The Good News

Obama is the right choice.

• He's smart, pragmatic.
• Pundits, politicians, and comedians can't attack him personally. It's politically wrong to do so.
• He has global appeal.
• We'll see more unity.

Unification reduces uncertainty and perceived risk - leading to growth and financial gains.

The global web can change the positive sentiment as quickly as it spread the negative views - much faster than newspapers in 1929, or TV and radio during other crisis. 

Bottomline

Americans agonize over the policy choices. Politicians move even slower. It's more important, today, to move in one-direction. 

What do you think?

CLIP Microsoft’s Chris Early, head of Games for Windows Live, among the layoffs

The fallout from the layoffs announced by Microsoft on Thursday continues: Among the casualties is Chris Early, general manager of Games for Windows Live, the online gaming service for gamers who play on personal computers.

The division launched its service about 20 months ago and created a new user interface for it in November. I haven’t reached Microsoft or Early for comment, but an email bounce-back says that Early’s time at Microsoft “has come to a close.” I suspect more well-known managers will exit now there are fewer people to manage.

I met with Early back then and he was a stout defender of Games for Windows. That group has taken its share of hits in the 1,400 layoffs announced so far. Like most Microsoft divisions, it will also likely take its share of the 5,000 cutbacks coming over the next 18 months.

You have to wonder. With the Xbox 360 games getting the big budgets and Games for Windows just chugging along, will Microsoft keep investing heavily in its Games for Windows branding and services? Microsoft has been heading toward a Valve Steam-like game downloading service. But it hasn’t yet implemented that. Games for Windows Live is a free counterpart to the Microsoft Xbox Live online gaming service on the console.

Players use it to access to their own gamertag, or single identity, and data like game achievements. They can also use the system for voice and text chat and finding other players to play in online multiplayer games.