Stephen Hoover

The business of open innovation is something PARC has been continually refining since we incorporated in 2002. Mastering the process of innovation is about far more than developing new technology; it requires a deep understanding of human behavior and context, and the ability to invent new business models to take the resulting products and services to market. We've found common themes. Three of them illustrate how we’ve been innovating at PARC over the past decade.

Innovation and the desire for innovation are nationally and globally pervasive. But by any measure of geographic or economic density, most of us still see Silicon Valley as the leader and lodestar of innovation. It’s interesting to take a moment and reflect on the very name Silicon Valley. It is, after all, named after a chemical element and a technology for making things. At its roots, Silicon Valley was about making transistors, integrated circuits and chips, and, of course, the application of these for computing and software.

‘Manufacturing 2.0’ is a radical shift already underway, and many key elements are taking shape. As technologies and business models evolve, we have an opportunity in the US to create and own the future of manufacturing. That means the opportunity for a resurgence of US manufacturing, creating big changes in the economy and revitalizing US cities across the country.

There’s something big happening right now. I’m not referring to any of the popular technology memes per se—big data, social, cloud, mobile, augmented reality, context, post-PC devices, consumerization, 3D printing, etc. I’m referring to something behind, and beyond, all of these technologies: the digitization of decision making.