WEB FREE SOFTWARE

Downturn upside

p/bBy Ian Hardy/bbr /Reporter, BBC Clickbr /pp b America's culture has always revolved around innovation so a global economic meltdown is bound to affect it perhaps more than any other country./b/pp/pimg src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45628000/jpg/_45628126_innovation203.jpg" align="left" width="203" height="152" alt="A row of TV screens" border="0" vspace="4" hspace="4"/pp In good times and bad if you had a great idea it would take about 20 minutes and $100 to set up a legal company and get the ball rolling. /pp But Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Jeremy Toeman who runs Stage Two Consulting said infectious enthusiasm for a concept is no longer good enough by itself. /pp quot;I think a few years ago you were able to start something you knew people wanted to do, even if you didn't know how you were going to make some money off that. /pp/p /quot;iIt could be argued that in the long term a recession is actually a good thing for innovationquot;/ibr /b/bbr /br /p quot;Today you don't have as much latitude. Today you have to be able to say... this is my great idea and (this is) why people will pay for that great idea.quot; /pp For established companies from around the world with big operations in the US it may be a different story. /pp b Strongest products/b/pp If consumers cut back dramatically on purchases - as has happened in the past few months - it does not necessarily mean an end to all innovation. /pp Steve Heiner, from Nikon explained: quot;We sell far fewer high-end high-dollar professional cameras than we do point and shoot or compact digital cameras to the masses. /pp quot;But of course development in professional photography in many ways leads the way for a lot of these other cameras, because features that we develop for very professional cameras... makes its way down into the consumer cameras.quot; /pp In bad times the strong companies survive and so do the strongest products - it could be argued that in the long term a recession is actually a good thing for innovation. /pp/pimg src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45628000/jpg/_45628222_final_cut203.jpg" align="left" width="203" height="152" alt="Apple's Final Cut Pro" border="0" vspace="4" hspace="4"/pp The key is for companies to differentiate themselves from their competitors so when rival firms fail or weaken they can excel more. /pp In 2001 Apple, better known for its computers and music players was able to take advantage of a recession to overhaul the costly world of video editing. /pp Final Cut Pro software shaved tens of thousands of dollars from a project and greatly expanded the video marketplace. /pp b Difficult environment/b/pp When the quot;dotcomquot; bubble burst many tech companies realised their products and services were suddenly worthless. /pp Andy Lippman, associate director MIT Media Lab said: quot;Now in this downturn, since it's coming from outside the technology industry, it's the environment that's much more difficult, not your own business. /pp quot;So the roadmap for the companies that we deal with, especially the most successful of them are still in place, their plans are still intact.quot; /pp Even though the global economy is in such a big mess those working in the technology arena agree that new innovative products will continue to show up in shops throughout 2009 because funding for such devices was in place years ago. /pp What is less clear is what will happen five years from now. The auto industry is already on its knees but most of the big tech players will likely weather the storm and green gadget innovators have a new supporter in the White House. /pp But if the downturn lasts any length of time the type of gadgets and services we see coming to market might also change, with the emphasis on cheap./phrpThis article is from the a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk"BBC News website/a. #169; British Broadcasting Corporation/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?a=RAQSUWRrioA:tlPjN0KCKJU:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?i=RAQSUWRrioA:tlPjN0KCKJU:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?a=RAQSUWRrioA:tlPjN0KCKJU:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?i=RAQSUWRrioA:tlPjN0KCKJU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?a=RAQSUWRrioA:tlPjN0KCKJU:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed/~4/RAQSUWRrioA" height="1" width="1"/