High-Speed Innovation

Will ultra-fast broadband be the backbone of U.S. inventiveness?

I assume most people reading these pages know that over 1,100 communities around the country threw their hats into the ring in hopes of being selected by Google for a massive investment in ultra high-speed broadband networks.  As of this writing, Google is keeping mum about possible locations – one can only assume they’ve been whittling down the list of contenders.

What does this have to do with innovation?  I believe a quest for American inventiveness is at the very heart of Google’s move. 

On February 9^th, the Washington Post featured an op-ed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “Erasing Our Innovation Deficit”.  Schmidt wrote that our nation needs to get back to innovation. That we must tolerate failure; invest in our knowledge base; hang on to talented people from anywhere in the world; and expand broadband access.

Schmidt mentioned that the U.S. is 15th in the world in internet access – a woeful statistic for a nation that would like to retain its position as the globe’s leading economy.

The very next day, Google announced its intention to build a super high-speed internet highway in at least one American city, with throughput 100 to 200 times faster than current top speeds.

This should lead to an explosion of innovation. And not just for tech geeks! Opportunities for innovative thinking founded on high-speed broadband are open to all. Life is about to change for everyone, in all walks of life.

These speeds don’t merely allow you to download high-definition movies in a matter of minutes or overload your inbox in milliseconds. In this rapid-delivery information environment, surgeons and engineers will achieve distant collaborations that make their work faster and more accurate. Scientists will collaborate on experiments in real time in laboratories continents apart.  Trade shows can become holographic and product samples will “ship” digitally, cutting travel, turnaround time, and energy costs. 

Global digital classrooms could spring up for everything from languages to medical practice – with no confusing image or sound delays, no missing digital information, and no download time.

In tomorrow’s hyper-drive information environment, companies and institutions will literally be able to “walk through” complex data in an immersive experience and discover previously unrecognized relationships. With the right data, we could realize dramatic breakthroughs in our understandings of disease, global economics, and environment. 

Literature and the arts will change, as “creatives” turn data into environments.  Imagine an art gallery of paintings you can walk into, sculptures you can experience from inside as well as outside.  Or a trip through an entire museum, downloadable into a 3-D media room – schools, senior centers, and care facilities would be able to offer virtual worlds of experience.  Star Trek’s “holodeck” may be just around the corner.

Innovation in the digital age is so closely tied to availability of information and digital services that it can be no wonder if U.S. innovation is failing to keep up with our intentions, given the turtle-pace of expansion and improvement of the digital highway here. But this as-yet unborn Web speedway will one day become the standard in major American cities, and similar digital capacity is speeding ahead in other nations.

Much faster speeds than ours are already the norm in places as far-flung as Korea, Hungary, and Sweden. Akamai, a Cambridge-based hosting company, rates the world it serves on an annual basis:  In 2009, it placed the US 18^th in Internet speed.  Not good for a country needing to innovate in a global economy. It’s a deficit that not only risks our economy, but our security, if we don’t fix it.

Fortunately, Google’s move pushes the game forward. And whichever cities ultimately win the first wave of super speed, more and faster access is coming to all.

Baltimore and DC are both in the Google race, because we see the long-term benefits for every aspect of our region.  The bid will not only serve established institutions and corporations, but lead to a renaissance of creative problem solving and economic growth. 

The innovations that issue forth could benefit both industry and mankind: Faster, better, more dimensional data could help the oil industry make better decisions in deep water, improve predictions for hurricane landfalls, and make air traffic safer. Whatever business you are in, 100 times more data per second is a game changer.

We don’t know which communities Google will ultimately select for its initial launch of ultra high-speed fiber:  We do know that this is the wave of the future. It's a future that is still over the horizon, which is perfect timing for savvy CEOs, entrepreneurs, and creative thinkers. 

It is time to gather information, examine your industry, think about what you can do with all that speed and power. Time to bring together the minds you trust, from your business and from the world of technology. Begin to imagine how you can capitalize on the possibilities. 

If your enterprise takes you into any of the nations where faster is normal – Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Romania, Hong Kong, and most of Europe – take your next business trip with an eye toward how they are using the speed already at their fingertips, knowing that even faster is coming. How can you adapt what they’ve pioneered, do it better, or introduce it to our market? Remember: Innovation is both massive and incremental: Step-by-step evolution of goods and services and small, useful tweaks on existing products are effective winners, too.

We have brains and big ideas enough here in the Mid-Atlantic to fuel a revolution.  With hundreds of educational and cultural institutions and corporations, and thousands of artists and entrepreneurs ready and eager to surf the waves of a faster internet, our region is ripe for high speeds and the potential they make possible. 

In global terms, we can’t afford to be left behind in this race. In smart CEO terms, it’s time to plan ahead.

View this article online at SmartCEO.