Economist.com | Business innovation

Economist.com | Business innovation: "Rather than chasing wonder new products, big companies should focus on making lots of small improvements"

Interesting article in the Economist, for those who can read it online (subscription required).

One suspects that as the nature of economies change and industries mature, the nature of innovation will also change. Thus, perhaps service innovation is growing with the increase in services while manufacturing innovation declines in importance with the decline in relative importance of manufacturing. Agricultural technology is quite mature, and continues to improve through modest technological innovations rather than dramatic introduction of new crops.

Still, I would not count out innovations in information technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and from the advances in cognitive science quite yet.