Paul McGowan writes: The past few days we’ve been focusing on not setting boundaries but I think it is really more about where much of the innovation we see comes from. The fact is, most innovation comes from small scrappy little companies – not from big corporate giants.
Take Apple for example – one of the more innovative companies out there. Most of their serious innovations, the iPod, their touch screens, the new voice recognition software were acquired through acquisition of small companies or organisations. The most famous, of which, is the technology created by a small group of mavericks Xerox funded called PARC that actually invented the icon based object oriented GUI Apple made famous and now used on every computer in the world (the mouse as well).
There are many fine examples of this including the transistor and the internet itself.
High-end companies are mostly run by mavericks, they are typically scrappy and underfunded and much of the original innovation in audio comes from them.
Certainly it is unlikely that a smaller company is going to produce a plasma TV, an optical disc, even a CD player. These major technology innovations take a lot of horsepower. But all big ideas are built on small ideas.
The high-end is the cutting edge for much of what finds its way into the masses over time when it comes to audio.
I think our industry’s efforts to raise the bar on sound quality has a ripple effect felt all over the world.
Now, how cool is that?
