While reading an article recently published on Core77 I found myself experiencing a strange sense of déjà vu.  An otherwise compelling article on product innovation, this particular piece was somehow off, reminiscent of something I’d seen or heard before.  It wasn’t the content itself, which was solidly-written, as I’ve come to expect from Core77.  It was something deeper, at the root of the subject matter.

In the article, author, Carl Aviani discusses product  innovation with Dickon Isaac, Motorola’s North American design manager.  The conversation revolves around a project dubbed, “Motorola 2033″, that was launched in late 2008 in celebration of Motorola’s 25th anniversary.  The mission was to explore what mobile devices might look like 25 years from now.

Lead by Isaac, Motorola’s Consumer Experience Design team (CXD) was the group behind the Motorola 2033 project.  In reference to the CXD team, Carl Aviani further explains that “31 of Motorola’s designers, from five different offices around the globe have been dedicating a portion of their time since late last year to a project called ‘Motorola 2033.”

One would imagine this all to be very exciting work, and surely such a design exercise, with contributions from 31 designers distributed across the globe, would result in uniquely ground-breaking concepts.  One would imagine.

Let’s now take a pause from the Motorola story and jump back to February of this year.  At that time, the 2009 TED Conference was in full swing in Long Beach, California.  Presenters were taking the stage to deliver the fruits of their labor to a captive audience.  Hard-earned discoveries, artistic and scientific breakthroughs, convention-challenging ideas, and daring new products were all under the spotlight, many for the first time.

Among the presenters at the TED Conference was Pattie Maes, founder of the Fluid Interfaces Group within MIT’s Media Lab.  The presentation Ms. Maes delivered was replete with imagination and foresight of things to come.  She portrayed a world where our mobile technology would take a backseat to our natural behavior, and subtle gestures would dictate how that technology serves us.  Her vision was one of an augmented reality, where nearly any physical object could be the recipient of visual, interactive data captured from or projected onto its surface.  An interesting concept to be sure, but that’s not the coolest part.  The coolest part – she had a real, working device!  She called it, “Sixth Sense”.

Pattie’s presentation took us through the exhaustive research and development conducted by Pranav Mistry, an MIT grad student working within her Fluid Interfaces Group.  Meet Pattie and Pranav as they demonstrate the Sixth Sense device in the video below:

For $350 in hardware costs and an incalculable amount of dedication, ingenuity, and imagination, Pranav managed to execute a vision of the future within three months.  An astounding accomplishment, but what’s all of the Sixth Sense stuff have to do with the Motorola 2033 project?  If you haven’t already done so, take a moment now to scan the Core77 article.  Anything seem familiar?  Let’s take a look at some images from each project:

Interactive Projected Applications, Part I

In the image to the left you have a conceptual design from the Motorola 2033 project.  On the right you have a functional demonstration of the Sixth Sense device from Pranav Mistry.

In the conceptual design from Motorola what appears to be illustrated is a gesture-based application that responds by projecting a UI onto or near the wrist.

On the right you have Pranav demonstrating the gesture-based functionality of Sixth Sense.  As he draws a circle on his wrist with his index finger a wristwatch appears telling him the time.

Contextual Information Display

Again, on the left we have a design concept from Motorola called, “2nd Sight.”  On the right we have Pranav’s device, “Sixth Sense”.

The illustration from Motorola depicts unique avatars and other information over the heads of people in a crowd, illustrating the ability to display dynamic contextual information.

On the right we have a functional demonstration of the Sixth Sense device’s capability to display contextual information (via tag cloud displayed on the student’s chest) relative to an individual.

Interactive Projected Applications, Part II

On the left, another Motorola 2033 concept.  The graphic llustrates an interactive application projected in front of the user and manipulated by fingers and gestures.

On the right Pranav is organizing a photo collection projected in front of him by using his fingers to shuffle through the images and relying on gestures to zoom in/out and rotate.

Interactive Projected Media

On the left we have the “Communidad” concept from Motorola.  As Aviani describes, it is “a device that shines information on any handy surface, turning ‘every blank space into a canvas…’”

On the right is Pranav displaying a video clip in a blank region, a canvas if you will, of the Wall Street Journal.

Let’s recap…

Motorola 2033 Project:

• Motorola 2033 project kicked off in late 2008 to visualize mobile tech 25 years from now
• Motorola 2033 project was comprised of a team of 31 designers distributed globally
• First public coverage of Motorla 2033 hit the Internet (as far as my searches have found) on June 5, 2009, approximately 4 months after the filming of the Sixth Sense presentation at the 2009 TED Conference and 3 months after the Sixth Sense video was made publicly available on TED.com.
• The final deliverable from the endeavor was a collection of graphics and descriptions of the concepts

MIT Media Lab’s Sixth Sense Project:

• Development of the Sixth Sense device took approximately 3 months, presumably in the latter half of 2008, prior to the TED conference in early 2009
• The primary team consisted of two individuals: Pranav Mistry and Pattie Maes
• First public coverage of Sixth Sense hit the Internet (as far as my searches have found) in March of 2009, 1 month after filming of the Sixth Sense presentation
• The final deliverable was a fully functional device at a total hardware cost of $350

So what does all of this mean?  Did Motorola choreograph some duplicitous scheme to infiltrate the MIT Media Lab and conduct corporate espionage on Pranav’s Sixth Sense device?  Is Dickon Isaac an evil mastermind fixed on acquiring the innovations of students and researchers?  As eerily similar as many of the Motorola 2033 concepts are to the Sixth Sense device, it’s not very likely that such villainous intentions were driving them.

However, what all of this does begin to establish is a picture of what “innovation” really means and how it’s impacted by environment.  On one hand you have Motorola, an organization with an army of engineers, designers, product managers, and marketing gurus.  On the other hand you have a single, super-intelligent and creative individual with passion and a clear vision.

Motorola projected that the advancements they portrayed in their conceptual designs wouldn’t be in the realm of possibility for another 25 years.  Meanwhile, Pranav built the impossible earlier this year for $350, and without the contributions of 31 international designers.  Does Motorola really think it’s going to take another 24 years for someone to productize Pranav’s device and have it shrink-wrapped on retail shelves?  I’ll offer a more optimistic estimate somewhere in the range of <3 years.

It’s not a new story – an enterprise with massive budgets, global teams, and a substantial customer base facing an inability to execute.  That part of the story hasn’t changed much in the last 20 or 30 years; the corporate juggernaut has been able to stay alive on momentum alone.  But what happens when small teams and individuals are able to not only envision a product, but bring it to life?

As incredible as his achievements are, Pranav is not alone in tripping a juggernaut.  Mike Arrington of TechCrunch had a vision of a net tablet device that no one out there was building.  Rather than sit idle and complain about what wasn’t being done, he did it.  At a time when most pundits predict Apple is at least months away from announcing any type of touchscreen tablet device, Arrington is preparing for a major release announcement on the CrunchPad (rumored to be happening at the end of this month).  A blogger will be first-to-market with a device that fills a unique niche, a niche that even Apple has not yet been able to penetrate.

It’s happening across industries, disciplines, and markets.  Revolution is upon us, and it’s going to be a tough battle – not for the little guy, but for the lumbering enterprise.

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