Xerox and the PARC
Today morning, we took the train from San Fransisco to Palo Alto. The famous town where Steve Jobs grew. But today was not about him or Apple… well, not directly. Because Apple owes a lot to another great innovative company from the Silicon Valley. This company is Xerox and more precisly it’s Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC. Some of you might ask themselves : “What ? Xerox ? The company from which I buy my printer paper ? What does it have to do with Apple ?”. All right. Xerox may be well-know for print related stuff. But, in the beginning of the 70′, it created a special division in Palo Alto, the PARC, where some hippie-computer-guys (and gals) worked on computers and information technology, creating the basis of what we take today for granted. Before diving deeper in history, let me introduce you to the man who welcomed us in the PARC: Julien Freudiger. Hey ! That’s a Swiss name ! As a matter of fact, it is. Julien came from Switzerland to Silicon Valley about a couple of years ago, and since then, is working for this company since a security researcher. It was a pleasant surprise to meet a fellow Swiss so far from home. We took advantage of that to do most of the visit in French. Walking in History The visit first took us to the small and kind of private PARC museum, inside the main building. In there, Julien introduced us to several of the most innovative works done by the research center throughout the years, starting with the 1970’s and the mice (invented originally in Stanford, though). The researchers created a piano-like companion to the mice that was supposed to help the user accomplish actions without using the keyboard. When he visited PARC in the late 1970’s, Steve Jobs hated this device and didn’t used it on his later projects. However, he was presented some other projects that were more to its taste: the SmallTalk language (an Object Oriented Language), Ethernet (the technology that’s still mostly used behind Internet) and the GUI, Graphical User Interface, via the Xerox Alto, which was the first personnal computer to ever use a GUI. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both used this feature when developping respectivly the Lisa and Windows. Some years later, PARC worked on a project called NoteTaker. As the name doesn’t imply, it’s a prototype of a portable computer which was targeting kids. The only problem being that the computer in itself was heavier than a kid. Some years later, they worked on a tablet prototype, the ParkPad. Finally, Julien showed us one of the most successfull innovation of the PARC: the laserprinter. And I don’t think that I need to explain this one. Now that the museum is done and the past of Xerox PARC is explored, it’s time to talk about the present time. PARC today Until 2002, PARC was a division of Xerox, intimately linked to the company and somewhat dependent on its decisions. Nowadays, it is a company related to Xerox but independent enough for it to work with other companies as well. Right now, PARC is no more focused only on hardware research. There is three main activities supported by the company: Research, Development and Sales. Each floor of the building is hosting a different discipline linked to these three activities. For Julien, this is part of what makes is job at PARC so interesting: the interactions with others, the confrontations of different points of view and mindsets and the intersection of disciplines. Additionnaly, PARC also offers a wide variety of services to companies and especially start-ups. Julien explained to us that PARC is very willing to help them innovate and create new businesses. Some start-ups are welcomed inside the Parc building to work on their business. They are given access to researches conducted by PARC to accelerate the process in exchange of some shares. This is a huge advantage for the start-ups. They can benefit from the advance knowledge helded by PARC and boost up their ideas and creativity. Julien also told us about the desire of the company to make the technology more human centered. This wish is materialized by hiring ethnologists and making them work with engineers and researchers. The ethnologists are studying the humans that will be using the technology and give the designers of this technology clues to make it easy, user-friendly and very close to the real needs of the users. This is what is called User Centered Design and PARC has been a key ambassador of this philosophy these last years. Disruptive Innovation After Julien finished his speech, we welcomed two of his colleagues, Jeremy Clarke and Honglu Du. The first is an Innovation Consultant and the second is a Human-Computer Interaction researcher. They came here to talk about what is Innovation Consulting for PARC. Basically, companies come to PARC for consulting when they are experiencing problems with their actual business model. With the help of the researchers and the ethnologists, they work on understanding problems, customers and or technologies in order to come up with fresh and new ideas. Preferably ideas more adequate to the actual market situation. Ideally disruptive ideas. That’s an interesting challenge because PARC and Xerox are also facing some disruptive forces in several markets. Wether it be on the transport, health, customer care or finance and accountance market, they are facing new challenges because of new and innovative ideas that change completely the market dynamic. In short, the company need to change its mindset. But as Jeremy told us, changes in big companies like Xerox and PARC are difficult because the people leading the companies have mindsets that change slowly than the market. Often, companies pivot drastically when they are facing imminent death. And that’s not very wise to wait for that. I’ll let Jeremy the final word with a quotation he told us : “Those who live by the sword will be shot by those who don’t”.
Team SMC: A day full of challenges
Part 1 – Emerging trend: Check We were looking for an emerging trend in the food field. As we stopped by for a coffee break at a cafe with a wifi connection, there we discovered it seems to became a trend to order your coffee and your cookie online and then just pass by to take it. Bags with the orders were ready in a shelf, waiting for the customer who ordered it. It was a little bit like in a library. Posters and ads across the city – especially in the bart stations – are attracting customers to order meals and food online. So it is a service to avoid queuing when you are in a hurry. Orders can easily be made while commuting to the working place and picked up just at the right time. There is a high chance that this model will also be adapted in Switzerland soon: the technical devices needed are all there (everyone has his smartphone), restaurants, cafés and take aways have just to set in place a tight workflow to handle the orderings and to create a place where food is placed to be picked up – with a certain control that the right person is picking up the right thing – and that food is paid in advance when placing the order. Finally: everybody hates queuing, so if there is a way to avoid it, we should propose this service to the clients. Part 2 – Try different food: Check As we are close to Chinatown, we decided to discover this district and the typical atmosphere. We spend time in the shops where we found typical Chinese stuff. It amazing to see how you can switch from San Francisco to a China city within a few second, only by crossing a road. It is like a county in the country. It was lunch time ! We found a typical Chinese restaurant with plenty different menu. Finally we go for the day menu that was composed of a curry and rice bowl with a famous miso soup, which was by the way excellent. Even for the drink we tried something new, a lychee lemonade with strange bowl on in, which seems to be called buba guy (we are still not sure what it really was). It’s now time to continue the challenge. We had a very nice lunch break all three together. Part 3 – How is work life in SFO: Check Working in San Francisco doesn’t mean to live in San Francisco. Like Filipe who is working in a Hilton Hotel as a Laundry worker. For the rents are way too expensive, he is making a one-hour trip to go to work. That is quite a common thing. Keisha, a school bus driver, can’t afford a place to live downtown. She told us though, that her work allowed her to spend time with her little boy Douglas. Long trip, time consuming, might be the price to be paid. Entering in a FedEx office, we got to meet Kevin. This young boy is one of the exception. For a 9 on 9 feet room he spend 900$ a month. These three people work 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. As Swiss people, how much can we relate to them? Do we drive that much to save money and tend to “survive”? Or do we make such distances only for good money? Part 4 – Swissness in the USA: Check On that part we tried to understand how swissness is perceive in the USA and especially in California. Chocolate, watches and swiss army knife are the most common word people think when we ask them what swiss product they know. Swiss products are mainly perceive as high quality product which last long but the consequence is that the products are expensive or at least are perceive as such. When we talk about innovation, swiss made is not what comes out of the discussions. Switzerland in perceive as a traditional country with hand made and quality manufacturing but not as an innovating country. If we sum up, swiss products are high quality, made with precision and will last longer than products, which are common in the USA. People are proud to have and show off that they have Swiss product… Part 5 – Find innovative entrepreneur: Check “Find entrepreneurs and ask them what innovation is in their perception”. What an easy task. How come can we even guess who can they be? Especially in a city like San Francisco where the following statement rules: ” do not trust appearances. “. We should not only look for people wearing a suit and drinking their starbucks coffee. Therefore, we decided to call them, hopping one would answer. A Cardboard a pen and here is a tool to look for them “Innovative Entrepreneurs?” talk to us! The first lady that stopped by, got curious on our way of doing. We chatted for a little, but her lunch break was getting to an end. Have a look at the video: Find innovative entrepreneurs. Terris, but call him “little” even though he is very tall, was the second person we talked to. He was an entrepreneur, back in days. He opened a place to eat chicken and fries. That man for sure loves Chicken by the way. After a few words on his life he summarized entrepreneurship as trying and falling, and trying and falling… We asked him how he perceives innovation. “Innovation is change. ” He gives us the example of a smartphone, where he got to change his whole way of doing thing to gain a new habit. There we thought that the same example is definitely the one that explains disruptive innovation all around the world. After some good talk (and good laugh) with Small (yes we got quite intimate after a few minutes), we continue our way. When suddenly, out of nowhere, those three Spanish guys jump in
Find innovative entrepreneurs
