Hi John,

Well said. A good example of this in practice is 3M. Every year, 20% of their revenue is generated from products that did not exist 5 years before. One way they accomplish this is by providing employees with work time to persue new projects and technologies. As a company policy, employees can spend 15% of their time learning, experimenting, playing with stuff outside their normal duties. At the same time, 3M still generates significant revenue from adhesives, products it's been producing for years.


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>In my opinion, it is an apples and oranges argument. i.e., to address the question of which is better is to imply that one is a substitute for the other.
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>A good place to start is to address the needs each side has. Cutting edge technology is a glimpse of what may be, what the future may have in store. It is something that is in a state of flux, unproven, concept. Existing technologies have a track-record, they are mature and for the most part, stable.
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>I have long said that one must keep an eye forward and keep tabs on the future. At the same time, one must be mindful of the present in terms of the technology that works well in providing solutions to your customers.
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>From a finance/economic standpoint, one cannot ring the register on a wholesale basis with the new - cutting edge stuff. I say for the most part because there are exceptions. ADO to some extent was an exception since it almost immediate applicability. With new techology, the ROI/Payback is simply not there. Unless you can deliver projects, you can't ring the register. This is why Fox is going to have a long life.
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>While new technolgy is "cool", I can't take "cool" to the bank and deposit it into my account. My mortgage company does not accept "cool" as a form of payment.
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>So with all that said, programmers, in order to keep their edge, must keep tabs on the cutting edge. At the same time, programmers have to continually strive to wring out whatever they can from existing technology in order to ring the register.
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>Concentrating on existing technology to ring the register is the catalyst for experimenting/investigating with cutting edge technology - some of which will become reality - some of which will be vapor. The two are halves of a whole - equally important.