Physics and an Innovation Mentality

To me, innovation is fast, intense, and purpose driven.  It is about adopting an experimental mentality and thinking about what we can do different today to create a better outcome for tomorrow. More than anything, it is about making those ideas happen. I was a physics major in college. Ever the scientist, there are a couple of principles of applied physics that actually help define my view on critical components of an innovation mentality: The first is momentum, the second is critical mass. Indulge me for a moment, as I apply this to one of my team’s crowning achievements from the past year.

One year ago, with such an innovation mentality, the Service Provider Video team set out on an ambitious mission to create a single platform for all devices and move video to the cloud. We devoted our best and brightest engineering talent to develop, build, test, scale, and sometimes fail fast and fix, Infinite Video Platform (IVP). We were striving to make a difference, to do things that created a better outcome for our customers, and challenge the status quo. By improving the solution, evolving our approach, and continuously asking ourselves “how can we make this better?”, we have built momentum and have launched our ‘idea’ in the marketplace.

Momentum:

Momentum, a vector quantity purely grounded in physics, is also sort of magical to me. That magic is exactly what we are seeing right now with IVP, as customers and industry analysts are recognizing the industry disrupting potential and the business opportunities that this solution provides. It all started just a few months ago with Vodafone’s GigaTV launch. And now, subscriber count is growing exponentially, and we have more exciting launches queued up, which will be announced later this year, rolling in close succession.

Critical Mass:

What do you call it when the rate and momentum of adoption begins to fuel further growth? Ah yes, critical mass. We are at that tipping point now, thanks to the addition of several key customers over the last couple of months.

• We just announced that Envivo, one of the key players in the Nigerian film industry, also know as Nollywood, will develop an OTT Service based on a mix of our solutions, including the Cisco Infinite Video Platform, the Cisco Open Media Distribution for Content Delivery Network (CDN), Virtual Media Packager and Cloud Object Storage.
• YES in Israel just launched StingTV, a cloud-based solution incorporating Infinite Video Platform, cloud DVR and our Digital Rights Management services, all on an Android-based system.
• We were honored at IBC in Amsterdam to welcome Sky NZ, one of our premiere customers for IVP, into our booth to share their experiences face to face with potential customers.

These customers have each recognized that we have the ability to transform the way they do business and reach consumers in new ways.

As with any innovation, the work is never done. We will continuously improve and evolve the solution, asking ourselves ‘what can we do different today to create a better outcome for tomorrow?’ That drive, passion, and commitment to innovation has us taking on the next big challenge; making IP Video Better than Broadcast.  Our path forward is simple: innovate, build momentum, achieve critical mass, improve and evolve. Rinse and repeat. We’re well on our way.

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