First, IBM announced a record 6,478 patents in 2012, patents for inventions that will enable fundamental advancements across key domains that include analytics, big-data, cybersecurity, cloud, mobile, social networking, as well as industry solutions like retail, banking, healthcare, and transportations.
These patented inventions also will advance a major shift in computing, known as the era of cognitive systems.
This is the 20th consecutive year that IBM topped the annual list of US patent recipients.
Ginny Rometty, IBM's chairman and CEO, had this to say about the milestone:
"We are proud of this new benchmark in technological and scientific creativity, which grows out of IBM's century-long commitment to research and development. Most concretely, our 2012 patent record and the two decades of leadership it extends are a testament to thousands of brilliant IBM inventors -- the living embodiments of our devotion to innovation that matters, for our clients, for our company and for the world."
IBM's record-setting 2012 patent tally was made possible by more than 8,000 IBM inventors residing in 46 different US states and 35 countries. IBM inventors residing outside the US contributed to nearly 30 percent of the company's 2012 US patent output.
There was also an early morning announcement from Los Angeles, this year's Academy Award nominees.
There was another long slate of Best Film nominees, including Amour, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and Zero Dark Thirty.
I've seen five of the nine, which puts me well ahead of where I am most years in terms of what films I have and haven't seen.
Best Actor nominations were led by Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln and Bradley Cooper for Silver Linings Playbook. If you've seen Lincoln, it's hard to see how the Best Actor Oscar doesn't go do DDL.
On the Best Actress front, the nominations were led by Juillard-trained Jessica Chastain for Zero Dark Thirty and Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook. But don't rule out Emmanualle Riva for Amour, or the chameleon-like Naomi Watts in The Impossible. In a crazy year, Quvenzhane Wallis could even walk away with the Oscar for her crazy good performance in Beasts of the Southern Wild, one of the most unique, imaginative films I've seen in years.
Quentin Tarantino got a nomination for Django Unchained in the Best Original Screenplay category, but I think that one is there for the taking by Mark Boal, screenwriter for Zero Dark Thirty.
Congrats to all this year's nominees. As a big movie fan myself, looking at that slate of Best Pic nominees, you realize what a strong movie year it's been.
Finally, on the topic of movies, if you're a big movie fan, check out Stephen Rodrick's piece in The New York Times magazine about the trials and tribulations renowned screenwriter-director Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Affliction, et al.) had financing and making his new film, The Canyons, which stars that ever-intemperate actress Lindsay Lohan.
Meanwhile, below I've included a nice video clip summarizing IBM's 20 successive years of patent leadership, and you can learn more about IBM's patent efforts on our Tumblr site.
That is an amazing achievement for IBM folks, almost one invention per inventor each year. It would be interesting to learn what the return on investment might be on those inventions over time.
Presumably, it's a good payoff, but nontheless, it would be revealing to future inventors just to see how lucrative or not the business of invention might be on average. Lots of losers, I'm sure but the winning ideas much surely be paying off handsomely over some number of years. Wonder how long that might be?
I hear you, Chuck. It's also a tradition in my household to watch all the movies nominated for an Oscar on Sunday nights, if a lot of us still haven't seen it. People just contribute a few bucks and we watch the stream together. Yes, it's hard to wean off and stop being a pirate, but hey, we gotta do what we gotta do.
IBM does an amazing job on the innovation front - they are clearly ahead of the pack when it comes to research and development. Being an IBMer is a mark of privilege that only the few in IT and consulting can aspire to. I hope that someday I could work there because of the cool stuff that those guys get to work on day in and day out.
My wife and I love movies, and usually have seen at least half of the Oscar nominees. This year, since I've stuck with legal streaming with Netflix and Amazon instead of risking the Pirate Bay approach, we have watched exactly 0 of the Best Pictures.
Sigh. The price I pay for cleaning up my act...
I will have to see if I can spare a few bucks to rent some of them...we usually only go with the videos that come with Prime or Netflix services. I have been wanting to see several of the titles, most especially Lincoln.
Thanks for the fun post. I had no idea IBM was so inventive.
I really like how they explicitly state that the number of patents is just an indicator, and that the raw number isn't as meaningful as the innovations that are produced from a culture of research dedication.
Also... I see someone snuck in an Apple laptop at 1:22... Though I guess IBM doesn't make Lenovos anymore...
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The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
So here we are, the last day of the 2013 US Open Golf Championship at Merion, and Phil Mickelson -- who has been a US Open runner-up five times now but never taken the trophy -- is right up there at the top of the leaderboard.
The last time I saw Monaco, I was heading from Milan to Nice in a car-full of IBM colleagues with whom I was on a two-week long business trip throughout Europe.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
Big-data and analytics tools enable marketers to understand customers as individuals, identifying unmet needs and addressing each customer as a "segment of one," says John Kennedy, VP corporate marketing, IBM.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
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