If you don't innovate, software is not the right industry for you

I spent most of today working with engineering team.  We were talking about redesigning one of our 6-year-old UI pages, and there was a question from an engineer:

Engineer: There must have been a reason why we made a decision to go with the current design.  It probably was designed to meet customer request [and therefore it must have been the right decision].

He was explaining why options on the UI page must have ended up being the way it is today.  Some customer interaction through somebody, probably product management team, must have driven the requirement to create the UI page that we have today.  He's probably correct.  But he missed a crucial point about software business.  It's that there is no staying still in software business.

Innovate as if you are starting new

I've spent this week thinking about big changes in tech industry impacting incumbent market leaders.  Well, it wasn't that I was looking for case studies.  They were on front pages of newspapers through out this week.

A couple of days ago, there were rumors of Kodak running out of liquidity and looking to file bankruptcy to keep its doors open.  Research In Motion was getting heavy pressure to change its top management from investors to stop the falling stock price.  There were also rumors about Barnes and Noble looking to spin off its Nook business to adapt to changing retail environment, and Forbes ran an article talking about slow demise of Best Buy, another retail giant.