“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

via Mashable

In the span of a century, IBM has evolved from a small business that made scales, time clocks and tabulating machines to a globally integrated enterprise with more than 400,000 employees and a strong vision for the future. The stories that have emerged throughout our history are complex tales of big risks, lessons learned and discoveries that have transformed the way we work and live.

These 100 iconic moments—these Icons of Progress—demonstrate our faith in science, our pursuit of knowledge and our belief that together we can make the world work better.

The number of patents obtained in the United States and in many other countries around the world hardly begins to tell the story of innovation by IBM.

For every invention that is patented by IBM, there are probably thousands more inventions and innovations that are not patented but are protected intellectual property in defensive publications or technical disclosures. As well as leading in patents, IBM has been a leader in the effective use of defensive publishing for over half a century. IBM's Technical Disclosure Bulletin and all its technical disclosures since 1958 have been published as part of IP.com's Prior Art Database.

The  recent addition of IBM Redbooks to the IP.com Intellectual Property Library is an effective extension of the ongoing collaboration between IP.com and IBM to make their non-patent literature and technical disclosures easily accessible to patent examiners and inventors everywhere.

Congratulations, IBM, on a century of achievements that have changed the world.

Dean Kamen is a globally renowned inventor with more than 400 patents, including the Segway, the insulin pump and the robotic prosthetic “Luke Arm.” This fall, the inventor will play the role of investigator—leaving his private island to jet around the world in search of the technologies of tomorrow. In the world premiere original series Dean of Invention, Planet Green joins Kamen on his quest to find the next scientific breakthroughs that will improve life for all mankind. Dean of Invention airs in Planet Green’s VERGE primetime block at 10/9c beginning on Friday, October 22.

Dean of Invention follows Kamen and correspondent Joanne Colan as they explore the emerging technologies being developed to tackle the most daunting global challenges of today. In each episode, Kamen and Colan encounter the world’s latest cutting-edge creations by embedding themselves with leading scientists, doctors and inventors. From space-age robotics to artificial intelligence to biological breakthroughs, Dean of Invention reveals the visionary scientific advancements that have the ability to reinvent the future.

Dean of Invention airs Fridays at 10 pm Eastern. See videos of upcoming episodes of Dean of Invention here. Fascinating stuff!

And linking from his Twitter stream @Pogue to this very interesting YouTube video giving us a good look inside Volkswagen's "transparent factory" in Dresden, Germany.

Padmasree Warrior is Cisco Systems' Chief Technology Officer. As CTO, she is responsible for helping drive the company's technological innovations and strategy, and works closely with its senior executive team and board of directors to align these efforts with Cisco's corporate goals. As an evangelist for what's possible, she pushes the organization to stretch beyond its current capabilities – not just in technology, but also in its strategic partnerships and new business models.

We @ipdotcom are among over a million followers of her on Twitter @Padmasree.

According to our blog traffic monitor, recent visitors have enjoyed our look at the best inventions of the year, as determined by Time magazine, and the 50 most innovative companies for 2008, presented in a BusinessWeek video.

Many readers have looked at Tom Petrocelli's post about the end of life for IP. Others have shown interest in MIT's technology licensing office.

And a lot of readers have checked out the post about rating USPTO examiners anonymously.

But the story that continues to get the most attention here on Securing Innovation is our disclaimer that IP.com is NOT suing Nokia for $17.7 Billion. Yeah, that's a lot of money even as patent infringement lawsuits go these days.

When the story first broke, back in February, we thought there might be more than a possibility of confusion of our company name, IP.com with the unrelated German IP licensing company IPCom GmbH & Co. KG that is demanding billions in patent licensing fees from Nokia and many other well-known brands. Hopefully, there's no confusion now, especially as the story continues to make news and is featured in the October 2008 issue of IP Law & Business article headlined: Crossing the Bridge to Europe.

BusinessWeek has an online feed of interesting videos of innovative companies, including this clip in which Abbott Laboratories CEO Miles White discusses a new drug-coated stent technology that lowers a patient's risk of arteries becoming reclogged. Full disclosure: Abbott Laboratories is a client of IP.com.

A typical business reaction to a downturn is to cut, cut, cut. While cutting the fat away is good, cutting into innovation is the beginning of the death spiral. Businesses are no longer competing amongst similar businesses to sell similar products to consumers. They are competing against all other purchases. This is the time to actually invest in innovation, to invest in creating compelling goods that people will buy instead of something else.

"Compelling" is the key word here. If consumers don't feel drawn to new products they will make buying decisions based on price or someone else's compelling product. This is why innovation management is more important now than ever. Coming up with good ideas is hard enough. Knowing that they exist, where they exist, and making decisions about them is even harder. Companies abound with good ideas. Most are just buried somewhere so that product and brand managers can't find them.

This is one of the key reasons that InnovationQ exists. By helping scientists and engineers to collect, organize, and share ideas, InnovationQ allows for greater creative output. Even better, by allowing others to find these ideas and make decisions about them, good ideas percolate up to the where they can become useful product features.

At any point in time, product innovation is important. In a down economic climate, where differentiation and value become the guiding lights for consumers, it is even more essential. InnovationQ can help drive innovation and better products.