Wes has posted up a blog entry about innovation in software and the movement of research activities into the corporate arena. I tend to agree, I think we are finally turning the corner and through the use of patterns and RAD technologies like SharePoint, BizTalk and Office we can deliver an enterprise application faster and more reliably than ever before.
But the fact that its getting easier means that competitors can’t use their brand new CRUD application as a competitive advantage because their competitors will have theirs updated to be functionally equivalent in no time.
I believe increased competition is driving the need for corporate research activities and I don’t think its just going to be limited to your tier one organisations. Business will start asking their IT departments “we want to do X, we don’t even know if its possible, but thats why we pay you the big bucks”.
Successful IT departments will seek out the “impossible challenge” and try and solve it, its about the only thing left that will differentiate IT systems from a competitive point of view.