Tomorrow, Less will be more.

The book, 'The Innovators Dilemma' focuses on the theory behind disruptive innovation in more detail than I care to go into - but I am convinced that in today's complex digital universe - consumers are asking for less not more.

The PC is the Swiss army knife of functionality. Here's a PC that can play music CD's, here's one that can play DVD movies, here is one that has a camera and can be your video phone, want to record live TV ? - Sure, the PC is great and be it Win/Lin/Mac - it can be done. Then comes the PDA (satellite to a computer for contacts/notes), the iPod (satellite to a computer for playing music), the digital camera (satellite to a computer for capturing images). -- Combine them all and you get an early incarnation of a SmartPhone (Ex: Treo). Now days, convergent devices are all the rage. SmartPhones are getting more powerful with web-browsers and full fledged PC applications (ex: iPhone) while you can't buy a GPS or even a Pez dispenser that won't play your MP3's for you.

Here lies the premise of my prediction - the disaggregation of the PC into it's 3 core components (Platform, Apps & Content) will result in consumers desiring greater disaggregation in terms of the features/functions of the devices they carry. Some will see this as the pendulum swinging back for a 2nd time. - First we aggregated into the PC (fixed computer), then we disaggregated into single function devices such as the iPod mentioned above, today we're re-aggregating into mobile computers, and next I predict we'll want to break it up into satellite devices yet again.

What will drive this 2nd wave of disaggregation isn't some new magical device like an iPhone v2, I also don't believe it will be a STUMPc (Super-Tiny-Ultra-Mobile-Pc) despite being a fan of Diamondville, err - ATOM systems. -- Set full disclosure = ON -- It will be the network.

Imagine a device capable of 60fps @ 480 lines of horizontal resolution capable of receiving multiple video streams on a monthly recurring service fee of absofrigginlutely nothing - and you've got this thing called television. Before that you had dozens of audio channels where a single tower in Chicago could broadcast a Cubs game all the way to mid-Michigan, it was called radio. Now today we have all that being re-invented in the form of packets vs. analog signals. Phones once the magic of Alexander Graham Bell and children playing with tin cans and string - are now digital packets being relayed around the world at light speeds.

Reinvention is all about taking something good and making it into something great. In a technology era where standalone technology innovation may be slowing - that is not necessarily a problem - we have turned to 'mashups' to create new and amazing possibilities. How do you 'mashup' stovepipe technologies ? - Tim O'Reilly was quoted saying, "The network is opening up some amazing possibilities for us to reinvent content, reinvent collaboration." Again, a common theme - the facilitator of this era of innovation is "The network..." The glue between the mashups is - "The network..."

We're at a point now where we need very specialized devices which can do one thing extraordinarily well. The end-device (platform) is the human interface, it's the very basis of the consumer experience. Rather than needing to stuff it full of capabilities (apps) - we need to have devices which are appropriate to the types of content we're trying to render.

I don't want to listen to music on my cell phone, I don't need my dog's photo on my GPS. I want all my devices to be subscribed to my content in the cloud. That way my digital photo frame could play my Flickr feed (not some SD card stuffed in it's gills) My car could play my music, not off an iPod with an FM Transmitter, and not relayed off my PC at home - but from my S3 storage library, my presentations wouldn't need to be reliant on my PC behaving well because the inFocus projector would be able to open the files directly, -- hopefully you're getting the drift by now.

Take a look at your own buying habits as a consumer or employee, I encourage you to share your perspective with others - are you looking for fewer devices that technically can do more, or are you looking to have more devices do one thing really-really well ?