The tech industry is driven by innovation. It’s the beating pulse that propels the development of new solutions, new platforms and new ways of thinking. After many years in the tech industry, I still wake up each morning excited by the prospect of new ideas and opportunities that may change our society and the way we experience the world.
One of the people at the centre of this tech innovation is Loic Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic and founder of LeWeb. I recently had a chance to catch up with Loic and ask him a few questions on innovation and its impact on today’s networks.
GS: As the CEO of Seesmic and founder of LeWeb, you’re seen as an innovator in the tech industry. What does innovation mean to you?
LM: Innovation is creating new ideas in empty space. It's about never being happy about any of your products and always trying to improve them and making them different than anything available. LeWeb was the first tech conference in Europe so much focused on international, all in English with no French translation even though it was in Paris, that was innovation that people loved. The non-French language in Paris controversy helped it get better known, too.
GS: The Internet continues to radically alter the way we communicate. Seesmic is an example of this shift. What’s next?
LM: I am very excited by everything around our body as a platform. I use Runkeeper, an application to measure my runs and fitness, a Withings wifi scale that sends my weight data to the cloud and they talk to each other with their APIs. It's only the beginning of an entire appstore around our body and health and it's very exciting.
GS: What role will the network play in future innovation? We’re already seeing a mobile bandwidth crunch and a slowing of domestic fiber connections. Are you concerned the network won’t be able to support new applications?
LM: I don't think it's going to be the case, it's only a temporary growth issue.
GS: The evolution of cloud computing has had a huge impact on today’s networks. So much so, Om Malik recently coined the term ‘the human cloud’ to describe how cloud computing is enabling a rapid rise in the world’s mobile workforce. How do you see the cloud developing in the next five years and what role will Seesmic play?
LM: I'm spending more time on Seesmic than my mail already and people spend more time on social networks than emails around the world. The three big trends are mobile, realtime and less emails. Seesmic solves a very simple problem, it helps you monitor and engage with all social networks, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more but also the new, internal ones such as Chatter and Yammer. I am very excited by the internal communication opportunity, people want to work as they communicate with their friends on Facebook. Seesmic provides a new way to see your business evolving, real time, in a way no-one has ever done before.
GS: You divide your time between San Francisco and Paris. Is the hub of tech innovation starting to migrate from Silicon Valley?
LM: I don't think so, that's why I moved to Silicon Valley 4 years ago, it's actually more and more concentrated in my opinion with exceptions such as Groupon. Look at phones, it used to be northern europe the center of the World with Nokia and Ericsson, now it is Silicon Valley, led by Apple and Google. 3,000 entrepreneurs coming from 60 countries every year at LeWeb is showing there is a huge innovation happening in Europe and startups and investors are getting much more competitive there. What's happening in China is very interesting obviously as the online services are getting huge there, they are still copies of what works in Silicon Valley, but not sure it's for long. It's going to be similar as the car industry and electronics, people won't look at technology and services from there as just copies but as good, or better, as the original and the size that chinese companies will reach should let them become powerful worldwide and not only in Asia. I think it's going to be a long time before Silicon Valley loses its leadership if it ever does.
GS: Finally, as an industry leader, what drives you?
LM: I just love the beginning, when it's tough, when no-one has been there yet, when you don't know if it's going to work or not. I also love international communities instantly adopting your product, we're in more than 100 countries with Seesmic and growing in all of them, it fascinates me as I really like listening to their feedback and building a product for them. Being one of the players of the trend to see all communication going near real time is very exciting.
Image courtesy of Joi Ito.