Large Scale Innovation

Yesterday a consortium of 5 huge companies announced their large-scale experiment in the helping their 2.5 million employees, retirees, and families manage their medical records digitally, in the hope that organizing all this information in one place will save money - lots of money. Intel, Applied Materials, BP America, Wal-Mart, and Pitney Bowes each kicked in $1.5 million of seed money to their new venture, Dossia.Electronic medical records is a topic that has been discussed and debated for years throughout the health care sector and at all levels of government. The fact that these five companies have taken the initiative is indicative of a pattern I expect we'll be seeing more and more - the initiative isn't coming from the government, but from the needs and requirements of the private sector.Similarly, NASA is now looking to private firms not just for component design and manufacturing, but for commerical offerings in launch and even in outer space opearations. They hope the X prize is just the beginning.It's the same in the energy sector, in telecommunications, and many other fields - private companies are stepping up to address society-wide problems and issues because they see entrepreneurial opportunities are ever-larger scales, and because these large scale problems are their problems, too.It won't be long before companies realistically consider creating new cities, and perhaps even new countries, radically altering the social landscape in this era of globalization and innovation.