Technology Review has a column by Michael Schrage:

Innovation isn’t what innovators do; it’s what customers, clients, and people adopt. Innovation isn’t about crafting brilliant ideas that change minds; it’s about the distribution of usable artifacts that change behavior. Innovators—their optimistic arrogance notwithstanding—don’t change the world; the users of their innovations do. That’s not a subtle distinction.

That’s also why I now believe that the dominant global issue of our time is the accelerating diffusion of innovation. Period. Full stop. The diffusion of innovation—not the “spread of ideas” or the “clash of civilizations” or even “globalization”—is the dynamic driving today’s world and tomorrow’s. Whether you care about nuclear-weapons proliferation, the specter of bioterrorism, global warming, the “digital divide,” or the prospect that new sources of potable water and cheap energy will better the lives of billions, you are—in the first and final analysis—concerned about the risk/reward rivalry that drives the diffusion of innovation.

Every significant issue of our time—energy crises, environmental degradation, economic development, public health, HIV/AIDS, educational opportunity, child care—is increasingly shaped by the ebb and flow of technical innovation. In fact, the quality of global life and the standard of local living have come to be defined by the diffusion of technology. We’re not going to escape this essential truth; it’s dishonest to try.

ACM Ubiquity has an interview with Espen Andersen, in which he mentions among other things, hiw two laws:

The first law says that communication and computing are now free resources, and if you remember that law when you think about the use of technology you're going to do a lot better, especially if you are a CIO or other business executive thinking about how you should make use of it.

The second one I've never seen formulated anywhere, but I though about writing it out for Ubiquity. My second law is that every dot.com should have a dot.org to watch over it. A lot of companies are dot.coms, in the sense that they have an Internet presence with an address like companyname.com. I think their customers and other stakeholders in the company should organize and take command over the companyname.org, whatever it may be. So, let's pick a company, let's pick enron.com. If there had been an enron.org that watched over enron.com, perhaps Enron wouldn't have been in the papers quite so much.

WSJ announced the winners recently. Among the big winners:

Gold Winner: Sun Microsystems Laboratories, US
New method for chips to transmit data inside a computer up to 100 times faster than today's top speed

Silver Winner: Given Imaging Ltd., Israel
Pill-shaped video camera screens the esophagus for disorders

Bronze Winner: InSightec Image Guided Treatment Ltd., Israel
Device destroys tumors using ultrasound waves together with magnetic resonance imaging