I frequently run into companies who have a technology that is successful for them in one application and now they are asking themselves what other applications can benefit from the same technology. This is always a difficult question. How do you make the best use of the good parts of your capabilities to be successful in a new market. This week Google showed an interesting example of one of the answers they came up with when they asked themselves this question. Google has released a beta site for their new video search offering. Now web search engines have provided searches of web content. They have provided dictionaries, encyclopedias, telephone books, movie showtimes and even TV schedule listings. But Google's new "Google Video" site (http://video.google.com) provides not searches of TV schedules but searches of actual TV content. Say you wanted to know if any TV show had mentioned the Linux operating system recently...
When I searched for Linux I found that the January 18th NCIS crime drama, the KRON 4 Morning News and on CSPAN2's Book Event Shows all made some reference to Linux. On other searches I found 5 references to Frank Lloyd Wright and 6 references to a Rubic Cube. I do not know about you, but I was impressed. This is clearly a useful new application of Google's technology in an unexplored application. The lesson is that we can never say that we are finished, that we have explored all uses of our technology and capabilities. So look around you there are an infinite number of ways we can look at things that are to us common place and find new uses for them. Take what you have and make something new and great out of it. All it takes is the willingness to look at it differently.