Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Today, that might be paraphrased as, “Innovation is more important than invention.” As the head of a major research organization, I am surrounded by incredibly talented and creative people with an impressive track record of invention in all aspects of IT.

Yet, the focus of our researchers has expanded beyond the invention of new hardware and software to include closer collaboration with customers in the application of that technology, often through services engagements.

The things that customers value are changing. The emphasis is shifting from “the next big thing” in technology to creative application of technology to change the way things are done in business, science, government and society at large.

For example, one IT trend we see in the coming decades is in underlying semiconductor and storage devices, where traditional materials, design and manufacturing will gradually give way to nanotechnologies like molecular self-assembly, spintronics and carbon nanotubes.

Yet, improved chip and storage hardware alone won’t necessarily help customers change the way they do business. But what they can do is hasten a new generation of high-performance computing, autonomic computing and virtualization and grid technologies that will allow customers to manage their processing resources, and their business, in a whole new way. To get there, however, will require that we couple these underlying technologies more closely with software and system design in a much more holistic way. This will be the new path to system optimization and to changing the definition of what constitutes a “system.”