Innovation: Only Game Changer Date:   Tuesday , May 04, 2010 Winston Churchill once said “Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation it is a corpse.” This is the same in the case of technology companies. Without innovation happening in their backyards, it will be a corpse, or rather it will become a follower and not be a leader. It is easy to blame the chief executives and senior management for not devoting enough attention to introducing new products, but that is too simplistic an explanation for why radically new products are so rare. To achieve this, today most executives are constrained not by resources but by their imagination. Successful strategic innovations need more than a great idea. A great idea should not be just a cash cow, but an idea that can address the needs of the poor, as well as the potential that lower income markets hold for firms. As CK Prahlad said, “The entrepreneurs should be aiming at the bottom of Pyramid that can transform the lives of People.” It is a known fact that 70 percent of the world’s growth over the next few years will come from emerging markets, 40 percent of which will be from India and China. And the mother and midwife of these innovations will be the pressing problems of the developing world - healthcare, education, water, energy, food, communications, housing and corruption. To address these, I feel Indians can play a great lead in making this grant vision come true.We Indians already add to our credit of having founded close to 10,000 startups in the valley which accounts to 40 percent of high-technology start-ups in US. And now we look forward to see more and more innovations from Indians. In this issue, we present ten most promising tech companies who have created a dent in different sphere. It was not a popularity contest, so no voting was allowed; it was an effort by our editorial staff with the help of several VCs, corporate executives, and experienced entrepreneurs to showcase 10 private technology companies in the U.S., which we think are most likely to be the game changers.