Blockbuster- or Incremental Innovation?

Again inspired by a HBR column (by Rosabeth Moss Kanter). Block buster products don't spring to work in the market place without incremental change.

We software makers have our release cycles and some of the releases are quite radical innovations, more a new technology than a new release.

In Q4 2009 we have launched UnRisk-Q, the UnRisk product for quant developers. In the first view it is an UnRisk PRICING ENGINE that comes with a Mathematica front-end only.

We ourselves develop in a hybrid-programming environment, where everything is represented in the declarative language of Mathematica.

In the PRICING ENGINE we link those functions to Excel. It provides a Mathematica and an Excel front-end both tightly tied together. In the FACTORY we wrap it with special services, the UnRiskverse .

So, is UnRisk-Q the small sister of UnRisk PRICING ENGINE?

Not at all, because not every construct in the Mathematica layer of the UnRiskverse can be reasonably linked to Excel. Making them available in UnRisk-Q to quants, they get what we develop(ed) to develop much faster in compute-develop-deploy cycles. I find this quite radical in its positioning, but incremental in its technical making. Less that does much more for quants.

A Blockbuster innovation for an unprecedented attractive price.