Take a look in the patent registry of US, Japan or any country of the old economy. The world is full of solutions. A search on Google patents for Mousetrap, results in 54 000 (!) hits.

If innovation was about most solutions, the number of held patents would be an indicator. But, is it?

IBM has topped the list of granted patents in US each year between 1997 and 2012. All the years that was covered by the wikipedia page, so probably they top the list long before, and still do.

Apple computers are not even on the top ten list. Any of the years -97 to -12. Nor is Google!

IBM’s business hasn’t exactly topped the IT companies those years, while Apple and Google are some of the most successful companies during the last 10 years or so. See the diagram how IBM, Apple and Google stocks compare for the last 10 years.

Screen Shot 2014-09-20 at 23.05.14

 

Graph from nyse.com