Information technology is gradually evolving to the era of ubiquitous networking from its current era of network computing. Ubiquitous networking refers to increasingly various information equipment such as cell phones, car navigation systems, PDAs, digital appliances, PCs and RFIDs will be connected seamlessly using protocols such as IPv6, Bluetooth, IEEE 802.X, 1396 etc. via broadband or other fixed mobile convergence technologies to enable anytime, anywhere, always-on networking among people, objects, enterprises and governments. This paper briefly reviews the ubiquitous networking development in Japan. We first attempt to describe the major components that make up a ubiquitous network such as the infrastructure, the digital networked appliances, the content and the content developers community, the standardization infrastructure that enable ubiquitous networking. We then argue that ubiquitous networking enables a new innovation paradigm, one that is not based on creative destruction but that successive new business models build upon the recombination of different applications (modules) via the digital infrastructure. This represents a new logic of distributed and combinatorial innovation which can sustain the continual self-propagation of the ubiquitous networking technology.
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