After its two-year hiatus, Apple returns to its throne of "Brand with the most global impact" this year, saying hello again to the market with its trend-making products like iPod and its 300% new income growth for the year 2004. Being probably the most popular search engine online, Google also celebrates its triumph of having US$399m net income last year.

What do Apple and Google's stories tell us about making money out of innovation? On February 24, 2005, Dr. Aaron TONG, Managing Director of TQM Consultants Co Ltd, shared with HK’s Technology talents at Hong Kong Science and Technology Park the factors that led to the two icon corporations' successes.

As Dr. TONG suggested, innovation is not only about new ideas, but also time and people. To ensure that products are titled as "innovative" when they get into the market, time to market, i.e. starting from the out-of-scratch design of a product to the time it is released to the consumer market, has to be short. While innovative ideas come only from human minds, the way corporations stimulate their people's innovativeness is also the key to success.

During the seminars, Dr. TONG talked about the use of Product Actuation Time Excellence (PATE) in R&D. Through systematic resources allocation and process mapping, the PATE approach can be well managed to shorten the cycle time of R&D and the time to market, as well as maximizing employees’ productivity.

"Innovation is not about wild-guessing," said Dr. TONG, "and it can be systematically managed to achieve its maximum." Young technology talents also shared their opinions during the seminars.