In Innovators stand on the shoulders of giants I argued that innovation builds on the work of our predecessors.

Lou Gerstner's IBM famously showed that elephants can dance. However, the pressures of IT changes today are making it more difficult for the elephants of technology to be as nimble as the current crop of startups. I was reminded of this earlier in the week when I was in Las Vegas for EMC World. Interop was going on at the same time, and as it happens, my old employer NetApp was having a conference. They are all struggling to stay relevant in today's software-centric, flexible, cloud-ready, agile, self-service IT world. The good news for them is that they at least recognize this.