Corante Innovation Network bloggers offered two different perspectives on the news that Google Spreadsheets is launching.

From the perspective of the Microsoft Emerging Business team, Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing disagrees that this move "turns up the heat on Excel" and says that instead "All the pieces are coming together for Google to compete directly with free open source offerings such as OpenOffice and Sun's StarOffice." writing from the perspective of Clayton Christensen's theories of disruptive innovation as practiced by the consultant group Innosight, Josh Suskewicz at Innoblog says that "Google understands and sees opportunity in the fact that few, if any, take full advantage of Excel’s famed and feared functionality and that many people use Excel as a compensating behavior – the Times cites youth soccer coaches using it for manual databasing of their team roster, I’ve known people who make chore lists in Excel, etc. If successful, Spreadsheet will make it easier for people to accomplish mundane tasks in their lives (Jobs to be Done, in Disruptive Innovation parlance) and may well become indispensable to many."

Here's some of the reaction outside of the Corante network:

From MarketWatch: The critical point about Google Spreadsheet is not that it threatens Microsoft's Excel sales. It is the continuing disruptive impact that free Web-based programs will have on computer users.

Jack Schofield at The Guardian's Technology blog: "To put it into terms I've been using recently, Spreadsheets is a complement to Excel. It actually makes Excel more useful - and hence more valuable. Let me repeat that: Spreadsheets makes Excel more valuable."

More on this can be found here and here.

Here's an interesting quote of a quote of a quote, from Corante network contributor Natalie Painchaud of Innoblog, writing about what makes a new product called Spot Runner disruptive. Spot Runner is an online service that enables businesses to customize stock video ads and run them on cable TV for a cost as low as $500. Natalie's point is that Spot Runner's solution is disruptive because it delivers a service that's not as good as what had previously been available, but is god enough and priced low enough to attract customers that had been priced out of that service before. Natalie quotes Fast Company quoting a VP of Media Planning at an ad agency:

"I'm a million times smarter than that… that - computer! You can't replace gut instinct. That comes from experience."

"It’s no secret that companies in low cost labor countries are looking to move up-market into things like design, marketing, and sales, in order to improve their margins. This means that the traditional high skilled positions like engineering and marketing will come under direct attack from foreign labor. And, everything else being equal, why wouldn’t the winner be a low cost worker?"

"Given global trends...low costs will matter less as a source of differentiation. The human touch will become more central to competitive advantage. Collaborative relationships will multiply and intensify."