hobbes wrote:
Is innovation dead? Or is it good riddance to idiotic ideas?
I think the two are probably mutually inclusive, if you have innovative designs then you're likely to get some dodgy reject ones at the same time!
Bicycle design does still have a lot of innovation, especially in the Mountain Biking area (not really surprising as this is the most fashionable sector right now):
In full suspension designs, the FSR, VPP, i-drives even the basic single pivot bikes from Kona and Orange are very well built and do the job a treat! The advances in suspension technology with inertia and platform valves, -ve and +ve air pressure chambers. Even the materials used, 5 years ago a carbon fibre full-suspension design would've been unheard of, now Scott and Giant are two companies that have production CF bikes available. This together with more advanced machining and hydroforming techniques for manipulating Al means that exotic frame designs can be produced which actually work! (Sometimes!). Then you've got new braking systems, v-brakes have replaced canti's and they are now being replaced by disk brakes.
Roadbikes don't seem to have developed as much (I blame the UCI!), but even so Cannondale have done truly remarkable things with Al to make such light, yet stiff frames. Omega and Time are churning out some very nice CF creations. Bottom Brackets have had an overhaul and been moved outside their shells, and headsets have migrated into the head tube. Not sure when STI or Ergolevers etc... were introduced but they've been a big influence on the shape of bikes too.
So there is still innovation in cycle design, it's just not quite as "eccentric" as it was!