« January 7, 2007 - January 13, 2007 | Main | January 21, 2007 - January 27, 2007 »

January 19, 2007

The Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century

The National Academy of Engineering is asking the public for help in determining the grand engineering challenges of the 21st century:

"America's big names in engineering, as well as millions of Internet users around the world, are being asked to weigh in with their picks for the greatest technological challenges of the next century — a nine-month process that could give birth to new research initiatives. The project, called the "Grand Challenges for Engineering" program, is aimed at gathering up all those ideas and distilling them into a list of 20 puzzles for engineers to solve — in fields ranging from energy to communications to aerospace to advanced materials. The National Academy of Engineering, an arm of the Washington-based National Academies, is supervising the project, armed with a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation."

Over the next few months, comments and suggestions will be sorted and ranked, then reviewed by an 18-member blue-ribbon committee headed by former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry. Other members on the selection panel include Google co-founder Larry Page, genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter and millionaire inventors Dean Kamen and Ray Kurzweil. The academy will unveil the 20 top challenges in September.

[image: Grand Challenges of Engineering]

Posted by dominic at 7:47 AM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack

Dunkin' Donuts: Time to make the donuts in Taiwan

Everybody has a China strategy these days. Apparently, even the neighborhood donut store plans a little expansion to China. As Bostonist points out, Dunkin' Donuts just opened its first-ever store in Taiwan:

"Soon, our Eastern friends will find themselves as addicted to donuts and coffee as we are if Dunkin' Donuts has its way. Yesterday, Dunkin' Donuts put out a press release to declare the company has opened a store in Taipei, Taiwan. Besides the obvious donuts, the Taipei menu includes "sweet potato, green apple and pineapple doughnuts, and mochi rings." The Wall Street Journal reported that Dunkin' Donuts won't shock the Taiwanese customers with coffee just yet: "Because tea is a dietary staple in China, Dunkin' Donuts plans to emphasize new tea drinks over coffee when it first opens, and then play up its coffee line over time."

What's cool is that Dunkin' Donuts conducted a bit of anthropological research ahead of the new store launch, and determined that it's best to offer donuts in flavors and assortments that include pineapple and sweet potato. (If you've ever wandered the streets of Chinatown in Manhattan or Flushing, you'll know that Chinese sweets look very much different from the traditional offerings at Dunkin' Donuts)

Meanwhile, Starbucks is also expanding to China, but is taking the exact opposite approach. Presumably, who needs anthropological research when there's one billion consumers dying to fork over $4 for cup of coffee? As the Wall Street Journal recently explained, Starbucks thinks it can educate Chinese customers to love the taste of coffee -- despite a thousand-old tradition of drinking tea in the nation. As a result, Starbucks is not taking any special steps to woo over the Chinese customer. On a unrelated note, there's recently been a big backlash against Starbucks in Beijing, with some claiming that the global coffee chain "tramples over Chinese culture."

[image: Dunkin' Donuts in Taipei]

Posted by dominic at 7:34 AM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack

Charles Murray and the formation of an intellectual caste system in American society

For the past three days, the Wall Street Journal has handed over the op-ed pages to public policy expert Charles Murray, who has opined on the role of education and intellectual ability in American life. In the first op-ed installment, Murray basically argued that America's schools aren't broken -- it's just that most kids are too stupid to learn. (Murray refers charitably to these kids as the "children in the lower half of the intelligence distribution") In the second op-ed piece (which appeared on January 17), Murray offered up an even more inflammatory (and elitist) argument, pointing out that most people with IQs of 100 or higher have absolutely no business attending a real four-year college. Murray claims there are better and cheaper ways for these average IQ people to spend their time after high school. After going through a bit of intellectual pitter-patter about IQ, the role of college as a "signal" for employers, and the nobility of being a simple craftsman, Murray concludes that people with average or slightly above-average IQs should attend vocational school and settle for becoming plumbers or carpenters:

"The spread of wealth at the top of American society has created an explosive increase in the demand for craftsmen. Finding a good lawyer or physician is easy. Finding a good carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason--the list goes on and on--is difficult, and it is a seller's market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the income distribution while master craftsmen can make six figures. They have work even in a soft economy. Their jobs cannot be outsourced to India. And the craftsman's job provides wonderful intrinsic rewards that come from mastery of a challenging skill that produces tangible results. How many white-collar jobs provide nearly as much satisfaction?"

Hey, the pay ain't too bad, and who wouldn't want to work for high-IQ people on well-paid projects around the house? (Imagine a whole platoon of craftsmen working on a home improvement project for a really wealthy, high-IQ member of society) Is it just me, or does that argument just make you sick to the stomach? If I'm reading Murray correctly, he's basically saying that IQ is destiny. The "smart" people at age 18 are the ones destined to form an intellectual super-caste at the top of American society. The average-to-above average kids at age 18 are the ones destined to become Home Depot contractors or Handymen-for-Hire, while the below-average kids are destined to become... Well, don't even ask. According to Murray, these kids are barely even literate and don't even deserve to set foot on a real, Ivy-covered four-year university.

One flaw in this argument, of course, is that IQ is not destiny. Maybe in Venezuela or North Korea or the former Soviet Union, but not in America. The other flaw is that IQ is not the same thing as creativity or inspiration or passion. IQ means that you can fill out a few boxes on a standardized test. Innovation signifies something else, in my humble opinion.

Anyway, here's the final piece of Murray's argument. I'm not making this up. Mr. Bell Curve has more he wants to say:

"Rightly understood, college is appropriate for a small minority of young adults--perhaps even a minority of the people who have IQs high enough that they could do college-level work if they wished. People who go to college are not better or worse people than anyone else; they are merely different in certain interests and abilities. That is the way college should be seen. There is reason to hope that eventually it will be."

[image: The Bloglines Plumber]

Posted by dominic at 7:02 AM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack

January 18, 2007

The U.S. is the world's most innovative nation

According to a study of global innovation conducted by French business school INSEAD, the U.S. is the world's most innovative nation by a large margin. Germany was a distant second, while the U.K., Japan and France rounded out the top five. The United Arab Emirates (#14) was the only country in the Top 15 that wasn't European, Asian or North American.

The World Business/INSEAD Innovation Index 2007, researched by Professor Soumitra Dutta and sponsored by BT, ranks nations according to their innovation performance. The ranking takes into account several categories of evaluation: institutions and policies; infrastructure; human capacity; technological sophistication; and business markets and capital. The study also factors in knowledge, competitiveness and wealth. Data for comprising the ranking was based on information provided by, among others, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.

[image: We're #1!]

Posted by dominic at 7:16 AM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack

January 18 Innovation Linkage

Portugal views India as a symbol of innovation [The Hindu]
Innovative landscapes created by your Web browser [Packet Garden]
Britain must wake up to Asian innovation [Guardian Unlimited]
Desktop fabricator may kick-start home revolution [New Scientist Tech]
The 100 most evolutionarily diverse species on the planet [EDGE Project]
An innovative way to keep hotel guests happy [New York Times]
Clap Your Hands, Say Innovation [PSFK]
The Canadian Pillow Fight League goes international [Yahoo! News]
Major Blends Aesthetic, Technical Skills [Daily Northwestern]

[image: Windows sushi]

Posted by dominic at 6:54 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack

January 17, 2007

The best in Australian innovation

Today's a big day for Australian innovation in New York City. The "Australian Innovation Shoot-out," co-sponsored by the Australian Consulate General and Invest Australia as part of the Australia Week 2007 festivities, is a business plan competition for six world-class Australian innovators that are hopeful of commercializing their products for the U.S. market. The panel of judges will be moderated by Alan Murray, Assistant Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal, so there's a strong likelihood that the winner of the Australian Shoot-Out will be featured in the pages of the Wall Street Journal sometime soon. The six finalists include:

(1) Autech Software & Design - a new type of in-store color selection for the paint and decorating industry;

(2) BSD Robotics - integrated bio-sample collection and handling systems;

(3) EvoGenix - conversion of research stage antibodies to high activity products ready for human development;

(4) Iatia Vision Sciences - software that enables materials to be seen with unprecedented depth and clarity;

(5) iCeutica - nano-sized particles to enhance drug performance;

(6) In the Chair - music technology that makes playing music fun and easy.

Then, later in the day in New York, the Australian Science Forum will highlight interesting Australian R&D opportunities that exist for Australian - US collaboration. This panel will be moderated by Dr Richard Gallagher, Editor and Publisher of The Scientist. For more on the innovation- and investment-themed events planned during the period January 11-20, be sure to check out the G'Day USA / Australian Week 2007 website.

[image: A scene from Australia Week 2007]

Posted by dominic at 8:56 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack

Neologisms for creativity and innovation

In the Financial Times, Lucy Kellaway highlights some of the worst neologisms of 2006 that were created by some of the best and the brightest minds in business. The worst neologism of the year is from advertising agency BBDO, which came up with a new concept called Procrealligence, a three-way marriage of pro-activity, creativity and intelligence. As BBDO explains: “Procrealligence is the foundation of our positioning, our method for attaining the highest standard of ‘work’.” BBDO is not the only company playing around with new words. In past years, A-b glöbâl combined creativity and innovation to come up with creovation™ and then, later, combined integrity and ethics to come up with integethics™. Also, General Electric famously combined ecology and imagination to create ecomagination.

Do you have any favorite neologisms related to creativity and innovation? If so, please send me an email or leave a comment with this blog entry.

[image: State of Mind by the Siberian surrealist Alexander Lyamkin]

Posted by dominic at 6:20 AM | Recommend this! (1) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack

The United States of the Global Economy

This reminds me a lot of a famous graphic that appeared on the cover of The New Yorker about five years ago that humorously depicted the neighborhoods and boroughs of New York City as various Middle Eastern- and Yiddish-sounding districts (e.g. Bronxistan, Central Parkistan, Kvetchnya, Moolahs, Taxistan)... Anyway, financial markets guru Barry Ritholtz (who regularly appears on CNBC) points to a unique map of the United States that sorts American states according to GDP levels and then compares them to nations in the world economy:

"Fascinating stuff: Carl Størmer points us to this amazing map of the United States. Each state's economic output is analogized to another country's GDP. Notable omissions: U.K., Japan, Germany, China, Italy. I cannot vouch for the precision of this, but by eyeball, it looks about right."

Anyway, the next time you call up the relatives in Florida, you might casually mention that the state has a GDP similar in size and composition to that of South Korea. (However, some of these categorizations don't seem to ring true -- consider that Brazil = New York, Saudi Arabia = Tennessee and France = California.)

ASIDE: In case you're wondering about that cover graphic I mentioned at the top of the blog entry, here's a brief summary of the "New Yorkistan" cover from Wikipedia:

"New Yorkistan" is the title of the cover art for the 2001-12-10 edition of The New Yorker magazine. It was created by Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz and is according to the American Society of Magazine Editors #14 on the list of the top 40 magazine covers of the past 40 years. It depicts the boroughs of New York City, as well as individual neighborhoods within the city, giving each a humorous name (a "funny mixture of Yiddish, Farsi, and New Yorkisms") based on the history or geography of that area of the city, while playfully using names or suffixes common to the Middle East, such as "istan". Thus the title, "New Yorkistan".

The cover has been unexpectedly popular, with the New Yorker making approximately $400,000 by February 2002 by selling copies of the picture as signed lithographs (all 750 copies of which sold out within 4 days) and unsigned posters. The New Yorker also sells shower curtains with the picture printed on them. According to Kalman, the inspiration for the cover arose in a car on the way to a party. She and Meyerowitz were talking about tribalism. At one point she came up with the idea of "Bronxistan", to which Meyerowitz replied "You know, we've got a map here." Originally, the picture was to be run on the back page of the magazine, but editors liked it so much that it was decided to make it the cover picture.

[image: Carl Talk - Stormers Blog]

Posted by dominic at 5:45 AM | Recommend this! (3) | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack

January 16, 2007

Disruptive innovation on the ski slopes

Clayton Christensen's Innoblog points to an article in the New York Times ("Snowbound Neverland") describing a disruptive new business model for the ski resort industry being developed by Echo Mountain Park in Colorado:

"Echo is a new resort built exclusively for freestyle snowboarders and skiers. It is much smaller than traditional resorts, covering just 50 acres with a vertical drop of 600 feet, miniscule for Colorado. There are no groomed runs, no gondolas, no moguls; Echo is 100% terrain park, all jumps, rails, and half pipe. It is relatively cheap and easy to operate since there is much less need for snow coverage and maintenance and it can handle considerably higher utilization than its competitors (many more freestylers fit on a slope at a time since they tend to congregate around jumps, watching their friends and taking turns). It is more skate park on snow than downhill resort.

This approach is much more economically viable than, say, building another Vail, and it is also perfectly targeted at the fastest growing segment of the winter sports industry – the youth market. Prices are low ($35 vs. $70-plus at competing resorts), the entire park is lighted so lifts run until 9pm daily, and the mountain is a quick 30 minute drive from Denver. The cafeteria sells microwavable burritos and Red Bull, and kids crowd around video game consoles while they eat. The resort operators field user requests and suggestions online, actively adding and subtracting features according to popularity. The décor, music, and atmosphere targets the young.

Jerry Pettit, Echo’s owner, sums it up: “It’s nothing against places like Aspen, but the young people we consulted early on told us they can’t afford to pay $75 for a lift ticket or $14 for a buffalo burger…What kept coming back to us was: ‘Keep it inexpensive. Make it for us.’”

Anyway, over at Flickr, there's a cool collection of snowboarding pics by photographer Matthew Staver that were taken at the opening of the Echo Mountain snowboard park in March 2006.

[image: Snowboarding at Echo Mountain Park by Matthew Staver]

Posted by dominic at 7:09 AM | Comments (1) | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack

Aloha innovation

Hawaii governor Linda Lingle announced a sweeping new innovation initiative for the state. The broad-based initiative is intended as a way to increase the state's participation in the technology-driven global economy. Among other things, the new innovation initiative includes:

* State support for a life sciences and biotech research facility and technology incubator;

* A digital media center for the development of a local film and digital media sector

* A new program to build the technical and business skills of Hawaii's artists in the music industry;

* A $100 million professionally-managed Hawaii Innovation Fund.

In addition, Hawaii will upgrade its wireless and broadband Internet services and engage in a comprehensive new digitization program. As Governor Lingle points out, innovation is now an important driver of economic competitiveness for the state:

"Hawaii's continued prosperity and ability to improve our standard of living and way of life over the long-term requires reducing our dependence on land as the chief driver of economic development. We need to focus on developing our people, recognizing that our future economic success and sustainability depends upon innovation and new ideas that will enable us to create more high-paying quality jobs that capitalize on people's skills and talents."

[image: Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle]

Posted by dominic at 6:02 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack

China, now powered by an "artificial sun"

Details are notoriously difficult to confirm out of China, but it appears that a group of Chinese scientists working on an experimental thermonuclear reactor have found a way to create an "artificial sun" power source:

"Designed to replicate the sun's energy generating process, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak fusion reactor recently garnered positive results in tests being conducting at China's Institute of Plasma Physics, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported. "The new tests show the reactor is very reliable, and we can repeat the experiments," institute official Wu Songtao said.

With tests set to continue until Feb. 10, the experiments will reveal exactly how far the project is from its final goal of creating plasma that can last for 1,000 seconds while giving off its own energy. While many have disputed the project's ability to create such an energy source, Xinhua said many scientists maintain such a fusion reactor could lesson China's energy crisis by providing cleaner endless energy at a significantly lower cost."

From an American perspective, let's hope this is just another Cold Fusion-style hoax.

[image: Chinese thermonuclear reactor]

Posted by dominic at 5:33 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack

January 15, 2007

Martin Luther King Day innovation linkage

Martin Luther King, Jr.: social innovator [Innovation Ecosystems]
Making the innovation pitch [Killer Innovations podcast]
A manifesto for experimentation [Joseph Jaffe]
Has the backlash against Apple started? [Randall Stross]
The making of the world's best airplane [New York Times Magazine]
How Legos are made [Popandco.com]
A personal annual report for your stakeholders [Information Aesthetics]
The insanity of bottled water [Tree Hugger]

[video: "I Have a Dream"]

Posted by dominic at 6:57 AM | Recommend this! | +dlc | +dig | TrackBack