Here is an example of a product and its story to prove the point.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Sugru - Breakthrough Innovation
I believe that breakthrough innovation is and always has been the domain of the entrepreneur and an incumbent has never delivered Schumpeter's Creative Destruction.
Here is an example of a product and its story to prove the point.
Here is an example of a product and its story to prove the point.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Energy: Robots for Drilling
"Robotic Drilling Systems AS, a Norwegian company developing a drilling rig that can think for itself, signed an information-sharing agreement with NASA to discover what it might learn from the rover Curiosity."
Oil and gas industry requires a significant amount of human resources to preform a multitude of tasks. A significant number of them are dangerous in execution or are in hazardous environments. Robotics is slowly making its way into this sector. Read further details at Bloomberg here.
"Apache, the third-largest U.S. independent oil and natural- gas producer by market value, is writing software that will essentially allow the drill bit to think for itself, communicating directly with equipment at the surface that controls speed and direction. Graham Brander, the company’s director of worldwide drilling, sees it working much like a plane on autopilot, flying on its own with a human on standby, ready to assume the controls if necessary. “That’s what I view very much as the automation model for the oil and gas business,” he says."
Here is a blog providing an extrapolation for the future of oil rigs, including 2,000 meter deep underwater cities.
Satellites with nuclear reactors have been functioning successfully in space for close on 40 years, to today a small multi-terrain vehicle of sorts is moving around on a distant planet, to applications of MEMS that quite honestly amaze me at times. It is not too far off to see the future Apache is envisioning and creating.
Oil and gas industry requires a significant amount of human resources to preform a multitude of tasks. A significant number of them are dangerous in execution or are in hazardous environments. Robotics is slowly making its way into this sector. Read further details at Bloomberg here.
"Apache, the third-largest U.S. independent oil and natural- gas producer by market value, is writing software that will essentially allow the drill bit to think for itself, communicating directly with equipment at the surface that controls speed and direction. Graham Brander, the company’s director of worldwide drilling, sees it working much like a plane on autopilot, flying on its own with a human on standby, ready to assume the controls if necessary. “That’s what I view very much as the automation model for the oil and gas business,” he says."
Here is a blog providing an extrapolation for the future of oil rigs, including 2,000 meter deep underwater cities.
Satellites with nuclear reactors have been functioning successfully in space for close on 40 years, to today a small multi-terrain vehicle of sorts is moving around on a distant planet, to applications of MEMS that quite honestly amaze me at times. It is not too far off to see the future Apache is envisioning and creating.
Monday, September 3, 2012
US higher education: A bubble?
Since 2006, I have been engaged in US academia from developing and teaching courses to working on acquisition of government grants and private sector funding to creation and commercialization of university IP to improvements in engineering education.
Given my closeness to the subject, I know for a fact that the US higher education system has been the envy of the world. Yet, a recent article in The Economist "The college-cost calamity" here, surprised me a bit with the extent of concern it documents regarding the state of the US universities.
"A crisis in higher education has been brewing for years. Universities have been spending like students in a bar who think a Rockefeller will pick up the tab."
"The average cost of college per student has risen by three times the rate of inflation since 1983. The cost of tuition alone has soared from 23% of median annual earnings in 2001 to 38% in 2010. Such increases plainly cannot continue."
There are schools that are approaching and attempting to change "education" for the 21st century, from simple automation to hopefully transformation.
"Some universities are addressing their financial problems. Cornell began in 2009: Kent Fuchs, the provost, offered to cut the costs of administration by $70m, if the faculty would concentrate on excelling at a limited number of important things, rather than trying to do everything. Mr Fuchs says that a university can become too broad; a financial squeeze is an opportunity to become more focused."
Though, when the customers (students) say they won't buy the goods (education and training) offered because the price is too high, then the shops (universities) will be forced into change they may not desire.
"Still, the doomsayers may be onto something. Four-year residential colleges cannot keep on forever raising their fees faster than the public’s capacity to pay them, especially when online degrees are so much cheaper. Universities that fail to prepare for the hurricane ahead are likely to be flattened by it."
China and India may want to prepare for Western students in the coming decades?
Given my closeness to the subject, I know for a fact that the US higher education system has been the envy of the world. Yet, a recent article in The Economist "The college-cost calamity" here, surprised me a bit with the extent of concern it documents regarding the state of the US universities.
"A crisis in higher education has been brewing for years. Universities have been spending like students in a bar who think a Rockefeller will pick up the tab."
"The average cost of college per student has risen by three times the rate of inflation since 1983. The cost of tuition alone has soared from 23% of median annual earnings in 2001 to 38% in 2010. Such increases plainly cannot continue."
There are schools that are approaching and attempting to change "education" for the 21st century, from simple automation to hopefully transformation.
"Some universities are addressing their financial problems. Cornell began in 2009: Kent Fuchs, the provost, offered to cut the costs of administration by $70m, if the faculty would concentrate on excelling at a limited number of important things, rather than trying to do everything. Mr Fuchs says that a university can become too broad; a financial squeeze is an opportunity to become more focused."
Though, when the customers (students) say they won't buy the goods (education and training) offered because the price is too high, then the shops (universities) will be forced into change they may not desire.
"Still, the doomsayers may be onto something. Four-year residential colleges cannot keep on forever raising their fees faster than the public’s capacity to pay them, especially when online degrees are so much cheaper. Universities that fail to prepare for the hurricane ahead are likely to be flattened by it."
China and India may want to prepare for Western students in the coming decades?
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Social Networks and Ads
About eight years ago, my team and I at Procter & Gamble had the opportunity to take one of the largest media buy and deploy companies to task - we had been paying them, in seven figures, for bot clicks on online advertisements. The worse part of it was, they had no clue themselves.
This occurred when we were building and rolling out the women's word-of-mouth marketing brand VocalPoint, see the site here. Leveraging my personal global network across ISPs and internet based companies, we developed the hypothesis of the bot clicks, and then we proved it through data analysis.
It is fascinating to see that today it remains just as bad.
"On July 30th Limited Run, a New York platform for the online shops of record labels, artists and designers, said it would delete its Facebook page. It estimated that 80% of clicks came from “bots”—computers rather than people, but triggering payments to Facebook all the same."
See The Economist's article "Facebook: Work in Progress" here.
This occurred when we were building and rolling out the women's word-of-mouth marketing brand VocalPoint, see the site here. Leveraging my personal global network across ISPs and internet based companies, we developed the hypothesis of the bot clicks, and then we proved it through data analysis.
It is fascinating to see that today it remains just as bad.
"On July 30th Limited Run, a New York platform for the online shops of record labels, artists and designers, said it would delete its Facebook page. It estimated that 80% of clicks came from “bots”—computers rather than people, but triggering payments to Facebook all the same."
See The Economist's article "Facebook: Work in Progress" here.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Education in China and India
Here is some interesting data from US News and World Report on education in China and India and a comparison to USA:
"China's investment in high school education rose from $4.1 billion to $13 billion between 2001 and 2006, an increase of 212.6 percent, according to a report released August 21 by the Center for American Progress and the Center for the Next Generation."
"India spent $44 billion on education in 2008, a substantial increase from the country's $11 billion annual investment in the late 1980s. The influx of cash bolstered high school attendance and graduation rates."
Here is something though I was not aware of:
"High school graduates in India and China are going on to college—and unlike nearly 50 percent of U.S. college students, they're finishing. Many of them graduate with degrees in science, technology, engineering, or math."
Read the article here.
"China's investment in high school education rose from $4.1 billion to $13 billion between 2001 and 2006, an increase of 212.6 percent, according to a report released August 21 by the Center for American Progress and the Center for the Next Generation."
"India spent $44 billion on education in 2008, a substantial increase from the country's $11 billion annual investment in the late 1980s. The influx of cash bolstered high school attendance and graduation rates."
Here is something though I was not aware of:
"High school graduates in India and China are going on to college—and unlike nearly 50 percent of U.S. college students, they're finishing. Many of them graduate with degrees in science, technology, engineering, or math."
Read the article here.
Amazon.com: Creatively Destructive
Amazon.com - I will remember the days when Amazon.com started, internet based book seller, hard to find books.
Today, Schumpeter would be smiling to see his concept of Creative Destruction realized in this company. Amazon has successfully ushered in a new way to deliver on the same need, upending incumbents:
"Within a few years, Amazon.com’s creative destruction of both traditional book publishing and retailing may be footnotes to the company’s larger and more secretive goal: giving anyone on the planet access to an almost unimaginable amount of computing power."
Like water for a human, computing holds the same for the 21st century organization, from a university to a for profit corporation. And the ones who learn how to successfully harness this power for extreme acceleration of time in their businesses, or exponential cost reduction, or etc. will be the leaders in their sectors. See multitude of examples in the article, linked below.
"Action in the Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing" in The New York Times here continues with:
"According to an executive with knowledge of Amazon’s operation who was not authorized to speak publicly, just one of the 10 data centers in Amazon’s Eastern United States region has more servers dedicated to cloud computing than does Rackspace, a public cloud company serving 180,000 businesses with more than 80,000 servers."
The question is, who will lead when everything starts to go at the speed of light?
"The efficiency of this hyper-aware environment is already remaking jobs for many and will most likely dislocate more. “You can now test a product against millions of users for just a few thousand dollars, or start a company with just one or two people,” said Graham Spencer, a partner at Google Ventures, which invests in data-heavy start-ups that rely on such cheap computing. “It’s a huge change for Silicon Valley.”"
Today, Schumpeter would be smiling to see his concept of Creative Destruction realized in this company. Amazon has successfully ushered in a new way to deliver on the same need, upending incumbents:
"Within a few years, Amazon.com’s creative destruction of both traditional book publishing and retailing may be footnotes to the company’s larger and more secretive goal: giving anyone on the planet access to an almost unimaginable amount of computing power."
Like water for a human, computing holds the same for the 21st century organization, from a university to a for profit corporation. And the ones who learn how to successfully harness this power for extreme acceleration of time in their businesses, or exponential cost reduction, or etc. will be the leaders in their sectors. See multitude of examples in the article, linked below.
"Action in the Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing" in The New York Times here continues with:
"According to an executive with knowledge of Amazon’s operation who was not authorized to speak publicly, just one of the 10 data centers in Amazon’s Eastern United States region has more servers dedicated to cloud computing than does Rackspace, a public cloud company serving 180,000 businesses with more than 80,000 servers."
The question is, who will lead when everything starts to go at the speed of light?
"The efficiency of this hyper-aware environment is already remaking jobs for many and will most likely dislocate more. “You can now test a product against millions of users for just a few thousand dollars, or start a company with just one or two people,” said Graham Spencer, a partner at Google Ventures, which invests in data-heavy start-ups that rely on such cheap computing. “It’s a huge change for Silicon Valley.”"
Friday, August 24, 2012
Digital computing through analog?
Robert McMillan of The Wired "Enterprise" blog writes that the Department of Defense through DARPA is funding a new program that "will investigate a brand-new way of doing computing without the digital processors that have come to define computing as we know it."
"The aim is to build computer chips that are a whole lot more power-efficient than today's processors - even if they make mistakes every now and then."
Daniel Hammerstrom, the DARPA program manager behind the program, "wants the UPSIDE chips to do computing in a whole different way. He's looking for an alternative to straight-up boolean logic, where the voltage in a chip's transistor represents a zero or a one. Hammerstrom wants chipmakers to build analog processors that can do probabilistic math without forcing transistors into an absolute one-or-zero state, a technique that burns energy."
The program is called UPSIDE - Unconventional Processing of Signals for Intelligent Data Exploitation. Read details here.
"The aim is to build computer chips that are a whole lot more power-efficient than today's processors - even if they make mistakes every now and then."
Daniel Hammerstrom, the DARPA program manager behind the program, "wants the UPSIDE chips to do computing in a whole different way. He's looking for an alternative to straight-up boolean logic, where the voltage in a chip's transistor represents a zero or a one. Hammerstrom wants chipmakers to build analog processors that can do probabilistic math without forcing transistors into an absolute one-or-zero state, a technique that burns energy."
The program is called UPSIDE - Unconventional Processing of Signals for Intelligent Data Exploitation. Read details here.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Entrepreneurs and Innovation
"Anyone who has tried a hand at starting a high-tech business—seeking to turn a clever research idea into something customers will pay good money for—quickly learns that everything taught in business school is next to useless. The mistake is to think of start-ups as just smaller versions of established businesses. They are nothing of the sort."
This quote is apropos to the extreme. And breakthrough innovation that has the capacity to enable Schumpeter's vision of Creative Destruction still remains the domain of the entrepreneur.
The above excerpt is from an article in The Economist discussing Osterwalder's "Business Model Innovation", which has been a contributor to my success as an entrepreneur through the recent down turn. See the article "Innovation: Difference Engine,Pilgrim's Progress here. See Osterwalder's website here.
This quote is apropos to the extreme. And breakthrough innovation that has the capacity to enable Schumpeter's vision of Creative Destruction still remains the domain of the entrepreneur.
The above excerpt is from an article in The Economist discussing Osterwalder's "Business Model Innovation", which has been a contributor to my success as an entrepreneur through the recent down turn. See the article "Innovation: Difference Engine,Pilgrim's Progress here. See Osterwalder's website here.
Monday, August 20, 2012
21st Century Global Brands - Made in China
Schumpeter articles in the The Economist are a delight to read. The latest one sums up an interesting generality about manufacturers and their approach to branding products and companies:
"... managing a portfolio of brands is complicated and demanding: people who made their fortunes manufacturing things may not be suited to the airy-fairy world of brand management."
Schumpeter writes:
"Americans can stop worrying about China’s plans to take over their country. The worst has already happened: on July 25th Lenovo, a Chinese computer firm, announced a deal to sponsor the National Football League. America will continue to provide muscle-bound linebackers, but the Chinese will provide the clever laptops and desktops that make their tussles possible."
Thus begins the article "Brand New" in The Economist here. The story of Lenovo is a case study in what else is there to emerge from the world's most populated country. Yet, it seems that the leap from becoming a global brand is not an easy one.
"Only four emerging-market brands make Interbrand’s list of the world’s 100 most valuable: Samsung and Hyundai of South Korea, Mexico’s Corona beer and Taiwan’s HTC."
The article discusses the book "The New Emerging-Market Multinationals" by Amitava Chattopadhyay, of INSEAD, and Rajeev Batra, of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Beyond the two common best practices for global growth, economies of scale and local knowledge, the article highlights, per the book, three more ingredients required for the emerging-market player to go global.
"The first is focus: they should define a market segment in which they have a chance of becoming world-class. ... Lenovo focused on computers for corporate clients before expanding into the consumer market."
"The second ingredient is innovation: firms need new products and processes that generate buzz. HTC produces 15-20 new mobile-phone handsets a year. Natura releases a new product every three working days."
And finally, I believe, the most important one:
"The third ingredient is old-fashioned brand-building. Emerging-market bosses must grapple with many traditional branding puzzles. Should they slap the company’s name on the product (as Toyota does) or another name (as Procter & Gamble does with its stable of brands, from Gillette razors to Pampers nappies)? How can they market themselves effectively in multiple countries without busting the budget?"
Innovation for the sake of innovation leads nowhere, perhaps a nice collection of artifacts. Marketing the power of the innovation is essential to build the dream that the customer or consumer must aspire to, hence, forming a symbiotic relationship between the growth of the name to becoming a brand name to being a global brand.
"... managing a portfolio of brands is complicated and demanding: people who made their fortunes manufacturing things may not be suited to the airy-fairy world of brand management."
Schumpeter writes:
"Americans can stop worrying about China’s plans to take over their country. The worst has already happened: on July 25th Lenovo, a Chinese computer firm, announced a deal to sponsor the National Football League. America will continue to provide muscle-bound linebackers, but the Chinese will provide the clever laptops and desktops that make their tussles possible."
Thus begins the article "Brand New" in The Economist here. The story of Lenovo is a case study in what else is there to emerge from the world's most populated country. Yet, it seems that the leap from becoming a global brand is not an easy one.
"Only four emerging-market brands make Interbrand’s list of the world’s 100 most valuable: Samsung and Hyundai of South Korea, Mexico’s Corona beer and Taiwan’s HTC."
The article discusses the book "The New Emerging-Market Multinationals" by Amitava Chattopadhyay, of INSEAD, and Rajeev Batra, of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Beyond the two common best practices for global growth, economies of scale and local knowledge, the article highlights, per the book, three more ingredients required for the emerging-market player to go global.
"The first is focus: they should define a market segment in which they have a chance of becoming world-class. ... Lenovo focused on computers for corporate clients before expanding into the consumer market."
"The second ingredient is innovation: firms need new products and processes that generate buzz. HTC produces 15-20 new mobile-phone handsets a year. Natura releases a new product every three working days."
And finally, I believe, the most important one:
"The third ingredient is old-fashioned brand-building. Emerging-market bosses must grapple with many traditional branding puzzles. Should they slap the company’s name on the product (as Toyota does) or another name (as Procter & Gamble does with its stable of brands, from Gillette razors to Pampers nappies)? How can they market themselves effectively in multiple countries without busting the budget?"
Innovation for the sake of innovation leads nowhere, perhaps a nice collection of artifacts. Marketing the power of the innovation is essential to build the dream that the customer or consumer must aspire to, hence, forming a symbiotic relationship between the growth of the name to becoming a brand name to being a global brand.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Conflict as Thinking
Margaret Heffernan's excellent TED talk, "Dare to disagree". I extrapolate from her talk that for creative thinking to occur constructive conflict whether within oneself or with a thinking partner must occur. Enjoy!
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Physics: Noble Prize vs. Milner Prize?
It has always been contentious when no more than three people share a Noble prize for invention or discovery. And the further requirement of the associated validation. Enter Mr. Yuri Milner, successful entrepreneur. Mr. Milner has created one or more annual prizes of $3 million for the most influential thinker in fundamental physics.
From The Economist:
"Crucially, recipients earn the prize for inspired contributions that have yet to be experimentally verified, a tactic the Nobel committee eschews. If these later prove beautiful but wrong, so be it. The principle, Mr Milner explains, is to afford the world’s best brains the financial freedom to pursue fundamental ideas wherever these take them. It may have the added benefit of keeping some imaginative physicists away from Wall Street."
Read details here.
From The Economist:
"Crucially, recipients earn the prize for inspired contributions that have yet to be experimentally verified, a tactic the Nobel committee eschews. If these later prove beautiful but wrong, so be it. The principle, Mr Milner explains, is to afford the world’s best brains the financial freedom to pursue fundamental ideas wherever these take them. It may have the added benefit of keeping some imaginative physicists away from Wall Street."
Read details here.
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