Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 11.

17 - August 25, 2012

ISSN: 1712-9834

David Forrest is a Canadian writer and strategy consultant. His Integral Strategy process has been widely used to increase collaboration in communities, build social capital, deepen commitment to action, and develop creative strategies to deal with complex challenges. David advises organizations on emerging trends. He uses the term Enterprise Ecology to describe how ecological principles can be applied to competition, innovation, and strategy in business. David is a member of the Professional Writers Association of Canada, the World Future Society, and other futures organizations.

Highlights from the last two weeks...

scientists create a giant knowledge base of chemical reactions... a new book on synthetic biology is printed in DNA... the potential for augmented reality... robots exceed human capabilities... the new geography of jobs... Google changes not what customers do but who they are... commerce shifts to new forms of electronic currency... homeless people find equality and acceptance online... China develops a new intercontinental ballistic missile capability... China news media giants are expanding in Africa and the developing world... PayPal founder invests in a company pioneering lab-grown meat... global drought could create a world food crisis... Clay Shirky advocates for new institutions based on global interconnectedness... Swiss researchers plan a computer system that will simulate the entire world...

More resources ...

a book by Michael Shamiyeh and DOM Research Laboratory -Creating Desired Futures: How Design Thinking Innovates Business... a link to the PopTech website, which brings innovators together to work on new approaches to some of the world's toughest challenges... a video presentation by George Kembel, co-founder and executive director of the Stanford University d.school, on nurturing creative potential and developing our full capacity to innovate... a blog post by John Hagel commenting on the recent book, Race Against the Machine... David Forrest Innovation Watch

He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa.

SCIENCE TRENDS
Top Stories: 'Google on Steroids': Scientists Create Chemical Brain (PhysOrg) - Northwestern University scientists have connected 250 years of organic chemical knowledge into one giant computer network -- a chemical Google on steroids. A decade in the making, the software optimizes syntheses of drug molecules and other important compounds, combines long (and expensive) syntheses of compounds into shorter and more economical routes and identifies suspicious chemical recipes that could lead to chemical weapons. "I realized that if we could link all the known chemical compounds and reactions between them into one giant network, we could create not only a new repository of chemical methods but an entirely new knowledge platform where each chemical reaction ever performed and each compound ever made would give rise to a collective 'chemical brain,'" said Bartosz A. Grzybowski, who led the work. "The brain then could be searched and analyzed with algorithms akin to those used in Google or telecom networks." Want to Get 70 Billion Copies of Your Book In Print? Print It In DNA (Discover) - Carl Zimmer "I have been meaning to read a book coming out soon called Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves. It's written by Harvard biologist George Church and science writer Ed Regis. Church is doing stunning work on a number of fronts, from creating synthetic microbes to sequencing human genomes, so I definitely am interested in what he has to say. I don't know how many other people will be, so I have no idea how well the book will do. But in a tour de force of biochemical publishing, he has created 70 billion copies. Instead of paper and ink, or pdf's and pixels, he's used DNA." More science trends...

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Newsletter Archive

Previous issues

TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
Top Stories:

How Augmented Reality Will Change the Way We Live (The Next Web) - The potential for AR to impact all elements of our lives is massive: from education to gaming to manufacturing, the world seems poised on the brink of substantial AR adoption -- with all associated benefits. Indeed, a recent study by Semico Research predicted that by the end of 2016, revenue produced by the AR Industry will total more than $600 billion. This study also determined that in 2014, approximately 864 million mobile phones will be AR-ready, and in excess of 100 million vehicles will come equipped with AR tech. According to Brian Selzer from Ogmento, AR will not only change the way we live, but will actively shape how our lives progress. Skilled Work, Without the Worker (New York Times) - At the Philips Electronics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers. That is the old way. At a sister factory in the Dutch countryside, 128 robot arms do the same work with yoga-like flexibility. Video cameras guide them through feats well beyond the capability of the most dexterous human. More technology trends...

BUSINESS TRENDS
Top Stories: Regional Inequality and "The New Geography of Jobs" (Brookings) - What explains the wide range of economic growth and prosperity across U.S. regions, and why is it so hard for struggling metro areas to reverse multi-decade trends? These are the questions that urban economist Enrico Moretti addresses in The New Geography of Jobs. In his vision, innovative workers and companies create prosperity that flows broadly, but these gains are mostly metropolitan in scale, meaning that geography substantially determines economic vitality. What Google Gets That Others Don't: Innovation Evolves Customers (Fast Company) - Pick any product or service that matters. Google's search engine. Credit cards. Boeing's 747. The iPhone. Amazon's recommendation engines. Microprocessors. Subprime mortgages. Indoor plumbing. Laparoscopic surgery. Fracking. Computer-aided design. Customer loyalty programs. The steam engine. Text messaging. GPS. Pick any innovator who matters: Jeff Bezos. Steve Jobs. Henry Ford. Estee Lauder. Bob Noyce. Sam Walton. Werner Siemens. Coco Chanel. Matthew Boulton. Akio Morita. Eiji Toyoda. Walt Disney. Marvin Bower. Mark Zuckerberg. Successful innovators don't just ask customers and clients to do something different; they ask them to become someone different.

More business trends...

SOCIAL TRENDS
Top Stories: You Might Already Be Rich in the Newest Alternative Currency: Social (Fast Company) - In 1991, Paul Glover created an alternative paper currency to trade goods and services within the Ithaca, New York, community. It sounds crazy, but with several million dollars in value, Ithaca Hours is a huge success, and is now one of the oldest and largest of numerous local currencies in the U.S. As commerce shifts from cash transactions to electronic payments and more exchanges move online, new forms of electronic currency in the spirit of Ithaca Hours are starting to take hold. The most well-known is Bitcoin, which describes itself as "an experimental new digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world." By allowing users to remain anonymous and by operating outside of any government or entity, Bitcoin has the potential to transform banking, international trade, and even illicit trade. Homeless People Find Equality, Acceptance on Social Networking Sites (PhysOrg) - University of Dayton sociologist and criminologist Art Jipson discovered in his most recent research that the homeless, along with everyone else, are turning to social media and that social media sites are turning into places where all people are truly equal. Jipson found that the homeless use social media not only to build support networks, but to solve practical issues such as where to find their next meal, where to find safe and warm places to sleep, and where to find various social services. "Why can't I be on Facebook?," asked one subject in the study. "I have as much right to that as anyone else. Just because I am homeless does not mean that I dont care about this stuff, you know? My family is on Facebook. My friends are on Facebook. People who care about me are on Facebook." More social trends...

GLOBAL TRENDS
Top Stories: China's Missile Advances Could Thwart U.S. Defenses, Analysts Say (New York Times) - China is moving ahead with the development of a new and more capable generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched missiles,

increasing its existing ability to deliver nuclear warheads to the United States and to overwhelm missile defense systems, military analysts said this week. Over all, China's steady strengthening of its military capabilities for conventional and nuclear warfare has long caused concern in Congress and among American allies in East Asia, particularly lately as Chinese has taken a more assertive position regarding territorial claims in the East China and South China seas. Live From Nairobi, China Puts Its Stamp on News in Africa (New York Times) - At a time when most Western broadcasting and newspaper companies are retrenching, China's state-run news media giants are rapidly expanding in Africa and across the developing world. They are hoping to bolster China's image and influence around the globe, particularly in regions rich in the natural resources needed to fuel China's powerhouse industries and help feed its immense population. The $7 billion campaign, part of a Chinese Communist Party bid to expand the country's soft power, is based in part on the notion that biased Western news media have painted a distorted portrait of China. More global trends...

ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS
Top Stories: PayPal Founder Bankrolls 3-D Printed Meat (PhysOrg) - A Missouri-based company may have an impact on environmental issues raised by nations of meat-eaters and populations bearing the brunt of world hunger with an alternative, bioprinted meat. According to the company, Modern Meadow, creating "a strip of edible porcine tissue using print-based tissue engineering approach" is "scaffold-free," in that it does not rely on artificial material to form the desired structure. The company founders aspire to develop lab-grown meat as a source of animal protein and to benefit from a technology with great market potential. The company, aptly named Modern Meadow, is founded by Gabor Forgacs and Andras Forgacs. World Must Brace for Higher Food Prices, Experts Say (PhysOrg) - With drought parching farms in the United States and near the Black Sea, weak monsoon rains in India and insidious hunger in Africa's Sahel region, the world could be headed towards another food crisis, experts say. Asia should keep a catastrophe at bay with a strong rice harvest while the G20 group of industrialized and emerging economies tries to parry the main threat, soaring food prices. More environmental trends...

FUTURE TRENDS
Top Stories: Clay Shirky: Unlocking Mankinds Untapped Potential (Forbes) - During a recent lecture at Singularity University's Graduate Studies Program, Shirky talked about the emergence of global interconnectedness and its effects on business, culture and human rights. Individuals are now able to transcend their immediate environment to work with people around the world based on shared interests and ideals. It's led to platforms like Ushahidi, which collects, aggregates, and mines data about inhumane and corrupt political events; and Linux, the operating system developed under the model of free and open source software distribution. Platforms that constrain themselves to people 'in house' are missing out, as Sun Microsystem co-counder Bill Joy famously remarked: "no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else." Shirky explains that we need to start building our institutions with these dynamics in mind. No longer should we be engineering for robustness, he says, as there is too much variance within the participants. Rather, we should engineer around resilience. Living Earth Simulator to Seek Planet's Future in its Data (MSN) - Researchers in Switzerland are planning an incredibly ambitious computer system that will attempt to simulate as much of the planet and its activity as possible, from weather to the economy -- and perhaps even predict the future. They call it the Living Earth Simulator, and it's in the running to get hundreds of millions in funding. The idea is that with enough data and enough computing power, a system should be able to essentially simulate the whole world. More future trends...

Just in from the publisher...

Creating Desired Futures: How Design Thinking Innovates Business

By Michael Shamiyeh and DOM Research Laboratory Read more...

A Web Resource... PopTech - PopTech brings innovators together from many different

fields -- science, technology, design, corporate and civic leadership, public health, social and ecological innovation, and the arts and humanities, among others -- in a network that complements the silos. The community is convened in intimate, peer-level gatherings where participants can share their most provocative questions and their most promising new ideas, and begin to work together on new approaches to some of the world's toughest challenges. Multimedia... George Kembel: Nurturing Creative Potential Developing Our Full Capacity to Innovate (Chautauqua Institute) - George Kembel is a co-founder and currently the executive director of the Stanford d.school, also known as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University. He has led the conceptualization, design, and development of new products and technologies for over ten years in both research and industry environments. He specializes in the design process, idea generation, concept development, and rapid prototyping. He has built and led successful interdisciplinary teams from 4-person projects to 120-person organizations and has co-founded and built two design-centered corporations: Engaje, a design consulting and product development company; and DoDots, a venture capital funded software technology startup. (1h 15m 15s) The Blogosphere... From Race Against the Machine to Race With the Machine (Edge Perspectives) - John Hagel - "The recent book, Race Against The Machine, has caught the imagination of a growing body of readers. It's an important book, but it doesn't go far enough in highlighting the root causes of the unemployment we are experiencing. Rather than framing it as a technological issue, the book would have generated a lot more insight about both the problem and the solution if it had framed it as an institutional issue."

Email: future@innovationwatch.com