Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 10.

15 - July 16, 2011

ISSN: 1712-9834

Selected news items from postings to Innovation Watch in the last two weeks... teeth grown from stem cells... new evolution machine speeds up genetic engineering... geo-immersion maps pulse with real-time moving images... spray-on solution makes garments permanently germ-free... Don Tapscott says five industries lag in business model evolution... Nestle buys a fast-growing candy maker in China... the growing divide between Silicon Valley and the rest of America... cities built for the young struggle with aging seniors... PIIGS countries wrestle with sovereign debt... rare earth elements could shape global politics... Australia unveils a new carbon tax... study finds five out of eight tuna species are at risk of extinction... seven conditions for becoming transhuman... US intelligence agency hopes to create systems that predict the future... More great resources ... Martin Raymond's book, The Trend Forecaster's Handbook... a link to the Future Laboratory website... the audio clip of a Leonard Lopate interview with Doug Edwards, author of I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee 59 ... a post by Tara-Nicholle Nelson on the foreclosure via Facebook... David Forrest Innovation Watch

David Forrest advises organizations on emerging trends, and helps to develop strategies for a radically different future

SCIENCE
Top Stories: Forward

Science With Real Bite: Full Set of Teeth Grown in the Lab (Daily Mail) - Scientists have grown fully formed teeth from stem cells. The artificial teeth looked like the real thing, were sensitive to pain and could chew food. The breakthrough was made on mice but could pave the way for those who lose teeth to decay or injury being able to 'grow' replacements. Evolution Machine: Genetic Engineering on Fast Forward (New Scientist) - Say hello to the evolution machine. It can achieve in days what takes genetic engineers years. So far it is just a prototype, but if its proponents are to be believed, future versions could revolutionise biology, allowing us to evolve new organisms or rewrite whole genomes with ease. It might even transform humanity itself. Effectively, rather than spending years introducing one set of specific changes, bioengineers can try out thousands of combinations at once. Peter Carr, a bioengineer at MIT Media Lab who is part of the group developing the technology, describes it as "highly directed evolution."

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TECHNOLOGY
Top Stories: Geo-Immersion Makes Maps Come Alive (PhysOrg) - When it comes to mapping the real world on computers, University of Southern California computer scientist Cyrus Shahabi takes his work to a whole new dimension. Upon first glance, his maps contain the typical landmarks we've become accustomed to seeing on Yahoo or Google Maps. If you look a little closer, you'll see the maps are also pulsing with images of moving cars and scenes of bustling people, all in real time. It is part of a new computing concept called "Geo-Immersion" that blends the real and virtual worlds together. New Solution Can Help 'Permanently Get Rid of Germs' (BBC) - A new anti-microbial treatment that can make clothing including smelly socks - permanently germ-free has been developed by US scientists. The spray-on solution can be applied to existing garments, according to the team from the University of Georgia. It is designed to offer low cost protection for healthcare facilities, such as hospitals.

BUSINESS
Top Stories: Don Tapscott: Business Models for Five Industries in Crisis (Wall Street Journal) In our 2006 book Wikinomics, Anthony D. Williams and I looked at dozens of companies that have used the Internet to transform their business models and achieve tremendous success. However, in the five years since the book's publication, we've noticed

something striking: the rate of business model innovation has not accelerated. Yes, some individual companies have achieved competitive advantage by exploiting the web and networked business models. But overall the gains have been modest. We're beginning to understand the reason. Increasingly it's becoming difficult or even impossible for companies to achieve breakthrough success without changing their entire industry's modus operandi. Nestle to Buy 60% Stake in Hsu Fu Chi for $1.7 Billion (Businessweek) - Nestle SA, the world's largest food company, agreed to buy 60 percent of Hsu Fu Chi International Ltd., a Chinese snack and candy maker, for S$2.07 billion ($1.7 billion) to tap growth in the world's most populous nation. The purchase by the Vevey, Switzerlandbased company will be its largest in China, where Hsu Fu Chi's revenue in the last fiscal year grew more than three times faster than Nestle's worldwide sales. In addition to Hsu Fu Chi's cakes and traditional sweets, Chief Executive Officer Paul Bulcke aims to use the company's distribution system for Nestle brands.

SOCIETY
Top Stories: A Tale Of Two Countries: The Growing Divide Between Silicon Valley And Unemployed America (Tech Crunch) For people who spend most of their days within a few blocks of tech start-up epicenters such as South Park in San Francisco, University Avenue in Palo Alto or the Flatiron district in New York, last week's jobs report must have created some cognitive dissonance. After all, we're in a boom/bubble right? It's really hard to hire good people isn't it? But take a moment to step outside the world of high technology and a dramatically different picture emerges of what's going on in America. Aging Boomers Strain Cities Built for the Young (Medical Xpress) - America's cities are beginning to grapple with a fact of life: People are getting old, fast, and they're doing it in communities designed for the sprightly. To envision how this silver tsunami will challenge a youth-oriented society, just consider that seniors soon will outnumber schoolchildren in hip, fast-paced New York City. It will take some creative steps to make New York and other cities age-friendly enough to help the coming crush of older adults stay active and independent in their own homes.

GLOBAL POLITICS
Top Stories:

Sovereign Debt Crisis Is Now Global (Huffington Post) - With ratings collapsing and bond spreads widening throughout the developed world, it now appears that another member of the infamous PIIGS nations (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) is descending into fiscal anarchy. Italy is on the verge of requiring a bailout of its own, one which would exceed what has already been allocated to Greece, Ireland and Portugal. In desperation, the Italian senate has voted in favor of austerity measures. Based on the failure of the austerity measures in Greece to prevent a second bailout being required, the desperate action by Italian decision makers is unlikely to work, and has the look of panic rather than thoughtfulness. Rare Earth Elements May Affect Future Global Relations (BBC) - Wars have been fought over oil and water. But are the future global tensions going to be over access to Scandium, Neodymium or Dysprosium? Or could conflicts be fought over any other of the 17 rare earth elements, which, week by week, are becoming more and more important in developing the latest high-tech products?

ENVIRONMENT
Top Stories: Australia Unveils Carbon Tax (CBC) - Australia has unveiled a new carbon tax that will force its 500 biggest polluters to pay for emissions -- the country's biggest economic reform in a generation. Coal miners, steel makers, and electricity generators will be among the companies that have to pay about $24 Cdn for each tonne of carbon dioxide they emit. Five Out of Eight Tuna Species at Risk of Extinction, Scientists Warn (Daily Mail) - Five out of the eight tuna species are at risk of extinction, conservationists warned as they called for urgent action to tackle over-fishing. Three species are threatened with global extinction, while two more will be under threat without action to help them, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Researchers looked at all 'scombrid' fish, which include tuna and mackerel, and billfishes, which include swordfish and marlins, and found that seven of the 61 known species were under threat.

THE FUTURE
Top Stories: When Will We Be Transhuman? Seven Conditions for Attaining Transhumanism (Discover) - The future is impossible to predict. But that's not going to stop people from trying. We can at least pretend to know where it is we

want humanity to go. We hope that laws we craft, the technologies we invent, our social habits and our ways of thinking are small forces that, when combined over time, move our species towards a better existence. The question is, How will we know if we are making progress? US Intelligence Agency Wants Technology to Predict the Future from Public Events (Network World) - Publically available data that could be aggregated and used by intelligent systems to predict future events is out there, if you can harness the technology to utilize it. That's one of the driving ideas behind a program of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) group. The program, known as the Open Source Indicators (OSI) will aim to "develop methods for continuous, automated analysis of publicly available data in order to anticipate and/or detect societal disruptions, such as political crises, disease outbreaks, economic instability, resource shortages, and natural disasters," IARPA stated.

Just in from the publisher...

The Trend Forecaster's Handbook

by Martin Raymond
Read more...

A Web Resource... The Future Laboratory - The Future Laboratory uses a suite of research, innovation, workshop and insight tools to assess which trends and consumer needs are most relevant for future profitability -- equipping organizations with a cohesive strategy to realise new brand, product, communications and retail propositions.

Multimedia... Doug Edwards: The Confessions of Google Employee 59 (Leonard Lopate) -- MP3 -- Doug Edwards, Google's first director of marketing and brand management, offers the first inside view of the camaraderie and competition at Google. In Im Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee 59 he describes the first pioneering steps of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the companys idiosyncratic partners, the evolution of the company's famously nonhierarchical structure, as well as the development of the company's brand identity and culture. (36m 57s) [Leonard Lopate]

The Blogosphere... Social Networking Gone Wild: Foreclosure via Facebook (TIME) - Tara-Nicholle Nelson "In America, foreclosure notices are generally public record, even when served via traditional means, so privacy concerns are moot. Debt collectors of all sorts are already using debtors' Facebook declarations to track them down, and attorneys are already using them as evidence in lawsuits (81 percent of divorce lawyers surveyed last year said they have used or faced evidence from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks in a divorce case). Electronic service is typically permitted in American court cases only when the party being served has agreed to it in advance; I can imagine a world in which lenders begin to routinely request -- and obtain -- the borrowers' permission to make service of foreclosure notices via email, Facebook and other electronic means at the

time the original loan documents are signed."

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