Smart Economy

When will the recession / depression end? Part 20 The Dog that Didn't Bark; Economists say don't pay attention to us

Why should we be listening to economists, when so few of them saw this whole mess coming? The Canadian CBC TV Sunday Morning program put that question to two top economists - Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, and James K. Galbraith of the University of Texas, son of the famed Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith - and ask: whose predictions should we believe now?

These were two of the small group of "minortity" economists, warning of the coming crash, who I have been tracking since the early 2000's ...[BTW, I track "outliers" on all the emerging issues that interest me...ie. I started warning clients about the imminant US  banking system collapse and housing collapse in 2006.]

Why did so few economists see this economic crisis coming? Asks the CBC TV reporter, or what I call the  Dog that Didn’t Bark question.

 

 

Here’s a transcript of what James K Galbraith said:

“…Well I think the  economics profession over that last few decades has kind of closed in on itself, it ceased to discuss history in a serious way and it basically excommunicated that relatively small number  of people, who worked on problems of financial crisis and financial instability.

So, there was no dialogue going on, the prospect was not being raised, the profession was busy congratulating itself on having solving the economic problems, on having basically come up with the right formulas for stable expansion, for the control of inflation and they had completely forgotten that the capitalist system has enormous vulnerabilities that come from of the financial sphere, and in addition to that, they were just unequipped to deal with the catastrophic malpractice that was coming from the financial sector over the last five years, they didn’t have the tools, they weren’t studying it, they were caught blind sided by it.”…[…]….Until the crisis actually broke, nobody was paying attention to us."

Dean Baker replies:

"…I was actually tipped off by Alan Greenspan, back in 2002. He was testifying before Congress and he said there was no problem, no bubble in the housing market. And I was reading his testimony and everything he said did not make any sense. He was giving explanations to why there was this sudden rise in house prices. The basic story is that we have a hundred year long history 1895-1995 where nation-wide at least, house prices had just kept pace with the overall  rate of inflation. In other words, House prices has risen at roughly the same rate as the average  other goods, car prices, clothes, gas, whatever it  might be. Suddenly beginning  in the mid 90’s, house prices began to substantially outpace the rate of inflation and by 2002 they had outpaced the rate of inflation by about  30%. And there was no explanation for it that made any sense, based on fundamentals. So to my mind, when you see a hundred year long trend broken, and there is no explanation,  that’s based on fundamentals, it was sort of crying out: Bubble! Bubble ! Bubble!  And I sort of had bubble on my mind because we had just gotten through the stock bubble, and stock crash. We had two explanations. One -this is being driven by something in the fundamentals that no one could identify or  two --the stock bubble had fed over into the housing bubble as was the case in Japan. So that was seemed to be a pretty easy call to me."

Listen to the full interview..a real eye-opener…

 

And what are most of the mainstream economists saying now..don't worry, it will all be over soon...depending on how you take that....that's what I'm worried about--Walter Derzko.

 

Walter Derzko

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression features 45 opportunity scenarios.

Related Recession / Depression Posts

When will the recession / depression end? Part 19 Put Infrastructure Where it's Needed; Ontario on the Move

When will the recession/ depression end? Part 18 Hormones and Boom and Bust Cycles

When will the recession / depression end ? Part 17 Recap from the World Economic Forum in Davos

When will the recession end? Part 16 It's all over, well sort of.

When will the recession end? Part 15 Year-end predictions for 2009 starting to come true

When will the recession end? Part 14 Four options for America's race to the bottom

When will the recession end? Part 13 Thirteen economic questions that economists can't answer

When will the recession end? Part 12 Bad times are good times for startups

When will the recession end? Part 11 Bank of Canada optimism

When will the recession end? Part 10, The Conformity Trap or Don't count on your economist for advise

When will the recession end? Part 9 Humor will signal recession /depression bottom

When will the recession end? Part 8 Lessons Learned from the last Post 9/11 recession; designing brilliant winning business models

When will the recession end? Part 7 False signals of recovery

When will this recession end? Part 6 The USA Paradox; Cheer vs Fear vs Transformation

When will the recession end? Part 5 Stop Auto Industry Bailouts, start buying Electric

When will the recession end? Part 4 The double dip housing crash in the USA

When will the recession end? Part 3 The coming collapse of the American Middle Class into an Underclass

When will this recession end ? Part 2 Do you listen to the Optimists or the Pessimists in 2009?

When will this recession end?

82 Signposts to the current Recession Depression Summary from 2008

 

© 2005-2009

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression features 45 opportunity scenarios.

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko

• ".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead

• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

Communication technologies eventually flip and lead to disconnected staccato lifestyle

Technology is not just a double edged sword-paradoxical good and bad effects. It’s far more complex-it’s a quadruple blade or four-edged blade sword.

McLuhan predicted and warned us that every technology or human invented construct has 4 simultaneous effects on culture and society, which strategists and marketers often ignore to their peril. One of them is "reversal or flip". What happens at the extreme when everyone is using technology X? There is a flip or reversal. Cars, which were supposed to be the ultimate transportation devise,  in time have created  gridlock, delays, frustration and pollution, as the system scales up. Sometimes its faster to walk then wait in traffic.

The same subtle "flip" effects are happening in the communication world.

People often ask: what’s the social impact of communication technology X? In fact, that’s the wrong question to ask. They should be asking: what are the social and cultural impacts of the entire family or cluster the technologies that technology X belongs to?  

I’ve coined the term “staccato effect” or “staccato lifestyle”—from the musical definition of staccato

[Music. Cut short crisply; detached: staccato octaves.  or marked by or composed of abrupt, disconnected parts or sounds: staccato applause.]

…because that's what my work day sometimes feels like. 

Communication technologies, which were suppose to help us connect, are starting to have the reverse effect on society. They are disconnecting us by our constant connectedness.--the staccato effect.

We never stay focused long enough on a task, problem or opportunity window to make sense of it, but shift our attention to the next immediate crisis, largely facilitated or accelerated by our range of communication devices. It all started with the photocopy Xerox machine, and has progressed to iphones, email and twitter We are loosing our ability to reflect and our reflection time to make sense of new information….

Think of the last time you had lunch or coffee with someone, who would be constantly interrupting the flow of the conversation by turning to their cell phone calls, email alerts, or twitter text messages.

Our life and job can now be characterizeded as a constantt string of distractions, punctuations or interruptions.

There is an interesting article in the Boston Globe this morning, describing some of the McLuhanesque-like social impacts of communication technology and Information overload and anxiety called: The End of Alone?  At our desk, on the road, or on a remote beach, the world is a tap away. It's so cool. And yet it's not. What we lose with our constant connectedness [Hat tip to Peter Montgomery]. 

 

The author notes:

 

"If you can't remember the last time you were truly unplugged, you've got company".

 

....but later  makes the point about the benefits of solitude:

"Descartes, Newton, Locke, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard -- they share the distinction of having been some of the greatest thinkers the world has known. They also share this: None of them ever married or had their own families, and most of them spent the bulk of their lives living alone.

In his provocative 1989 book Solitude: A Return to the Self, British writer and psychiatrist Anthony Storr made a persuasive case for the value of deep, uninterrupted alone time. He found it in ample supply in the lives of not just philosophers and physicists, but also some of the greatest poets, novelists, painters, and composers."

but warns that many people now can't deal with being unplugged, (exhibiting classic with-drawl symptoms), which leads me to ask: What would happen to people if the Internet ever crashed for an extended period of time? Could it? Next big solar corona flare? Well remember that they said that the Titanic was unsinkable too.

University of Toronto researcher Rhonda McEwen tracked the communication behavior of students across their freshmen year…[…]… McEwen found in her University of Toronto study that college students are constantly connected to the point of having no concept of a truly unplugged life. There's a time-honored tradition in Canada of "going to the cottage," usually in the summertime, and being blissfully disconnected from the rest of the world. "The participants in my study had real discomfort going to the cottage,"McEwen says. "If there's no cellphone reception, no Internet access, they think, 'What the hell am I doing out there?' "

  

© 2005-2009

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko

• ".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead

• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for Managing your Business in a Recession Part 5 of 28 Category Killer Innovation-India's $10 laptop

The recession is a perfect time to  launch a new business or new product, especially what I call Category Killer Innovation, or what Clayton Christenson calls a "Disruptive Technology." The Category Killer Opportunity window is not a single opportunity space or event but a cluster of smaller fortuitous opportunities that bundle together (such as the design enhancement opportunity, a production challenge opportunity, the value chain opportunity, the supply chain challenge opportunity window and many others) to form a "super opportunity space" or in this case a Category Killer Innovation Opportunity Window. If history is any indication, we will see a flood of distruptive technology hitting the market between now and 2014.

A good example is the Starbury sneaker, who went up against the big boys-NIKE, Adidas, Puma and New Balance to produce a $14.95 runner that is as good as the $149-$300 equivalent basketball shoe, but at an order of magnitude price drop. It will be interesting to see how low cost Starbury Sneakers fare against NIKE in a recession

According to Wikipedia:

"Starbury, Inc. is an American brand of sneakers and clothing endorsed by NBA players Stephon Marbury and Ben Wallace, and marketed by Steve and Barry's. The line was launched in September 2006, as a pair of $14.99 basketball shoes to compete with higher priced products endorsed by celebrity athletes. Stephon Marbury and retail clothing chain Steve & Barry's claim that the products are of the same level of quality as more expensive alternatives."

Now India is about to unveil tomorrow a prototype of a $10 laptop (which actually costs $20 to produce.) It will be subsidized by the Indian Education Ministry, so that eventually every school child in India will be able to afford a laptop and access to the Internet. This is a counter-offer to the MIT Negroponte project which was proposing a $100 laptop per child for India, but the Indian government thought that they could do one better. The $10 laptop will come with WiFi, 2GB of memory, Ethernet and expandable memory capability and consumer just 2 watts of power. There are still many unanswered questions, such as can they find the supply chain to manufacture the laptop at that low cost and many others. How will they protect themselves from reverse engineering and IP theft and the grey market?

But it proves the point that every incumbent CEO, Manager and entrepreneur should be always looking behind their back for the next Category Killer Innovation to sneak up on them

Walter Derzko, Smart Economy, Toronto

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression featuring 45 opportunity scenarios.

Other Opportunity Clinic posts in this series:

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for managing your Business in a recession Part 6 of 28 What's in your Recession Playbook?

The Opportunity Clinic; 28 Tactics for Managing your Business in a Recession Part 5 of 28 Category Killer Innovation-India's $10 laptop

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 4 of 28 “Left Behind “Opportunities- Go Green & Go Slow

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 3 of 28 Design Opportunities- Hope or Nostalgia

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business in a Recession Part 2 of 28 Innovation or Efficiency?

The Opportunity Clinic - 28 Tactics for Managing Your Business (& surviving and thriving) in a Recession Part 1of 28

Realted posts over that past year:

·         Opportunity Recognition in Difficult Times

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn

·         Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn – June 25, 2008, Ontario College of Art Design, Toronto, ON

·         Recession-Proofing your Business-Strategies and Tactics for smoother sailing in turbulent seas

·         Master Class in Opportunity Recognition for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs> May 30th 2008> University of Toronto

·         Turning Misery into Opportunity

·         Vacuum leaves pullout opportunities;

·         How will baby boomers handle the recession? Zoomers, Doomers, Gloomers, Opportuneurs

·         Recession, Depression and Shortages as Opportunities

·         Restructuring of American Business-A New Business Model?

·         Using New Yorker Cartoons for Opportunity Recognition /Sense-making & Pattern Recognition

·         Text Mining for S&T Scouting, Foresight and Opportunity Recognition

·         The Opportunity Clinic-swapping opportunity scenarios 08-002

Walter Derzko

 

When will the recession end? Part 8 Lessons Learned from the last Post 9/11 recession; designing brilliant winning business models

  There’s an old saying…”the best time to start a new business is the day after the recession ends.” The $64K  question is not when will the recession end but what will the recovery look like? Will it be V-shaped, U-shaped, W-shaped, v-W-shaped,  J-shaped, L-shaped or extended L-shaped? Which of these seven scenarios will play out?  UPDATE: see cartoon on the right from March 2009

To anticipate this, we have to look at what tools do managers and entrepreneurs have to help them predict, track and measure where they and the economy are heading?

 

I dusted off some old notes, slides  and workshop handout materials from just after post 9/11 as the economy topped out and in hindsight, was headed into a recession, triggered by the terrorist attacks on New York city and Washington. The materials were from a set of  experimental workshops that I designed for Andrew Maxwell, who at the time was at the incubator / accelerator at  the Innovations Foundation at the University of Toronto, when they were still located on 243 College Street, before moving into the new MaRS facility.

One workshop was on Designing Winning Business Models and the second was called 12 Tools and Techniques for Surviving Thriving and Managing in a Volatile and Turbulent Business Climate.

Could some of these same  principles and lessons learned from these workshops apply to today’s recessionary / depressionary climate? Most certainly!!

 

Designing a robust and adaptive business model could determine if you dive, merely survive or thrive in a recession.

Some of the key points and questions from the Designing Winning Business Models workshop include the following points:

• What were/are  the traditional business models/ revenue models in my industry and what can I learn from them?

• What are the prevailing business models/ revenue models in my industry today?

• What can I learn from mapping my current business landscape?

• What’s my current business model look like and what are all the components?

• What are the assumptions (tacit and explicit) behind my current business model and are they still valid? robust under changing conditions? various recovery scenarios ?  (V-shaped, U-shaped, W-shaped, v-W-shaped,  J-shaped, L-shaped or extended L-shaped? )

• What are the changing consumer or business values, attitudes and behaviors and are they reflected or aligned with my current business model

• What changes, trends, driving factors and issues are forcing me to rethink my current business model?

• How do I surface assumptions about the current and near-future business climate?

• What’s broken in my existing business model and how do I mitigate the faults and defects?

• How do I design a new viable system using scenario planning, systems dynamics and viable systems modeling?

• How do I model potential major discontinuities, wild cards, disruptions into my revenue model and business model?

• What were the lessons learned from the dot.com bubble, e-commerce failures and the collapse of the “green tech” and alternative energy markets? How do I mitigate that in the future from new emerging technologies.

• What cognitive thinking skills do I need to deploy to come up with novel and difficult to copy concepts for a brilliant new business model?

Tomorrow we’ll look at the 12 predictive  tools that should be in your managerial or entrepreneurial toolkit to help you predict and design opportunity windows for both the downward leg of the recession and the upward leg of the recovery.

 

Walter Derzko

Smart Economy

Toronto

Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression featuring 45 opportunity scenarios.

 

Related posts:

 

82 Signposts to the current Recession Depression Summary from 2008

When will this recession end?

When will this recession end ? Part 2 Do you listen to the Optimists or the Pessimists in 2009?

When will the recession end? Part 3 The coming collapse of the American Middle Class into an Underclass

When will the recession end? Part 4 The double dip housing crash in the USA

When will the recession end? Part 5 Stop Auto Industry Bailouts, start buying Electric

 

When will this recession end? Part 6 The USA Paradox; Cheer vs Fear vs Transformation

 

When will the recession end? Part 7 False signals of recovery

 

When will the recession end? Part 8 Lessons Learned from the last Post 9/11 recession; designing brilliant winning business models

 

© 2005-2009

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko

• ".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead

• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

Sporting equipment intellivating by getting a smarter grip

 

Today's sporting gear is dumb and benign.

 

But sports equipment is about to get a lot smarter soon --not just from a style point of view but literally.

 

The sports industry (along with porn) has always been a bellwether sector for new technology applications. First it was new  composite materials (graphite) and then nanotechnology (carbon nanotubes), Now hand-held  sporting gear is about to intellivate* (a word I coined that’s a combination of intelligence +elevate) or become “dynamic or responsive”

Apple has patented a process of wrapping electronic touch sensitive (hepatic) material around sports gear, from hockey sticks, tennis rackets and golf clubs, to baseball bats and even darts. Think of it as a smart grip, where the user’s grip (correct or incorrect) can be monitored for training and improving the consistency of shots or hits.

 

Consequences? Adapting an old saying, "Smart practise leads to perfection sooner." Armchair athletes, weekend warriors  and professionals alike will improve their proficiency in sports a lot quicker and earlier in age, increasing the talent pool for professional sports clubs to choose from.

 

ETA: 2010-2013

 

 

In the future footballs, baseballs, hockey pucks and golf balls may be next on the list of objects that will be able to give you direct feedback

© 2005-2009

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko

• ".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead

• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

IBM endorses smart technology and a smarter planet

A while back when I was at the Idea Lab at the Design Exchange, I remember sitting over a coffee and exploring a thought exercise with some clients.

The question under debate was: What are  the generic elements or activities that would accelerate any new technology platform, (such as smart technologies) and overcome the initial market interia. Simply put, Is there a generic technology evolution matrix?

We came up with over 25 items. (see related Post-Do you know how to spot opportunities?)

One was having cartoonists make fun of your technology ( No, smart technologies aren't on Dilbert's radar screen yet, but any day now I hope)  Another key event would be to have some influential CEO highlight the benefits of your technology in a milestone keynote speech (act as a complimentor-in business strategy terms. )

Well for smart technologies, that breakthrough event may have happened this month on November 6^th, when IBM’s CEO, Sam Palmisano, outlined a new agenda for building a smarter planet - during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relation. (hat tip to Adam Christensen at IBM HQ)

 

 

From IBM's blog:

"In the speech, he outlines a number of the challenges faced today by people, governments, businesses and organizations. A lack of clean water for a fifth of the world’s population. Energy systems that waste more energy than they produce. Traffic in our cities that clogs roads and chokes economic growth. 

Clearly there are no simple solutions for these problems.

Technology can play a big role in helping find answers to these problems. While the Internet currently connects more than a billion people, in just a few years, it will connect more than a trillion objects. Everything from cell phones, cars, roads, buildings, and even objects in nature itself, will have embedded technology and be connected to one another, enabling tremendous advances in how we understand how the world works and make smarter decisions to make it work better. 

But technology is just part of the solution. Without the people, policies and culture to inspire and execute the change, nothing ultimately gets done."

From Sam’s speech:

[...]   These collective realizations have reminded us that we are all now connected—economically, technically and socially. But we're also learning that being connected is not sufficient. Yes, the world continues to get "flatter." And yes, it continues to get smaller and more interconnected. But something is happening that holds even greater potential. In a word, our planet is becoming smarter.

This isn't just a metaphor.I mean infusing intelligence into the way the world literally works—the systems and processes that enable physical goods to be developed, manufactured, bought and sold… services to be delivered… everything from people and money to oil, water and electrons to move… and billions of people to work and live.

 What's making this possible?

• First, our world is becoming instrumented: The transistor, invented 60 years ago, is the basic building block of the digital age. Now, consider a world in which there are a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent. We'll have that by 2010. There will likely be 4 billion mobile phone subscribers by the end of this year… and 30 billion Radio Frequency Identification tags produced globally within two years. Sensors are being embedded across entire ecosystems—supply-chains, healthcare networks, cities… even natural systems like rivers.
• Second, our world is becoming interconnected: Very soon there will be 2 billion people on the Internet. But in an instrumented world, systems and objects can now "speak" to one another, too. Think about the prospect of a trillion connected and intelligent things—cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines… even pharmaceuticals and livestock. The amount of information produced by the interaction of all those things will be unprecedented.
• Third, all things are becoming intelligent: New computing models can handle the proliferation of end-user devices, sensors and actuators and connect them with back-end systems. Combined with advanced analytics, those supercomputers can turn mountains of data into intelligence that can be translated into action, making our systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, more productive and responsive—in a word, smarter.

What this means is that the digital and physical infrastructures of the world are converging. Computational power is being put into things we wouldn't recognize as computers. Indeed, almost anything—any person, any object, any process or any service, for any organization, large or small—can become digitally aware and networked.

With so much technology and networking abundantly available at such low cost, what wouldn't you enhance? What service wouldn't you provide a customer, citizen, student or patient? What wouldn't you connect? What information wouldn't you mine for insight?

The answer is, you or your competitor—another company, or another city or nation—will do all of that. You will do it because you can—the technology is available and affordable.

But there is another reason we will make our companies, institutions and industries smarter. Because we must. Not just at moments of widespread shock, but integrated into our day-to-day operations. These mundane processes of business, government and life—which are ultimately the source of those "surprising" crises—are not smart enough to be sustainable.

[...]

Leaders will need to hone their collaboration skills, because we will need leadership that pulls across systems. We will need to bring together stakeholders and experts from across business, government and academia, and all of them will need to move outside their traditional comfort zones.

I’m struck by the questions this raises. What investments need to be made by both public and private institutions? What policy issues need to be debated and resolved? What role can individual citizens and employees play in helping bring about meaningful change?

I’m also struck by the potential opportunities inherent in finding solutions to these problems. 

see full text of Sam Palmisano's speech

Walter Derzko

 

From IBM's blog:

"In the speech, he outlines a number of the challenges faced today by people, governments, businesses and organizations. A lack of clean water for a fifth of the world’s population. Energy systems that waste more energy than they produce. Traffic in our cities that clogs roads and chokes economic growth. 

Clearly there are no simple solutions for these problems.

Technology can play a big role in helping find answers to these problems. While the Internet currently connects more than a billion people, in just a few years, it will connect more than a trillion objects. Everything from cell phones, cars, roads, buildings, and even objects in nature itself, will have embedded technology and be connected to one another, enabling tremendous advances in how we understand how the world works and make smarter decisions to make it work better. 

But technology is just part of the solution. Without the people, policies and culture to inspire and execute the change, nothing ultimately gets done."

From Sam’s speech:

[...]   These collective realizations have reminded us that we are all now connected—economically, technically and socially. But we're also learning that being connected is not sufficient. Yes, the world continues to get "flatter." And yes, it continues to get smaller and more interconnected. But something is happening that holds even greater potential. In a word, our planet is becoming smarter.

This isn't just a metaphor.I mean infusing intelligence into the way the world literally works—the systems and processes that enable physical goods to be developed, manufactured, bought and sold… services to be delivered… everything from people and money to oil, water and electrons to move… and billions of people to work and live.

 What's making this possible?

• First, our world is becoming instrumented: The transistor, invented 60 years ago, is the basic building block of the digital age. Now, consider a world in which there are a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent. We'll have that by 2010. There will likely be 4 billion mobile phone subscribers by the end of this year… and 30 billion Radio Frequency Identification tags produced globally within two years. Sensors are being embedded across entire ecosystems—supply-chains, healthcare networks, cities… even natural systems like rivers.
• Second, our world is becoming interconnected: Very soon there will be 2 billion people on the Internet. But in an instrumented world, systems and objects can now "speak" to one another, too. Think about the prospect of a trillion connected and intelligent things—cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines… even pharmaceuticals and livestock. The amount of information produced by the interaction of all those things will be unprecedented.
• Third, all things are becoming intelligent: New computing models can handle the proliferation of end-user devices, sensors and actuators and connect them with back-end systems. Combined with advanced analytics, those supercomputers can turn mountains of data into intelligence that can be translated into action, making our systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, more productive and responsive—in a word, smarter.

What this means is that the digital and physical infrastructures of the world are converging. Computational power is being put into things we wouldn't recognize as computers. Indeed, almost anything—any person, any object, any process or any service, for any organization, large or small—can become digitally aware and networked.

With so much technology and networking abundantly available at such low cost, what wouldn't you enhance? What service wouldn't you provide a customer, citizen, student or patient? What wouldn't you connect? What information wouldn't you mine for insight?

The answer is, you or your competitor—another company, or another city or nation—will do all of that. You will do it because you can—the technology is available and affordable.

But there is another reason we will make our companies, institutions and industries smarter. Because we must. Not just at moments of widespread shock, but integrated into our day-to-day operations. These mundane processes of business, government and life—which are ultimately the source of those "surprising" crises—are not smart enough to be sustainable.

[...]

Leaders will need to hone their collaboration skills, because we will need leadership that pulls across systems. We will need to bring together stakeholders and experts from across business, government and academia, and all of them will need to move outside their traditional comfort zones.

I’m struck by the questions this raises. What investments need to be made by both public and private institutions? What policy issues need to be debated and resolved? What role can individual citizens and employees play in helping bring about meaningful change?

I’m also struck by the potential opportunities inherent in finding solutions to these problems. 

see full text of Sam Palmisano's speech

Walter Derzko

New Yorker cartoonist spots smart technology

I've been talking about smart technology and the smart economy since 1998, but I may have been a little ahead of the curve. Cartoonists usually have a good sense of what issues, trends  and fads are coming into fashion.

This week's New Yorker magazine has an interesting cartoon. Will we see more?

Smart Sustainability Showcase for Toronto and Canada

From: Walter Derzko

Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 12:19 AM

To: undisclosed list

Subject: re Smart Sustainability ShowCase for Toronto and Canada.

Importance: High

Dear Colleagues

I’d like to plant an idea with you – after speaking with a number of designers and vendors, I’m exploring the idea for a sustainability showcase that would feature theme based exhibits with smart technologies from Canadian and international sources-the best from Ontario, nationally and from around the world.

The launch would be 2010, The timing for this seems right.  The target audience would be Canadian business, consumers and school children

I’m writing a book on smart technologies and this would be a logical extension of the concept.

Two years ago I talked to Samantha Sannella and Poala Polletto at the Design Exchange (DX) in Toronto and with several people at the Ont Science Center.  Both groups expressed interest but said that we would need to find sponsors for the project

My business model for this would be three pronged -vendor based revenue, corporate based sponsor revenue and municipality based sponsorship ie city of Toronto or Mississauga and possibly the province of Ontario who may wish to promote sustainable manufacturing.

This concept would be a Canadian, in fact a North American first.

I have a list of 150 potential vendors, and designers from around the world who are working on smart technologies that we can start to approach.

The exhibits would be theme based, --the sustainable kitchen, the sustainable office, the sustainable retail shelf, the sustainable workspace, the sustainable community, the sustainable city etc and would be updated with new technologies every 3-5 years and have a 1-5 year forward focus. (what's commercially available now or in the very near future.

For other exhibits, there can be a regional or national focus ie smart sustainable technology from the UK, Finland, Germany (Fraunhofer Inst), China, Ukraine, Russia, or Singapore, Hong Kong etc

Corporate sponsors might include: Walmart, Rona, Home Deport, Canadian Tire, Loblaws, Sears, Imperial Oil, the banks (RBC, TD, RBC BMO) etc.

The Sustainability Showcase could be housed in a physical location, or it could tour from location to location around the city or province or be mobile ( on a bus the way the Japanese and Korean do- a display bus turned into a demo center that tours from school to school or to fairs and exhibitions.

OCAD students and staff and Beal senior fellows could play a hand in designing exhibit spaces and sourcing new vendors and sustainable technologies.

Several other revenue opportunities could spin off from this as well

Here’s just a few examples of what can be showcased

1) Environmentally sensible packaging such as Mercury-Absorbant NanoSponge packaging for broken compact fluorescent lamps (CFL's) http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2008/06/mercury-absorba.html

2) Concrete Wood (from the example I mentioned June 2 at OCAD, when Bob Logan was bemoaning the lack of durability of pressboard shelving from Ikea.  See Concrete Wood from lodgepole pine trees destroyed by pine beetles (kills two birds with one stone) http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2007/11/concrete-wood.html

3) End of Traditional Heating and Air conditioning Thin-film version of Active Building Envelope (ABE) systems could make conventional air conditioning and heating equipment obsolete http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2006/07/thinfilm_versio.html

4) OLEDs New High efficiency flat light source OLEDs > Almost any surface in a home, whether flat or curved, could become a light source: walls, curtains, ceilings, cabinets, shelves or tables.  Http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2006/04/new_high_effici.html

Lots more like these

For anyone who is interested in exploring the idea of a Smart Sustainability Showcase for Toronto, we are having a meeting on Tuesday July 22 at 11 am at the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD), Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, room 600, 6th floor , 100 McCaul St, Toronto just south of the Ont Art Gallery.

Please RSVP, so we know how many people are coming

I have had some positive feedback from several organizations, & I’d like to push the concept forward

I'm sending this nationally and internationally in  case you are aware of any designers, vendors, manufacturers or research centers who have interesting cutting edge smart sustainable technology to showcase.

Contact me by email

----Walter  Derzko; Senior Fellow Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, OCAD 

© 2005-2008 Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant, Keynote Speaker and Lecturer on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

Is anyone using Marshall McLuhan's tetrad model for technology foresight work? 08-082

Is anyone using Marshall McLuhan's tetrad model for technology foresight work?

Marshal McLuhan was the "master" in predicting the social impacts of new technology (in his case the media) with deadly accuracy. Marshal would ask himself 4 simple questions ( which he called the tetrad), to explore the impacts and consequences of any new technology, that he didn't fully understand yet.

1) What does the technology enhance? 2) What does the technology make obsolete? 3) What does the technology retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier? 4) What does the technology flip into when pushed to the extremes?

Using McLuhan's tetrad model to discover the impacts of a new technology, we see that Obama's “internet fundraising” campaign:

1) Enhances: visibility, more time out on the hustings, proximity to the voter

2) Obsolesces; the corporate donor as the sole sponsor, corporate influence, influence peddling,

3) Brings Back or retrieves: the collection plate that gets passed around in a virtual voter congregation

4) Reverses or Flips into: politics for the masses and not just the rich; money from the masses, “a penny for your politics”, distributed decision-making in politics and distributed representation

Walter Derzko

Is technology making your life simpler or more complex or both? Join the debate 08-081

Is technology making your life simpler or more complex or both? 

Debating Freedom and its digital discontents..... In our second debate of this series we address the proposition: "This house believes that if the promise of technology is to simplify our lives, it is failing."

Speaker Pro:Richard Szafranski Partner in Toffler Associates

Speaker Con: John Maeda President Elect of the Rhode Island School of Design

Join the debate on the Economist web page