Smart Economy

Incredible gaming simulation

One of our readers alerted us to this incredible gaming simulation…..Truly state-of-the-art....combining physics and graphics....as people have said...This 2:43 minute video is awesome! .....especially the simulated tornado.

Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Game on You Tube

Helps if you have high speed to see it. Takes longer on dialup to download.

The Future and Cultural Values

In doing background research on an article I'm writing on the Future and Inter-cultural Values, I ran across an intereting piece of interdisciplinary work from the political science, cultural anthropology and sociology fields.

The Values Map above ( Inglehart and Baker (2000), visually illustrates the strong correlation of values in different cultures.  You will notice that countries are clustered in a remarkably predictable way.

These world-wide Value Surveys were designed to provide a comprehensive measurement of all major areas of human concern, from religion to politics to economic and social life. From this we see that  two dimensions dominate the picture: (1) Traditional/ Secular-rational and (2) Survival/Self-expression values. 

"These two dimensions explain more than 70 percent of the cross-national variance in a factor analysis of ten indicators-and each of these dimensions is strongly correlated with scores of other important orientations." note researchers.

The Traditional/Secular-rational values dimension reflects the contrast between societies in which religion is very important and those in which it is not. 

A wide range of other orientations are closely linked with this dimension.  Societies near the traditional pole emphasize the importance of parent-child ties and deference to authority, along with absolute standards and traditional family values, and reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide.  These societies have high levels of national pride, and a nationalistic outlook.  Societies with secular-rational values have the opposite preferences on all of these topics."

"The second major dimension of cross-cultural variation is linked with the transition from industrial society to post-industrial societies-which brings a polarization between Survival and Self-expression values.  The unprecedented wealth that has accumulated in advanced societies during the past generation means that an increasing share of the population has grown up taking survival for granted.  Thus, priorities have shifted from an overwhelming emphasis on economic and physical security toward an increasing emphasis on subjective well-being, self-expression and quality of life."

Inglehart and Baker (2000) find evidence that orientations have shifted from Traditional toward Secular-rational values, in almost all industrial societies.  But modernization, is not linear-when a society has completed industrialization and starts becoming a knowledge society, it moves in a new direction, from Survival values toward increasing emphasis on Self-expression values.

"A central component of this emerging dimension involves the polarization between Materialist and Postmaterialist values, reflecting a cultural shift that is emerging among generations who have grown up taking survival for granted.  Self-expression values give high priority to environmental protection, tolerance of diversity and rising demands for participation in decision making in economic and political life.  These values also reflect mass polarization over tolerance of outgroups, including foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality.  The shift from survival values to self-expression values also includes a shift in child-rearing values, from emphasis on hard work toward emphasis on imagination and tolerance as important values to teach a child.  And it goes with a rising sense of subjective well-being that is conducive to an atmosphere of tolerance, trust and political moderation.  Finally, societies that rank high on self-expression values also tend to rank high on interpersonal trust."

"This produces a culture of trust and tolerance, in which people place a relatively high value on individual freedom and self-expression, and have activist political orientations.  These are precisely the attributes that the political culture literature defines as crucial to democracy."

Questions to ponder.....?

• Is it me or does it seem to more people that Canada, the USA  and Russia are slipping and backsliding along some of these value spectra?
• How will values change and in what direction will they go, as post communist countries go through their transition periods into a market or semi-market economy?
• How often do values shift & change? Every decade? Is it accelerating?
• Are there noticable generation to generation (G2G) changes visible every decade?
• Is there a significant correlation and link between genetics, culture and happiness?

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

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 "

To arrange for an in house presentation 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

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

Anti-aging Breakthrough: CGK733

Earlier this summer, Kim Tae-Kook, a professor at the state-run Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology announced that his team has created a newly-synthesized molecule, which enables human cells to not just avoid ageing and but makes cells younger.

"For the first time in the world, our team has discovered the substance that could slow the ageing of human cells and at the same time cause a reverse reaction,"claims the professor.

"The substance, named CGK733, is more of a "dimmer switch" than an on-off switch, meaning it could be used in drugs, he said."

"Knocking out a protein's function entirely can lead to terrible side-effects.  The dimmer switch characteristic provides a window for dosage."

Applications:

Look for advances in wound-healing, anti-ageing cosmetics, cancer therapy and tissue engineering.

ETA: at least 2025 if all goes well in R&D

More .....Kim's findings were published by the Britain science journal Nature Chemical Biology 2, 369-374 (2006) in July.

See Small molecule–based reversible reprogramming of cellular lifespan

Buzz word to learn and remember:

CGK733

To help you remember, I couldn't help but share this funny graphic that appeared in one of the technical forum chat rooms after this discovery was announced...5 easy steps to longevity !!!

My final thoughts:

This looks like another smart disruptive technology to me, but don't expect applications soon. Needs plenty of development work and poitive clinical trials. Many social and ethical roadblocks.

To parody a common road sign…you are now merging with the Future…be prepared for change & be prepare to change!!!

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

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 "

To arrange for an in house presentation 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

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

Formula for small business success--location, location, location and physics

The secret to small business success: location, location, location and physics

Choosing the right location is one of the most important and difficult decisions a business owner must make.  You could rely on pavement-pounding research, intuition, and a good real estate agent, or you could turn to a new model that analyzes businesses in much the same way that physicists model interactions between spinning atoms.

Pablo Jensen of the Ecole Normal Superiure in France studied the locations of businesses in Lyon to determine which stores seem to attract each other and which stores repel each other (much as atoms can attract or repel each other in various materials).  The analysis leads to a quality index Q that automatically reveals promising store locations throughout the city.  Q might be high for a jewelery store in a particular location if there are other accessory stores nearby selling shoes or hats, but few neighboring grocery or hardware stores.

Jensen confirmed his model by looking at business data for Lyon in 2003 and 2005.  He found that bakeries, for example, that were located in low quality locations in 2003 tended to fail by 2005.  Meanwhile, new bakeries popped up preferentially at locations where their Q index is high.

ETA: 2007 for proof of concept

Jensen is currently working with the Lyon Chamber of Commerce to use his model's predictions of Q to help aspiring business owners find promising locations, as well as advising city officials on ways to improve Lyon's commercial opportunities.

For  paper " Network-based predictions of retail store commercial categories and optimal locations" go here>> [...]

My final thoughts:

This looks like another smart disruptive technology to me, giving smart-technology-savvy people an early edge.

To parody a common road sign…you are now merging with the Future…be prepared for change & be prepare to change!!!

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

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 "

To arrange for an in house presentation 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

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

Smart new search engine Monitor 110 uncovers new business trends

AFP reports that an online service set for launch early next year will perpetually mine the Internet for gems useful to sophisticated financial investors.

A specialized search engine christened "Monitor110" promises to continually sift and sort information from nearly 40 million online sources to uncover business trends or developments before word reaches mainstream media.

"It can monitor alternative news websites, government websites, regulatory sites, blogs, union websites, local newspapers," said Monitor110 chairman Roger Ehrenberg, a former manager of investment funds at Deutsche Bank.

"It looks at the type of people linking to the blog and the people that link to the people that link to the blog," he added, explaining that an algorithm was used to rank the reputation and credibility of sources.

Weblogs, or blogs, are increasingly common online postings in which people offer opinions or insights regarding whatever they choose.

.....Sounds like the online automated version of the Opportunity Clinic, which I developed a  number of years back.

ETA:

Monitor110 will launch online at the beginning of 2007 and scan sources ranging from "alternative sites" to stock-exchange regulators for recurring information, said Ehrenberg, who once managed investment funds at Deutsche Bank.

Information gleaned by Monitor110 will help investment fund managers determine how to most profitably adjust portfolios, according to Ehrenberg.

Cost?

He promised Monitor110 would be a precious resource and warned that subscriptions to the service would be priced to match, with the target audience expected to be sophisticated investors and fund managers.

N.B.

This service will likly be successful if it does all it promises, but its success will lead to its undoing. The time lag or gap between a new business trend or strategic information recognized by a few and when it becomes public and widely known,  has ways been used as a competitive window for  savvy investors. If everyone starts using this type of service, that advantage will disappear over time.

In the short term. I suspect it will increase market velocity as new investors jump on the bandwagon looking for new opportunity windows.

I also wonder if Monitor110 is designed as a traditional search engine that matches opportunity window algorithms to unstructured data or if it's designed as a discovery engine to take unstructured data and find new novel opportunity window patterns? The second approach seems more useful.

Paint-On Power Generation: The holy grail for mobile battery power?

From a recent set of forecasts I saw:

"Scientists say it is quite likely that developments in nanotechnology and the science of coatings will yield nano solar cells - each just a billionth of a meter in diameter.  They will be sensitive enough to generate power from any light source - even infrared light that can be found indoors - and they will be painted or sprayed onto surfaces everywhere to provide a power source.

These inexpensive electricity-generating surfaces can keep our many digital devices fully charged without any effort on our part."

ETA: by 2020 - 2025

Micro (gas turbine) engines-in-a-chip

MIT researchers are putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. 

Significance:

The resulting device could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight can, powering laptops, cell phones, radios and other electronic devices.

It could also dramatically lighten the load for people who can't connect to a power grid, including soldiers who now must carry many pounds of batteries for a three-day mission -- all at a reasonable price.

The researchers say that in the long term, mass-production could bring the per-unit cost of power from microengines close to that for power from today's large gas-turbine power plants.

MEMS-How it works

Making things tiny is all the rage.  The field -- called microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS -- grew out of the computer industry's stunning success in developing and using micro technologies.  "Forty years ago, a computer filled up a whole building," said Professor Alan Epstein of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.  "Now we all have microcomputers on our desks and inside our thermostats and our watches."

While others are making miniature devices ranging from biological sensors to chemical processors, Epstein and a team of 20 faculty, staff and students are looking to make power -- personal power. 

"Big gas-turbine engines can power a city, but a little one could 'power' a person," said Epstein, whose colleagues are spread among MIT's Gas Turbine Laboratory, Microsystems Technology Laboratories, and Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems.

Size of MEMS gears vs a dust mite.

How can one make a tiny fuel-burning engine?  An engine needs a compressor, a combustion chamber, a spinning turbine and so on.  Making millimeter-scale versions of those components from welded and riveted pieces of metal isn't feasible.  So, like computer-chip makers, the MIT researchers turned to etched silicon wafers.

Their microengine is made of six silicon wafers, piled up like pancakes and bonded together.  Each wafer is a single crystal with its atoms perfectly aligned, so it is extremely strong.  To achieve the necessary components, the wafers are individually prepared using an advanced etching process to eat away selected material.  When the wafers are piled up, the surfaces and the spaces in between produce the needed features and functions.

Making microengines one at a time would be prohibitively expensive, so the researchers again followed the lead of computer-chip makers.  They make 60 to 100 components on a large wafer that they then (very carefully) cut apart into single units.

The MIT team has now used this process to make all the components needed for their engine, and each part works.  Inside a tiny combustion chamber, fuel and air quickly mix and burn at the melting point of steel.  Turbine blades, made of low-defect, high-strength microfabricated materials, spin at 20,000 revolutions per second -- 100 times faster than those in jet engines.  A mini-generator produces 10 watts of power.  A little compressor raises the pressure of air in preparation for combustion.  And cooling (always a challenge in hot microdevices) appears manageable by sending the compression air around the outside of the combustor.

"So all the parts work….  We're now trying to get them all to work on the same day on the same lab bench," Epstein said.  Ultimately, of course, hot gases from the combustion chamber need to turn the turbine blades, which must then power the generator, and so on.  "That turns out to be a hard thing to do," he said.  Their goal is to have it done by the end of this year.

Predicting how quickly they can move ahead is itself a bit of a challenge.  If the bonding process is done well, each microengine is a monolithic piece of silicon, atomically perfect and inseparable.  As a result, even a tiny mistake in a single component will necessitate starting from scratch.  And if one component needs changing -- say, the compressor should be a micron smaller -- the microfabrication team will have to rethink the entire design process.

For all the difficulties, Epstein said the project is "an astonishing amount of fun" -- and MIT is the ideal place for it.  "Within 300 feet of my office, I could find the world's experts on each of the technologies needed to make the complete system," he said.

Funding:

This research was funded by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

ETA:

proof of concept by end of 2006 and working prototype by 2007

Source: MIT Press Release

My final thoughts:

This looks like another disruptive smart technology to me.

To parody a common road sign…you are now merging with the Future…be prepared for change & be prepare to change!!!

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

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 "

To arrange for an in house presentation 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

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

Scientists discover link between matter and anti-matter -the B-sub-s meson, which switches between matter and antimatter 3 trillion times a second. Preamble to quantum computing?

IT MIGHT BE…IT COULD BE…IT IS!!!

Fermilab's CDF scientists make it official: They have discovered the quick-change behavior of the B-sub-s meson, which switches between matter and antimatter 3 trillion times a second.

BATAVIA, Illinois - Scientists of the CDF collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today that they have met the exacting standard to claim discovery of astonishingly rapid transitions between matter and antimatter: 3 trillion oscillations per second.

Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Undersecretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy, congratulated the CDF collaboration on the result.

"This remarkable tour de force details with exquisite precision how the antiworld is tied to our everyday realm," Dr. Orbach said.  "It is a beautiful example of how, using increasingly sophisticated analysis, one can extract discovery from data from which much less was expected.  It is a triumph for Fermilab."

Significance

The CDF discovery of the oscillation rate, marking the final chapter in a 20-year search, is immediately significant for two major reasons: reinforcing the validity of the Standard Model, which governs physicists' understanding of the fundamental particles and forces; and narrowing down the possible forms of supersymmetry, a theory proposing that each known particle has its own more massive "super" partner particle.

see full press release here >> [...]

....so does that mean that there is a "me" and an "anti-matter me" every 3 trillionth of a second?

Being able to "see and measure" effects at this unimaginable rate is important, if we want to think about and understand what the next age of computing could be. Many predict it will involve quantum computing.

It's worth remembering the predictions of two fellows....David Darling and Michio Kaku.

British astronomer David Darling wrote convincingly in his 2005 book, "Teleportation - The Impossible Leap," that we are close to being able to teleport individual atoms and molecules - the first step toward human movement.  Next would come the teleportation of macromolecules and microbes, which would eventually lead into the teleportation of humans.

How possible is this? 

"If you recall, in 2005, researchers had successfully teleported beams of light across a laboratory bench, and the quantum structure of a trapped calcium ion to a second calcium ion had been teleported.  Networked quantum computers are the key.  They are more complex than today's commonplace, bit-oriented computers, and will be able to accomplish more complex tasks.  They use quantum mechanical aspects such as "entanglement" and "superposition" to perform operations on data."

"Teleportation is going to play a major role in all our futures," Darling writes.  "It will be a fundamental process at the heart of quantum computers, which will themselves radically change the world."  He adds that replication of inanimate objects will also be developed through the same scientific developments.  He says it is "a question of simply overcoming technical challenges," and adds that quantum computing is the "factor that changes the rules of what is and isn't possible."

Michio Kaku, the co-founder of String Field Theory, predicts this:

"The nation which dominates the world economy may be the one which masters the nano world of atomic and quantum computing.  Then quantum events … will be the source of the world's wealth.  The Silicon Age is coming to a close.  Welcome to the Quantum Age, where even button-down bankers will have to learn the mysteries of the multiverse."

Social Innovations needed to optimize Physical Technological Innovations-In real life the reverse happens

David Pearce Snyder (who recently spoke at the WFS conference in Toronto July 2006) reminds us that technology development "usually" follows an S-curve of some form or another. (also see here)

1st 25 years	Introduction (or "Infancy')	The technology is economically non-productive.
2nd 25 years	Development (or "Adolescence")	The technology is economically counter-productive.
3d 25 years	Assimilation (or "Maturity")	The technology is economically hyper-productive.

Using computers as an example, we see the evolution of PC's has followed a predictable path

1st 25 years	Introduction (or "Infancy') FOR THE COMPUTER – 1946 to 1971	The technology is economically non-productive.
2nd 25 years	Development (or "Adolescence") FOR THE COMPUTER – 1971 to 1996	The technology is economically counter-productive.
3d 25 years	Assimilation (or "Maturity") FOR THE COMPUTER – 1996 to 2020	The technology is economically hyper-productive.

TABLE Physical Technologies and  Requisite Infrastructure and Social Technologies

Technological Innovation: Technology (Patented)	Infrastructure (Begun)
Steam Engine (1776)	Railway (1825)
Electric Dynamo (1871	Power Grid (1908)
Computer (1946)	World Wide Web (1994)**
What’s next?

We also know that each technology paradigm or technology era requires the infrasructure along with a set of requisite social technologies to make it economically hyper-productive.(see table above)

**The addition of color, graphics, sound and data transmission in 1994 transformed the Internet text messaging system into the World Wide Web, the infrastructure – or Info-Structure – for the computer, and the crucial enabler of the information economy.

IT's Dirty Little Secret

“It’s no secret that information technology alone is not enough.  Yet many continue to buy IT – and many [of us] continue to sell IT – that way.  Productivity is NOT embedded in software code!  Business improvement does NOT come in a box!  Technology requires changes in the way humans work, yet companies continue to inject technology without making any of the necessary changes.  Why?  Because it’s easier to write a check than it is to rethink the way you work.”

--Anne Mulcahy, CEO Xerox Corporation Address to the Information Technology Association March, 2003

This notion was confirmed by Information Work Productivity Council

Average Cost Breakdown for Successful IT Projects

Cost Component	Share of Total Cost
Hardware and Software	10%
Training	20%
Organizational Restructuring, Process Re-engineering, & Job Redesign	70%

Source: Information Work Productivity Council

Getting to my main point of this post --- all major technology innovations require the accompanying requisite social innovations and infrastructure to make them hyper-prooductive. The key point being-as a rule, social innovations lag technology innovations.

Many inventors and entrepreneurs jump the gun and are premature with their technology innovations not realizing that the social "enabling factors" are not all in place yet for them to be successful. In the last century, hundreds of electrical appliance inventors went broke before there was a "country-wide"electrical grid into which to plug them into.....( from "The Generic Technology Evolution Matrix--GTEM" © by Walter Derzko, Design Exchange DX Idea Lab 1998)

To review two definitions:

Physical technologies are ways of organizing things – machinery, structures & processes. 

Social technologies are ways of organizing people – institutions, laws & common practices

Technological Innovation: Technology (Patented)	Infrastructure (Begun)
Steam Engine (1776)	Railway (1825)
Electric Dynamo (1871	Power Grid (1908)
Computer (1946)	World Wide Web (1994) People connected to information
MEMS, (1990’s) Micro- electro-mechanical systems NEMS (2006), Nano -electro-mechanical systems MOEMS,Micro Opto- Electrical-Mechanical Systems	Pervasive, ambient computing (2008?-2015?)  “The Internet of things” “ EX-tranet” The Object Net or O-Net” People connected to everything
Quantum Computing (2004)	Q-space?

KEY SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES OF THE INDUSTRIAL AGE

• Limited Liability Corporations (1825-1870)
• The Assembly Line (1860)
• Vertically-Integrated Industrial Bureaucracies (1860-1880)
• Scientific Industrial Management (1881)
• Labor Unions (Legalized - 1825; Empowered - 1880’s)
• Workman’s Compensation (1890’s - 1920’s)
• Unemployment Insurance (1890’s - 1930’s)
• Social Security (1890’s - 1935)
• Private Pensions (1905 - 1908)
• Minimum Wage (1909 – 1930s)

EMERGENT SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES OF THE SMART ECONOMY (partial sample)

• Open Knowledge (GPL) – 1985
• Open Source Software (OSS) – 1991/1998
• Open Source Education (OSE) 2004
• Communities of Practice (CoPs) – 1991
• Open Source Innovation (OSI) – 2002
• Open Source Manufacturing (OSM) –Buy-what-you-design- 2005
• Work-embedded Learning – 2004
• Grass Roots R&D (GR/RD) – 2004
• Peer-to-Peer Collaboration -1990’s  to 2000's
• Peer-to-Peer Exchanges - 2000's >> Peer2Peer Everything?
• Chambers of Technology -2006
• Global Healthcare-A new Human Rights Issue? 2010-2020?
• Prediction Markets
• Idea Markets
• Global digital Currency ? (non-sovereign, non-national-aligned, virtual value unit)

(adopted from "The Generic Technology Evolution Matrix--GTEM" © by Walter Derzko, DX 1998 and David Pearce Snyder, WSF.org conference,Toronto July 2006)

"According to Mike Hollinshead, the pace of technology adoption is also quickening. The pace of technology substitution is measured by the time taken for a new technology to go from 10% to 90% of the market (called the delta t) As we see from the table below, delta t’s are continuing to drop."

Transportation infrastructures (Canals, railways,roads, airways)	100 years
Primary energies (Wood, coal, oil, methane)	100 years
Power in factories (steam engines to electric motors)	37 years
Motive power for transportation (horse tram to electric tram, horse to auto, steam loco to diesel electric, vertical triple expansion to turbine)	12 years
Auto emission control	12 years

For technologies requiring an entirely new infrastructure it has been 100 years.  For technologies that can use an existing infrastructure it is only 12 years.

Source: Mike Hollinshead; Alberta in the New Economy, 2006

Questions to Ponder:

• What other novel social innovations are you aware of ?
• What new social innovations do we need to drive the smart economy forward ?
• What else can you predict?

My final thought:

To parody a common road sign…you are now merging with the Future…be prepared for change & be prepare to change!!!

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

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 "

To arrange for an in house presentation 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

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

Where to go for good new smart Ideas? which university doors do I knock on?

Where to go for good new smart ideas?

U. S. Universities Lead in Biotechnology Research, Tech Transfer and Commercialization of Intellectual Property, says recent study

Despite growing efforts by universities around the world to catch up, (see China’s Phony Science>Exposing Corruption, Plagiarism, and Fraud) **, the United States remains the global powerhouse in biotechnology research - and in the ability to turn research into commercial applications, according to a new study released last week.

[**SIDENOTE

"A cover story in China Newsweek on “The Abnormal Corruption of Higher Education”  (translated and graciously provided to The New Atlantis by American journalist Paul Mooney) estimates that 530,000 published papers in “key journals” will be required of graduate students in the coming year. Of those, the magazine reports, perhaps 20,000 will genuinely merit publication in China’s 1,500 recognized academic journals, while the authors of the rest will resort to either bribery or “black market” counterfeit journals. And, as described in China Daily, in a recent Ministry of Science and Technology survey of 180 Chinese Ph.D.s, a whopping 60 percent admitted to paying to have their work published, and another 60 percent copped to plagiarizing the work of others." ]

This examination of the commercialization of university research reveals that the U.S. dominates the top rankings on many key measures, including published research, patents issued and licensing income.

The study shows the position of these institutions in the commercialization pipeline, which starts with the quality of research and moves to patented ideas and, finally, to commercial outcomes.  The findings include:

• U. S. universities hold eight of the top 10 positions on a measure of the quality and quantity of published biotech research, which assesses the strength of that research.  Harvard University is No.  1, followed by the University of Tokyo, University of London, University of California at San Francisco and the University of Pennsylvania.

• Nine of the top 10 universities are American when scored on the quality and quantity of biotechnology patents issued in the U.S. (where most universities attempt to patent biotech discoveries).  The University of Texas system is first, followed by U.C. San Francisco, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University and Cornell University.

• In a narrower aspect of the larger study, based on detailed data from U.S. and Canadian universities only, Institute researchers looked at outcomes - turning knowledge into commercially viable products and companies.  According to the University Technology Transfer and Commercialization Index, which measures such factors as licensing income and startup companies, the following universities are the leaders at taking world-class research and turning it into commercial applications - what the Institute's researchers call "academic entrepreneurial capitalism": 9 USA and 1 Canadian university cracked the top 10 list.

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. University of California system
3. California Institute of Technology
4. Stanford University
5. University of Florida
6. University of Minnesota
7. Brigham Young University
8. University of British Columbia
9. University of Michigan
10. New York University

For the Technology Transfer and Commercialization Index, researchers focused on universities in Canada and the U.S. because these are the only institutions that release data by individual campus; data from universities elsewhere around the world were either in aggregate form or subject to measurement difficulties.  The ranking also includes all commercialized university research, not just biotech, since statistics are not available by individual fields; but the authors said that based on their research, biotech makes up a significant portion of university commercialization income.

In this study, researchers sought to discover which universities do the best job at technology transfer and commercialization.  "U.S. universities are the world leaders in transferring intellectual property to the private sector," says the report.

The study shows the importance of research to a university's - and region's - bottom line, especially those universities with a strong biotech component, a well-functioning office of technology transfer and proximity to clusters of biotech firms eager to pay for the research.

Since the implementation of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which allowed U.S. universities to own, license and market their faculty research, and similar legislation enacted in other countries, innovation has increasingly shifted to universities.  This has created new roles for them as engines of economic development and shifted commercially viable research away from corporate labs back to campuses, according to the study.

"Universities around the world have expanded their mission beyond that of basic research and teaching to become places where knowledge fuels patent development, business collaborations and incubators for startups," the report says.

To judge and understand this trend, Institute researchers compared university technology transfer processes around the world; studied the common characteristics to successful commercialization; and measured the role of the university offices of technology transfer (OTT).

Among their key findings:

• Research activity (as measured by publications and citations) has a high rate of return.  Each 10-point increase in the Institute's score for published research contributes an additional $1.7 million to a university's annual licensing income.
• For every $1 invested in OTT staff, the university receives more than $6 in licensing income.
• For each additional year that an OTT is in operation, $228,000 of incremental licensing income is generated for the university.  "Without an OTT office, the average university would earn only 79 percent of its annual licensing income," the report states.
• According to the study, a handful of America's top universities is responsible for the bulk of commercialization.  For example, the top 10 percent of universities accounted for 42 percent of the university-generated total licensing income in 2003.  From 1997 to 2003, the most successful institutions, in terms of dollars generated per year, were the University of California system, averaging nearly $100 million; Stanford University, $50 million; and MIT, $33 million.
• The U.S. is also a leader in the amount of research dollars spent per campus.  According to the study, the average research expenditure for universities in 2004 was $225 million in the U.S., $178 million in Canada and $100 million in Europe.  Looked at another way, U.S. universities have $27,825 in licensing income for every $1 million in research expenditures, substantially higher than the $11,988 for European universities.
• The report touches on the controversial nature of technology transfer, noting that some believe commercialization goals may stifle research and that a university should focus on basic research and teaching, not on commercializing its intellectual property.

However, the study's authors argue that commercially viable research discoveries communicate to universities that their work can be applied to benefit society at large, and that innovation costs can be partially recovered in the marketplace.  Moreover, they note, since universities receive the bulk of their funding from public sources, social benefits must factor into their goals.

"Technology transfer reflects the delicate balance of a university's wider culture and is, in fact, an important byproduct of its mission," says the report's lead author.  "Universities that don't encourage the commercial application of their research assets will not assist economic development in their communities and contribute fully to national competitiveness."

Biotechnology Publication Ranking

University Biotechnology Publication Ranking

1. Harvard University, Cambridge USA
2. University of Tokyo Japan
3. University of London UK
4. University of California, San Francisco USA
5. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia USA
6. University of California, San Diego USA
7. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore USA
8. Washington University, St. Louis USA
9. University of Washington, Seattle USA
10. University of California, Los Angeles USA

#30 University of Toronto Canada; #31 McGill University, Montreal Canada

Biotechnology Patent Ranking

1. University of Texas US
2. University of California, San Francisco US
3. Johns Hopkins University US
4. Stanford University US
5. Cornell University US
6. Columbia University US
7. University of California, Berkeley US
8. University of California, San Diego US
9. University of Wisconsin US
10. University of London UK

#14 McGill University CA

University Technology Transfer and Commercialization Index (Canada & USA only)

1. Massachusetts Inst.  Of Technology (MIT)
2. University of California System
3. California Institute of Technology
4. Stanford University
5. University of Florida
6. University of Minnesota
7. Brigham Young University
8. University of British Columbia
9. University of Michigan
10. New York University

#23 McGill University; #33 University of Toronto; #34 Simon Fraser University;  #40 University of Waterloo