Smart Economy

Intel's view of smart technologies in the next Smart Economy: energy harvesting

A number of companies are working away at developing smart technologies, but releasing few details to the public.

So I was delighted to see several press releases and comments by Intel CTO Justin Ratner, who  gave us a glimpse of that Intel is developing in its back room labs.

When I do emerging technology briefings for clients, one of my predictions is that energy harvesting (used  in self-powered intelligent objects) would be a key new-to-the-world capability of smart enabling technologies and in intelligent objects, systems and environments. In fact,  it's  my trend #4 on my list of 15 new trends that show what the potential impacts of smart technologies might be. Working in that direction Intel reported on Friday that:

"...[...]... it is researching technology to harvest free energy from the environment, which could lead to devices such as mobile phones running for indefinite periods without recharging.

The company is working on tiny sensors that can capture energy from sources such as sunlight and body heat. In the future, such energy could be used to power personal electronic devices such as cell phones."

There are already watches available that are powered by body heat, as well as prototype smartphones with display screens that double as solar cells, said Justin Rattner, chief technology officer at Intel, during a press event. Intel is also looking at powering a mobile phone by harvesting the energy the user generates by moving the phone's trackball. The radiation of cell phone or TV signals might also be used to power devices.

"Wouldn't it be nice if, in fact, you were able to go almost indefinitely without charging the battery, if you were able to scavenge enough free energy from the environment?" Rattner said.

Intel's initial efforts revolve around the sensors, which could power themselves using free energy. Recharging themselves by scavenging free energy allows the sensors to continuously record and transmit readings over wireless networks, without any human involvement. "

...[...]....

Intel has also designed a self-charging neural implant that can monitor bodily functions and transmit its readings wirelessly, Rattner said. .."I never have to ... come along with some sort of external fixture and have to recharge this. These become ... install-and-forget systems, because they can scavenge energy from the environment and power themselves up," Rattner said.

Intel has not marketed such a sensor yet, as its research is still ongoing, Rattner said. Sensors use just a fraction of the power demanded by typical mobile devices, and it may take a while before the energy-harvesting technology can power larger items.

[...] "We haven't been driving it as an Intel product; it's not on anyone's road map at this point. It's part of our broader effort in both sensors and energy harvesting," Rattner said.

In an earlier summer time announcement Intel divulged:

"In the next 40 years, Intel is planning to develop a range of new technology that will allow chips to communicate through pulses of light and allow users to wirelessly project the Internet onto large screens from tiny mobile devices."

The benefits of these types of processors are chips that use less energy and give off less heat, while increasing the bandwidth and the speed at which data travels from one point to another. IBM is also working on similar technology.

Looking at novel embedded capabilities, Intel also announced a photonics breakthrough that will allow us to  transmit data using light faster, shifting our manufacturing paradigm from  electrons and copper to light and fiber optics. The research paper, which is being published in the Dec. 7 edition of the scientific journal Nature Photonics, describes efforts by Intel engineers to build a silicon-based APD (avalanche photodetector) at a lower cost and that gives better overall performance than conventional photodetectors made of different materials.

Self organizing smart traffic lights offer significant reductions in waiting times and fuel consumption

Society (and business schools) teach us that  being tidy is prefered to being  untidy, order trumps disorder and chaos.  We strive for regularity, vs erratic and irregular behavior in business.  Above all, we aim for predictability and especially control.

Dirk Helbing, a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, has been studying the seemingly chaotic movement of tens of thousands of cars on road networks. His conclusion? Complex systems seem to do better without us i.e without our helping hand of overarching control.

Problem:

Within the USA alone, the annual cost of congestion is estimated to be $63.1 billion US, caused by 3.7 billion hours of delays and 8.7 billion liters of “wasted” fuel, (according to D. Schrank and T. Lomax, Texas A & M University in College Station,The 2005 urban mobility report.  Texas Transportation Institute, 2005.)

In New Scientist recently, we see:

"Although the behaviour of individuals is often simple, the collective patterns to which it leads can be counter-intuitive, making common sense a faulty guide to what might happen.  For example, it is generally true that traffic jams become more likely as traffic density increases.  It's not always the case, though, as Helbing's group has shown."

Counter-intuitive example:

"Consider a two-lane road carrying both cars and trucks, where the cars are moving faster on average.  At low traffic densities, the cars have plenty of space to overtake and can easily pass the trucks.  As the traffic density increases, drivers find it more difficult to overtake because other vehicles are in the way.  However, evidence from simulations and real traffic flows shows that at a critical density of traffic, the obstruction to lane-changing begins to have a beneficial effect. Because drivers tend to stay in one lane, they disturb the flow of traffic less, leading to a higher total throughput of vehicles."

This would mean giving traffic lights a way to adapt their behaviour, which most of today's systems lack.  At the moment, engineers force traffic into patterns that appear favourable.  Lights on main roads stay green longer during peak hours, for example.  But it's the engineers who do this tuning based on average conditions observed in the past; most traffic lights don't have the flexibility to respond to changing conditions on their own. Engineers also take some things for granted, such as the notion that lights must be managed from a central control.

Smart Solution:

Self organizing smart traffic lights

Last year, Dirk Helbing and Stefan Lämmer at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany began exploring if traffic lights could be engineered, designed or intellivated (elevate intelligence) to cut congestion and reduce fuel use.

"Lights can do a better job, Helbing and Lämmer have found, if they are given some simple operating rules and left to organise their own solution.  To demonstrate this, they developed a mathematical model that assumed traffic flowed like a fluid, a well-established traffic engineering technique.  The model also describes what happens at road intersections, where traffic entering from one road has to leave by another, much like fluid moving through a network of pipes.

Of course, jams can arise if traffic entering a road overloads its capacity.  To avoid this, Helbing and Lämmer make the lights at each intersection respond to growing traffic pressure, like the people going through the passage.  Each set of lights carries sensors that feed information about the traffic conditions at a given moment into a computer, which then calculates the flow of vehicles expected in the near future.  The computer also works out how long the lights should stay green in order to clear the road and relieve the pressure.  In this way, each set of lights can estimate for itself how best to adapt to the conditions expected at the next moment.

Best left alone

This isn't enough, however, because the lights might adapt too much.  If they are only adapting to conditions locally, they might cause trouble further away.  To avoid this, Helbing and Lämmer have devised a scheme whereby neighbouring lights share their information so that what happens around one traffic light can affect how others respond.  By doing so, the self-organised lights prevent long jams from forming.

Despite the simplicity of these rules, they seem to work remarkably well.  Helbing and Lämmer have demonstrated in simulations that lights operating this way should achieve a significant reduction in overall travel times and keep no one waiting at a light too long (See diagram below). Nonetheless, the behaviour of the lights doesn't generally fit with human notions of what ought to be efficient.  "How long lights stay green is unpredictable," says Lämmer.  Yet the average journey times go down and become more predictable."

"What's more, the scheme eliminates other irritating problems that afflict traditional traffic control.  At quiet times, drivers typically have to wait far longer than is really necessary at intersections because the lights' schedules are designed to serve a large number of vehicles.  And in the middle of the night, lights keep stopping cars even when there is no need. The self-organising traffic scheme eliminates these problems because the lights remain responsive to local demands, for instance sensing an approaching car and changing to green to let it through."

"Town planners are beginning to look at self-organising lights as a practical solution to looming traffic congestion.  Helbing and Lämmer are working with a local traffic agency in Dresden, Germany, first to test and then hopefully to implement the idea.  In early simulations based on Dresden's road layout, they have had encouraging results.  "We've found significant reductions in waiting times and fuel consumption, and we can also accelerate public transport," says Lämmer.  Authorities in Zurich, Switzerland, have also been taken by the idea."

So, heads up...Toronto, Kyiv and Beijing...and other traffic-prone cities--Walter Derzko

Conclusion:

"The wider lesson is that we just can't trust our intuition when it comes to the super-complex systems that we depend on today.  We may never learn exactly how to control these systems in the traditional fashion and the best way to cope may be by learning new principles for letting them manage themselves." concludes New Scientist.

Source: New Scientist and Self-Control of Traffic Lights and Vehicle Flows in Urban Road Networks

Tomorrow: Adaptive Intelligent Cruise Control

iPlant Collaborative to Tackle Greater Science Questions > like a Google Nature Map? 08-033

How do you create a "big picture overview " from all the specialized, reductionist, research in any discipline?

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced a $50 million award to a University of Arizona-led team to create the first national cyberinfrastructure center to tackle global "grand challenge" plant biology questions that have great implications on larger questions regarding the environment, agriculture, energy and the very organisms that sustain our existence on earth.

Like no other single research entity, the iPlant Collaborative will provide the capacity to draw upon resources and talent in remote locations and enable plant scientists, computer scientists and information scientists from around the world for the first time ever to collaboratively address questions of global importance and advance all of these fields.  It will bring together and leverage the resources and information generated through the National Plant Genome Initiative, enabling more breadth and depth of research in every aspect of plant science.

"We are confident in the positive returns of this substantive investment in basic research," said NSF Director Arden L. Bement.  "The iPlant Collaborative will harness the best and the brightest scholars and research in plant biology in order to tackle some of the profound issues of our day and for our future.  Challenges that may need plants for solutions include addressing the impacts of climate change, dwindling oil supply, decreasing agricultural land area, increasing population and environmental degradation."

The iPlant center will be located in and administered by the University of Arizona's BIO5 Institute, which was founded to encourage collaboration across scientific disciplines, accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, and develop innovative solutions to society's most complex biological challenges.

"This global center is going to change the way we do science," says UA plant sciences professor and BIO5 member Richard Jorgensen, who is the lead investigator and director of the iPlant Collaborative.

"The iPlant team has a compelling vision for an organization by, for and of the community, that will bring to bear the power of cyberinfrastructure to enable scientists everywhere to take on some of the most important questions in plant science," said Joann Roskoski, executive officer of the NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences.

The cyberinfrastructure and the researchers will rely heavily on computational thinking, a form of problem-solving that assigns computers the jobs they're most efficient at, and in doing so frees up humans to spend more time on the creative tasks that humans do best.  The iPlant cyberinfrastructure will serve as a model for solving problems in fields outside of plant biology too.

"One feature of iPlant that will be developed is the ability to map the full expanse of plant biology research in much the way Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth or Mapquest utilizes mapping technology.  Like users of these applications, users of iPlant may one day be able to "zoom" in and out among various levels of plant biology, from the molecular to the organismic to the ecosystem level.  For example, a researcher might "zoom in" to analyze the carbon fixed, oxygen produced, and water utilized by individual leaves, then "zoom out" to analyze how all of these might effect large-scale changes in ecosystems and how that could in turn affect air quality and climate."

Because collaboration among disciplines is central to iPlant's mission, the cyberinfrastructure also will have a strong networking component to facilitate communication among researchers from different fields.  It will also conduct research on the effectiveness of social networking in iPlant and in the plant and computer and information sciences generally.

All iPlant projects will have K-12, undergraduate and graduate education components as well, which is co-funded by NSF, BIO5 and Science Foundation Arizona.  Students, teachers, and interested laypeople will all have access to iPlant's resources and data, as well as to educational tools designed to help them understand that data and develop inquiry-based learning modules for K through 12, undergraduate, and graduate science education.

The iPlant Collaborative is a five-year project that is potentially renewable for a second five years and a total of $100 million.  This award is greater than three times the size of any other NSF award received in Arizona to date.

Other institutions working with The University of Arizona (UA) include Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Arizona State University, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and Purdue University.  UA participants in the iPlant Collaborative include the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' Department of Plant Sciences, the College of Science's Departments of Computer Science, Mathematics and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, the Eller College of Management's Department of Management Information Systems, the College of Engineering's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Arizona Research Lab's Biocomputing Facility.  The project' board of directors will be chaired by Robert Last, PhD, a Michigan State University professor.

Related Websites iPlant Collaborative: http://iplantcollaborative.org/

What came before DNA or RNA ? Fullerenes and amino acids? 08-008

Christmas and New Year's is a time when many people think about birth or rebirth and some think deeper--even more philosophically about how life first started on earth.

The complexity of life has always bothered me. Helical DNA molecules are a fairly complex structure and I always wondered if there could have been a proto-genesis stage to life…ie what where the steps before the creation of DNA and RNA on Earth?

We are now getting some strands of evidence (pun intended) that suggests what came before DNA and RNA. One explanation is the primordial soup theory. According to Wikipedia, the primordial sea, or primordial ocean, is a term applied collectively to the oceans of the earth at a very early time in its history, either the time before or during the development of multi-cellular life forms (i.e., during the Precambrian), or alternatively before the development of the first land-based life forms (i.e. during the early Paleozoic). The term primordial ooze (or primordial or prebiotic soup), refers to a particular set of models of the origin of life.

One hypothesis has been the notion of spontaneous self-assembly of basic amino acids to form simple strands of DNA. This was recently in the news with the announcement amino acids can self-assemble under curtain conditions. However, this seems too random and uncertain to be constantly reproduced to create life. 

Could some other atom or molecule have been used as a template for the creation of life on earth, prior to the short-strand DNA formation stage?

Carbon is one of the most abundant atoms on earth. Most people will recognize two forms of basic carbon; charcoal or graphite (the lead in your pencil)and diamonds. The third form of carbon (discovered in the 1980’s) is C60 or Fullerenes or Buckyballs, named after Buckminster Fuller, the designer of the geodesic dome at Expo 67 which resembles a 60 point soccer ball.Fullerene (C₆₀, C₇₀, etc.) was the third carbon allotrope discovered in 1985 (by H.W. Kroto, R.E. Smally, R.F. Curl; Nobel Prize in 1996), and since then, a great deal of attention has been focused on its physical-chemical and unique bio-medical properties. Fullerenes have been found in nature (in molasses - a waste byproduct of heating sugar cane), in candle soot and in impact craters of meteorites in Sudbury Ontario( formed both on impact and of extraterrestrial origins).

 

Fullerenes are also formed by lightening discharges, so imagine earth's atmosphere--a natural lightening factory producing fullerenes through millions of years.

 

So, could C60 Fullerenes have been the templates for very basic amino acids to form the first strands of life (DNA) in earth’s pre-mordial soup, millions of years ago?

 

This plausible hypothesis was proposed by Prof. Grigoriy Andrievsky in Sudak Crimea at the 7^Th International Conference called Cosmos and the Biosphere, in the fall of 2007 in a paper entitled “Water Structures ordered [in a] specific manner as universal regulators of biological processes; what hydrated fullerenes-the symbiosis of cure carbon and water-have told [us]”.Andrievsky G.V. ISMA NAS Ukraine, STC 'Institute for Single Crystals', Kharkiv, Ukraine.  Andrievsky points out the similarity between spherical fractal clusters of hydrated fullerenes (HyFn) (C₆₀ and surrounding water clusters) and some of the most significant biological structures.Fullerenes have been found to mimic several biologically important structures such as clathrine cages, viral structures, and other structural (spatially) similar biological supra-(or sub)-molecular structures. He also suggests that the universalism of HyFn biological activity as the confirmation of hypothesis that C₆₀ - H₂O systems might be the matrix for primary biological matter (substance) formation (such as RNA or DNA).

He writes:

“The wide range of HyFn positive biological activity can be determined by the quite eligible hypothesis that fullerenes and fullerene-like structures, conjoint with water molecules, could be the first natural matrices for the initial synthesis of pristine bio-molecules on earth. As a consequence, HyFn should not be foreign for living organisms and, thus, they should be capable of protecting and stabilizing the biological structures formed in nature and which exist in a hydrated state."

This was confirmed this week in a paper published in Chemical Physical Letters called Fullerene-Amino Acid Interactions.  A Theoretical Study.by Aned de Leon, Abraham F.Jalbout and Vladimr A. Basiuk. In it, they explored the ability of the C60 fullerenes to interact with amino acids at the theoretical level. The calculations suggest that the most favorable interactions of the fullerene is with arginine, leucine, and tryptophan which is related to the backbone structure of the corresponding amino acids.

Do you know how to spot or design new business opportunities? 07-053

Several people have called me in the past week asking how I could help them create or spot new opportunities in their businesses. "Chance favors the prepared mind", so the saying goes. So, it follows that if you had a repertoire of examples of different generic opportunity windows, you can use them as a templates for either 1) designing opportunity windows for your business or 2) as a checklist for scanning to spot unique opportunity scenarios when the circumstances present themselves.

I've actually developed a workshop on that topic that I call the Opportunity Clinic (c) & here's an overview and example

The Opportunity Clinic is a robust methodology and framework bundled into a two day workshop that I developed in the 1980’s and 1990’s that helps companies, large and small explore their emerging “opportunity space”. I got the idea from Aultshuller's TRIZ model, which are essentially invention formula's or invention algorithms developed from his search of patents in the former Soviet Union (FSU). He came up with 40 principles. Why can't the same be done for opportunity examples and ideas? It's like taking an opportunity window and asking yourself: What's that an example of? or What's the underlying concept or principle here? and how do I transfer that concept from one application area (where it's common) to another, where it's novel or foreign?

It’s applicable to individual products or services, clusters of products or services, or industry verticals. It can be used at any point in the product life cycle and works at any time of the business cycle from downturns and depression to market upswings. (Hint: downswings actual produce the most new opportunity windows, but most companies are in too much of a panic to recognise them)

The Opportunity Clinic  helps companies answer such basic questions about opportunity windows as: Could it Happen? Will it Happen? How will it Happen? Should it Happen?   and align their opportunity windows with the best time to launch them in their product /service life cycle or business life cycle.

The Opportunity Clinic can focus on up to 20 “vectors” to look for or design opportunity windows, but usually we just concentrat on one or two in a session, ie, designing or creating opportunity windows for marketing, sales, branding, R&D, new products etc. While most useful in business setting, the Opportunity Clinic can also be used by the not-for-profit sector and government ministries and agencies

The actual process is a fairly simple 7 step excercise, done over two or more days, as part of a strategy retreat.

I work with a client to:

1) identify what an opportunity window is and develop a list of the current opportunity scenarios  that the organization takes advantage of now, or will in the near future

2) map out their current cluster of opportunity windows/scenarios  and populate the Generic Opportunity Map.

3) move forward; we then focus on the white spaces, the cells on the Generic Opportunity Map that are blank and ask why?

4) design new opportunity windows; depending on where the client’s products/services are in their life cycle, we then work with a client to ‘co-design” new concepts for opportunity windows using lateral thinking skills (based on the work I did as Director of the Idea Lab at the Design Exchange in Toronto)

5) compare tactics from unrelated industry verticals; alternatively we resort to selected examples from a list of over 250 generic opportunity windows from various industries that we have in our database (see example below)

6) prioritize ideas; working with a client’s existing stage /gate process we help a client prioritize their list of novel opportunity windows, based on selected criteria and requirements

7)farm out low priority opportunity windows; if good opportunity windows are designed that don’t fit into the client’s strategic mix, we explore creative ways to farm out these opportunity windows to other third  parties and still benefit from the ideas.

Here's an example from our Generic Opportunity Windows Database

[…]

3.0 Operating Asset Opportunities Via Concept Challenge (how do we do things)

3.1 The Business Model Opportunity Window

3.1.1 Steady fixed pricing Opportunity Window vs Dynamic pricing Opportunity Window

3.1.1.1  Time-based dynamic pricing Opportunity Window

a retail outlet in Rochester drops prices on men’s and women’s clothes; the longer that clothes sit on the rack the steeper the price drop, till it hits the wholesale floor level price

3.1.1.2 Demand-based dynamic pricing Opportunity Window

the new Coke Vending machines change pricing based on weather and demand for the product

3.1.1.3 Dynamic volume-discounting Opportunity Window

LetsBuyIt.com a Dutch European e-tailer operated with an innovative twist on the standard e-tail business model: as more users requested a product, bulk-buying discounts were passed on to customers and the price comes down. Its shopping site offered more than 50,000 products and services this way, notably consumer electronics from makers such as Aiwa, Logitech, Nikon and Pentax. Source: TechWeb Jan 1,2001 http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010101S0001

Want to learn more? Call or email me asking about the Opportunity Clinic for your organization

© 2005-2007

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 "

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 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

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

My entry in Virgin's Global $25 million Earth Challenge 07-051

Last Friday, Richard Branson announced the Virgin Earth Challenge -- a prize of $25m for whoever can demonstrate to the judges' satisfaction a commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of Earth's climate. New Scientist covered the event  quite nicely.

So here's my solution to the problem. (although I must profess my bias here, that I think "global cooling" over the next 200 years is a bigger threat to society (based on paradoxes, anomalies and contraditions that mainstream science seems to ignore.) Also tinkering with a global dynamic complex weather and climate system that we know very little about is dangerous too...our solutions today could cause bigger problems down the road)

That said, back to our problem at hand...

Conceptually to do this, one would need a system composed of three stages or parts.

System one would need to draw large amounts to air through it like a giant global air conditioner or a bunch of smaller distributed ones.  I can only think of five natural systems that can do that today: hurricanes, tornadoes, twisters, dust devils and water spouts, all of which depend on a heat gradient, or a 20-30 degree differential in temperature to get started and maintain momentum and energy ....what we need is an artificial whirlwind or a stationary, "tamed" tornado....think Vortex ( hint #1 .....a Canadian company mentioned in the Smart Economy blog within the last six months can do this today).

(Hint #2 ... we especially need to speed up these artificial tornadoes and not slow them down, the way scientist have been trying to do, to create a larger atmospheric scrubbing footprint)

.....Richard Branson should understand the mechanics of this, being an avid hot air balloonist.

These  'thermal atmospheric vortex engines" could be placed next to man-made sources of latent heat, such as existing nuclear power stations ( replacing cooling towers), hydro power stations (steam), coal powered plants, waste-to-energy (waste incineration) plants, such as those in Ukraine, Russia, Sweden or Denmark, central district heating plants that are popular in Europe, Ukraine and Russia, and chemical and cement plants or in natural settings where there is a ready-to-use thermal gradient, such as geothermal hot springs or in the distant future, maybe even underwater thermal vents. One added benefit is that you can turn steam or latent heat that is escaping into the atmosphere today into electricity as well.

The second element that is needed is a system that can efficiently absorb CO2 at ambient air temperatures and other green house gases (such as methane that will be given off as the Siberian tundra begins to thaw and melt).  An above-ground or airborne version of subterranean carbon sequestration, so to speak.  ( yes,  we covered this one too in our previous postings....I'll give you a 3d hint...it involves nanotechnology)

The third element needed is a system that is coupled to the second absorption system above, that can detach CO2 in bulk and on-demand, which can then be used as a feedstock (input) to create useful products such as bio plastic, synthetic oil, or bio diesel (several Smart Economy blog examples were cited in the last year or so)

Frequent readers of the Smart Economy blog over the past two years will recognize these three unrelated smart technologies that can meet all of the above requirements.

From estimates I've seen, Stage one alone will cost about $7 -$10 million dollars in the West to build a working prototype, less if built and designed in a developing country such as Ukraine, India, China or Russia --countries that have the scientists and know-how to do it …..

Technology for stages 2 and 3 are all in the works...in the R of the R&D phase.

Now all we need is someone to put all of these three disparate elements together into a working proof of concept and a model prototype.

.......let's get to it

© 2005-2007

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 "

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 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

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

What makes you Smart? My 8 influencers 07-019

The other day, somebody asked me what were the most influential ideas or business concepts that had a profound affect on my career and the development of my thinking.

Off the top of my head I came up with 8 influencers, listed approximately in chronological order:

My Toolbox of skills

• Kepner Tregoe's Executive Problem Analysis and Decision Making methodology that I learned when I worked for Canada Packer's in their Pharma division as a chemist
• Edward de Bono's concept of Lateral Thinking, and concept mapping applied to strategic thinking, business development and business models thanks to Ontario Hydro where I was a an analyst and manager of policy and program assessment.
• Technology Foresight , issues management and environmental (or horizon) scanning and Management Oversight and Risk Tree (MORT) methodologies, again thanks to Ontario Hydro
• Aultshuller's TRIZ methodology, the concept of Invention algorithms, that I first heard about at a CPS conference at Buffalo in the 1980's
• Marshal McLuhan's tetrad model, through the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, U of T
• Viable systems modeling (VSM)developed by my good late friend and colleague Stafford Beer, the father of Management Cybernetics circa 1986
• the idea of smart technologies, thanks to an emerging technology project that I worked on for Royal Bank, rbc.com
• Karl Weik's concepts of sensemaking, throughout the 1990s'

Who or what were your top influencers?

© 2005-2007

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 "

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

"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

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

Smart Elevators, Energy Savings and Opportunity Windows 07-017

The next time you are in New York City, drop into the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square and take a ride up the elevators in the newly renovated lobby. Before you get on, you'll notice something different. Instead of a single button to summon the elevator, there's a keypad. You key in the number of the floor you want, and the computer directs you to a particular elevator. At that elevator  you'll will find a group of people headed to your floor and those close to it. When your smart elevator arrives it whisks you express to your floor and next adjacent floors, instead of taking the "traditional milk-run elevator" having to stop at every floor along the way. Elevator rides will change based on traffic. Building managers like it because it saves energy too, because of the overall shorter rides and fewer stops and starts.

This new generation of “smart elevators” called Miconic 10 is made by Schindler Elevator Corporation. All new high-rise buildings in Manhattan will soon have them.

The system is based on a simple fact: when an elevator contains a group of people going to many different floors, each person’s ride becomes longer than if traveling alone. By sorting people into groups headed to nearby floors, each person’s journey becomes — on average — 50 percent faster.

This concept or the Opportunity Window here could be called "Customer Clustering". Most people reading this story will stop here-likely thinking -what a neat and simple idea. or ...."Why didn't I think of that?" Seasoned or serial entrepreneurs will take it a step further, thinking....how can I transfer this concept of customer clustering into my business environment?

Banks started doing this a decade ago by creating single line-ups (cues) that would direct customers to the next free available teller. Previous to this I would always invariably end up in the line where the patron in front of me would have a half hour of banking to do. Government agencies quickly followed suite.

Where else could "customer clustering" be applied?

In my humble opinion airlines have always done a terrible job of boarding passengers. Boarding from back to front makes intuitive sense but there is a much more efficient way of doing it, using customer clustering as the opportunity window concept.

What happens now? Invariably the aisle seat passenger gets settled  into his/her seat before the window passenger makes it to their place. They then have to unbuckle, stand up to let the late passenger into the middle or window seat, all the while, road blocking all the incoming traffic in the aisle.

I've always said that it makes much more sense to board all window seat passengers from the back to the front first, followed by middle seat passengers, followed by all remaining aisle seat passengers, back to front.

Intrigued and interested in learning and applying this type of thinking in your business or organization? We have over 200 such examples of such generic opportunity windows in our Opportunity Clinic Workshops. Call or write for details.

© 2005-2007

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 "

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

"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

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

Open source Education, intellectual philanthropy offered by M.I.T. and intellectual groupies 07-011

In a previous post, I proposed a list of 15 social innovations, (including Open Source Knowledge & Education) which I believe will and are already having a significant impact on culture and society and accelerating the adoption of some smart technologies. To compete with each other, I can envision the day when universities hold their annual drafts for celebrity academics, who have the cache and draw power behind their lectures to attract top students and a worldwide online audience of followers..intellectual groupies.

On Jan. 4, 2007 The Christian Science Monitor reported that by the end of this year, the contents of all 1,800 courses taught at MIT will be available on-line to anyone in the world. Learners won't have to register for the classes, and everyone is accepted.

The OpenCourseWare movement, begun at MIT in 2002, has now spread to some 120 other universities worldwide.

Full story >> How to go to M.I.T. for free, Online "intellectual philanthropy" attracts students from every nation on earth

"Silicon Valley Open Doors" (SVOD-2006) technology investment conference looks east, selects Ukrainian SuperCap company, most promising technology of 2006 07006

The “Silicon Valley Open Doors“ (SVOD-2006) technology investment conference,  took place in Silicon Valley (California, USA) last November 16-17, 2006.

The winner of the most promising technology of 2006 was APowerCap, a  company  established by Ukrainian researchers for developing/commercializing a new breakthrough nano-technology for high-power storage devices called super capacitors or supercaps, which now has offices in the USA and Ukraine. They were choosen from more than 60 pre-selected candidates from the FSU by a panel of judges comprising more than 30 experts from leading VC firms in

Silicon Valley, including Google, Draper Fisher Jurvetson NEXUS and Intel Capital

The tops six Ukrainian winners were:

1. APowerCap Technologies (a novel nano power source),  invested by VC firm TECHINVEST
2. Eyestride (virtualized geo-map), ShiftLabs
3. InvisibleCRM (CRM integrated with office applications), MTVP
4. Semetrics (contextual information search), TECHINVEST
5. SiteHeart (electronic payment system), PrivatBank
6. Viewdle (video files search), Semanetics.

see Full story >> [...] 

© 2005-2007

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 "

The Smart Economy Blog: Read, enjoy, explore, speculate and 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

"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

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