Smart Economy

Happy 1st Birthday to the Smart Economy Blog; Announcing a new Web site, Monthly workshops and webinars

Today marks the 1st anniversary of the Smart Economy Blog. We've received many encouraging feedback & emails from our readers over the past year and good suggestions from positive-focused critics for future improvements.

• According to Pingpoat, The Smart Economy Blog is worth  is $1011.17!  per day
• Inbound links: 1085
• Technorati rank: 34,021

So today, I'm announcing a series of new "smart" initiatives that we will be kicking off in October 2006.

The Smart Economy is growing exponentially and so are we, right along with it.

Smart Economy Learning Series-monthly workshops in Toronto

Starting in October 2006, we will be launching a monthly series of one-day workshops on topics that our blog readers say interest them. These include:

• Latest Tools for Advanced Environmental Scanning, Managing Information Overload and Sense-making ( October 12, 2006, BCE Place Toronto) email me asking for a registration form
• Lateral thinking in business  (Date TBA)
• Developing foresight in your business or industry  (Date TBA)
• Resolving conflicts and disputes using lateral thinking (Date TBA)
• The Opportunity Clinic --Scanning your business environment for Opportunities(Date TBA)
• The Idea Lab --Designing smart products and services that will drive business development forward (Date TBA)
• Introduction to Business Development --Tracking emerging technologies as threats or opportunities for your business (Date TBA)
• Technology Assessment for Investment Professionals & High Tech Startups (Date TBA)
• Building a Busines Case for Smart Devices, objects and services (Date TBA)
• Designing winning business modles for Smart Technologies (Date TBA)

Register today, since space will be limited. Past workshops have sold out quickly.

The Smart Economy Web Page

We are finally in the last stages of planning and constructing our new web site for the Smart Economy. Watch out for launch date soon.

The Smart Economy Webinar Series.

Also starting in October 2006, we will host a monthly opportunity for our blog readers to phone in and participate in a "live seminar" which will include power-point slides and a Q&A session, all from the comfort of your PC or laptop. It will be on some current topic related to the smart economy and some rising smart technology that will be coming into prominence soon. This will be a subscription based series.... We will try to keep the price reasonable so that everyone can participate. Subscription information & schedule will be out soon. Watch for announcements.

Thanks again for all your ideas and keep the feedback coming in.

© 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

Looking for Feedback on the Smart Economy Blog

Today is a bit of an anniversary for the Smart Economy. Since I started on this blog last Fall (Sept 15th, 2005 to be exact), I've posted 500 entries (this is # 501). We've received over 100 comments online and many more private direct emails. Our daily traffic is growing steadily month by month, as word spreads about The Smart Economy. Many other influential and popular web sites, trend syndication services and blogs now link back to us.

• According to Pingpoat, The Smart Economy Blog is worth is $1011.17!  Per day
• Inbound links: 1085
• Technorati rank: 34,021

I'd like to hear feedback from you --- our blog readers. How can we improve this site?

• what do you enjoy reading about smart technologies?
• what else would you like to see?
• what don't you like? what annoys you?
• what suggestions do you have for future topics?
• what  would you like to see more coverage of?
• do you use RSS? would you subscribe to a Smart Economy RSS  news feed?
• would you like to hear news about the smart economy on your Mp3 player?
• would you like a one-stop-shop to purchase smart technologies?
• would you find road maps for smart technologies useful for your worK?
• would you subscribe to a monthly online seminar (webinar) on smart technology?
• would you find workshops on smart technology topics useful?
• how do you use our information? investment decisions? strategic decisions? alliance decisions? other?

Post your replies or comments in the comments box below or send me a private email

I look forward to hearing from you.

Enjoy the rest of 2006 and 2007 and I hope to see you back here on a regular basis.

All the best !!

Walter Derzko

Smart Dashboards. Business @-a-glance view of an enterprise

The metaphor of a dashboard is a simple one.  A driver sits in a car and has all the essential visual information, conveniently located in eye sight to drive a vehicle forward ….or backwards.

Business executives that I talk to have often bemoaned the fact:

"If only I had my own business dashboard to drive my business forward and see where we are heading in real time."

I first ran across an elegant "dashboard' application at a poster session a few years back at McMaster University's annual Knowledge Management (KM) Summit in Hamilton, Ontario

A graduate student in Finland had developed a dashboard for an environmental scanning/ horizon scanning application that gave an executive at a pulp and paper / forest company all the current real time metrics and future trends that were needed to run the forest products business and make strategic and tactical decisions, insteading of combing through stacks of outdated reports.

The concept of a dashboard is not new.  It's been around for several decades.

Think NASA mission control and the moon launch, NORAD, Nuclear and electrical power plants, hurricane, flood and weather centers, disaster recovery centers, the NSA ( the communication snoops in Washington) etc What's new is that business decision makers are only now starting to adopt this visualization technology to get, what I call "a business @ a glance view" of their enterprises.

Back in the 1990's, NewsEdge Corp developed a cool dashboard app for stock exchange regulators that tied large insider stock trades to news events to spot potential insider trading.

Who are the early adopters?  No, not the high tech behemoths but less high tech sports team.

Here are some facts from a business case study on business dashboards that I developed for one of my workshops ( see Advanced Notice> Workshop >Latest Tools for Advanced Environmental Scanning, Managing Information Overload and Sense-making )

Two years ago, one of the NBA basketball franchises in the USA created a color-coded image /dashboard of their arena.

The Goal?  To get live, real-time updates of which tickets were sold and at what prices.

The new Senior VP of Operations and Information complained:

"What shocked me was that Ticketmaster, our ticketing vendor, didn't have a way to show us, in real time, which seats were filled and which weren't." 

"We had spreadsheets with that data, but we wanted a visual map of what was selling at what price."

Problem:

Old Conventional Way

The team had been printing paper reports (outdated as soon as they were printed), that were laden with numbers and often took hours to prepare. 

"Even some of their own executives could not decipher the reports."

"Previously, getting an exact read on what seats had been filled for an upcoming game was harder to pin down.  By the time the front office managed to round up the stats, more tickets had been sold, making the number instantly obsolete."

Traditional ticketing systems are focused on simply fulfilling and tracking transactions, not analyzing the data.

Smart Way

Business @ a Glance (c)

"When the new software was up and running, executives could see which tickets were not sold, act on the information by designing promotions to sell them, and watch the results live to make sure their promotions were working."

"We created different views that are useful in different contexts.  For example, we have the sold or not sold view, depicted by green or red seats.  The system shows every seat with different colors to indicate whether the seats were sold and how they were sold, to individuals or groups"

"We also have a percentage of potential revenue view, which lets you see where you are discounting on a single game or across multiple events.  That's probably the view we use the most."

Results

After installing the dashboard software , the team sold out all 14 of their final games, and finished the season with attendance up about 6 percent.

From Smart Dashboards to Prediction Markets

What can we expect in the very near future?

Down the road, this type of Dashboard Software will be able to predict how tickets will sell based on:

• local area economic trends,
• the local weather forecast,
• the popularity of the visiting team,
• other selective external factors and most importantly to some,
• the performance of the players.

Executives might one day be able to evaluate the merits of a possible trade or decide how much to pay a player based on the predicted effect it will have on ticket sales.

I can think of loads of applications.

For example: Walmart is testing over 50 energy-saving technolgies at two expertimental concept stores in the USA. An energy  dashboard could compare the energy savings from the experimental stores vs the energy usage in a regular store.  Just don't get me going here, because I could come up with a list, a mile long.

For more information on business dashboards, attend our workshop on the Latest  Tools for Advanced Environmental Scanning, Managing Information Overload and Sense-making  at the end of September 2006 or email me for details. We will add your name and email to our emailing list, when we start emailing out promotional e-materials next week.

© 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

How Long Will America Lead the World? and who is Next ?

Once in a while you read a story that you just want to share with everyone....I ran across such a piece in NewsWeek today -by Fareed Zakaria called: How Long Will America Lead the World?

The United States is still the dominant force in technology, innovation, productivity and profits.  But Americans don't quite realize how fast the rest of the world is catching up.

[here are some key points from the article-Walter Derzko]

[ ]

....Well, Americans have replaced Britons atop the world, and we are now worried that history is happening to us.  History has arrived in the form of "Three Billion New Capitalists," as Clyde Prestowitz's recent book puts it, people from countries like China, India and the former Soviet Union, which all once scorned the global market economy but are now enthusiastic and increasingly sophisticated participants in it.  They are poorer, hungrier and in some cases well trained, and will inevitably compete with Americans and America for a slice of the pie.....

[ ]

.....Much of the concern centers on the erosion of science and technology in the U.S., particularly in education…..[   ].... China and India combined graduate 950,000 engineers every year, compared with 70,000 in America; that for the cost of one chemist or engineer in the U.S. a company could hire five chemists in China or 11 engineers in India; that of the 120 $1 billion-plus chemical plants being built around the world one is in the United States and 50 are in China…[   ].... "More people will graduate in the United States in 2006 with sports-exercise degrees than electrical-engineering degrees,".....

[ ]

.......The genius of America's success is that the United States is a rich country with many of the attributes of a scrappy, developing society.  It is open, flexible and adventurous, often unmindful of history and tradition.  Its people work hard, putting in longer hours than those in other rich countries.  Much of this has do to with the history and culture of the society.  A huge amount of it has to do with immigration, which keeps America constantly renewed by streams of hardworking people, desperate to succeed.  Science laboratories in America are more than half filled with foreign students and immigrants.  Without them, America's leadership position in the sciences would collapse. That is why America, alone among industrial nations, has been able to do the nearly impossible: renew its power and stay at the top of the game for a century now.  We can expand our science programs --and we should --but we will never be able to compete with India and China in the production of engineers.  No matter what we do, they will have more, and cheaper, labor.  What we can do is take the best features of the America system--openness, innovation, immigration and flexibility- and enhance them, so that they can respond to new challenges by creating new industries, new technologies and new jobs, as we have in the past."...

[ ]

Our greatest danger is that when the American public does begin to get scared, they will try to shut down the very features of the country that have made it so successful.  They will want to shut out foreign companies, be less welcoming to immigrants and close themselves off from competition and collaboration.  Over the past year there have already been growing paranoia on all these fronts.

[Some of the reactive knee-jerk reactions ----Some US senators are proposing to embed RFID Chips in USA Immigrants & Guest workers. Dubai Ports was blocked by USA congress to manage US ports, even though most people don't realise that Vancouver's port is managed by Dubai Ports. The Dutch have taken a hard line, banning Islamic women from wearing their traditional burkas. Canadian politicians are contemplating banning tourists from Parliament Hill in Ottawa after the arrest of a terrorist cell in Toronto, Canada-Walter Derzko]

[   ]

If we go down this path, we will remain a rich country and a stable one.  We will be less troubled by the jarring changes that the new world is pushing forward.  But like Britain after Queen Victoria's reign, it will be a future of slow, steady national decline.  History will happen to us after all.

Overall, an enjoyable read in Newsweek

..best quote in the story ?    "Only the paranoid survive."--Andy Grove

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To arrange for an inhouse presentation on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

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

100 Smartest US Companies

Baseline's 100 Smartest US Companies

Computers manipulate numbers and track words better than people do.  But they can't think.  They aren't smart. 

"Smartness is an animal trait and, for now, we humans are at the top of the heap.  Like a computer, we store specific facts in our memory.  But we also apply experience, instinct and the ability to identify obstacles when we respond to problems. Working together, human and machine can figure out things that, separately, neither could." 

That is smart. 

Baseline tried to capture the contribution that people, using all tools available to them, make to their companies. But how do you quantify these benefits?  How do you know which companies are really smart?

That's the basis of Baseline's 100 Smartest Companies ranking.

Using public data, Paul A. Strassmann, a former technology executive at Xerox, General Foods, Kraft and NASA  has developed a formula to calculate what he calls Knowledge Value per Employee.  That is, the value created by each worker, on average, from chief executive to middle manager to entry-level staffer to their employer.

The metric Strassmann created isn't too complex.  First, subtract the company's shareholder equity from its market capitalization.  Then divide that amount by the number of employees at the company.  The result is an intangible but vital asset: the value each employee generates.

"Investors, whose stock-buying choices create a market value for a company, are, in effect, judging the worth of the company's employees.  The smartest companies are, no matter what the business is, the ones where employees are engaged, productive and forward thinking. 

"Look at Google." 

"As of March 17, investors had bid up Google stock to a staggering worth of $100.5 billion.  Yet in annual financial documents filed in December, Google tallied its tangible assets at $10.3 billion.  The $90.2 billion difference reflects what investors were willing to pay for what they presumed to be the smarts of Google's 5,680 workers.  Investors bought expectations that, with the right tools and data, Google's employees will make a $340-per-share stock price a profitable proposition."

Granted, relying on the stock market to judge a company's smartness has its problems. 

"There will be cases when investors bid up the price of shares beyond any hopes of realizing good returns-say, during times of "irrational exuberance." 

So, the formula isn't perfect.

"But a company's smartness quotient, especially when compared to that of its competitors, can open discussion into how to make people more productive.  Almost always, that's an area where the chief information officer can help-and not necessarily by installing more software and hardware.  Sometimes, productivity comes from simplifying." 

QUESTION: Which better metrics do you think are indicators of a company's brains?

                                                                                                 

Full Story >>

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To arrange for an inhouse presentation on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

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

Swarm Intelligence

Swarm Intelligence-- Nature's way .  .  .

By borrowing from nature, Xiaohui Cui of Oak Ridge National Laboratory is devising more efficient ways to analyze large amounts of publicly available data and perform other tasks to make information more accessible and useful. 

While ants and birds don't know anything about mathematical models, they represent the ideal when it comes to teamwork, colony organization and devising the best way to accomplish a task. 

Using the same concepts that allow ants and birds to keep themselves in a colony and perform duties that are essential to their survival, Cui uses a technique called multiple species flock clustering, which sorts through news items on the Internet to extract useful information. 

Cui also is developing a disposable sensor network based on the ant colony mathematical model, which enables large numbers of sensors to self-organize and collect and exchange information.  This can be used, for example, by 1,000 or more battery-powered sensors deployed in strategic locations to monitor environmental activity or gather other information over a long period of time. 

This work is funded by the Department of Homeland Security.

Reference:

X. Cui, J. Gao and T. E. Potok, A Flocking Based Algorithm for Document Clustering Analysis, to appear in Journal of System Architecture, Special issue on Nature Inspired Applied Systems, 2006, ISSN: 1318-7621

X. Cui, and T. E. Potok, A Distributed Flocking Approach for Information Stream Clustering Analysis, to be presented in Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing, June, 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To arrange for an inhouse presentation on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

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

37 reasons why strategic plans fail (V 3.0)

I've started to write an article on why strategic planning fails and started to informally poll my clients to get their feedback....here are some of the common reasons noted.

Please help me expand my list to 50. The first Contributors of any new idea or reason will be credited in my article. Add your experiences and reasons in the Comments section below

A big Thank you to Blog Readers in advance

Walter Derzko

37 reasons why strategic plans fail (V 3.0)

1)       overemphasis on strategic planning  and under -emphasis on implementation

2)       internal focus vs balanced external /internal focus

3)       focus on mechanical and rational strategic planning & goal-setting vs strategic thinking (the overt emphasis on the lateral cognitive skills and operations to generate new ideas and concepts around tactics and strategy)

4)       straight-line forecasts vs scenarios

5)       clarity between certainty vs uncertainty…we are certain about this ? we are uncertain about that

6)       challenging assumptions ; what do we take for granted (WDWTFG) about ?

7)       fear of or ignorance of how to surface our personal and often tacit world views (key concepts), mindsets (assumptions, norms and values ), mental maps (the landscape) and models (social networks, interactions & relationships)

8)       challenging “what works”

9)       ignoring changing circumstances and time scales

10)   ignoring 2ndary and 3 Impacts & Consequences of events, tactics and strategies

11)   ignoring dissenting opinions

12)   dismissing outlying nonconforming information (problem of scope and definitions)

13)   ignoring ambiguity ( lack of any framework),

14)   mishandling uncertainty ( lack of data or even which questions to ask to find the information),

15)   not knowing how to handle complexity (too many interrelated components or events to manage or understand the specific
workings of the system in focus i.e. our body)

16)   difficulty with equivocality  ( multiple interpretations of same events or data).

17)   Poor sense-making , sense-modeling and sense-portraying (Sense-making occurs when we consciously or unconsciously compare new
knowledge with our existing mindset-assumptions, norms and values and see what's changed, challenged, dismissed or reinforced ( usually a process that shifts back and forth from tacit to explicit knowledge creation).

18)   Not thinking in system terms, do we actually have a Viable system? What’s the big picture?

19)   Ignoring the metrics that measure the results; what’s considered good, mediocre or poor performance

20)   Not building in flexibility and adaptability into your strategic plans, ie if circumstance or condition A changes, then we go with Tactic B

[ ... ]

36) Urgent vs important; deflected from the task by the supposed urgent issues of the day

37) poor communications

Now please add your comments below in the Comments Section

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To arrange for an inhouse presentation on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

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

here's part of the list tp give you a sample of answers so far......

Preparing for that AHA Eureka moment> Insight proportional to Mental preparation claims Creativity Research

Preparing for that AHA Eureka moment> Insight proportional to Mental preparation claims Creativity Research

Aha!  Favors the prepared mind

If you've experienced the highs and lows of creative thinking, you know that sometimes the creative well is dry, while at other times creativity is free flowing.  It is during the latter times that people often experience so-called "Aha!"  Moments - those moments of clarity when the solution to a vexing problem falls into place with a sudden insight and you see connections that previously eluded you.

But why do "Aha!"  Moments sometimes come easily and sometimes not at all?

A new study reveals that patterns of brain activity before people even see a problem predict whether they will solve it with or without such an insight, and these brain activity patterns are likely linked to distinct types of mental preparation.

Researchers from Drexel and Northwestern University will report their findings in a new paper to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Previous research by this team demonstrated that the brain functions differently when a person arrives at "Aha!"  Solutions, compared to methodical solutions.  The current study reveals that the distinct patterns of brain activity leading to "Aha!"

Moments of insight begin much earlier than the time a problem is solved.

The research suggests that people can mentally prepare to have an "Aha!"  Solution even before a problem is presented.

Specifically, as people prepare for problems that they solve with insight, their pattern of brain activity suggests that they are focusing attention inwardly, are ready to switch to new trains of thought, and perhaps are actively silencing irrelevant thoughts.  These findings are important because they show that people can mentally prepare to solve problems with different thinking styles and that these different forms of preparation can be identified with specific patterns of brain activity.  This study may eventually lead to an understanding of how to put people in the optimal "frame of mind" to deal with particular types of problems. 

This research team's previous study revealed that just prior to an "Aha!"  Solution, after a person has been working on solving a problem, the brain momentarily reduces visual inputs, with an effect similar to a person shutting his or her eyes or looking away to facilitate the emergence into consciousness of the solution.  The new study extends these findings by suggesting that mental preparation involving inward focus of attention promotes insight even prior to the presentation of a problem.  Therefore, it may be that how a person is thinking before problem solving begins is just as important as the kind of thinking involved in reaching the solution, and perhaps even determines whether the solution will be derived with a sudden insight. 

Participants in the new study were presented with a series of word puzzles.  Each problem consisted of three words (for example, tank, hill, secret), and participants had to think of a single word that could form a compound or common phrase with each of the three words.  People sometimes solve such problems with a sudden flash of insight - the solution suddenly pops into their heads and seems obviously correct - and other times solve such problems more methodically, perhaps "trying out" possible solutions until they hit on the correct one (in this case, top: tank top, hilltop, top secret).  In two parallel experiments, participants solved these problems while brain activity was monitored either with electroencephalograms (EEG), which provide precise timing information and approximate anatomical information, or with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which gives a more precise location of active brain areas, but with less precise timing.  The researchers focused on neural activity that occurred during the period just before each problem was displayed.  The two brain imaging techniques yielded highly similar results and showed a different pattern of brain activity prior to problems that they subsequently solved with an "Aha!", compared to the pattern of brain activity prior to problems they solved more methodically. 

According to David E. Meyer, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the research, "It's remarkable how similar the results were across the two experiments, using different methods, and these results nicely demonstrate that different types of mental preparation are conducive to different types of problem solving."

" Mental preparation that led to insight solutions was generally characterized by increased brain activity in temporal lobe areas associated with conceptual processing, and with frontal lobe areas associated with cognitive control or "top-down" processing.  Scientists noted that "Problem solvers could use cognitive control to switch their train of thought when stuck on a problem, or possibly to suppress irrelevant thoughts, such as those related to the previous problem." 

In contrast, preparation that led to more methodical solutions involved increased neural activity in the visual cortex at the back of the brain -- suggesting that preparation for deliberate problem solving simply involved external focus of attention on the video monitor on which the problem would be displayed. 

More than a century ago, the great scientist Louis Pasteur said

"Chance favors only the prepared mind." 

By this, he meant that sudden flashes of insight don't just happen, but are the product of preparation.  According to researchers,

"We have begun to understand how the brain prepares for creative insight.  This will hopefully lead to techniques for facilitating it."

To accelerate your AHA moments call us to use our Idea Lab methods and techniques. Email  me at [email protected] and ask about the Idea Lab

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

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

Boost your Smart Technology IQ

Increase your Smart Technology IQ

Are you interested in the novel but quietly booming field of Smart Technology?

Are you a novice to the discipline or an old pro? Are smart technologies still under your business radar screen? Confused by all the jargon? opinions? predictions?

We are able to offer your team or organization, a tactile ‘hands-on’ presentation based on the topic and application areas that best suit your interest from our Smart Economy Blog.

We can  provide your group with a general introduction to Smart Technologies or cover a highly specialized and narrow topic area. We can cover the spectrum from Competitive Intelligence to Product Development to Technology roadmaps.

Combined with a health dose of provocative, lateral thinking, our interactive  presentation will get your team inspired and boost their Smart Technology IQ  !!

Suitable for off site or on site training sessions, monthly team or division meetings, research meetings, focus groups and conferences, our presentations can be customized to the needs of different audiences, numbers and special interest areas.

Smart Technology is a tactile subject area and by bringing the audience into physical contact with a wide range of different smart materials and products, our presentation brings to life the subject matter contained in our Smart Economy Blog 

Please contact me for further details.

Walter Derzko  [email protected]

Influenza Prediction Market

Has the time come for an Influenza Prediction Market?….from Univ of Iowa Business School web site (see below)

(Alerted came from Mike Jackson's Shaping Tomorrow web site )

Why was the influenza market started?

1. Currently there are no methods to accurately forecast influenza activity.

2. If local health officials and health care workers could predict an outbreak, even 1-2 weeks in advance, they could initiate measures to modify the severity of the outbreak.

3. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention devotes significant resources to influenza surveillance, but by the time this information is published, it is 1-2 weeks old.

How does the influenza market work?

"At the beginning of the influenza season, we recruit a diverse group of health care workers with information about influenza activity.  Each of the traders is given an educational grant of $100 with which to trade.  This grant grows or shrinks over the course of the influenza season depending upon the accuracy of the individual trader's predictions.  Potential traders include physicians, nurses, pharmacists, clinical microbiologists and epidemiologists.  Each of these traders has access to unique information regarding current and future influenza activity.  For example, if a clinical microbiologist suddenly sees an increase in the number of respiratory cultures positive for influenza, influenza will likely increase in her community during the next few weeks.  Such a trader could log-on to our website and purchase shares for "widespread influenza activity" over the next few weeks.  She would also likely try to sell her shares of "little-or-no influenza activity".

"On the other hand, if a nurse had seen several patients with influenza in the emergency room for the last few weeks and then saw no more patients, he would be tempted to sell all his "widespread influenza activity" shares and try to buy as many "little-or-no activity" shares as he could.  Each influenza "share" or "contract" is associated with a specified level of influenza activity during a specific week and is worth $1.00 when trading ends if that turns out to be the observed level of activity.  Thus, the price at which trades take place represents the consensus belief about the likelihood of that level of activity.  For example, if the price of widespread activity for a given week was $0.90, the market expects influenza to be widespread with 90% probability."

Each influenza contract is based on the Centers for Disease Control's weekly color-coded system: RED=Widespread, BLUE=Regional, PURPLE=Local, GREEN=Sporadic, YELLOW=No Activity.  Individual trader's predictions are judged accurate or not based upon the levels of activity reported by the CDC.

How can information from the influenza market be used?

"An accurate forecast of influenza activity would be helpful even 1-2 weeks in advance: measures could be initiated to modify the severity of the outbreak.  For example, public health officials could allocate resources to increase vaccination rates among high-risk individuals and health care workers.  Prophylactic medication, such as neuroamidiase inhibitors, could be administered to persons in high-risk groups (e.g. nursing home residents and staff).  In addition, if increased influenza activity could be predicted, hospital administrators could plan ahead and ensure that adequate numbers of staff are available to care for an increased number of patients admitted for influenza complications."

See the Univ of Iowa Business School  web site

Intelligence Level: Influenza Prediction Market

Intelligence Level (1)	Adapting:	Modifying Behaviour to Fit the Environment
Intelligence Level (2)	Sensing:	Bringing Awareness to Everyday Things	X
Intelligence Level (3)	Inferring:	Drawing Conclusions from Rules and Observations	X
Intelligence Level (4)	Learning:	Using Experience to Improve Performance	X
Intelligence Level (5)	Anticipating:	Thinking and Reasoning about What to Do Next
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-creating,	Ability to reproduce itself, regenerate
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-organizing	Ability for components to self-organize
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (A)	Ability to replicate components
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (B)	Ability to process information
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (C)	Ability to steadily consume energy from the environment

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

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