Smart Economy

Smart Sustainability Showcase for Toronto and Canada

From: Walter Derzko

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

To: undisclosed list

Subject: re Smart Sustainability ShowCase for Toronto and Canada.

Importance: High

Dear Colleagues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Several other revenue opportunities could spin off from this as well

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

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

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

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

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

Lots more like these

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

Please RSVP, so we know how many people are coming

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

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

Contact me by email

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adoption of smart technology

Cost vs New-to-the-world Benefits ?

RFID [radio-frequency identification] is one the the smart technologies that's gotten an early commercialization toe-hold, but it still has a number of barriers to overcome. One of them is the Cost vs New-to-the-world Benefit equation. From the story below, we see that the issue is far more complex with a number of drivers and barriers acting simultaniously to both push and withhold the adoption rate of RFID technology

EWEEK recently interviewed  Clayton Christensen  at Harvard Business School in Boston, where Christensen offered some provocative insights on companies' use of IT (such as RFID) to disrupt their competition. 

One of the questions that E-week asked  Clayton Chistensen was:

Do you see any companies that are using IT to be disruptive?  That's how Wal-Mart has disrupted the full-service department stores.  They manage the flow of inventory so that their turns are high.In retailing, the way you make money is you have a gross margin, times inventory turns.  So if the department stores turn their inventory over three times a year.  In order to earn an adequate return, their gross margins have to be about 40 percent.  If you turn your inventory over six times per year, then your gross margins can be 20 percent and you'll earn an adequate return.  It's key in the retail business to have that.  I think they made very good investments that way.  They've been trying to push RFID [radio-frequency identification].  Is that disruptive? 

Christensen:

It is.  However, the prediction would be that Wal-Mart, although they aggressively seek RFID-compatible suppliers, will probably be one of the last companies to adopt RFID.  The only way it would make sense would be if RFID performs better in terms of cost and reliability and accuracy than bar coding.  They are the world's state-of-the-art practitioner of bar coding.  They've got billions of dollars every hour staked upon the accuracy of that system.  My models would predict that where you see RFID take root will be where bar coding is impossible or very cumbersome, and then, adding those new applications, RFID will get better and better until ultimately it's good enough so that a complex operation like Wal-Mart could adopt it.

Full story here

© 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 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

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

Conference: Smart Cities Ensure Smart Futures

{N.B. Thanks to Mike Jackson from Shaping Tomorrow, for bringing this to my attention-Walter Derzko]

Brisbane is hosting the Fifth World Technopolis Association (WTA) General Assembly - an international conference bringing together the science and technology community from around the world.  Where: Brisbane, Australia When: 26 to 28 July 2006

Conference theme: "Smart Cities Ensure Smart Futures" The Assembly conference will explore the theme of "Smart Cities Ensure Smart Futures". 

This theme focuses on:

• sharing knowledge and technologies that create smart cities and better communities - to help meet the challenges we face as the world rapidly urbanises
• gaining a clear idea of the knowledge base that exists and relevant technologies that are available

Smart City Futures Project

The Assembly will feature a unique foresight project, called the "Smart City Futures Project".  It will offer participants an opportunity to contribute their views on the question:

• "What knowledge should we invest in to create smart cities of the future and what are the key technologies that might enable it?"

The Smart City Futures Project will ensure energetic and constructive conference debate.  For more information and to participate, complete the survey. 

The results of the Smart City Futures Project will be discussed on Day 2 of the Assembly at The Future for Smart Cities Conference.

See conference link

© 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

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]

Smart Wallet Phone

Problem:

While Canada and the USA have hardly been touched by “contact-less smart card” technology, its been all the rage in Japan and parts of Asia since 1995

The smart cards, embedded with Sony’s and Royal Philips Electronics’ ‘“FeliCa chip” as the active component for close proximity, low data- rate transactions are used as transit commuter passes and for making e-purchases. 

As of June 2005, Sony had distributed 82 million Felica chips, including 53 million in Japan, 16 million in Hong Kong, 10 million in Singapore, and 1.5 million in China for various uses.

The problem is that as consumers accumulate various smart cards from different vendors, these cards start to overwhelm and overweigh your wallet or purse.

Smart Solution:

Smart Cards are out. Smart e-wallet phones are in.

Now you can throw away all these smart cards and replace them with a single e-wallet, built right into your new cell phone.

The November 2005 issue of IEEE Spectrum Magazine reports that:

“NTT DoCoMo Japan's largest cellphone system operator, best known worldwide for pioneering the wireless Internet in 1999 with its hugely successful i-mode system, looks to have another big winner on its hands. Having recast the cellular handset as an electronic wallet - in effect a prepaid wireless cash card - it's getting ready to make it a full-fledged wireless credit card.”

“The wallet phones can be used to make electronic purchases at stores or vending machines equipped with FeliCa readers; can act as boarding passes on certain domestic air flights; and can authorize entry through corporate security doors “- all with a simple wave of your smart handset.

As an added security feature.....

“…should the phone be lost or stolen, a subscriber can block transactions by calling the handset with a preregistered number or calling customer support to have the phone locked.  The user can opt for a personal identification number to be entered before transactions are made, an important feature given that up to 50 000 yen (US $450) in e-cash can be stored.”

ETA:

Now

So far NTT DoCoMo has shipped 6 million smart e-wallet handsets since they were introduced a year ago in Japan. DoCoMo predicts that by March 2006, that number will increase to 10 million mobile wallets and reach 15 million by the end of 2006. Two rival competitors, KDDI Corp. and Vodafone K.K., are expected to introduce another 5 million competing products, both using the same FeliCa platform technology, topping market penetration in Japan at an expected 20 million e-wallet handsets by the end of 2006.

IEEE Spectrum also notes that”

“A pioneering user of FeliCa technology is East Japan Railway Co.  (JR East), the country's largest rail company.  Its Suica smart card is used both for e-purchases and as a commuter pass. Users simply flash the card as they go through turnstiles, and instantly the reader displays the cost of the journey and the amount of e-cash remaining on the card. 

JR East plans to extend the commuter service in January to wallet phones from DoCoMo and KDDI, and it is in discussions with Vodafone

When can other countries expect them?

IEEE Spectrum speculates:

“DoCoMo is keeping silent on the subject. 

Since 2002, however, it has been working with a dozen mobile operators in Europe, Taiwan, and Israel to create local versions of i-mode (wireless internet).-  Vodafone, though it refrains from commenting on plans for its wallet-phone business, has subsidiaries and alliances in 28 countries across five continents, giving it ample opportunity to introduce an e-wallet service when the time is right

© 2005

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