INNOVATION. INTEROPERABILITY!
. Michael Schrage: "Interoperability: the great enabler", Financial Times (*)
Global financial markets are in disarray but prospects for innovation in the real economy have never been more robust. Innovations once crafted to stand alone are increasingly built to work together, or “interoperate”. The interoperability quotient, or IQ, of discrete components and systems to influence constructively the behaviour of other systems and components increasingly determines economic value. A low IQ indicates innovation destined to underachieve. Playing well with others, not just ingenuity, has become the new standard for innovation excellence. Look no further than the internet for the inspiration for interoperable innovation. The misunderstood genius of the internet is that interoperability makes “networks of networks” possible. Protocols permitting diverse data to mingle creatively explain why the internet’s influence as a multimedia, multifunctional and multidisciplinary environment for innovation remains unsurpassed.
Consider “mash-ups” as a model: Google Maps can easily be mixed and mashed with property, seismic or epidemiological data to produce novel applications that might launch a company or an industry. Greater interoperability invites greater innovation – and vice versa. But interoperability as a core innovation investment principle extends well beyond the internet into power-grid systems, defence technologies and medical devices. More innovators in more disciplines are investing more in interoperability as both a business and research strategy. Nascent nanotechnologies are being mashed up with biotechnologies. Facebook pages mash up with Global Positioning System mobile phones. Rechargeable batteries can mash up with programmable solar cells. Seemingly disparate devices and disciplines that ordinarily would have zero interest in interoperating creatively, or zero capacity to do so, might find novel relationships cheap and easy. Successful interoperability dramatically cuts the costs, risks and complexities of hooking up.
Barriers to interdisciplinary innovation tumble. Favourable economics of interoperable innovation will tempt ambitious “inter-preneurs” to test their ideas. How might interoperability between Siemens cochlear implants, Apple iPhones, Nike running shoe accelerometers, LG microwave ovens, Nintendo Wiis and BMW Series 3 Sedans create bold entrepreneurial, or diversification, opportunities? Who knows? But the fact that the question piques curiosity reveals fundamental changes in the global innovation climate. The interoperability imperative creates a new innovator’s dilemma: will greater market share or profitability come from making one’s innovation more interoperable . . . or less? What IQ do current customers and potential prospects prefer? How should we collaborate, and compete, in the context of interoperability?
How much interoperability is enough, or too much, is impossible to know in advance. What is easier to anticipate is the growing need for innovators and customers alike to customise the interoperability they offer and use. For instance, this might involve giving people the power to determine whether their cardiac pacemakers should be able to influence their running shoes or allowing the breathalyser in their mobile phone to disable their car’s ignition. Creating cost-effective rules of engagement for customised interoperability will be a fantastic business challenge. Pervasive interoperability in both industrial and consumer markets suggests that a new generation of interfaces will be essential. Simple interfaces that allow access to complex interoperability promise to be the great enabler, or the horrendous bottleneck, to innovation. The incompetent design of video remote control devices will give way to more iPhone-like and Google-esque streamlined access. Interface technologies – whether keyboard, touch-sensitive, voice or visual – will prove crucial to interoperable innovation. Interoperability’s economic potential is stunted without easy ways to gain access to it. Of course, increased interoperability means increased vulnerabilities. The viruses, spam and malware that pollute today’s laptops could crash fuel delivery trucks or implantable insulin pumps tomorrow. Wicked innovators, more than failed inter-preneurial ingenuity, may be the dominant threat to interoperability’s future.
Unsurprisingly, as interoperability becomes the technical locus of innovation strategy worldwide, regulators may feel compelled to enshrine, loosen or shatter market standards. Interoperability standards can create, or destroy, innovation oligopolies and monopolies. Interoperability represents a challenge to competition policies in Europe and America. But where interchangeable parts enabled the mass production era more than a century ago, tomorrow’s interoperable systems promise richer, more diverse and more customisable innovation. Economic historians and post-industrial pundits alike observe that high-impact innovations come less from scientific breakthroughs than from clever recombinations of existing inventions. While trend should never be confused with destiny, interoperability potentially offers the best of both innovation worlds: a medium that gives scientific breakthroughs the opportunity to connect with other disciplines and a method for exploring more combinations more quickly and cheaply. That is a recipe for economic growth in difficult times.
(*) The writer researches the economics of innovation at MIT’s Sloan School and at Imperial College’s Business School.
Showing posts with label Innovation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Innovation. Show all posts
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
INNOVATION. "SCHUMPETERIAN" CASES, ETC.
. Thomas K. McCraw. Prophet of Innovation. Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction. Harvard University Press, 2007 [web] [prologue]
The most recent book on Joseph Schumpeter is the 2007 volume by Thomas McCraw. I've written a review, but sadly it's in ... Spanish! The rest of the post presents some documents that cover different aspects of Schumpeterian economics!
Document # 1
. Windows as a monopoly (*)
OneStat.com, today reported that Microsoft's Windows operating system has a global usage share of 97.46 percent. Microsoft's Windows still dominates the global operating system market. The global usage share of for Apple's Macintosh operating system is 1.43 percent and is the second most popular operating system in the world. The three most popular operating systems according to OneStat are: 1. Windows 97.46%, 2. Macintosh 1.43%, 3. Linux 0.26%.
(*) osnews.com, September 9, 2002
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1706
___________________
Document # 2
. Google is “after everything”! (*)
Google is after everything. Think $600bn (€ 500bn) or so: the size of the entire global advertising industry, across all media, from the signs in the subway carriages in Beijing to the help-wanted adverts at the back of your local paper. Sooner or later, Google aims to be in every nook and cranny ― if the adverts you see are not brought to you directly by Google, it will at least have a big hand in the process.
(*) Richard Waters. “Complete world domination beckons to King Google”, Financial Times, March 6, 2006.
__________
Document # 3
The size of the market for ED products (*)
Heavy advertising to consumers, totaling more than $400 million in 2004, has made Viagra and its newer competitors, Cialis and Levitra, among the best-known drug brands in the United States, and their combined global sales reached about $2.5 billion last year.
(*) Alex Berenson: “Sales of Impotence Drugs Fall, Defying Expectations”, New York Times, December 4, 2005.
__________
Document # 4
Dell Computer manages inventory in real time (*)
The inventory in a channel is determined by the variance in supply and the variance in demand. Unless these variances are reduced, channel inventory can only be moved around, not eliminated. Through its use of profitability management, Dell matched supply and demand on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. It sharply reduced the variance, and the need for inventories simply disappeared. As inventory disappeared, the company's returns grew disproportionately. Not only did Dell avoid carrying costs and obsolete stock, but importantly, it was saving enormous amounts of money on purchasing components because the component prices were dropping 3 percent per month.
(*) Jonathan Byrnes. “Dell Manages Profitability, Not Inventory”, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, June 2003.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=3497&t=dispatch
__________________
Document # 5
Chart. The amazing “Inventory to Sales” ratio (*)
(*) Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s FRED database.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ISRATIO/1
__________
Document # 6
An ambitious South Korean cosmetics company (*)
Having revolutionized South Korea’s crowded cosmetics market, The Face Shop hopes to branch out into the US and Europe. The company, which reported sales of $162 million in 2005, is trying to replicate its success in overseas markets. Jung Woonho, the company’s president, opened the first Face Shop store in Seoul’s bustling Myongdong district at the end of 2003. Now, he has 400 franchised shops in Korea and 100 in 12 other countries. The Face Shop is already accelerating its push offshore, especially in Asia. The company aims to open 2,000 shops abroad in the next five years, and hopes eventually to derive 90% of its sales from overseas.
(*) Song Jung: “Face Shop to export Korean beauty”, Financial Times, April 7 2006
________________
Document # 7
Gas-to/Liquids Technology (*)
A novel way to create an ultra-clean fuel for cars that uses natural gas instead of oil is on the verge of rapid growth, analysts say, driven by soaring oil prices and a thirst for alternative fuels.
Oil companies are investing billions of dollars in the nascent technology, called “gas-to-liquids” or GTL, which can be used to produce quality diesel and a range of other products normally derived from crude. Frank Harris, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, the Scotland-based international oil consultancy, believes the next 10 years will see more than $40bn invested in GTL plants.
(*) Thomas Catan. “Oil giants look to gas alternative. Billions invested in gas-to-liquids technology”, Financial Times, March 6, 2006.
_________
Document # 8
Innovation and the credit market: interest rate on Moody’s Baa 10-year corporate bonds (*)
End of Quarter Yield
October 1998: 6.95% - December 1998: 7.18% - March 1999: 7.61% - June 1999: 7.90% - September 1999: 8.22% - December 1999: 8.18% - March 2000: 8.35% - June 2000: 8.71%
(*) Source: Federal Reserve.
___________
Document # 9
Attitudes towards monopolies: Microsoft and the EU (*)
The European Union’s top antitrust regulator has warned Microsoft that the next version of its flagship Windows operating system, Vista, due out next year, may run foul of competition rules.
Neelie Kroes, the EU’s competition commissioner, wrote to Microsoft last week to express her concerns over plans to integrate an internet search facility and several other programmes into Vista. The Brussels regulator believes such moves may end up crushing providers of competing products, and violating a precedent set in the Commission’s landmark March 2004 decision ruling against Microsoft.
(*) Tobias Buck. “New Brussels warning to Microsoft”, Financial Times, March 30, 2006.
_______
Document # 10
Attitudes towards monopolies: Apple and the French parliament (*)
The French legislative chamber on March 21 passed a bill that would force Apple to make its downloads work on all digital music players and not just on the iconic iPod. Analysts said Apple would have to choose between sharing the secrets of the exclusive online music technology that has helped make it a market leader -- or, more likely, stop selling music downloads from the iTunes store in France. Supporters of the French legislation argue it will better protect the rights of musicians and other artists whose work is sold online. But Apple has condemned the French bill, which has yet to be passed by the upper house, as no more than "state-sponsored piracy". "If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers," it said.
(*) Physorg.com: “US commerce chief backs Apple over French law”, March 24, 2006.
___________
Document # 11
Innovators: a touch of madness? (*)
Most innovations are introduced not by the regimented R&D of established corporations, but by scrappy new firms, twin-born with the invention itself. Willian Baumol, who has been laboring for years to create more space for entrepreneurship and innovation in economic theory, ventures that most breakthroughs arise this way ¾ the offspring of independent minds not incumbent companies …
Revolution is a risky endeavor. Of 1,091 Canadian inventions surveyed in 2003 by Thomas Astebro, of the University of Toronto, only 75 reached the market. Six of them earned returns of 1,400%, but 45 lost money. A rational manager will balk at such odds. But the entrepreneur answers to his own dreams and demons. Mr. Baumol thinks a “touch of madness” is probably one of the chief qualifications for the job.
(*) The Economist. “Searching for the invisible man”, March 17, 2006.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_VGDTRJD
______________
Document # 12
Innovators: a bunch a maniacs? (*)
The typical traits of an entrepreneur:
• He is filled with energy.
• He is flooded with ideas.
• He is driven, restless, and unable to keep still.
• He channels his energy into the achievement of wildly grand ambitions.
• He often works on little sleep.
• He feels brilliant, special, chosen, perhaps even destined to change the world.
• He can be euphoric.
• He becomes easily irritated by minor obstacles.
• He is a risk taker.
• He overspends in both his business and personal life.
• He acts out sexually.
• He sometimes acts impulsively, with poor judgment, in ways that can have painful consequences.
• He is fast-talking.
• He is witty and gregarious.
• His confidence can make him charismatic and persuasive.
• He is also prone to making enemies and feels he is persecuted by those who do not accept his vision and mission.
(*) John Gartner. “America’s Manic Entrepreneurs”, The American Enterprise Online, 2005 http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.18583/article_detail.asp
_______________
Document # 13
Steve Jobs (*)
Rocketed heavenwards by Toy Story, floated Pixar, became billionaire, rejoined Apple, took credit for predecessor's work, basked in glow, screwed up a bit, realised error of ways, saw potential of music, bought iTunes, produced iPod, survived cancer (so far), basked some more in new glow. Now sitting pretty on intriguing nexus of computers, animated films and digital music. Has ambitions to do something that will be the terror of all mankind, though none shall know what.
(*) Charles Arthur: “Steve Jobs: smoke and mirrors or iCon?”, The Register, May 2005.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/20/jobs_biography/
________________
Document # 14
Technology, Talent and Tolerance (*)
Profesor Richard Florida’s research found has found an important link among three factors he calls the “Three Ts” ¾ Technology, Talent and Tolerance. Why this link? Because talented technology workers want to live in places where talented individuals feel immediately comfortable, find other creative people in many fields, and have the opportunity to make an immediate contribution ¾ places that value and welcome people of every kind.
(*) Memphis Talent Magnet Project. Technology, Talent and Tolerance: Attracting the Best and Brightest to Memphis, 2006.
http://www.colettaandcompany.com/public/talentmagnet/Final_TalentMagnetReportv4.pdf
. Thomas K. McCraw. Prophet of Innovation. Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction. Harvard University Press, 2007 [web] [prologue]
The most recent book on Joseph Schumpeter is the 2007 volume by Thomas McCraw. I've written a review, but sadly it's in ... Spanish! The rest of the post presents some documents that cover different aspects of Schumpeterian economics!
Document # 1
. Windows as a monopoly (*)
OneStat.com, today reported that Microsoft's Windows operating system has a global usage share of 97.46 percent. Microsoft's Windows still dominates the global operating system market. The global usage share of for Apple's Macintosh operating system is 1.43 percent and is the second most popular operating system in the world. The three most popular operating systems according to OneStat are: 1. Windows 97.46%, 2. Macintosh 1.43%, 3. Linux 0.26%.
(*) osnews.com, September 9, 2002
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1706
___________________
Document # 2
. Google is “after everything”! (*)
Google is after everything. Think $600bn (€ 500bn) or so: the size of the entire global advertising industry, across all media, from the signs in the subway carriages in Beijing to the help-wanted adverts at the back of your local paper. Sooner or later, Google aims to be in every nook and cranny ― if the adverts you see are not brought to you directly by Google, it will at least have a big hand in the process.
(*) Richard Waters. “Complete world domination beckons to King Google”, Financial Times, March 6, 2006.
__________
Document # 3
The size of the market for ED products (*)
Heavy advertising to consumers, totaling more than $400 million in 2004, has made Viagra and its newer competitors, Cialis and Levitra, among the best-known drug brands in the United States, and their combined global sales reached about $2.5 billion last year.
(*) Alex Berenson: “Sales of Impotence Drugs Fall, Defying Expectations”, New York Times, December 4, 2005.
__________
Document # 4
Dell Computer manages inventory in real time (*)
The inventory in a channel is determined by the variance in supply and the variance in demand. Unless these variances are reduced, channel inventory can only be moved around, not eliminated. Through its use of profitability management, Dell matched supply and demand on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. It sharply reduced the variance, and the need for inventories simply disappeared. As inventory disappeared, the company's returns grew disproportionately. Not only did Dell avoid carrying costs and obsolete stock, but importantly, it was saving enormous amounts of money on purchasing components because the component prices were dropping 3 percent per month.
(*) Jonathan Byrnes. “Dell Manages Profitability, Not Inventory”, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, June 2003.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=3497&t=dispatch
__________________
Document # 5
Chart. The amazing “Inventory to Sales” ratio (*)
(*) Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s FRED database.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ISRATIO/1
__________
Document # 6
An ambitious South Korean cosmetics company (*)
Having revolutionized South Korea’s crowded cosmetics market, The Face Shop hopes to branch out into the US and Europe. The company, which reported sales of $162 million in 2005, is trying to replicate its success in overseas markets. Jung Woonho, the company’s president, opened the first Face Shop store in Seoul’s bustling Myongdong district at the end of 2003. Now, he has 400 franchised shops in Korea and 100 in 12 other countries. The Face Shop is already accelerating its push offshore, especially in Asia. The company aims to open 2,000 shops abroad in the next five years, and hopes eventually to derive 90% of its sales from overseas.
(*) Song Jung: “Face Shop to export Korean beauty”, Financial Times, April 7 2006
________________
Document # 7
Gas-to/Liquids Technology (*)
A novel way to create an ultra-clean fuel for cars that uses natural gas instead of oil is on the verge of rapid growth, analysts say, driven by soaring oil prices and a thirst for alternative fuels.
Oil companies are investing billions of dollars in the nascent technology, called “gas-to-liquids” or GTL, which can be used to produce quality diesel and a range of other products normally derived from crude. Frank Harris, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, the Scotland-based international oil consultancy, believes the next 10 years will see more than $40bn invested in GTL plants.
(*) Thomas Catan. “Oil giants look to gas alternative. Billions invested in gas-to-liquids technology”, Financial Times, March 6, 2006.
_________
Document # 8
Innovation and the credit market: interest rate on Moody’s Baa 10-year corporate bonds (*)
End of Quarter Yield
October 1998: 6.95% - December 1998: 7.18% - March 1999: 7.61% - June 1999: 7.90% - September 1999: 8.22% - December 1999: 8.18% - March 2000: 8.35% - June 2000: 8.71%
(*) Source: Federal Reserve.
___________
Document # 9
Attitudes towards monopolies: Microsoft and the EU (*)
The European Union’s top antitrust regulator has warned Microsoft that the next version of its flagship Windows operating system, Vista, due out next year, may run foul of competition rules.
Neelie Kroes, the EU’s competition commissioner, wrote to Microsoft last week to express her concerns over plans to integrate an internet search facility and several other programmes into Vista. The Brussels regulator believes such moves may end up crushing providers of competing products, and violating a precedent set in the Commission’s landmark March 2004 decision ruling against Microsoft.
(*) Tobias Buck. “New Brussels warning to Microsoft”, Financial Times, March 30, 2006.
_______
Document # 10
Attitudes towards monopolies: Apple and the French parliament (*)
The French legislative chamber on March 21 passed a bill that would force Apple to make its downloads work on all digital music players and not just on the iconic iPod. Analysts said Apple would have to choose between sharing the secrets of the exclusive online music technology that has helped make it a market leader -- or, more likely, stop selling music downloads from the iTunes store in France. Supporters of the French legislation argue it will better protect the rights of musicians and other artists whose work is sold online. But Apple has condemned the French bill, which has yet to be passed by the upper house, as no more than "state-sponsored piracy". "If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers," it said.
(*) Physorg.com: “US commerce chief backs Apple over French law”, March 24, 2006.
___________
Document # 11
Innovators: a touch of madness? (*)
Most innovations are introduced not by the regimented R&D of established corporations, but by scrappy new firms, twin-born with the invention itself. Willian Baumol, who has been laboring for years to create more space for entrepreneurship and innovation in economic theory, ventures that most breakthroughs arise this way ¾ the offspring of independent minds not incumbent companies …
Revolution is a risky endeavor. Of 1,091 Canadian inventions surveyed in 2003 by Thomas Astebro, of the University of Toronto, only 75 reached the market. Six of them earned returns of 1,400%, but 45 lost money. A rational manager will balk at such odds. But the entrepreneur answers to his own dreams and demons. Mr. Baumol thinks a “touch of madness” is probably one of the chief qualifications for the job.
(*) The Economist. “Searching for the invisible man”, March 17, 2006.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_VGDTRJD
______________
Document # 12
Innovators: a bunch a maniacs? (*)
The typical traits of an entrepreneur:
• He is filled with energy.
• He is flooded with ideas.
• He is driven, restless, and unable to keep still.
• He channels his energy into the achievement of wildly grand ambitions.
• He often works on little sleep.
• He feels brilliant, special, chosen, perhaps even destined to change the world.
• He can be euphoric.
• He becomes easily irritated by minor obstacles.
• He is a risk taker.
• He overspends in both his business and personal life.
• He acts out sexually.
• He sometimes acts impulsively, with poor judgment, in ways that can have painful consequences.
• He is fast-talking.
• He is witty and gregarious.
• His confidence can make him charismatic and persuasive.
• He is also prone to making enemies and feels he is persecuted by those who do not accept his vision and mission.
(*) John Gartner. “America’s Manic Entrepreneurs”, The American Enterprise Online, 2005 http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.18583/article_detail.asp
_______________
Document # 13
Steve Jobs (*)
Rocketed heavenwards by Toy Story, floated Pixar, became billionaire, rejoined Apple, took credit for predecessor's work, basked in glow, screwed up a bit, realised error of ways, saw potential of music, bought iTunes, produced iPod, survived cancer (so far), basked some more in new glow. Now sitting pretty on intriguing nexus of computers, animated films and digital music. Has ambitions to do something that will be the terror of all mankind, though none shall know what.
(*) Charles Arthur: “Steve Jobs: smoke and mirrors or iCon?”, The Register, May 2005.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/20/jobs_biography/
________________
Document # 14
Technology, Talent and Tolerance (*)
Profesor Richard Florida’s research found has found an important link among three factors he calls the “Three Ts” ¾ Technology, Talent and Tolerance. Why this link? Because talented technology workers want to live in places where talented individuals feel immediately comfortable, find other creative people in many fields, and have the opportunity to make an immediate contribution ¾ places that value and welcome people of every kind.
(*) Memphis Talent Magnet Project. Technology, Talent and Tolerance: Attracting the Best and Brightest to Memphis, 2006.
http://www.colettaandcompany.com/public/talentmagnet/Final_TalentMagnetReportv4.pdf
INNOVATION. ON WAR & INNOVATION ...
. Janet Abbate. Inventing the Internet (MIT Press, 2000) [Google]
Here's some info on this rather troubling issue:
. Sylvia Pfeifer: "Defence groups enter the green zone for a new fight", Business Day
. Richard Waters: "Satnav gadgets show way in seasonal gift sales", Financial Times. Money quote: "Navigation devices emerged as a consumer category only after 2000, when the US government relaxed the technological restrictions that had prevented public use of its GPS satellite navigation system". [TomTom] [Garmin]
. Video on the history of the Internet
. Janet Abbate. Inventing the Internet (MIT Press, 2000) [Google]
Here's some info on this rather troubling issue:
. Sylvia Pfeifer: "Defence groups enter the green zone for a new fight", Business Day
. Richard Waters: "Satnav gadgets show way in seasonal gift sales", Financial Times. Money quote: "Navigation devices emerged as a consumer category only after 2000, when the US government relaxed the technological restrictions that had prevented public use of its GPS satellite navigation system". [TomTom] [Garmin]
. Video on the history of the Internet
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
INNOVATION. INSPIRATION FROM NATURE - eBOOKS TAKE OFF! - BATTERIES TO STORE WIND ENERGY
[1] From the Washington Post:
In the past few years, entrepreneurs have developed and started marketing an array of inventions that imitate natural phenomena. For instance, the resurrection plant, a desert species common in Africa and Latin America, dries up and appears to be dead when water is scarce. It does so without breaking its cells' membranes, enabling it to revive when moisture returns. Researchers have learned to make some vaccines with a similar capability so they do not have to be refrigerated. Other inventors are developing friction-free surfaces modeled on the slippery skin of the Arabian Peninsula's sandfish lizard, an advance that could eliminate the use of ball bearings in many products as well as industrial diamond dust in automobile air bags.
__________
[2] From Tim O'Reilly:
The electronic book marketplace is finally taking off! There has never been more competition either in electronic books, or for books, in the broader electronic "republic of letters." It is true, perhaps, in the narrow sense, that no other party will be able to do a mass digitization project on the scale of Google's - but that was already true. The barrier has always been the willingness to spend a lot of money for little return; the settlement doesn't change that. Meanwhile, the settlement provides absolutely no barrier to publishers providing their own digital copies, and this is in fact happening. At O'Reilly, we are selling digital copies of all our books through subscription services like Safari Books Online (which also includes thousands of books from other publishers), as direct downloads from our web site in pdf, mobi, and epub formats, and through emerging ebook channels like Amazon's Kindle, Stanza, and the iPhone app store.
___________
[3] From Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends:
Scientific American reports that Xcel Energy, a Minneapolis-based utility company, has started to test a new technology to store wind energy in batteries. The company is currently trying it in a 1,100 megawatts facility of wind turbines in Southern Minnesota. The company started this effort because 'the wind doesn't always blow and, even worse, it often blows strongest when people aren't using much electricity, like late at night.' It has received a $1 million grant from Minnesota's Renewable Development Fund and the energy plant should be operational in the first quarter of 2009. And if this project is successful, the utility expects to deploy many more energy plants before 2020 to avoid more polluting energy sources.
___________
[1] From the Washington Post:
In the past few years, entrepreneurs have developed and started marketing an array of inventions that imitate natural phenomena. For instance, the resurrection plant, a desert species common in Africa and Latin America, dries up and appears to be dead when water is scarce. It does so without breaking its cells' membranes, enabling it to revive when moisture returns. Researchers have learned to make some vaccines with a similar capability so they do not have to be refrigerated. Other inventors are developing friction-free surfaces modeled on the slippery skin of the Arabian Peninsula's sandfish lizard, an advance that could eliminate the use of ball bearings in many products as well as industrial diamond dust in automobile air bags.
__________
[2] From Tim O'Reilly:
The electronic book marketplace is finally taking off! There has never been more competition either in electronic books, or for books, in the broader electronic "republic of letters." It is true, perhaps, in the narrow sense, that no other party will be able to do a mass digitization project on the scale of Google's - but that was already true. The barrier has always been the willingness to spend a lot of money for little return; the settlement doesn't change that. Meanwhile, the settlement provides absolutely no barrier to publishers providing their own digital copies, and this is in fact happening. At O'Reilly, we are selling digital copies of all our books through subscription services like Safari Books Online (which also includes thousands of books from other publishers), as direct downloads from our web site in pdf, mobi, and epub formats, and through emerging ebook channels like Amazon's Kindle, Stanza, and the iPhone app store.
___________
[3] From Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends:
Scientific American reports that Xcel Energy, a Minneapolis-based utility company, has started to test a new technology to store wind energy in batteries. The company is currently trying it in a 1,100 megawatts facility of wind turbines in Southern Minnesota. The company started this effort because 'the wind doesn't always blow and, even worse, it often blows strongest when people aren't using much electricity, like late at night.' It has received a $1 million grant from Minnesota's Renewable Development Fund and the energy plant should be operational in the first quarter of 2009. And if this project is successful, the utility expects to deploy many more energy plants before 2020 to avoid more polluting energy sources.
___________
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