INNOVATION, 26 April 2006

INNOVATION, 26 April 2006
 
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Innovation Weekly reports on trends, strategies, and innovations in business
and technology, and is sponsored in part by Norwich University
<http://www.norwich.edu>, Animatrix Inc. <http://www.animatrix.com>, and our
loyal individual and institutional subscribers. The editors are John Gehl
and Suzanne Douglas, [email protected].
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TRENDS 
       Skyscraper as Ego Trip
       Robots on the Front Lines
       Services Science


STRATEGIES 
       How to Nurture Innovation
       Scrambled Hackz Challenges Copyrights
       Breaking Boundaries -- in Cooking and Business
       Multidisciplinary Design
 
INNOVATIONS
       Tiny Wireless Implant to Improve Cancer Treatment
       Smartball
       More Money for Scientific Research
 
SPONSORS
      Norwich University
      Animatrix Inc.
 
 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>TRENDS
 
SKYSCRAPER AS EGO TRIP
     Developers around the world have unveiled a flurry of new skyscraper
designs that challenge traditional notions of what tall buildings are
supposed to look like. For example, a tower in China owned by a tobacco
company is shaped like a cigarette pack. It will "breathe in" air to push
turbines that will power the entire building. A plan for a tripartite spire
in Moscow aims to be not only the tallest building in Europe, but also the
only modern skyscraper with a natural ventilation system. A design in
Louisville, Ky. looks like a three-legged chair. It's 22-story diagonal
elevator accesses a "floating island in the sky" art museum. To some
observers, these over-the-top swoops and curves reflect a top-of-the-market
mentality, as global real-estate tycoons pour money into notoriously
difficult-to-build stylized symbols of ego and economic strength. Strong
economies in Asia and the US, as well as oil-fueled booms in the Middle East
and Russia, are also driving the soaring spectacles. "Skyscrapers are always
a function of good economic times," says Carol Willis, founder of New York's
Skyscraper Museum. But the curves, bends and contortions of today's tall
buildings might also echo the skyscraper boom -- and eventual bust -- in the
late 1920s. While many famous spires went up before the 1929 stock-market
crash, Willis says there were "many more announcements for the tallest
building or eccentric designs, some brightly colored, that never got built."
(Wall Street Journal 19 Apr 2006 sub req'd)
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114538848836229002.html?mod=hps_us_editors_picks> 
 
ROBOTS ON THE FRONT LINES
     The US military is countering the risks from roadside bombs and
terrorist ambushes by replacing troops with battlefield robots, including
new versions armed with machine guns. "Just a few years ago we almost had to
beg people to try an unmanned ground vehicle," says Marine Col. Terry
Griffin, manager of the Robotic Systems Joint Project Office in Huntsville,
Ala. Not anymore. In Iraq, where improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are the
largest killer of U.S. troops, hundreds of small robots are helping bomb
squads examine or disarm explosives from a safe distance. Sophisticated new
ground- and sea-based robots are being developed and tested, including an
unmanned vehicle intended to patrol around domestic bases, self-driving
convoy trucks, and driverless versions of the Army's Stryker armored
personnel carrier. Robots that can enter a building, look for an enemy and
send back a map of the interior are being tested for the Marine Corps. The
military also is responding to some creative tinkering by the troops, who
have modified their robots to carry grenades and other weapons into
buildings or other potentially unsafe targets. "Soldiers and Marines are
very innovative," says Griffin. Meanwhile, much larger and more ambitious
robot weapons are in testing, including the tank-like, 1,600-pound
Gladiator, which can fire a variety of guns or tear gas. (USA Today 14 Apr
2006)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2006-04-13-robot-soldiers_x.htm>
 
SERVICES SCIENCE
Although computer science is now a fixture in higher education, a couple of
decades ago academic purists scoffed at the idea that it was a real science
-- and argued that any discipline to which the word "science" has to be
fixed is no science at all. Now the same kind of debate is taking place
about "services science." New York Times journalist Steve Lohr says that
"scientists and engineers tend to regard what is taught in business schools
as a mushy combination of anecdotes, success stories and platitudes, wrapped
in jargon. Put a few success stories together, and they become a 'best
practice'."  But one of service science's strongest defenders, Cal-Berkeley
professor Henry Chesbrough, argues: "We in academia have to find ways to
contribute research to improving our economic performance in services and to
help students succeed in this knowledge-based services economy." IBM, which
previously championed computer science, is now championing services science
by sponsoring workshops, awarding research grants and helping develop course
materials. In fact, IBM is itself one of the best examples of the shift
toward services, for it has evolved from being just a computer maker to a
company that 's moving into sophisticated technology services for every
aspect of business. (New York Times 18 Apr 2006)
<http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2006/04/18/business/18services.html&tntemail0=y<http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&amp;tntget=2006/04/18/business/18services.html&amp;tntemail0=y> >
 
 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>STRATEGIES
 
HOW TO NURTURE INNOVATION
     Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated, says Robert B. Tucker,
president of the consulting firm The Innovation Resource. If you've always
rewarded risk- avoidance and punished failure, and that's what moved
managers up the ladder of success, of course your people will be gun-shy
about innovating. Tucker recommends getting clear on exactly what actions,
decisions, cultural norms and values you've been rewarding. Then look for
ways to encourage different behaviors going forward. It's not enough to talk
about it. You'll need to get the word out that expectations are changing,
and that NOT innovating is the greater risk to one's career. Steer clear of
monetary rewards as a way to get attention, Tucker suggests. Recognition is
the most reliable reward of all. Properly motivated and recognized, even
seemingly ordinary contributors will do amazing things. Publicizing examples
of in-house innovation is another way to gain buy-in and reinforce new
behaviors. Not only does this shine a spotlight on people who dearly need
recognition, but you provide evidence that innovation isn't something that
only the Apples and the Googles can do. It's something your people are doing
too -- and need to do more of. Look for people who dream up new solutions to
customers' problems, who aren't content just to perfect the system but want
to originate bold new products, services and solutions and change the
system. (ThinkSmart 14 Apr 2006)
<http://thinksmart.typepad.com/headsup_on_organizational/2006/04/rewarding_risk_.html> 
 
SCRAMBLED HACKZ CHALLENGES COPYRIGHTS
     Is it a technology breakthrough, a copyright buster, or just a fancy
parlor trick? A video reviewed in Wired depicts a man demonstrating new
software called Scrambled Hackz. It appears to parse what he's saying fast
enough to reassemble the same words by pulling and reordering bits from a
recorded Michael Jackson interview. The result: Jackson appears to speak the
same sentence right back to him. Scrambled Hackz analyzes the audio portion
of a video file to determine the tempo of the incoming audio, and then
slices it up into discrete chunks of quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth
notes and so on. These slices are classified into a database according to
their sound characteristics. When you send it new audio information -- like
your voice -- the software outputs the pre-analyzed sample most similar to
that new input. Developer Sven König says, "I believed (and still do) that
IP is fundamentally wrongŠ and if that's the case it must be possible to
show that, not just by writing a text but by an artistic project. So the
original idea of (Scrambled Hackz) was just to somehow 'hack copyrightŠ' In
the beginning I just wanted to show that any of my own music could be
completely reconstructed out of very small samples of copyrighted music, to
ask the question of who now owns that music? Do I own it or do 30 other
musicians/ labels own my song?" (Wired 17 Apr 2006)
<http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70664-0.html?tw=wn_index_2>
 
BREAKING BOUNDARIES -- IN COOKING AND BUSINESS
     Stanford professor of organizational behavior Hayagreeva Rao studied
the French haute cuisine restaurant business to examine the more general
phenomenon of category crossover (such as country to pop; Bob Dylan's move
from acoustical to electric guitars; etc.).  What he found: "Most of the
boundary breakers were high-status chefs, and when the high-status person
begins to break out, others begin to imitate him. That's how categorical
boundaries weaken." His lessons for business people are, first, that there
is a strong link between innovation and authenticity. Second, that
diversification should not be thought of purely in technological terms but
also in terms of its cultural dimensions. Third, that innovation can
dissolve existing boundaries. Fourth, that innovators need to be
risk-takers, because innovation is a risky business -- in that "when
categories are rigid, people may not understand what you're doing when you
cross them." Rao concludes: "What managers need to realize is that a lot of
times they're operating in cultural space. If they don't come up with new
ways of doing things that take this into account, their businesses can
sometimes be hit hard." (Stanford Graduate School of Business Research News
Apr 2006) 
<http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/ob_rao_categoricalboundaries.shtml>
 
MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN
    There's a buzz these days about something called multidisciplinary
design, a concept explained this way by Harry West, vice president of
strategy and innovation at Design Continuum: "One thing I think we need to
be clear on is that multi-disciplinary design, in and of itself, does not
deliver real value. It's a means to an end. And the end that we're looking
for is that a team be able to have a really holistic view of the problem so
that they equally understand and equally respect the consumer's emotional
needs around a product or service offering ­ as well as the technical or
financial constraints around delivering that offering. Innovation often
happens not in the center of a discipline but in the spaces in-between the
disciplines. So, in order to find those opportunities, you need to have a
team that can see all of those different aspects and have equal respect for
those different considerations of a problem. What we have found is that we
need to have teams that include members who are very left-brained and very
right-brained with no hierarchy between the disciplines. What that means is
that somebody coming in from the best business school in the U.S. works
alongside as an equal with someone coming in from a design school."
(Innovate Forum 30 March 2006)
<http://www.innovateforum.com/innovate/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=316153>
 
 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>INNOVATIONS
 
TINY WIRELESS IMPLANT TO IMPROVE CANCER TREATMENT
     It's about the size of a grain of rice, but a tiny wireless device will
soon be telling doctors the exact location of cancer tumors, and even the
precise dose of radiation the tumor has received. Researchers at Purdue's
Birck Nanotechnology Center have already tested a dime-size prototype to
prove the concept, and expect to have the miniature version completed by the
end of summer. The passive wireless transponder requires no batteries; it's
powered by electrical coils placed next to the body. "It's like a capsule
placed into the tumor with a needle," explained Babak Ziaie, an associate
professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The
technology uses the same principle as simple electret microphones, which
contain a membrane that vibrates in response to sound waves. Between the
membrane and a metal plate an air gap serves as a capacitor, storing
electricity. As the membrane vibrates, the size of the air gap changes
slightly, increasing and decreasing the capacitance, and altering the flow
of electric current. This creates a signal that transmits information stored
in the dosimeter. The radiation dosimeter includes a tracking device in the
same capsule. It's hermetically sealed so that it will not have to be
removed from the body. (Purdue University News 17 Apr 2006)
<http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/2006/060417.Ziaie.cancer.html>
 
SMARTBALL
     The use of RFID (radio frequency identification) tags is by now
well-established in shipping, retailing, and other business applications
that have requirements to track the precise location of parcels or
inventory. Well, why not apply the same technology to the officiating of
football, soccer and other sports? Last year the world's governing soccer
authority experimented with a specially made ball from Adidas that contained
an RFID chip. The RFID tag in the "smartball" sends a signal to antennas
arranged around the field, and a computer, after determining the exact
location, sends the information to a wrist-worn device that can tell a
referee if a goal was scored or a ball went out of bounds. The system needs
to be given further testing, but it will surely be used by the NFL one of
these days. (SciTech Today 14 Apr 2006)
<http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=10300AQR2C8F>
 
MORE MONEY FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
     2006 may become the year the electronics industry finally got traction
in Washington, D.C. At his State of the Union address, President Bush
announced his American Competitiveness Initiative. The ACI proposes, among
other things, that the federal government double its investment in basic
research in the physical sciences over the next 10 years. Without that basic
research, many fear that US firms will slowly lose their technological edge
to overseas firms. The next step will be to focus on the details of the
actual spending bills as they appear in Congress. Four key agencies channel
most of the federal dollars dedicated to R&D: the National Science
Foundation, Department of Energy, National Institute of Standards and
Technology and the Department of Defense. Generally, these agencies award
grants that support the sort of basic research that may not lead directly to
salable product, but that may result in discoveries that advance the
industry as a whole. But the reality of this funding increase may not be
rosy as it sounds. A preliminary analysis by the American Association for
the Advancement of Science found the overall funding for R&D proposed in the
Bush administration 2007 budget will increase by only 1.9 percent over the
2006 budget, meaning it won't even keep up with an anticipated 2.2 percent
increase in inflation. (Electronic Business 1 Apr 2006)
<http://www.reed-electronics.com/eb-mag/article/CA6319557?pubdate=4/1/2006>
 
 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>SPONSORS
 
NORWICH UNIVERSITY 
 
A Student's View of the Norwich University Online Graduate Programs
 
"Almost weekly now I ponder how much my knowledge and career continues to be
strengthened by my relationship with Norwich!"
<http://www.graduate.norwich.edu>
          --Curtis Coleman, Student
 
ANIMATRIX INC.
 
Founded in 1984 by CEO and principal designer Marney Morris, Animatrix has
created interactive projects that have defined major strategic shifts for
clients like AT&T, The Limited, Clinique, Domino's Pizza, Perot Systems, and
the Walt Disney Company. Animatrix projects include intranets, web sites,
interfaces and stand-alone applications. Visit Animatrix at
<http://www.animatrix.com>
 
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