Extreme uncertainty over startups as a solution to everything
Startups attempt innovation under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Is it possible that we can find new ways to solve the world’s biggest problems using ‘extreme uncertainty’?
Are governments really listening to innovation investors?
The iij compares innovation-friendly policy suggestions offered prior to the UK budget with the measures that were actually announced by the chancellor
What did the budget do for UK innovation investors?
Of the incentives announced in the budget, perhaps the most important for innovation may be the increase in the rate of income tax relief. Share scheme specialist Russell Eisen compares the chancellor’s announcements with innovation champion Julie Meyer’s pre-budget suggestions
Maybe Scoble got it wrong and Convofy isn’t just the future of work
Robert’s insight into Adobe’s next OS was probably right, perhaps he just didn’t take it far enough
The angel scene: how much has changed since September?
You’ll probably scrutinise ‘angel disruptus maximus’ Naval Ravikant’s latest video much more thoroughly than I have, just to see how his predictions have changed since the last talk of his that we covered
Sneak preview of MIT research into robot humanisation
Can we build robots that can be taught in the same way that humans teach each other? That’s not how we teach robots now. Is this the way to make robots more useful in natural disasters?
Photosynth as a metaphor for an even bigger challenge
Remember the software that could use lots of casually taken photos of a scene and somehow combine them into a 3D model that you could then navigate in a breathtakingly intuitive way? Well, what if you could do the same with independently created scientific research databases?
Innovation videos: making sure they’re not ignored
Fail to do most of the things below, and you risk the likelihood that even an outstanding presentation will be consigned to oblivion. Most innovation videos uploaded to YouTube are let down by things that are easily prevented
Thousands of lean startup devotees bravely endure shaky YouTube video
Yes, it’s Eric Ries classic ‘Minimum Viable Product’ presentation. It’s so absorbing that you soon stop noticing the jitters. Oh, and no, you can’t even cheat by just listening to it. There are slides. And if you saw it in 2009 but you did nothing about it, shame on you, it’s time to watch it again.
Which UK universities offer innovation management degrees?
Management may be a ‘Cinderella issue’ in the innovation news space, eclipsed by social media, entrepreneurship and mobile technology. Nonetheless, academia is responding to growing industry demands for accredited innovation management capability
Sound bites are just not enough: what is Jeff Immelt really like?
This video of about an hour gives us a long look at the man and tells you quite a lot about what he thinks about leadership and innovation. Does it give us enough to help us predict how he’ll do in his new position as leader of the new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness?
The iij Top Ten Startup Books for the start of 2011
Shame on us for not managing to get a top ten startup book list out at the end of last year, but most of these titles are barely a month old. Some are obvious choices, but others are quite specialised and deserve more attention than they’ve received
Where are the droids we’re looking for?
Are we on the threshold of Asimov’s robot dreams? We can’t make humanoids useful enough. We can’t make them cheap enough. Why not?
Required reading for the intrepid innovation reporter
Those of us afflicted by the innovation reporting bug, confronted daily by a seemingly limitless diversity of complex issues, need all the help we can get
Ron Conway, archangel, on video, on how it all began
He’s been investing in a new company every six days for fifteen years. What’s that like? He secured Google’s first Venture Capital when Google had six people. What was that like?
Are innovators their own worst enemies?
We innovation cheerleaders leave a lot of ruffled feathers behind us as we urge the sweeping away of the long-established. Do we care?
Who IS this guy?
Never heard of Oliver Kreylos? You will. He’s just transformed the Kinect from a hands-free game controller into a holographic camera. The demo blew many minds, quickly getting a million YouTube hits. He didn’t think it was that impressive: check out what he’s working on now
Creating capability: finding the founders of the future
I’m building a theory on how Y Combinator gets such amazing results. I’ve concluded that it has nothing to do with the usual suspects
Why not pay the unemployed to create startups?
Or how you might create the really big society. Yes, it will probably create some serious chaos. But who said being disruptive should be tidy?
Unlikely tale of a bike created by twiddling three buttons
One of the great music biz anecdote clips, Jim Steinman’s surprising gifts as a gonzo raconteur prove worthy of the acknowledged master of that art, Peter Ustinov
A phone that morphs into a tablet
What are the next generation of phones going to look like? There hasn’t been a radically new ‘phone form factor’ for a while. Perhaps the iPad and its ‘larger than a phone’ screen size will drive a whole new generation of phone design ideas
Would replacing some bankers with meteorologists have prevented the crisis?
It wasn’t greed after all. Neuroscience shows that experts make illogical decisions when confronted with unprecedented circumstances, because experience can force you to unconsciously override logic in favour of your established beliefs. Experts in entirely unrelated fields need to be brought in on crucial decisions
Calculations which affect just about everything sped up a billion times
The issues are enormous, the implications profound. What we’re being told is incredibly exciting. But some really important questions seem to have been left unaanswered
Tomorrow’s digital licensing: what are the issues?
If you bought into all the hubris about the ‘inevitable’ demise of charging for content, you might imagine that debating the future of licensing was pointless. Or just dull. Watching this might change your mind
Innovation issue missing from Wikipedia right now (hopefully not for long)
Green Engineering is not only ‘using engineering to do sustainable things’, it is also about ‘how to do all engineering in a sustainable way’
Does the idea of “turning everything into a game” just sound silly to you?
Then you may be behind the times. Your business might soon be someone else’s football and you may become nothing more than their pawn. Just because business is only just starting to realise that turning everything into a game can work, doesn’t mean that you can afford to just sit back and wait for the results
What’s authenticity got to do with innovation?
This video doesn’t ask or answer that question. But it makes it clear that something highly relevant to both of these issues is heading our way and it’s on a collision course with the way we think about everything.
Who is Mr Prediction in Tech?
This year was expected to be so full of unprecedented upheavals that getting it right would be tougher than ever.
Priceless video: father and son grappling with the past, present and future of design
Alex Bogusky, legendary poster boy for the ad business, rashly decides to interview his dad online. The outcome reveals what looks like a stormy relationship between a ‘designer parent’ and a ‘designer child’
Why does ‘formal transparency’ often still seem so opaque?
Many public organisations have been ‘formally transparent’ for centuries, yet the more detail they publish about their proceedings, the less we seem to understand about what they do. Are there new ways to fix this broken process?
Is it a game? a learning tool? a programming language?
Whatever it is, it’s been around for years, I’d never heard of it and it’s become a huge educational phenomenon: it’s been used to create over a million projects
Gave content away free, raised live show seat price 50% to $6,000: still sold out
TED risked everything by putting their precious content online for nothing, but it paid off, they are now bigger than ever: the future is live
What does it take to be a leadership guru?
Hidden away in an old ‘speaking showreel’ on YouTube: a showcase of the exceptional talents of René Carayol
Innovation cocktail recipe: insurance plus poverty
It’s got a market of four billion people: other ingredients include creativity, technology and an appetite for change: it’s called microinsurance
What is “pull” education and why does it matter?
Compulsory curriculum teaching (“push”) only works for those who don’t need to be pushed very hard: for the remaining billions on the planet, it’s often just too expensive to push
Watch influencers offer predictions on major tech acquisitions
The second half of 2010 is looking better than last year, a surge is expected, heralding a very hectic end of year M&A traffic jam
The quango as heroic green knight?
Private equity hesitancy contrasted with prompt public funding of green innovation
The valley’s angel scene is going crazy
It’s unrecognisable from just a few years ago: lots more angels, much bigger sums, many more investments
What’s wrong with the way we think about education?
The old educational model of ‘compulsory knowledge consumption’ is still here, but becoming shockingly irrelevant
Who is todays greatest innovation visionary?
In the 60s and 70s, the title ‘Oracle of the electric age’ was given to one man
What role does ‘synthesis’ play in the design process?
It’s the missing link, halfway between discovering an original idea and using it to make something new: this video tries to explain how it works
What is this thing called Transmedia?
And what really happened at 8pm on the 17th of November 1978?
Haunted by the price of commercial success: using up the planet’s resources
Who you gonna call? These guys aren’t Ghostbusters, but they do believe they’ve discovered how to banish the spectre of industrial wastefulness
Birds do it: but can we fly without destroying the planet?
This fascinating Stanford University video explores what can be done to make aviation more sustainable
How relevant are ‘parenting issues’ to today’s innovation investment?
Checking out these news stories may help you decide
A tale of two planes
Different dreams, startlingly brought to reality, but still mostly futuristic dreams for most of us
Getting old, dying and other endangered ideas
A long-awaited documentary examines human mortality. The controversy is more about separating science from pseudo-science than about longevity
iij secrets on display?
Ok, we confess: we wish we could say that TED videos were made by us
What on earth is an Anthropreneur?
Need to attack poverty, environmental and language issues simultaneously? Then maybe you need one of these: as far as inspiring videos go, I haven’t seen anything much better than this
Underwhelmed by interfaces? Want to see what’s coming next?
Spielberg’s ‘Minority Report Interface’ guru tells us all what he’s been working on