Innovation Watch - Online Intelligence

Dear Peter Thiel: Let’s Fix College, the Right Way (Mashable)

iw — Wed, 30 May 2012 23:43:25 +0000

Vivek Wadhwa – “You created this fellowship program to give students an alternative to college and tried to level the playing field by making it accessible to anyone with a smart idea. But many of the students selected were headed to elite schools anyway. And what about the average student who may not have the kind of ideas that get them into a program such as yours? Don’t you think they deserve similar opportunities? That’s why there has to be a better answer than the one you’ve given. So, I propose this. Why don’t we work to create more options for graduates to walk away from debt as the government lets businesses do, or as you and other investors let entrepreneurs do? And when it comes to educating future generations, why don’t we do things the Silicon Valley way: Change the equation with innovation. Technology, the very thing that made you who you are, can do that.” … Read more

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Designing a Life, Making Meaning: Simple Design Choices (Huffington Post)

iw — Tue, 29 May 2012 23:25:39 +0000

Douglas Crets – “Last week, I visited the Institute of Design (also known as the d.school) at Stanford University. Stuart Coulson, an adjunct professor at the school took me and my colleague Claire Lee around and gave us a little information about the school, its origins and what it was doing. I learned a few things I didn’t know. The d.school isn’t really a part of the University itself. It’s an independent organization in the school that students can take part in and get add-ons to their degree. The school is also using a $100 million grant to build micro-design and innovation centers all over the world. They are working in Africa pretty intensely, where Microsoft BizSpark will be in October at DEMO Africa. Inside the second floor design studio, I found a white board shown above. I have been looking at that phrase written across the bottom, written down by a student trying to figure out a design thesis. ‘Deep existential search for meaning.’ ” … Read more

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Greece Is Also Having a Social Crisis (Huffington Post)

iw — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:32:20 +0000

George Logothetis – “In a recent speech given to the Greek America Foundation, I shared my belief that Greece won’t find the solution until the larger Greek community recognizes that Greece is having a social crisis. We have a social crisis because we have forgotten the undercurrent of Hellenism that unites all Greeks, which in my view is philotimo. What is philotimo? The literal translation is “love of honor” but that translation does not capture the true meaning of the word. To me it means duty, loyalty, integrity, honor, love, trust, faith, and perhaps most important of all, pride in being decent. … Read more

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The Top Ten Myths of Modern China (Huffington Post)

iw — Sat, 19 May 2012 01:03:32 +0000

Tom Doctoroff – “The China hard landing drum is beating louder now than it was at the beginning of the year. Their call from an investment standpoint has been a lucrative one. But fundamentally and over the long haul, China’s place as the world’s No. 2 economic power is secure. In fact, China is likely to become the economic superpower within a generation. By most estimates from groups like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the Chinese economy will be bigger than that of the U.S. within a decade or two at the latest. Their national per capita income will double, putting once poor, dollar a day China on par with Western nations when it comes to aggregate middle class purchasing power. In my new book, What China Wants, I write that much of Western analysis on China has been overly alarmist.” … Read more

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The Key to Successful Eco-Innovation? Timing (Huffington Post)

iw — Sat, 19 May 2012 00:01:44 +0000

I had a great talk the other day about the timing of innovation with Rahul Raj, Director of Sustainability and Merchandising Innovation at Wal-Mart. We were introduced through colleagues at Sustainable Brands, a conference Raj is speaking at this June. As we’d both attended several SB shows over the years, our chat naturally started with the metamorphosis of CSR reflected in the yearly events. “I’ve seen sustainability evolve from being a bolt-on risk mitigation tool to something built into the company, to part of a company’s DNA” Raj reflected. “I see the Method model, where CSR is baked into the company charter, as the next step.” … Read more

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Outsourcing is Widening the Urban-Rural Divide in India (Tech Republic)

iw — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:14:46 +0000

Sankalp Waingankar – “I recently read an article on Tech Republic that showcased how women in India are being benefited by outsourcing and offshoring. While I completely agree with the views expressed by the writer, I think it is equally important to look at the other side of the coin. Outsourcing has also caused a lot of problems in the Indian economy. Let me clarify here that I am one of those who were highly benefited by the outsourcing and offshoring trend in the US. For the longest period of time, I had seen nothing but advantages for India in the outsourcing trend. My views, although, were challenged when I started visiting the interiors of India while doing a project for the Indian government. That was the first time that I had come face-to-face with the ‘Real India.’ ” … Read more

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The Pink Collar Future (Open the Future)

iw — Sun, 13 May 2012 15:03:01 +0000

The claim that robots are taking our jobs has become so commonplace of late that it’s a bit of a cliché. Nonetheless, it has a strong element of truth to it. Not only are machines taking “blue collar” factory jobs — a process that’s been underway for years, and no longer much of a surprise except when a company like Foxconn announces it’s going to bring in a million robots (which are less likely to commit suicide, apparently) — but now mechanized/digital systems are quickly working their way up the employment value chain. “Grey collar” service workers have been under pressure for awhile, especially those jobs (like travel agent) that involve pattern-matching; now jobs involving the composition of structured reports (such as basic journalism) have digital competition, and Google’s self-driving car portends a future of driverless taxicabs. But even “white collar” jobs, managerial and supervisory in particular, are being threatened — in part due to replacement, and in part due to declining necessity. … Read more

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Larry Lessig on Facebook, Apple, and the Future of “Code” (Searchblog)

iw — Sun, 13 May 2012 14:23:15 +0000

John Battelle – “Larry Lessig is an accomplished author, lawyer, and professor, and until recently, was one of the leading active public intellectuals in the Internet space. But as I wrote in my review of his last book (Is Our Republic Lost?), in the past few years Lessig has changed his focus from Internet law to reforming our federal government. But that doesn’t mean Lessig has stopped thinking about our industry, as the dialog below will attest. Our conversation came about last month after I finished reading Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2. The original book, written in 1999, is still considered an authoritative text on how the code of computing platforms interacts with our legal and social codes. In 2006, Lessig crowdsourced an update to his book, and released it as Version 2.0.” … Read more

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Kill The Company (Forbes)

iw — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:45:26 +0000

Scott Goodson – “I am convinced that revolutionary leaders bent on innovation will take over the universe. With the status quo in just about every industry sucking wind, there is a new book out there that is kicking in teeth and helping business leaders – and marketers – take it to the next level. Recently, I wrote in the Harvard Business Review digital edition a piece entitled “Marketing in Revolutionary Times.” I asked “how does a smart business respond in a time of heightened passions and greater activism?” And suggested that you run the risk of being out of step with your customers, if you fail to respond to this shift in the culture, with your company looking like a status quo brand in a revolutionary world.” … Read more

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Innovation Ecosystem: A Global Shift in Capitalism? (Huffington Post)

iw — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:36:28 +0000

Adam Marsh – “On global and local scales, there is a large shift in how novel ideas and discoveries can quickly establish market relevance and commercial significance. The acquisition of Instagram by Facebook for US$ 1B may seem aberrant, but it clearly marks recent trend boundaries. As a co-founder of a small biotech, informatics based, academic startup company, this has led me to wonder how a young company like Instagram could have achieved such stunning success so quickly.” … Read more

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Here’s Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years (Forbes)

iw — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:08:35 +0000

Eric Jackson – “We think of Google and Facebook as Web gorillas. They’ll be around forever. Yet, with the rate that the tech world is moving these days, there are good reasons to think both might be gone completely in 5 – 8 years. Not bankrupt gone, but MySpace gone. And there’s some academic theory to back up that view, along with casual observations from recent history.” … Read more

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Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. By Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. Crown Publishers.

iw — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 04:10:37 +0000

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions — with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today. … Read more

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