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MIT Technology Review reports on new advances in implantable device technology -- thin, flexible silicon electronics built on silk substrates, resulting in electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body. Says the report, "These electronics don't need protection [from the body], and the silk means the electronics conform to biological tissue. The silk melts away over time and the thin silicon circuits left behind don't cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick." The research that has made this possible took place on several fronts, including the development of flexible, stretchable silicon circuits that perform as well as more traditional rigid circuits, and making such circuits bio-compatible. 

Applications could include "silk-silicon LEDs that might act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, as well as arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system," according to the article. The same research group is currently designing electrodes built on silk as interfaces for the nervous system. Such electrodes could integrate much better with biological tissues than existing electrodes, which either pierce the tissue or sit on top of it. Electrodes built on silk could be wrapped around individual peripheral nerves to help control prostheses.

Purdue University researchers have made a breakthrough in designing cooling systems with highly efficient heat-transfer rates, reports CNet News. These researchers have developed and tested new mathematical formulas concerning the properties of boiling liquids in "microchannels," which are tiny channels through which fluid is directed in some types of high-power electronic cooling systems. The idea is that "allowing a liquid to boil in cooling systems dramatically increases how much heat can be removed, compared to simply heating a liquid to below its boiling point," according to the researchers' report. "Boiling occurs differently in tiny channels than it does in ordinary size tubing used in conventional cooling systems," lead researcher Dr. Suresh Garimella said in a statement. The results of this research could be used to improve cooling systems for computer chips and hybrid cars. 

Microsoft’s recently launched OneApp software has the developing world talking. The application ‘smartens’ standard, basic phones — technically known as ‘feature’ phones — by allowing users one-stop access to applications like Windows Live Messenger, Twitter, and Facebook. Given that billions of people in the developing world do not own computers or smart phones, the feature phone is their only computing device. By allowing feature phones to tap into apps, Microsoft is bringing both convenience and access to the developing world. The addition of applications to phones is stale news for smart phone users. Yet, for those with cheap, crummy phones, OneApp has exciting disruptive potential.

For a number of reasons, OneApp is quite special. The product is as easily downloadable as a ringtone, which drastically reduces unnecessary installation time while enabling processing within meager memory capacity. Unlike apps on ‘smart phones’ like the iPhone that are accessed through app stores, OneApp software is offered through network operators who pre-determine the bundled set of offered apps. Such a configuration allows operators to centrally store and update the apps, increasing convenience for users. Under such an arrangement, users would have no concern for the local storage of their apps and would not have to comb through a store in search for an appropriate app. Also conveniently included is cloud service, a feature that improves overall performance and assists by offloading processing and storage to the Internet.

Equally intriguing is OneApp’s potential to “trickle-up.” Traditionally, sophisticated products are created in rich countries and later de-featured and repackaged for the emerging markets. Recently, a few products have reversed this process. One example is GE’s $2,500 echocardiograph machine. Initially designed for Indian and Chinese doctors who typically travel long distances to see their remote patients, the device is now making inroads in developed countries due to its effectiveness, compact size, energy efficiency and very low retail price. With similarly profound market potential, OneApp could be a major coup for Microsoft.

Although Microsoft eventually intends to unveil OneApp to the rest of the developing world, the application is currently only available in South Africa. Microsoft offers OneApp through a partnership with Blue Label Telecoms, a “mobile wallet” offerings company that is already revolutionizing the South African payments space. In a country where carrying cash is very dangerous because of high crime rates, mobile wallet allows customers to access and transfer money using their handsets. With this application, and the help of BLT, Microsoft has taken a step towards turning every phone in the developing world into a sophisticated, cost effective and user friendly device.

Microsoft’s OneApp software is highly attractive to markets in the developing world by virtue of being simple, convenient, affordable and accessible. By sacrificing raw performance in order to give customers something that is more accessible and more affordable, OneApp holds true disruptive potential. Of course, the ultimate success of the product depends on Microsoft’s execution, and competitor’s reactions. But for now, courtesy of OneApp, that $20 phone just got a lot smarter.

 

On August 19, 3M introduced the first electronic stethoscope with Bluetooth functionality. Adding Bluetooth solves a problem that has plagued electronic stethoscopes -- they can capture sounds that are hard for the ear to hear using an analog stethoscope, but taking those sounds off the devices for analysis has proved difficult. The new stethoscope can send its data to a Bluetooth-enabled computer, and comes with software to allow doctors to interpret the data. The sounds can also be sent as an audio file to other doctors for second opinions. The goal is to give physicians better information with which to make diagnoses and potentially cut down on the use of unnecessary referrals to specialists in some cases. While the stethoscopes now are only compatible with Windows XP and Vista, reportedly there will be Blackberry support in the future, which could make the electronic stethoscopes attractive for physicians who use PDAs.

This Wired article discusses advances in structural DNA nanotechnology, a field now beginning to show promise. DNA has a unique capacity for precise self-assembly, and scientists have been experimenting with using DNA as a building material for nanotech. According to the article, "Scientists in the burgeoning field of structural DNA nanotechnology are exploring DNA’s potential as raw material for next-generation circuits, sensors, and biomedical devices. Advocates say it could become the new go-to material for engineers, scientists, and clinicians." 

One example of a use for structural DNA nanotechnology: "biocomputers" made from DNA, RNA, and protein that respond to biological signals. For example, A DNA-based sensor that recognizes RNA messages produced because of cancer or viral infection could trigger the release of RNA or DNA strands with therapeutic properties.

The article also notes challenges: many in the scientific community are still skeptical, and it is difficult to recruit scientists to work in a field noted for its interdisciplinary nature — structural DNA nanotechnology brings together elements of biology, physics, chemistry, computer science, and materials.

 

Recently, a couple of interesting articles (here and here) in the New York Times detailed new research into glass. The true physical nature of glass remains somewhat mysterious — one article points out that "although there has long been debate as to whether glass is a solid or liquid, it is now usually described as an amorphous solid (there is no evidence that it flows, extremely slowly, over time as a liquid)." Yet there is still disagreement among scientists about the exact nature of glass.

Scientists are still probing this question because answering it could lead to a number of breakthroughs: "Understanding glass would not just solve a longstanding fundamental (and arguably Nobel-worthy) problem and perhaps lead to better glasses. That knowledge might benefit drug makers, for instance. Certain drugs, if they could be made in a stable glass structure instead of a crystalline form, would dissolve more quickly, allowing them to be taken orally instead of being injected. The tools and techniques applied to glass might also provide headway on other problems, in material science, biology and other fields, that look at general properties that arise out of many disordered interactions. Scientists are also probing into the potential building uses of types of glass other than the typical soda lime glass most often used now. And they are experimenting with new materials and methods that could someday lead to glass structures that are unmarked by metal or other materials. 

 

Image courtesy of the New York Times

About two months ago, a colleague convinced me to sign up for Verified Identity Pass' Clear service. I dutifully filled in the forms, had the company capture my fingerprints and take pictures of my iris, forked over a couple hundred bucks, and received my Clear pass in the mail.

I wouldn't quite say the Clear card changed my life, but the next couple months of travel (at airports that had special Clear lines) were a breeze. I made at least one flight because of Clear. I started recommending the service to my colleagues.

Then, last week, a sad email arrived in my inbox:

"At 11:00 p.m. PST today, Clear will cease operations. Clear's parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations."

I'm honestly not all that surprised at this outcome. Clear was a beautiful technological solution. The machines worked reliably, processing my fingerprints almost instantaneously. The service delivered on its value proposition.

But I couldn't help but notice how Clear employees always outnumbered Clear customers in my visits to Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati.

While I have no inside knowledge about Verified's operations, I'm willing to wager that the company fell into two traps that make it hard for innovators to build new growth businesses.

Read the rest at Scott's Havard Management blog, Innovation Insights.

 

The modernization of our electricity infrastructure – the so called Smart Grid revolution – is underway, and not a moment too soon. As an interesting overview in a recent Wired made clear, the grid was cobbled together in ad hoc fashion over the last century, and is largely one-way, mechanical, and dumb. That’s why a storm in Ohio can plunge New York City into darkness; why, as energy guru Amory Lovins preaches, every electron saved at the point of use offsets the production of three to four times that many electrons at the source (e.g. a coal fired power plant); and why the Department of Homeland Security is so concerned about terrorists targeting our power infrastructure.  In short, our archaic patchwork of a grid is vulnerable, inefficient and unreliable. It is quite damaging economically and environmentally.

Smart Grid – the application of computing and two way control to the electric infrastructure – is the solution, but it is a massive undertaking (the Obama administration has pledged upwards of $40 billion as part of the stimulus package alone). History has demonstrated that infrastructural shifts of this sort tend to be massively inefficient.  Our research suggests that a great deal of this inefficiency stems from the widespread inability of incumbents and start-ups alike to create the new business models required by new markets.

In short, grid modernization will yield immediate gains in control, efficiency, and security – at a considerable cost. We’d like to see that cost offset by the advent of new business models that open up new avenues of growth.

Indeed, Smart Grid promises to enable a number of new business model opportunities. It is widely considered the missing link that will make renewable energy work: the promise of decentralized renewables is blunted by our current grid, as it does little good to have solar panels on your roof if you can’t sell excess energy back to the system. Someone has to design a scalable system that enables widespread deployment.

Another Smart Grid development we’ve been monitoring is demand response. Companies like EnerNOC optimize energy use throughout an opt-in network of office parks and industrial plants. It turns out that as much as 10 percent of the overall cost of electricity – and a similarly outsize proportion of the pollution – comes from just 1 percent of electricity generation. This is because our grid functions in an incremental, as-needed fashion; we operate at just enough capacity at all times. The grid strains and sometimes breaks on hot summer days when everyone turns on their air conditioners at the same time. To meet the excess demand, power companies have to rev up old, dirty, and expensive backup generators. EnerNOC and its peers practice “peak shaving”; they reduce systemic load at critical times by coordinating lower energy usage across their network, which in turn enables power companies to avoid using their most expensive generators.  Everyone shares the savings that result.

We’ve been excited about demand response for some time because it uses an innovative business model to solve a pressing problem. Rather than simply extending the old and expensive model by building a new power plant, we can now manage the grid in a more intelligent and much more cost-effective way.

The utilities analyst at a leading green mutual fund recently pointed me towards an innovation that makes demand response even more exciting. A company called Ice Energy is adding a relatively low-tech piece of capital equipment to the equation (pictured above); they attach a chiller to conventional air conditioning systems in the buildings they manage that freezes water at night when electricity is cheap (and relatively clean). They then use the ice to moderate temperatures during the day, when electricity is expensive. The company claims that air conditioning accounts for 40 to 50 percent of a building’s peak energy use, and that their system can cut air conditioning electricity requirements by 95 percent.

We like this approach because it wraps an innovative business model around existing technology to get a job done. This is akin to Netflix making DVD-by-mail work, rather than focusing on Blu-Ray or digital delivery, or, in another cleantech example, Better Place building a recharging and battery swapping infrastructure that enables electric mobility with today’s limited batteries. Innovative business models that make proven technologies work better are not at the whim of unpredictable technology development and uptake. They are, in other words, the most predictably efficient way to achieve transformation.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have patented a new acoustic shielding technology that will allow for private conversations in open office settings. The technology is reminiscent of the purpose, if not the look, of the "cone of silence" from the 1960s Get Smart television show. According to New Scientist, the solution includes a sensor network to work out where potential eavesdroppers are, and speakers to generate a subtle masking sound. Acoustic shielding is not a new concept, but workable solutions have been slow to emerge, perhaps because of the difficulty. Current solutions include portable devices that emit white noise and a device that masks certain speech frequencies within a specific range of distance. The MIT-developed technology, in contrast, is more complicated and meant to track people as they move around a space. The New Scientist article describes the technology this way: "The walls of the room must be peppered with light-switch-sized units that include a microphone, a speaker, an infrared location sensor and networking circuitry connected to a server. When somebody wants to activate what the MIT researchers call the 'sound shield', they do so on their desktop computer. Knowing the position of the computer, the sensors identify the person and map out the locations of people around them. Software assesses who is so close that they must be participants in the conversation, and who might be a potential eavesdropper. The array of speakers then aims a mix of white noise and randomised office hubbub at the eavesdroppers. The subtle, confusing sound makes the conversation unintelligible."

 

 

• World Innovation Forum Twitter Feed

  Displays all Twitter posts tagged #wif09, which is the tag used by the dozen-plus bloggers who attended the May 5-6 event in New York. Still being updated with post-conference blog posts, and if you read back you can see the real-time posts that went up while the conference was going on.

• Malcolm Gladwell: How David Beats Goliath (New Yorker)

  Echoing Clay Christensen's theories of how low-end disruptions take down large, well-established incumbents, Gladwell explores cases in which small competitors beat stronger opponents. The "Davids" win a large percentage of the time when they manage to change the rules of the game to mask their weaknesses and render their larger opponent's strengths irrelevant.

• Innovation: How your search queries can predict the future (New Scientist)

  A look at the predictive nature of search queries.

• Tom Morris: Adaptation and The Art of Change (The Huffington Post)

  Apt advice for these times on how to personally adapt to change.

•  A Crash Course in Emerging Technologies (FT.com)

  A new, pseudo-academic institution called Singularity ­University, established on Nasa's Silicon Valley campus, is going to "solve our grand challenges: poverty, hunger, energy scarcity and climate change."

 

A new wireless microsensor that measures oxygen levels in brain could become the basis for tiny devices to help test drugs and other treatments for patients with traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, and other conditions, report scientists from Italy and Ireland who have been working on the technology. In addition to being much smaller than current brain monitoring technologies, the new microsensor gives second-by-second, real-time readings of brain oxygen levels that help provide a better understanding of the brain in health and disease, the researchers say.

Other research by Harvard University Professor George Whitesides has resulted in diagnostics devices made of paper. The result is a disposable, quick, inexpensive test that can check a tiny amount of urine or blood for evidence of infectious diseases or chronic conditions. The finished devices are squares of paper roughly the size of postage stamps. The edge of a square is dipped into a urine sample or pressed against a drop of blood, and the liquid moves through channels into testing wells. Depending on the chemicals present, different reactions occur in the wells, turning the paper blue, red, yellow, or green. A reference key is used to interpret the results. The test could make diagnosis much more effective in undeveloped areas. For example, in order to use the devices in remote locations without medical facilities, the researchers have also begun work on coupling the paper tests with cell phones, so that the results can be photographed, sent to a center, and read by a technician who can send recommendations back via phone.

Image courtesy of Discover magazine.

 

Last week MIT Technology Review reported that an advisory panel for the FDA has recommended the approval of a new implantable telescope for the eye that could help with vision loss from macular degeneration, an age-related eye disease that is the leading cause of blindness in people age 65 and older, affecting more than 10 million Americans.

Macular degeneration damages the center of the retina, called the macula, which is especially important for reading, watching television, and recognizing faces. As the Technology Review article points out, while some treatments exist to slow progression of the disease, no treatments are currently available for those in the latest stages of the disease, who have irreversible damage to the macula. An estimated 50,000 to 70,000 people per year fall into this category.

The new implant, developed by start-up VisionCare Technology of Saratoga, CA, consists of two lenses within a small glass tube. Once implanted inside the eye, it works like a fixed telephoto lens, acting in conjunction with the cornea to project a magnified image of whatever the wearer is looking at over a large part of the retina. Because only the central parts of the retina are damaged in the disease, magnifying the image on the eye allows the retinal cells outside the macula to detect the object and send that information to the brain.

The device is implanted in only one eye -- patients use this eye for detailed vision and the untreated eye for peripheral vision. That takes some getting used to, says Eli Peli, a scientist at The Schepens Eye Research Institute, who has consulted for VisionCare. "Instead of using two parts of the same eye, they must switch between two eyes; if they see someone coming but can't tell who it is, they need to switch to other eye."

The device is expected to win final FDA approval in late 2009 and will be on the market in the U.S. shortly thereafter.

(Photo courtesy of VisionCare)

 

According to Wired, University of Hawaii roboticist Peter Berkelman has developed a robot-assisted surgery droid for just $75,000, while higher-end surgery droids can cost more than $1 million and require extensive set-up. Berkelman's version isn't good enough for higher-end surgeries but is small enough to fit in a soldier's backpack and easy to set up. It could certainly be good enough for removing shrapnel and handling other battlefield injuries. The technology is still in the testing stage. 

The New York Times reported recently that South Korean scientists say they have made a significant advance toward the development of flexible electronics devices that might be used in “smart” clothing or in foldable displays that could make reading news online more like reading it in print. The researchers described a technique for making stretchable thin electrodes out of graphene, a single-layer sheet of carbon atoms. In addition to being nearly transparent and having excellent electrical characteristics, the films are unaffected by bending or stretching. And the researchers say the process is scalable, so relatively large films can be made.

• Cisco Plans Big Push Into Server Market - NYTimes.com

  Cisco plans to release a server equipped with virtualization software, a product that "threatens to shake up the technology industry and put the company on a collision course with traditional partners like Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M. ... [this] is a bold but risky move by Cisco into an unfamiliar, intensely competitive market that typically produces far lower profits than Cisco makes from network gear. ... Cisco’s push into the server market...could cause an all-out war among the tech titans for one another’s customers."

  
  

• Asleep at the Wheel of Creative Destruction - Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org

  "Wall Street's moral hazard has a mirror image.. The perverse irony of the collapse of industrial-era capitalism isn't just that Wall St ended up being massively risk seeking, taking bets it never should have. It's also that venture capitalists ended up being risk averse - never making the bets they should have. ... Venture investors have been free to take hidden action that maximizes their own near-term returns - underinvesting in radical innovation."

  
  

• The New Reality: Constant Disruption - The Big Shift - HarvardBusiness.org

  John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison argue that "equilibrium is a thing of the past" because "Today's core technologies--computing, storage, and bandwidth -- are not stabilizing. They continue to evolve at an exponential rate. And because the underlying technologies don't stabilize, the social and business practices that coalesce into our new digital infrastructure aren't stabilizing either. Businesses and, more broadly, social, educational, and economic institutions, are left racing to catch up with the steadily improving performance of the foundational technologies."

  
  

From MIT's Technology Review: Wilbraham, MA-based FloDesign Wind Turbine has developed a wind turbine that could generate electricity at half the cost of conventional turbines. The company's design, which draws on technology developed for jet engines, circumvents a fundamental limit to conventional wind turbines. Typically, as wind approaches a turbine, almost half of the air is forced around the blades rather than through them, and the energy in that deflected wind is lost. At best, traditional wind turbines capture only 59.3 percent of the energy in wind, a value called the Betz limit. FloDesign surrounds its wind-turbine blades with a shroud that directs air through the blades and speeds it up, which increases power production. The new design generates as much power as a conventional wind turbine with blades twice as big in diameter. The smaller blade size and other factors allow the new turbines to be packed closer together than conventional turbines, increasing the amount of power that can be generated per acre of land. It's plausible that such a design could double or triple a turbine's power output, says Paul Sclavounos, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. This design could potentially halve the cost of generating electricity from wind.

MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera (pictured at lower right) and post-doc Matthew Kanan recently unveiled a discovery that may represent a major energy breakthrough: a new compound that promises to enable large-scale adoption of truly decentralized, at-home solar power. The researchers focused on harnessing solar energy, since it enables clean, carbon-free power generation and is abundantly available. In this video clip on the discovery, Nocera puts the promise of solar in context: “In around one hour, the amount of sun that hits the face of the earth is what we use in an entire year globally for our energy.” (See the MIT Technology Review cover story on Nocera's research here.)

Until now, however, solar has been constrained by its inherent intermittency; power is only generated when the sun is shining, and storing any excess power produced during the day has been prohibitively expensive for at-home use. Batteries are costly, and solutions such as compressed air storage do not represent feasible options in small-scale applications. In places where the energy infrastructure allows it, excess power can be sold back to the grid, but this stop-gap solution is still reliant on the relative inefficiencies of our 20th-century energy system.

In contrast, the catalyst Nocera and Kanan discovered represents the crucial new component of a simple, inexpensive, and reportedly highly efficient water electrolysis system with negligible maintenance and replacement costs.

How does it work? Excess solar energy is used to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen for separate storage and subsequent re-combination in fuel cells when energy is needed.  As Nocera points out in the video linked above, the researchers are hoping that their discovery will lead to homes that capture solar energy themselves by using their efficient process to convert sunlight into chemical energy for use when the sun is not shining.

While the electrolysis of water is a well-known process, it has traditionally been expensive due to reliance on noble metals and the inefficiencies of oxygen extraction in non-benign environments. The new catalyst that extracts oxygen consists of cobalt and phosphate covering a conducting material such as glass or graphite. These materials are widely available and thus cheap. Placed in water, cobalt and phosphate ions form a thin film on the electrode when a positive potential is applied and produce oxygen gas.

The new catalyst works well in neutral water at room temperature and under normal atmospheric pressure – in contrast to the traditional industrial water electrolysis process. The solution looks to create precisely the benign, inexpensive, and easy-to-set-up environment preferable for at-home use.

Scientists have been able to extract hydrogen from water easily for a long time, but only the simultaneous extraction of oxygen avoids the production of undesired hydroxide. Hydrogen is typically produced using platinum-based electrodes, but Nocera also announced plans for a full system design that includes a replacement for the noble metal, which would decrease the price of the energy storage system further.

Two additional aspects make the technology even more elegant. First, the cobalt and phosphate ions on the cathode exhibit a “self-repair” interaction that allows for repeated use. Second, the inputs – energy and water – ultimately yield energy and water again. Since this water can then be reused, an entire closed-loop system might be within reach.

The impact of Nocera and Kanan’s discovery can only be forecasted at this point. James Barber, professor of biochemistry at Imperial College London, gushes: “This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind. The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.”

Notwithstanding, as with any emerging technology, this energy storage enabler needs to be vetted in further research and prove its economic potential for scalability. Also, the storage of hydrogen and oxygen and their recombination in fuel cells needs to become safer for reliable at-home use.

Nocera, though, is convinced: “This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years. Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”

Indeed, this technology could be the final link in an emerging energy system that includes distributed photovoltaics and fuel cells, electric cars, and new regulation that favors at-home energy generation.  Commercializing this system will be a challenge (though we have theories on the best way to do this – see this article and chapter 5 of The Innovator’s Solution), but true clean energy decentralization, which promises enormous efficiency and environmental benefits, could be closer than commonly assumed.

 

Metamaterials similar to those I wrote about in this blog post on acoustic shielding have been used by researchers at the University of California in Berkeley to develop a material that can bend light around 3D objects, making them "disappear,” according to BBC News. The light-bending effect relies on reversing refraction, the effect that makes a straw placed in water appear bent. Up until now, invisibility devices being developed have involved metamaterial devices that were "invisible" only from one angle. Possible applications of invisibility technologies include advances for telecommunications devices and better microscopes that would allow images of far smaller objects than conventional microscopes can see.

Engineers led by José Sánchez-Dehesa at Spain’s Polytechnic University of Valencia have designed a material that redirects sounds and could be used in buildings to shield them from noises, reports MIT Technology Review. This sound-shielding material would be the first acoustic cloaking device. The engineers use alternating layers of two different metamaterials (artificially structured composites designed to have properties unmatched by natural materials) that allow some sound waves to pass while blocking the passage of others. In this way the material directs sound waves around an object so that they re-form on the other side with no distortion. Because the waves return to their original conformation after passing a shielded object, the object effectively becomes invisible to sonar. And a listener inside such a shield wouldn't hear the sounds flowing around. Hiding warships from sonar is one possible application. But Sánchez-Dehesa is interested in the problem of noise generally. "In principle," he says, "it's possible to make this cloak very thin," on the order of centimeters. "If we're able to design a wall to put in a house to screen external noise, it would be very nice." Another possibility: columns for concert halls that function as part of the structure but, acoustically, are effectively not there.

As a loyal supporter of Amazon.com's Kindle e-reader, an email from a client titled "Throw that Kindle away!" was sure to catch my interest.

The email linked to a video demonstrating an electronic reader that a U.K. company called Plastic Logic plans to launch next year. The video is eye-catching. Plastic Logic's device — which is powered by the same E Ink technology behind readers offered by Amazon and Sony — is the size of a sheet of paper and has a stunning 13-inch screen.

As the company's name implies, the device is based on plastic technologies originally developed at Cambridge University. Plastic Logic is betting that lower capital costs and a simpler production process will provide it with a sustainable cost advantage over devices based on silicon.

A beautiful design and a sustainable cost advantage certainly sound troubling for Amazon. How worried should Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos be?

Innosight's lenses suggest not too worried, unless Plastic Logic dramatically shifts its approach.

There are two problems with Plastic Logic's approach. First, the company appears to be targeting business users. Its demonstration showed how users can carry the device instead of bushels of documents.

What's wrong with that focus? After all, the business market is where the money is after all. And who likes being weighed down by thick stacks of paper?

Read the rest on Scott's Harvard management blog, Innovation Insights.

Last week the Wall Street Journal noted that light-emitting diode (LED) technology has now reached the point that LED lights will begin to show up more and more in daily life. According to the article, "prices for LEDs on the market today can be more than five times what an incandescent bulb costs. However, the LEDs use about 85 percent less energy and last 30 times longer. They also use about half as much energy and last five times longer than compact fluorescent lights."

The article also offered an interesting look at how LED makers are managing the adoption curve on this promising yet still expensive technology. Quite rightly, they are first targeting commercial and industrial customers whose jobs-to-be-done involve leaving lights on most or all of the time, and have to pay time and labor costs to change bulbs. "Longer-lasting lights that use less energy thus offer them significant savings over time," notes the article. "Then, as sales increase, creating economies of scale and bringing down production costs and prices, the industry will expand its marketing to residential customers in a push that many observers expect will make LEDs the lighting of choice for years to come." The article's well worth reading, as it goes into much more detail about strategies for driving wider adoption of LEDs.

The illustration at top left shows one of the places in the consumer market LEDs have begun appear widely: Christmas lights. In the context of the adoption strategy the article describes, this makes perfect sense — people generally leave their Christmas lights on for long stretches of time and certainly don't want to have to change bulbs often.

Attendees of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year might have easily overlooked what could become a huge success. Modu, an ultracompact cell phone launched by the Israeli technology start-up modu mobile, might be the first truly modular phone – a technology with significant disruptive potential in the mobile communication devices category. However, highly relevant questions on consumers’ jobs-to-be-done and the business model need to be thoroughly considered for modu mobile to be successful in the marketplace.

The technology

In essence, the 1.41 oz., 2.8 x 1.4 x 0.3 inch device is a no-frills cell phone with a small screen and just a few buttons that can be wrapped in one of multiple “jackets” to become a more advanced cellphone (e.g. with a full QWERTY keyboard, a bigger screen, or individualized design). When merged with a “mate,” the modu becomes the core of an entirely different compound device with different performance dimensions such as a portable music player, a car radio, a GPS-system, a bike computer, a camera, or an alarm clock with a docking station that displays incoming text messages. The modularity of modu’s hardware and software allows its processor, memory, and wireless technology to run the compounded devices. 

The job

The modu is set for success only if it precisely targets consumers’ jobs-to-be-done and does not get distracted by the technological possibilities. Instead it should focus on specific circumstances consumers face during their day where the modu could be a winning solution: “Help me enjoy my commute” when getting to work and back, “help me access my emails while on the go” during the work day, and “help me become available for communication” when going out at night might be examples. Now, each of these jobs is already addressed separately by illustrious products such as Apple iPod, RIM Blackberry, and small form-factor cell phones by Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and others. 

At the moment, modu mobile’s answer to these competitors seems to be a lower price. The anticipated price of $200 for a modu bundled with two jackets that range in price from $20 to $60 each might differentiate modu from its respective nonmodular competitors. Yet, competitors could simply decide to sell for less, cutting their margins to outcompete modu.

The true power of modu’s technology lies in its modular architecture. Modu mobile can create a competitive edge by translating the device’s customizability into two distinct performance dimensions. First, modu's modularity can facilitate the individualization of consumer electronics -- a trend that predates its most common and unfortunately popular example, the personal ringtone. The second performance dimension follows the broad job “help me make my daily life easier.” This might sound more straightforward than it actually is, but figuring out how precisely to align communication technology with cross-architectural usefulness will be key for modu to challenge the iPods, Blackberrys and Nokias of this world. In this context, swapping the modu between multiple jackets and mates per day needs to be as quick and easy as its teaser suggests.

The business model

Modu mobile plans to launch its device with support from major cellphone carriers in Italy, Israel and Russia this October, followed by the U.S. and other European countries in 2009. Modu's business model focuses on selling the phone while licensing the technology to third-party manufacturers, who will build jackets and mates on their own. Manufacturers could profit from licensing modu’s technology by launching their products without a slow and relatively expensive licensing process with the Federal Communications Commission, because the modu is already a phone.

Modu mobile, in turn, keeps full control over the core component of what they hope will become as standard as flash data storage devices, the last undertaking of modu founder and CEO Dov Moran, who was formerly CEO of msystems inventor of flash data storage devices that was acquired by SanDisk Corp for $1.6 billion in late 2006). The two main advantages of licensing technology to other manufacturers for modu mobile are that with an increasing number of jacket and mate manufacturers the modu would be more and more cemented as a standard, and as other companies also strive for success, modu mobile hedges its risk of failure by potentially not getting the job quite done for consumers.

The future

Modu mobile has the potential to disrupt the mobile communication devices category. It can target overshot and/or nonconsumers (an interesting occurrence of a potential low-end and new market disruptive innovation), if it is able keep the low-price promise along with increased ease of use, or by introducing a new performance dimension around the device’s modularity and striving for increased customizability. The business model appears promising, if the self-reinforcing mechanism of initial success results in a large base of third-party manufacturers.

These are all big ifs, and I am really curious to see what the future will bring for modu. 

The markets that exist at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) have been garnering increasing attention in recent years. Traditionally, these markets have been served by charities and government aid programs but for-profit companies are increasingly targeting the BOP. This makes sense for two reasons. One: the business models of many charitable organizations and government aid programs are broken. Two: the opportunities for profit and impact in serving BOP markets are attracting for-profit players.

Why are charities and government aid programs ripe for disruption? First, the top-down business models offer opportunities for corruption as funds are collected and doled out by a centralized organization. Start-ups avoid dealing with the complaints of existing channels of distribution that have vested interests in continuation of an existing model. Moreover, the administrative costs incurred in order to prove to donors the efficacy of spending and services leads to unnecessary bureaucracy and reporting. For-profit start-ups do not have to chase elusive metrics of success such as improvements in well being. Entrants that seek a double bottom line can instead focus on more streamlined measures such as "increase in income or "jobs created as well as profit. Finally, continued operations of most charities are based on donated dollars rather than the self-sustaining revenue of for-profit businesses. The scalability of charities and aid programs tend to be linear with donated dollars while for-profits can invest in future growth without dependence on external resources.

Meanwhile, in the for-profit world, the buzz about selling to BOP markets and successful examples of such ventures are becoming more commonplace.
C.K. Prahalad's 2004 book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, promoted the idea of targeting products and services to the 5 billion people who live on less than two dollars per day.
Inspired by the Grameen Bank microcredit model, Grameen Phone created a business in which cellular phone access is sold to rural consumers by local entrepreneurs who make a profit by renting out small quantities of access to community members. Unilever famously reached rural non-consumers in India by selling small sachets of soap and other products through local, independent agents to customers who would not be able to afford a larger-sized quantity of product.

Given the large opportunities for both profit and impact, one might wonder why for-profits havent been interested or able to serve these markets in the past. I think the jobs-to-be-done lens can shed some light on the reasons for-profits have not gained more traction in the BOP in the past and how they can approach these markets successfully.

Companies need to recognize the distinct barriers to consumption and product "hiring criteria that exist for consumers in these markets. The lack of wealth, skill, time, and access present in the lives of those at the BOP serve as barriers to consumption. These barriers and the distinct set of "jobs to be done that these consumers have relative to consumers in Western markets mean that products and services may be evaluated along different performance dimensions by BOP consumers. New products that offer lower prices or greater access to information/communication may be of particular interest in these markets, even if performance along traditional measures is diminished.

By understanding these barriers and hiring criteria, and by taking to heart the concept of "good enough, some solar companies are finding that BOP customers constitute an ideal foothold market. Solar technologies that offer only a few hours of energy per day at a lower price are attractive to BOP customers who are overshot by the always-on, expensive power supply options marketed to wealthier consumers who have a different set of performance criteria. As these technologies develop in markets that are unattractive to incumbents serving the high-margin Western markets, they will inevitably improve in function and capacity to move up market. This phenomenon is not limited to emerging technology areas like solar is there any doubt that the operational and technological innovations involved in creating the one-lakh car wont be applied to Tatas future higher-end products?

One last point: in the competition for talented employees, for-profit start-ups have another edge over charities and governments. They meet the job-to-be-done of "doing well in addition to "doing good of those bright minds the organizations seek to attract.

On March 17, technology research firm IDC and information technology publication The Industry Standard, announced a partnership centered on the latters prediction market. Specifically, the two companies will create a joint service, sold by IDC, matching the data generated by the prediction market with the insights of IDCs analysts. This new service appears to be one of the first applications of a prediction market to technology trend and market forecasting by a research firm. Could a prediction market forecast information technology markets more accurately than a technology research analyst? How might the principles of disruptive innovation apply here? Is this an attempt by IDC to disrupt itself?

The Industry Standard, famous for a quick rise to prominence during the dot-com boom and then a similarly quick decline into bankruptcy at the end of the boom, re-launched in early February in a web-only form built around the core of a prediction market. Prediction markets are much like the stock market participants can buy and sell shares or place bets on whatever the market has securitized (in the case of prediction markets, most often future events and outcomes).

Theoretically, as participants use their tacit knowledge and experience to bet for or against a specific outcome, the probability of that outcome actually coming true will rise and fall. By introducing a far greater number of inputs (scale) and a greater diversity of those inputs (scope) into the prediction process, these types of markets have shown to be more accurate, over the course of repeated trials, in forecasting outcomes than individuals or even groups of experts.

Following in the footsteps of technology prediction markets including Yahoo Tech Buzz and The PopSci Predictions Exchange, The Industry Standards market allows participants to place virtual currency bets on future technology-related events. Current predictions in the market include "Googles stock price will be below $500 per share by end of Q1, "Google to buy Digg, "Dell gets acquired by a Chinese manufacturer looking to get a foothold in the US, and "MySpace takes on iTunes with music store.

Unlike regular voting, participants can bet as much virtual money as they want on their predictions. When an outcome is achieved, participants who bet on that outcome when odds were low, for example, receive a greater payback than those who bet on that outcome when the odds were high. Participants who bet on an alternative outcome, lose the virtual money they placed on that bet. The names of the most successful participants, and their Net Worth are posted on the sites leaderboard.

Technology research firms such as IDC, Gartner, and Yankee Group are known for producing forecasts of revenue generation or unit sales. These forecasts are developed through the aggregation of inputs information from vendors and channels, macroeconomic conditions, customer surveys, technological trajectories, and so forth. Ultimately, however, there is only so much information that analysts can gather together and that, combined with intuition, experience, and a little secret sauce is used to generate the forecasts.

There are many ways in which prediction markets can fail to deliver accurate results. Assuming that a prediction market was constructed carefully and that it has the necessary quantity and diversity of participants, however, might it be able to aggregate a wider range of information than a technology research analyst could gather? Could a prediction market prove to be more accurate than a group of analysts? Could technology research firms turn the process of forecasting technology trends over to prediction markets and focus solely on analysis and interpretation?

Further, the principles of disruptive innovation teach that incumbents, if able, should co-opt or replicate the entrants innovation or business model to stave off disruption. Prediction markets are a potentially powerful low-cost, yet high quality tool for forecasting. Could an organization use a prediction market to harness collective intelligence to disrupt technology research firms? Might this new service offering be an attempt by IDC to protect itself from such an entrant?

Solar power is taking off around the world. Capacity and installations are growing between 30-40% a year, supply can hardly keep up with demand, venture investment is reaching Internet bubble levels ($264m in 2006), and IPOs are popping with furious abandon. And yet, solar still barely registers in the sum total of global energy production it represented some .04% of the energy mix in 2005. Can such breathless growth be sustainable? Will, and when, will solar become significant on a local, regional, national, global scale? We have long argued that a disruptive approach would hold the most promise for the development of solar technologies and business models at scale. Compared to conventional power sources, solar is inherently disruptive it excels on certain underappreciated dimensions of performance (it is distributed and emission-free) while being considerably less good than coal, gas and oil when it comes to traditional metrics like price and energy density. To maximize their chances for disruptive success, companies could, for example, initially target regions with underdeveloped infrastructure where solar would compete against nonconsumption of electricity rather than ubiquitous and cheap grid power. They could pursue low cost solar technologies that attain price-competitiveness without the help of government subsidies. Or, they could focus on applications that require portable power where recharging is a pain. One such promising niche application was previewed at the annual CeBIT fair in Germany the other day. A Chinese mobile devices company called Hi-Tech Wealth is releasing a solar-powered cell phone that will get 25 minutes of talk time from 40 minutes of charging in the sun. The phone will also be able to draw on indoor light, and will, theoretically, be entirely self-sufficient on standby mode so it will never have to be turned off. This is interesting for at least three reasons: 1) Niche applications for portable micro power are great breeding grounds for solar technologies and business models. Batteries are worlds most expensive form of energy and recharging cell phones, laptops, and mp3 players can be a hassle. As far as electricity needs go, this is relatively low hanging fruit. 2) It is not surprising that this phone is coming from China, which has less developed power and communications infrastructure than much of the western world. There is much greater need for self-sufficient mobile communication devices there, and thus much greater incentive for innovation. 3) Wireless charging capability can be a powerful new feature for cell phones, generally. Mobile device manufacturers seem to be caught in an endless race to pack as many features as they can into phones; Motorolas RAZR made such a splash a few years back because it differentiated on another dimension of performance form and style, rather than features. Differentiating in this way might be a new avenue to success, especially in the developing world. The emergence of the cell phone decentralized communications, unlocking all sorts of new consumption. It liberated consumers from the wires that tied them to their homes and officesexcept for that pesky charger (and personally, my phone charger always seems to be either underfoot or lost at the exact moment I need it). Solar-powered cell phones promise to relegate that last wire to the dustbin of history. See: http://www.trustedreviews.com/mobile-phones/news/2007/03/20/CeBIT-2007-Self-Suffient-Solar-Mobile-Unveiled/p1