Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 12.

23 - November 16, 2013

ISSN:
1712-9834

Highlights from the last two weeks...

David Forrest is a Canadian writer and strategy consultant. His Integral Strategy process has been widely used to increase collaboration in communities, build social capital, deepen commitment to action, and develop creative strategies to deal with complex challenges. David advises organizations on emerging trends. He uses the term Enterprise Ecology to describe how ecological principles can be applied to competition, innovation, and strategy in business.

scientists map the dinosaur brain... antibiotic-resistant germs are now showing up in wild animals... Smithsonian museums allow users to print their own 3D models of rare artifacts... MIT develops a new display technology where users can reach out and touch the physical world... Silicon Valley company plans to sell asset-backed securities based on leases for rooftop solar systems... companies from the emerging world could change how the world does business... Google plans to track consumer smartphone data to connect store visits to online searches... cities are our most important innovation platform... the Netherlands is a world leader in resilience... China profits from the world's waste... Brazil's carbon footprint is falling fast... two Austalian coal mines will emit more greenhouse gases than 52 countries... engineered species could solve environmental problems... by 2017, Google Glass could save companies $1 billion a year...

More resources ...

a new book by Mark Hatch: The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of Crafters, Hackers, and Tinkerers... a link to photographer Jimmy Nelson's website Before They Pass Away... video of a TED talk by Jimmy Nelson on the lives and traditions of the world's last surviving tribes... a blog

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David is the founder and president of Global Vision Consulting Ltd., a strategy advisory firm. He is a member of the Professional Writers Association of Canada, the World Future Society, and the Advisory Committee of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa.

post by Stephen Wolfram on his latest technology project...

David Forrest Innovation Watch

SCIENCE TRENDS
Top Stories: Scientists Create Detailed Map of Dinosaur Brain (Guardian) - Scientists have created a detailed map of the dinosaur brain for the first time and found that the ancient beasts had the faculties for complex behaviour, and perhaps made sounds to communicate with one another. The map provides an unprecedented view of the makeup of the dinosaur brain and a glimpse back in time at what the creatures might have been capable of during their reign on Earth millions of years ago. Drug-Resistant Germs Bred in Humans Show Up in Wild Animals (Popular Science) - Crows don't often hang out in hospitals, where the overuse of antibiotics has created drugresistant germs. Yet crows in some areas of the U.S. carry drugresistant bacteria in their bodies, according to a new study. Poop from about 2.5 percent of the crows studied had microbes that were resistant to a drug of last resort for infections in hospitals, Environmental Health News reports. The crow survey adds to a growing body of evidence that so-called superbugs have reached wild animals. Environmental Health News links to studies that have found drug-resistant microbes in everything from houseflies to whales. More science trends...

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TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
Top Stories:
Previous issues

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Now You Can 3D Print Priceless Smithsonian Artifacts (ReadWrite) - The Wright Brothers' airplane. The Cosmic Buddha. A fossilized Woolly Mammoth. For decades, the only way to see artifacts like these has been to visit the Smithsonian museums in Washington, DC. And even if you have the time and money to make the trip, you only get to view the item's front, from behind a glass case. Today, 3D design software company Autodesk revealed an advance in technology that will let us get up close to our culture's our rarest relics. With the Smithsonian X 3D Explorer, anyone with an Internet connection can examine, manipulate, and even print exact 3D models of a few of the Smithsonian's most precious items. MIT Invents a Shapeshifting Display You Can Reach Through and Touch (Fast Company) - We live in an age of touch-screen interfaces, but what will the UIs of the future look like? Will they continue to be made up of ghostly pixels, or will they be made of atoms that you can reach out and touch? At the MIT Media Lab, the Tangible Media Group believes the future of computing is tactile. Unveiled today, the inFORM is MIT's new scrying pool for imagining the interfaces of tomorrow. Almost like a table of living clay, the inFORM is a surface that three-dimensionally changes shape, allowing users to not only interact with digital content in meatspace, but even hold hands with a person hundreds of miles away. And that's only the beginning. More technology trends...

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BUSINESS TRENDS
Top Stories: The Next Big Innovation in Renewable Energy Wont Be Technological (Atlantic) - Silicon Valley solar company SolarCity quietly did something that could revolutionize renewable energy in the United States. No, the company did not invent a radically more efficient or cheaper photovoltaic panel. Rather, it announced it plans to sell $54 million in asset-backed securities. And that is a very big deal, even if the dollar amount of the notes on offer is rather small. That's because the assets backing the securities are leases for some of the rooftop solar systems it has installed on homes across the country. Urban World: The Shifting Global Business Landscape (McKinsey & Company) - Emerging markets are changing where and how the world does business. For the last three decades, they have been a source of low-cost but increasingly skilled labor. Their fast-growing cities are filled with millions of new and increasingly prosperous consumers, who provide a new growth market for global corporations at a time when much of the developed world faces slower growth as a result of aging. But the number of large

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companies from the emerging world will rise, as well, according to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). This powerful wave of new companies could profoundly alter longestablished competitive dynamics around the world. More business trends...

SOCIAL TRENDS
Top Stories: Google Takes Its Tracking Into The Real World (DigiDay) Tech companies large and small have long been trying to use smartphones to connect consumers' online activity to what they do in "real" life. Google is now telling advertisers it has a way to do just that -- and it involves tracking consumers' smartphone locations all the time, wherever they go, even when they're not using a Google app. Google is beta-testing a program that uses smartphone location data to determine when consumers visit stores, according to agency executives briefed on the program by Google employees. Google then connects these store visits to Google searches conducted on smartphones in an attempt to prove that its mobile ads do, in fact, work. Why Cities Are Our Most Important Innovation Platform (Forbes) - Innovation, most of all, is driven by collaboration. So it takes more than just smart people, diversity is also important. Different people, working on different things colliding together in unexpected ways is what brings about important new ideas. That's why, more than anything else, vibrant cities are crucial to our continued ability to innovate and compete. More social trends...

GLOBAL TRENDS
Top Stories: How the Netherlands Became the Biggest Exporter of Resilience (Fast Company Co.EXIST) - The Netherlands built itself into the world's premier laboratory for how to tame the rivers and the seas. Today, the country's ideas and expertise may be its most valuable export. "Retreat is not an option, though we know its dangerous. The only option is to protect ourselves," says Free University of Amsterdam professor Jeroen Aerts, the world's foremost expert in flood-risk management. "If we invest right now in innovative measures, we can avoid a lot of damage in the future."
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How China Profits From Our Junk (Atlantic) - China's reputation as the "worlds factory" is well-established. But what happens to everything the world throws away? Since 2002, the Shanghai-based journalist Adam Minter has sought to find out. The son and grandson of scrap metalists, Minter traveled throughout the world to investigate how what we discard -- and reuse -- helps drive the global economy. Minter, who has written for a variety of publications (including both the print and digital versions of The Atlantic), now writes a weekly column on China for Bloomberg. In this excerpt from his book Junkyard Planet, Minter travels to the epicenter of the global scrape trade: southern China. More global trends...

ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS
Top Stories: Brazil Has the World's Weirdest Carbon Footprint (Quartz) Unlike just about every other developing country's carbon print, Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions are falling -- fast. That's according to an independent study carried out by over 30 nongovernment organizations focused on climate change, including the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace. Brazil's emissions for 2012 dropped 5% from a year earlier, and registered as the country's lowest in 20 years, according to Observatorio do Clima, the network of NGOs that carried out the study. The latest decline caps a steady decline since the countrys emissions hit a near peak in 2004. The Union of Concerned Scientists said in 2011 that Brazil cut down on deforestation of the Amazon so much so that the drop-off in its heat-trapping emissions over the last five years surpassed that of any other country in the world. Two Australian Coal Mines Alone Will Emit More Greenhouse Gases Than 52 Countries (Quartz) - As the Guardian's Graham Readfearn detailed, two controversial coal mines in the Australian state of Queensland would emit nearly 125 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) annually. To put that number in perspective, that's a bigger carbon spew than Vietnam, Uzbekistan or Iraq. And altogether, there are nine proposed coal mines for the Galilee Basin in central Queensland. A 2012 report by Greenpeace calculated that if all the projects came online they would emit 705 MtCO2e a year and rank as the seventh-largest carbon emitter in the world, right behind Germany and ahead of Iran, Canada, South Korea, and the UK. More environmental trends...

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FUTURE
TRENDS
Top Stories: Synthetic Creatures Could "Save Nature" (DeZeen) Synthetic living creatures would be released into the wild to save endangered species and clean up pollution under this futuristic proposal by designer Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. Called Designing for the Sixth Extinction, the project is designed to trigger debate about how artificial organisms could be used to solve environmental problems. Google Glass Could Save Companies $1 Billion By 2017 (Business Insider) - While most of us think of Google Glass as a consumer gadget, it's going to be great for businesses, too. Market research firm Gartner has boldly predicted that companies using Glass and similar gadgets could save $1 billion a year within three to five years. Hands-free access to the Internet, cameras, conferencing and phone calls, plus something called "augmented reality" will be a big help to people who work in jobs that take them outside of the office, Gartner says. This includes fields like technical repair, health care and manufacturing. More future trends...

From the
publisher...

The Maker Movement Manifesto: Rules for Innovation in the New World of Crafters, Hackers, and Tinkerers
By Mark Hatch Read more...

A Web Resource... Before They Pass Away - The purity of humanity exists. It is there in the mountains, the ice fields, the jungle, along the rivers and in the valleys. Jimmy Nelson found the last tribesmen and observed them. He smiled and drank their mysterious brews before taking out his camera. He shared what real people share: vibrations, invisible but palpable. He adjusted his antenna to the same frequency as theirs. As trust grew, a shared understanding of the mission developed: the world must never forget the way things were. Multimedia... Jimmy Nelson: Before They Pass Away (TEDxAmsterdam) - Jimmy Nelson captures the lives and traditions of the last surviving tribes who have managed to preserve their traditional ways and customs within our increasingly globalised world. (13m 31s) The Blogosphere... Something Very Big Is Coming: Our Most Important Technology
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Project Yet (Stephen Wolfram) - "Computational knowledge. Symbolic programming. Algorithm automation. Dynamic interactivity. Natural language. Computable documents. The cloud. Connected devices. Symbolic ontology. Algorithm discovery. These are all things we've been energetically working on -- mostly for years -- in the context of Wolfram|Alpha, Mathematica, CDF and so on. But recently something amazing has happened. We've figured out how to take all these threads, and all the technology we've built, to create something at a whole different level. The power of what is emerging continues to surprise me. But already I think it's clear that it's going to be profoundly important in the technological world, and beyond."

Email:
future@innovationwatch.com

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