Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 13.

06 - March 22, 2014

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.

microbes in the body affect our health and behavior... researchers create artificial organs interlaced with blood vessels... Facebook's facial recognition algorithms approach human accuracy... Los Angeles Times robot writes news stories... half of U.S. business schools might be gone by 2020... Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg invest in an artificial intelligence company... teen employment falls to new lows... Bill Gates says software substitution will reduce demand for jobs... U.S. government says it will relinquish key internet administration tasks... India may deepen its involvement in the South China Sea... Stewart Brand presents the status of de-extinction projects at the TED2014 conference in Vancouver... corn rootworm pest has become resistant to the genetically engineered corn created to control it... Elon Musk could replicate the success of disruptive entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Henry Ford... demand may soon exceed the supply of scarce minerals...

More resources ...

a new book by Sarah Morgans and Bill Thorness, Power: How J. D. Power III Became the Auto Industrys Adviser, Confessor, and Eyewitness to History.... a link to the website for the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy... the video of a Charlie Rose interview with Larry Page on where Google is going next... a blog post by George Dvorsky on 20 terms every 21st Century futurist

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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.

should know...
David Forrest Innovation Watch

SCIENCE TRENDS
Top Stories: The Bugs in Your Stomach Define You As Much -- If Not More -- Than Your Genes (Fast Company Co.EXIST) - Rob Knight and his team at the University of Minnesota have discovered that manipulating unseen microbial world has the ability to cure such diseases as inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, and even possibly make strides against autism and depression. Through a series of experiments in which they shared different kinds of microbes among lean and obese mice, they discovered that weight gain can be passed on via microbes in two ways. First, they could change the way the body digests food. But they could also change a mouse's behavior: Different microbes made some mice eat more food. Knight's conclusion: microbes can affect mammalian behavior and also dictate how the body responds to certain functions. Artificial Organs May Finally Get a Blood Supply (MIT Technology Review) - In what may be a critical breakthrough for creating artificial organs, Harvard researchers say they have created tissue interlaced with blood vessels. Using a custom-built four-head 3-D printer and a "disappearing" ink, materials scientist Jennifer Lewis and her team created a patch of tissue containing skin cells and biological structural material interwoven with bloodvessel-like structures. Reported by the team in Advanced Materials, the tissue is the first made through 3-D printing to include potentially functional blood vessels embedded among multiple, patterned cell types. More science trends...

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TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
Top Stories: Facebook's DeepFace Project Nears Human Accuracy In Identifying Faces (Tech Crunch) - In the past, facial recognition via computer could be pretty easily foiled if a subject is simply tilting their head in a slightly different direction. The Facebook DeepFace algorithm needs to be trained on an extensive pool of faces to be able to perform its magic, but it can identify up to 4,000 identities based on a database of over 4 million separate images in its current version. Theoretically, that could be expanded to cover a much larger swatch with further work, and then be applied to Facebook's social network itself, which would be very useful if Facebook wanted to automate the process of identifying all your contacts, and performing analytical magic like determining who you're photographed most frequently with, without the use of manual tagging. It's All Over: Robots are Now Writing News Stories, and Doing a Good Job (Huffington Post) - When an earthquake hit the Los Angeles area Monday morning at 6:25 AM, the Los Angeles Times had their story published in about three minutes. It was the first media outlet to report on the breaking news. How, you ask? It used a robot. Ken Schwencke, a journalist and programmer for the LA Times told Slate on Monday that an algorithm he created called Quakebot was behind the story. It's the latest example of robot journalism, a developing practice that has many news organizations intrigued as it could change the game of breaking news. Schwencke said that when he was woken by the earthquake Monday morning, he simply got out of bed, opened his computer, and found the robot-generated story already written in the system. All he had to do was click "publish," Slate reported. More technology trends...

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BUSINESS TRENDS
Top Stories: Half of U.S. Business Schools Might Be Gone by 2020 (Businessweek) - Richard Lyons, the dean of University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, has a dire forecast for business education: "Half of the business schools in this country could be out of business in 10 years -- or five," he says. The threat, says Lyons, is that more top MBA programs will start to offer degrees online. That will imperil the industry's business model. For most business schools, students pursuing part-time

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and executive MBAs generate crucial revenue. Those programs, geared toward working professionals, will soon have to compete with elite online alternatives for the same population. Lowerranked business schools, rather than recognized names such as Harvard Business School and Wharton, are most vulnerable to this phenomenon. Zuckerberg, Musk Invest in Artificial-Intelligence Company (Wall Street Journal) - Elon Musk made the electric car cool. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook. Ashton Kutcher portrayed Apple founder Steve Jobs in a movie. Now, the three are joining in a $40 million investment in Vicarious FPC, a secretive artificialintelligence company. The funding round, the second major infusion of capital for the company in two years, is the latest sign of life in artificial intelligence. Last month, Google acquired another AI company called Deep Mind for $400 million. More business trends...

SOCIAL TRENDS
Top Stories: What's Behind the Collapse in Teen Employment? (CNN) According to a new study released last Friday by the Brookings Institution, the employment rate for teens aged 16-19 has fallen from 45% in 2000 to 26% in 2011, the lowest rate for teens in the post-World War II era. This data is in stark contrast to what's happening to older folks, who are working longer than ever. Employment rates among those aged 55-64 ticked up slightly during the same time frame, from 58% to 60%, and the employment rate rose for those aged 65-74 from 19% to 25%. In some ways, this data should not be surprising. The economy in 2000 was coming off of one of the strongest periods of growth in U.S. history, while the nation was still mired in high unemployment in 2011. But when you see that employment has increased among the older population, it's clear that theres more going on here than just a poor economy. Bill Gates: People Don't Realize How Many Jobs Will Soon Be Replaced By Software Bots (Business Insider) - Big changes are coming to the labor market that people and governments aren't prepared for, Bill Gates believes. Speaking at Washington, D.C., economic think tank The American Enterprise Institute, Gates said that within 20 years, a lot of jobs will go away, replaced by software automation ("bots" in tech slang, though Gates used the term "software substitution"). This is what he said: "Software substitution, whether it's for drivers or waiters or nurses it's progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set. 20 years from now, labor demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower.

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I don't think people have that in their mental model." More social trends...

GLOBAL TRENDS
Top Stories: US Pledges to Loosen Grip on Net. Don't Be Fooled. (Wired UK) - Because the internet first emerged, grew, and prospered in the United States, the US government has a special relationship and disproportionate influence over what is now regarded as a global public good. While the US is unwilling to relinquish its role as chief internet steward, this is becoming an increasingly untenable position, particularly as the NSA/Snowden revelations continue to shake global confidence. In this context, and perhaps accelerated by last week's damning critiques in the European Parliament and the UN Human Rights Council, the US government announced, in a smart front-footed move, that it intends to release oversight of its long-treasured IANA contract under which the US Commerce Department contracts ICANN, a private US company, to perform key internet administration tasks. The government has proposed a transition plan for these tasks to be administered directly by the "global multistakeholder community." India Wades Into South China Sea Dispute (Diplomat) - The Indian Navy first deployed to the South China Sea in 2000, and, in a pointed message to China, it has at times threatened to send naval assets to the region to protect its energy investments in the waters near Vietnam. For their own part, ASEAN nations have long called on India to deepen its involvement in the South China Sea issue. Laura Q. Del Rosario, the Philippines' deputy minister for international economic relations, recently insisted that "India should go East, and not just Look East." More global trends...

ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS
Top Stories: Futurist Makes a Compelling Argument for Why We Should Bring Animals Back from Extinction (Business Insider) Last March, scientists met at a TEDx conference to discuss which extinct animals would be good candidates to bring back from the dead, called de-extinction. One year later, futurist and environmentalist Stewart Brand appeared at a TED conference in Vancouver to present the status of a few de-extinction projects.
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Rootworm Evolves to Eat GM Corn Designed to Kill It (Wired UK) - One of agricultural biotechnology's great success stories may become a cautionary tale of how short-sighted mismanagement can squander the benefits of genetic modification. After years of predicting it would happen -- and after years of having their suggestions largely ignored by companies, farmers and regulators -- scientists have documented the rapid evolution of corn rootworms that are resistant to Bt corn. Until Bt corn was genetically altered to be poisonous to the pests, rootworms used to cause billions of dollars in damage to U.S. crops. Named for the pesticidal toxin-producing Bacillus thuringiensis gene it contains, Bt corn now accounts for threequarters of the U.S. corn crop. The vulnerability of this corn could be disastrous for farmers and the environment. More environmental trends...

FUTURE
TRENDS
Top Stories: What the World Will Look Like If Elon Musk Becomes the Next Henry Ford (Quartz) - Analysts are coming up with increasingly entertaining ways to justify Tesla's enormous valuation and lofty share price, and who are we to disagree with them? Recently, Morgan Stanley outlined an interesting thesis on how Tesla could become a serious player in the energy market, through the production of its own batteries, and because its cars could be used for power storage. Today, it's Goldman Sachs's turn. The investment bank's analysts are similarly upbeat on the electric vehicle maker's ability to reshape everything, outlining scenarios where CEO Elon Musk could replicate the success of some truly disruptive entrepreneurs, namely Steve Jobs and Henry Ford. What is the World's Scarcest Material? (BBC) - Of all the world's materials, which one will "run out" first? The more we consume as a society, the more we hear about how vital ores and minerals are dwindling, so it seems logical to assume that a few may be about to disappear. Yet that may be entirely the wrong way of looking at the problem. According to natural resources experts, many of the materials we rely upon in modern life won't "run out" at all. Unfortunately, the scenario they paint about what will happen instead in the near future is hardly rosy either. More future trends...

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From the
publisher...

Power: How J. D. Power III Became the Auto Industry's Adviser, Confessor, and Eyewitness to History
By Sarah Morgans and Bill Thorness Read more...

A Web Resource... MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy - The Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) is a major effort addressing one of the most critical issues of our time: the impact of digital technology on businesses, the economy, and society. Drawing on MIT Sloan's strengths in technology and innovation, its internationally recognized faculty, and more than a decade of research and partnership with MIT Sloan's Center for Digital Business, the IDE is analyzing the broad sociological changes brought about by the advance and spread of digital technology. Multimedia... Larry Page: Where's Google Going Next? (TED) - Onstage at TED2014, Charlie Rose interviews Google CEO Larry Page about his far-off vision for the company. It includes aerial bikeways and internet balloons and then it gets even more interesting, as Page talks through the company's recent acquisition of Deep Mind, an AI that is learning some surprising things. (23m 30s) The Blogosphere... 20 Crucial Terms Every 21st Century Futurist Should Know (IO9)- George Dvorsky "We live in an era of accelerating change, when scientific and technological advancements are arriving rapidly. As a result, we are developing a new language to describe our civilization as it evolves. Here are 20 terms and concepts that you'll need to navigate our future. Back in 2007 I put together a list of terms every self-respecting futurist should be familiar with. But now, some seven years later, it's time for an update. I reached out to several futurists, asking them which terms or phrases have emerged or gained relevance since that time. These forward-looking thinkers provided me with some fascinating and provocative suggestions -- some familiar to me, others completely new, and some a refinement of earlier conceptions. Here are their submissions, including a few of my own."

Email:
future@innovationwatch.com

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