Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 13.

08 - April 19, 2014

ISSN:
1712-9834

Highlights from the last two weeks...

scientists insert DNA-based nanobots into a living cockroach... bacteria might be the future of materials science... US company develops a miniature robot surgeon designed to slip into the body via an incision in the abdomen... Japanese design studio predicts a future where mass-produced products and 3-D printed parts can be mashed up to create new things... since 1972 Sequoia Capital has backed startups that now have $1.4 trillion of combined stock market value... space firm, Thales, bets on dirigibles... experience, not stuff, is the revolutionary idea for the 21st century... people in US rural areas accounted for just 16% of the population in 2010, down from 72% a century earlier... China's growing capital could be bigger than Uruguay and more populous than Germany... the first Global Youth Wellbeing Index provides baseline data on how young people are faring and feeling about their lives... the UN is now focused on surviving, not stopping, climate change... China says one-fifth of its farmland is polluted...

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.

More resources ...

a new book by Christopher Surdak, Data Crush: How the Information Tidal Wave is Driving New Business Opportunities....
a link to the website of the Global Footprint Network, an international think tank working to advance sustainability through use of the Ecological Footprint, a resource accounting tool that measures how much nature we have, and how much we use...

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.

video of a TED talk by Marco Annunziata on the Internet of Things... a blog post by Adam Smiley Poswalsky, offering four tips to help Millennials find meaningful work...
David Forrest Innovation Watch

SCIENCE TRENDS
Top Stories: Nano-Robots That Compute with DNA Installed into Living Cockroach (Popular Science) - Scientists have inserted DNAbased nanobots into a living cockroach, which are able to perform logical operations. Researchers say the nanobots could eventually be able to carry out complex programs, to diagnose and treat disease. These DNA machines (or origami robots, so-called since they can unfold and deliver drugs stored within) carry fluorescent markers, allowing researchers to tell where in the roach's body they are traveling and what they are doing. Incredibly, the "accuracy of delivery and control of the nanobots is equivalent to a computer system," New Scientist reported. A study describing the advance was published this week in Nature Nanotechnology. The Bacteria That Might Just Be the Future of Materials Science (Motherboard) - Sci-fi, as a super-generalized set of ideas, likes to view the encroaching future-world as a metallic, post-biology realm where robots and computer-brains populate the day to day, and even food is consumed as inert doses of pure nutrition. There is no disease unless it's the disease, the one that knocks civilization loose. This world goes whoosh instead of squish, screek instead of moan. Biology becomes a thing of the past, and the tissues of the new world become cold and dead; membranes and mucous are no longer. But that's not right. If you've been keeping up, you'll have noticed that as much as biology and technology apparently split, they so often find themselves reconnecting somewhere else. One such somewhere else is the realm of materials science/materials engineering. The thing is that biology, over the course of 3.7 billion years, has gotten quite good at materials science itself, and you'll find discoveries like, say, wood being a great bacterial filter, happening on a regular basis. But that's just the start.

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TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
Top Stories: Space Surgery Robot Will Enter Astronauts Via the Belly Button (Wired) - What happens if an astronaut develops appendicitis halfway through the journey to Mars? He or she may be saved by a small surgery robot that enters the body via the belly button. At least that's the aim of a Nebraska-based company called Virtual Incision, which has developed a miniature (400g) robot surgeon designed to slip into the body via an incision in the abdomen. Once inside, it can work at removing the infected appendix or part of a diseased organ. Cool Idea: Using Tiny 3-D Printed Parts to Hack Other Products (Wired) - Thanks to advances in technology and drops in price, it's become possible to imagine a 3-D printer in every home. What's less clear is what we'll do with these wondrous machines. It'll be decades, if ever, before we can print a pair of Nikes. Luckily, Japanese design studio Takt Project predicts a future where mass-produced products and 3-D printed parts can be mashed up to create wild new wares. More technology trends...

BUSINESS TRENDS
Top Stories: Inside Sequoia Capital: Silicon Valley's Innovation Factory (Forbes) - Step inside Sequoia's spartan offices at Silicon Valley's capital of capital, Sand Hill Road, and see what happens when a handful of hungry perfectionists like Doug Leone band together. Start at the entryway, packed with framed copies of financing documents for 98 companies. The hit parade begins with Apple's initial public offering in 1980; it includes the likes of Oracle, Cisco, Yahoo, Google and LinkedIn. These are Sequoia's children. Since its founding in 1972 Sequoia has backed startups that now command a staggering $1.4 trillion of combined stock market value, equivalent to 22% of Nasdaq. First Balloons and Drones, Now Dirigibles: The Race for a Truly 'World Wide' Web (Singularity Hub) - Facebook wants to be as cool as Google. Google wants to be the most innovative tech firm in history. Both are aiming to deliver internet access to

the worlds offline billions -- one with balloons, the other with drones. But what about dirigibles? Dirigibles (or airships) figure prominently in early 20th century propaganda, the adventures of Indiana Jones, and alternate universes (see the TV show Fringe). But excepting eye-in-the-sky ads at sporting events, the dirigible is largely out of fashion. Space firm, Thales, thinks that needs to change. More business trends...

SOCIAL TRENDS
Top Stories: Stop Accumulating Stuff and Start Accumulating Experiences (Fast Company Co.EXIST) - For a new value system to replace materialism, and be the answer to the problem of Stuffocation, it will have to solve all the problems that come with it -- like pollution, overconsumption, and status anxiety. It should also take advantage of all the opportunities it contains -like the technologies that give us the benefits of access without the downsides of physical ownership. It will have to appeal to everyone you would call a captain of consciousness in the 21st century -- businesses, governments, you and me. It will have to provide profit for businesses, and jobs for people. It will need to produce taxable income, and a useful benchmark for governments. It should also satisfy our innate desires for happiness, meaning, and status. What America's Internal Migration Tells Us About the Death of the Mall, and the Brand (Quartz) - According to analysis of US census data by Piper Jaffray, people in rural areas accounted for just 16% of the population in 2010, down from 72% a century earlier, while the largest share of Americans (51%) called the suburbs home. But at the moment, the really interesting action is going on in cities, where 33% of Americans were residing in 2010. Though this level has stayed roughly flat since 1940, data released since 2010 suggest the proportion of Americans living in the cities is now rising again. A 2012 analysis of census data by Brookings Institute senior fellow William Frey found that for the first time since the 1920s, the city populations of 51 metropolitan areas outpaced growth in their surrounding suburbs between 2010 and 2011. And this trend continued between 2011 and 2012, he found. More social trends...

GLOBAL TRENDS

Top Stories: China's New Megalopolis Would Be Bigger Than Uruguay and More Populous Than Germany (Quartz) - China might not be willing to relocate its capital city, but it can make it bigger. The country's top economic planner has reportedly drawn up a plan for a Beijing-centered "economic circle" that combines the municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin and parts of Hebei province into one huge megalopolis. Officials believe that integrating the three areas will help alleviate traffic, population, and housing pressure in Beijing, which is struggling with air pollution, water scarcity, and a flood of migrant workers. Last month, officials said that some administrative bodies in Beijing would be offloaded to Baoding, a nearby medium-sized city in Hebei. Other initiatives range from a joint plan for improving air quality to expanding transportation links so that more families opt to live outside Beijing, easing demand for housing in the capital. The Countries Where Youth Are Doing the Best and the Worst (Fast Company Co.EXIST) - Half of the world's population is now under the age of 25, and 1.8 billion people are between the ages of 10 and 25. This is the largest youth generation ever to exist. Yet few well-being measures and metrics focus specifically on how this age group -- the one that has fueled societal and governmental change around the globe in recent years -- is faring and feeling about their lives. The first Global Youth Wellbeing Index is an effort to provide baseline data so that countries can be compared and progress (or lack thereof) can be followed. At a time when nearly half of youth are unemployed or underemployed, this kind of tracking is more important than ever. More global trends...

ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS
Top Stories: The UN's New Focus: Surviving, Not Stopping, Climate Change (Atlantic) - The United Nations' latest report on climate change contains plenty of dire warnings about the adverse impact "human interference with the climate system" is having on everything from sea levels to crop yields to violent conflicts. But the primary message of the study isn't, as John Kerry suggested, for countries to collectively reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Instead, the subtext appears to be this: Climate change is happening and will continue to happen for the foreseeable future. As a result, we need to adapt to a warming planet -- to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits associated with increasing temperatures -- rather than focusing solely on curbing warming in the first place. And it's businesses and local governments, rather than the international community, that can lead the way.

Chinese Government Admits One Fifth of Country's Farmland is Polluted (Business Insider) - China's government says in a report that nearly one-fifth of the country's farmland is polluted, mostly from yearslong accumulations of toxins from factories, mining and agriculture. The report raises sharp concerns about the country's food safety after years of unbridled industrialization. More environmental trends...

FUTURE
TRENDS
Top Stories: Study Indicates Robots Could Replace 80% of Jobs (Robotenomics) - In a few decades, twenty or thirty years -- or sooner -- robots and their associated technology will be as ubiquitous as mobile phones are today, at least that is the prediction of Bill Gates; and we would be hard-pressed to nd a roboticist, automation expert or economist who could present a strong case against this. The Robotics Revolution promises a host of benets that are compelling (especially in health care) and imaginative, but it may also come at a significant price. Google Wants to Make 'Science Fiction' a Reality -- And That's Limiting Their Imagination (Atlantic) - "Science fiction" provides but a tiny porthole onto the vast strangeness of the future. When we imagine a "science fiction"-like future, I think we tend to picture completed worlds, flying cars, the shiny, floating towers of midcentury dreams. We tend, in other words, to imagine future technological systems as readymade, holistic products that people will choose to adopt, rather than as the assembled work of countless different actors, which they've always really been. The futurist Scott Smith calls these 'flat-pack futures,' and they infect "science fictional" thinking. Science fiction, too, can underestimate the importance and role of social change. More future trends...

From the
publisher...

Data Crush: How the Information Tidal Wave is Driving New Business Opportunities
By Christopher Surdak

Read more...

A Web Resource... Global Footprint Network - Global Footprint Network is an international think tank working to advance sustainability through use of the Ecological Footprint, a resource accounting tool that measures how much nature we have, and how much we use. This tool is unique in making overshoot measurable -- through detailed resource accounts for nations, cities and individuals. By working with governments, investors and opinion leaders we demonstrate the advantages of making ecological limits central to decision-making.The Good Judgment Project is a four-year research study organized as part of a government-sponsored forecasting tournament. Thousands of people around the world predict global events. Their collective forecasts are surprisingly accurate. Multimedia... Marco Annunziata: Welcome to the Age of the Industrial Internet Everyone's talking about the "Internet of Things," but what exactly does that mean for our future? In this thoughtful talk, economist Marco Annunziata looks at how technology is transforming the industrial sector, creating machines that can see, feel, sense and react so they can be operated far more efficiently. Think: airplane parts that send an alert when they need to be serviced, or wind turbines that communicate with one another to generate more electricity. It's a future with exciting implications for us all. (12m 36s) The Blogosphere... 4 Tips to Help Millennials Find Meaningful Work (Fast Company Co.EXIST) - Adam Smiley Poswalsky "When I interviewed dozens of millennials about their career choices for The Quarter-Life Breakthrough, not once did someone answer that they wanted to 'make lots of money,' 'have lots of power,' or 'retire with a pension in 40 years.' Rather, they said things like: 'I want to teach urban teenagers how to avoid debt and become successful entrepreneurs,' 'I want to inspire young girls to think they can become engineers, and not Barbie dolls,' 'I want to teach kids living in a food desert how to grow their own food,' and 'I want to ensure large corporations reduce their carbon footprint.' These young people aren't motivated by climbing the career ladder or their stock options."

Email:
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