Open Innovation Hub > Open Innovation Forum

The long view on innovation and growth (1 Comment)

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:35:55 +0000

Topic by Husker

Summary

Great historical view of long economic cycles and where market growth is fueled

Content

The New Golden Age

The history of investment and technology suggests that economic recovery is closer than you think, with a new silicon-based global elite at the helm.

by Mark Stahlman

Recession. Depression. War. Terrorism. Unemployment. Enemies on the march. Every day the headlines remind us that there is plenty to worry about and more than enough real suffering to try our souls.

And yet, if we step back and take a longer view, we see that industrial society has been here before. The global economy is poised to enter a new phase of robust, dependable growth. Technological and economic historian Carlota Perez calls it a “golden age.” Such ages occur roughly every 60 years, and they last for a decade or more, part of a long cycle of technological change and financial activity. (See Exhibit 1.)

This doesn’t mean that the world’s political and economic problems will go away. But whereas the details of long cycles vary, the overall pattern of progress remains the same: An economy spends 30 years in what Perez calls “installation,” using financial capital (largely from investors) to put in place new technologies. Ultimately, overinvestment and excessive speculation lead to a financial crisis, after which installation gives way to “deployment”: a time of gradually increasing prosperity and income from improved goods and services.

This time, linchpins of the golden age will include the worldwide build-out of a new services-oriented infrastructure based on digital technology and a general shift to cleaner energy and environmentally safer technologies. In the emerging markets of China, India, Brazil, Russia, and dozens of smaller developing nations, a billion people will enter the expanding global middle class.

The idea of sustained prosperity may seem implausible in early 2010. But no one would have believed, during the dark days at the end of World War II, that the global economy was heading for two decades of broad-based economic growth and relative peace, led by a new establishment of business and political leaders.

Tracking the Cycle

Long cycles of technology and investment have been tracked and analyzed by an impressive roster of scholars, including Perez, Joseph Schumpeter, and others. (See “Carlota Perez: The Thought Leader Interview,” by Art Kleiner, s+b, Winter 2005.) Five such cycles have occurred since the late 1700s. The first, lasting from the 1770s through the 1820s, was based on water power and introduced factories and canals, primarily in Britain. The second, the age of steam, coal, iron, and railways, lasted from the 1820s to the 1870s. The third, involving steel and heavy engineering (the giant electrical and transportation technologies of the Gilded Age), expanded to include Germany and the United States. This cycle ended around 1910, giving way to the mass production era of the 20th century, a fourth long cycle encompassing the rise of the automobile, petroleum-based materials, the assembly line, and the motion picture and television.

Our current long cycle, which began around 1970, is based on silicon: the integrated circuit, the digital computer, global telecommunications and the Internet. It may feel like this technology has run its course, but the cycle is really only half over. In a typical “technological–economic paradigm,” as Perez calls it, new technologies are rolled out during the first 30 years of installation with funding from financial capital. Investors are drawn in because they receive speculative gains that come, in effect, from other people making similar investments. Gradually this leads to “frenzy”: Investors can’t be certain which inventions will succeed and which new enterprises will endure, so they bet wildly. As some bets lead to rapid gains, enthusiasm and impatience fuel a more widespread appetite for jumping on board, risks be damned. The consequence is irrational exuberance, a crash — and then a period of crisis.

The current crisis began in 2000 with the Internet bubble collapse. It was prolonged by the financial-services industry. Not wanting to give up easy profits, and applying the technological innovations that computer “geeks” had provided, traders continued to push for rapid returns. Ever more elaborate derivative instruments were concocted; increasingly complicated computer models replaced experienced judgment; and highly leveraged bets piled into such “sure thing” arenas as real estate. This culminated in the catastrophic meltdown of 2008 and a historic moment of shifting establishment priorities.

Every crisis ends in such a moment. The last crisis, which began with the stock market crash of 1929, ended with the Bretton Woods agreements of 1944. In each case, once the widespread debacle bottoms out, the speculators of the old era are reined in, expectations are reset, and new business and government elites start to rebuild the world’s governing institutions. After World War II, the locus of power and influence was the oil economy. Rockefeller family interests influenced the governance of companies, governments, and supranational institutions (such as the International Monetary Fund, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission) for many years. The United Nations headquarters in New York is built on former Rockefeller real estate; the World Bank’s first president, John J. McCloy, had been a Rockefeller-connected lawyer and a family friend. The symbols of elite power, including the Rockefeller-built World Trade Center, were all linked to oil.

Only with a similar restructuring can a new period of extended growth, a golden age, be ushered in. This time, the leaders will be linked to silicon. IBM, Intel, and Microsoft will be more important in the next two decades than Exxon or the World Bank. IBM’s deep engagement with national and regional economic planners, particularly in emerging economies like China and India, will probably become the prevailing model for corporate growth.

When deployment begins, general assumptions about business shift accordingly. Financial capital, which is relatively indifferent to particular technologies, becomes less of an economic force. Businesses depend more on industrial capital, derived from profits from the sale of goods and services. Executives with a greater interest in long-term stability than in rapid returns are placed in charge of global affairs.

There are clear signs that this is happening now. Financial regulations are being put in place around the world to improve market monitoring, limit leverage, and mandate heftier reserves. Wall Street’s leaders (and their equivalents in the City of London and bourses elsewhere) are undergoing a fundamental reassessment. Far too much has been lost by far too many individuals, in both money and reputation, to allow a widespread return to the old fast-and-loose investment casino. It is no longer practical for financial institutions to operate by rewriting risk “insurance” over and over again, in an opaque market without established rules. To be sure, new schemes are always being hatched, but the people who run Wall Street (traditionally scions of wealth) have lost confidence in these interloping “smart guys.”

One telling indicator of this shift from speculation to real growth is the official attitude toward bubbles. In the 1990s, the U.S. Federal Reserve, under Alan Greenspan, took a hands-off approach to speculation. Now the Fed is discussing what actions it might take to cool off overheated markets in advance, and is admitting that its earlier approach to bubbles and risk management was a mistake. New authority is being sought by regulators such as the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and its European counterparts. And, although some on Wall Street will surely object, the most powerful of the houses, Goldman Sachs, has ex-employees in key Washington positions who are pushing for the new rules. Many believe it is in the interest of Goldman and others to rein in “rogue” trading activities, since this would not only make returns more reliable, but raise barriers to entry in the industry.

The Emerging Silicon Economy

Goldman Sachs will probably be part of the new Silicon Establishment, along with dominant enterprises in information and communications technology and others involved in deploying these technologies. For the first time in decades, a commonality of purpose and shared reservoir of knowledge will bridge the many differences among governing bodies. Many people have lived their adult lives without responsible and capable leadership; to their surprise, the next 30 years will be a time when authority — both in government and in business — can be trusted. Companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Intel have matured during the past 20 years, weathering conflicts — IBM’s near breakup, Microsoft’s antitrust battles, Intel’s confrontations with other chip manufacturers — that threatened their corporate existence and forced them to reconsider their core strategies and redefine their long-term goals. Meanwhile, major government agencies, such as the U.S. Army, the U.K. National Health Service, and various ministries in emerging market governments, have become the most significant and sophisticated buyers of large-scale information technology in the world today. Both customers and manufacturers have learned to factor life-cycle costs and long-term plans into their decisions.

The priorities of the new technology-based elite include access to larger groups of customers, such as those in emerging nations. Thus, one hallmark of the coming golden age will be its global inclusiveness. Although oppression and slavery may remain widespread, the social systems that reinforced a “haves” and “have-nots” status quo, holding back economic opportunities for the majority of the human population, will give way. A billion new people will gain a productive foothold that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.

A new global economic infrastructure is emerging, built on networked, shared computing resources and commonly called cloud computing. Google alone has more than 10 million servers, and other companies are building comparable cloud infrastructures. As enterprises exit the recent slump, widespread investments will be made in private clouds, shifting business from high-fixed-cost data centers, and reshaping many public and consumer services. A more responsible approach to the natural environment is also gaining ground, one that advocates using energy more efficiently and reducing pollution, greenhouse gases, and hazardous waste. Meanwhile, innovative new service offerings will displace entrenched but inefficient medical and financial practices.

Although the benefits will be widely distributed, not everyone will be happy. For those who would like to continue rolling the dice of global finance, a more planned and regulated future will feel like an attack on freedom. Adding a billion new people to the global middle class will add to the labor arbitrage that has already begun to affect many lawyers, journalists, software engineers, and accountants. It will now affect professionals in health, finance, and education. As cloud-based financial services spread, will we really need as many stockbrokers? As credible expertise becomes more easily available, will we still need so many intermediaries?

After a couple of decades, the silicon era will grow moribund, as the oil era did before it. Sometime around 2030, there will be a silicon equivalent to the oil crisis of the early 1970s. Then a new long cycle will emerge. This one will probably be based on the technologies just emerging now: biotechnology and nanotechnology, along with molecular manufacturing (the ability to cheaply build any material from scratch). Then the pattern of frenzied investment will begin again, with another cycle to come.

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A Little Lesson On Crowdsourcing (2 Comments)

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 17:55:22 +0000

Topic by Cesar Castro

Summary

How to leverage the crowd in times of emergency - lessons from the BP Oil Disaster

Content

(originally posted in the DiscoveryCast blog)

BP has received a lot of criticism for failing to respond adequately (or in a timely manner) to the thousands of ideas that it received, both solicited and unsolicited. If they (BP) would have followed a few key elements of open innovation and crowdsourcing, perhaps this would have had a better result. As of this post, I am aware that BP is currently reviewing the submissions and hopefully they’ll glean something of value to prevent future disasters of this scale.

Where did they go wrong?

1) Asking the Question: Trying to present a single solution that addressed all of the challenges facing BP is like trying to cure cancer with one experiment. What BP should have done is break the challenge down into various key categories (containment, recovery, clean up, etc) and posed a series of requests in each category. That would have directed the crowd to focus on one area or another.

2) Collaboration: To my knowledge, both the solicited and unsolicited ideas were brought forward by individuals and/or companies, with no ability to see each others ideas and build or improve them. A more collaborative process would have gone a long way to improve the quality of ideas and perhaps even reduce the total number of ideas (since people would find other ideas to build on before entering their own).

3) Filters: clearly with this number of ideas you need filters. Again, with a truly crowdsourced and collaborative process the crowd can act as a filter. Not sure how BP is filtering / analyzing the ideas submitted but I’m pretty sure that at this point the crowd isn’t involved.

Perhaps one thing they did achieve (not by design, I might add) was diversity. It looked like they were getting ideas from all over the world and from a diverse group of participants. What a wasted opportunity.

Lastly, perhaps there is a chance for BP to open up these submissions to the global community and see if they can salvage some ideas to prevent this from happening again in the future. I’m sure there are a few diamonds in that pile of information.

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Bio-Based Chemicals and Materials

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 05:21:35 +0000

Topic by Cesar Castro

Summary

Invitation to Join a Public Brainstorming Session on the Future of Bio-Based Chemicals and Materials

Content

DiscoveryCast is pleased to announce an upcoming brainstorming session using our advanced, web-based ideation platform. Our channel partner for chemicals, SpecialChem S.A., has organized a global, public event to share ideas about the future of Bio-based Chemicals and Materials.

The scenario we'll use to start the conversation consists of three key questions:

A. What are the most promising bio-based chemical technologies of the future, and why?

B. What are your short to mid-term applications and needs for bio-based chemicals, and why?

C. What are the hurdles to accelerate growth of bio-based chemicals, and how can they be overcome?

NOTE: The event will take place from June 9 - 11, 2010

This a global, public and open event. If you are interested in participating, you can register here:

http://www.omnexus.com/home/survey/483/index.aspx?lr=lidp

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Cesar Castro

DiscoveryCast Founder and CEO

Ideation and Open Innovation (8 Comments)

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:30:41 +0000

Topic by Cesar Castro

Content

I recently completed a white paper on ideation and open innovation. I thought it might be of use to the CloroxConnects community. I've attached it to this post and am including a link below.

Here's the Executive Summary:

Developing new approaches to innovation is no longer just an option for organizations that
want to grow and thrive; it is a 21st century imperative. With the increasing landscape of new
models and methods of innovation, it becomes important to understand what these strategies
can offer, how to combine them for maximum impact and how to execute them for maximum
output. One thing is clear: there is no single magic answer for any one company’s innovation
needs. The most successful companies have recognized from the very beginning that a strategic
portfolio approach ensures the highest return on innovation investment. This portfolio
approach includes working with innovation intermediaries and employing a direct-to-market
strategy, but most often starts by developing new methods to uncover the best ideas within
your organization. This process of ideation is a key element to any innovation portfolio strategy
and a first step for many of the Fortune 500 companies.

For a link to the white paper:

File

Ideation and Open Innovation White Paper - DiscoveryCast - March 2010.pdf (791KB)

Link

Ideation and Open Innovation White Paper

User Led Innovation (2 Comments)

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:12:36 +0000

Topic by Cesar Castro

Summary

Are there any examples of user led innovation in Clorox?

Content

User led innovation (ULI) is an area of great opportunity, particularly in consumer-facing businesses. There are lots of good examples out there, such as IkeaHacker (http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/) and Instructables (http://www.instructables.com/) to name a few. Eric von Hippel of MIT is one of the leading experts in this area, and a great resource for further reading ( http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/tutorials.htm>.

For those of you not as familiar, here's my take on ULI:

"User-led innovation (ULI) has been around for a long time, but only recently has this term entered the innovation conversation. Defined by customer-led development to improve products or services, it is becoming a well-established innovation approach, especially for consumer-facing businesses. ULI requires a committed and passionate group of end-users, the abundance of tools and technology that allow consumers to improve or re-purpose existing products, and the willingness of companies to foster the type of environment conducive to this behavior. The innate advantage to ULI is that the created knowledge is organic and guaranteed to be useful to some segment of the customer base (and ideally impact the major customer segments as well). The other advantage is its ability to reduce the cost of innovation and new product (or service) development by placing some responsibility on the end-user. The early examples of ULI come from the software industry; existing products and code were constantly being reconfigured in new ways, but has moved to other industries such as food, electronics, hardware, and home furnishings."

Clearly this has the potential for negative impact too, but nonetheless it should be part of the innovation conversation within companies. Any thoughts? Any good success stories that can be shared? Are there any strategies at Clorox to foster this type of innovation?

Upcoming innovation seminar (1 Comment)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:50:35 +0000

Topic by Gordon

Summary

Local (to Clorox R&D) seminar on innovation in Berkeley CA

Content

Hey,

I came across an interesting seminar on innovation. They've got some great speakers lined up for March in Berkeley Haas. Anyone going, or maybe get a group to go and report back?

http://ideas.economist.com/

The Economist believes that the world is governed by ideas. Because human progress relies on the advancement of good ideas, we are launching a new series of events that brings together top thinkers from around the world to discuss and debate the most important ideas of our time. By focusing on Innovation, Intelligent Infrastructure, and Human Potential, we imagine an ecosystem where good ideas move from concept to implementation, fueled by the power of human ingenuity, and only the best survive. Welcome to the Ideas Economy.

The inaugural event, Innovation: Fresh thinking for the ideas economy, held at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley on March 23 and 24, will be unlike any other event organised on the topic. A multi-part, multimedia forum designed to fuse creativity with action, this event will expand and possibly overturn established thinking about what innovation is, where it comes from, and how to make it work.

Some of today’s top global innovators will examine and iterate on the genesis of good ideas, the great challenges of the twenty-first century, the question of whether we live in a flat world, the costs and benefits of crowdsourcing, the power of social entrepreneurship, the role of government in catalysing innovation, leveraging failure, finding innovation in a crisis, organising the teams of tomorrow, the phenomenon of reverse innovation, the future of open innovation, and how old economy actors are being disrupted in the new economy. Whether the impetus is to improve customer relationships, develop new products and services, explore untapped markets, or improve efficiency, companies today must implement more than just an R&D strategy to survive and thrive. Regardless of geography or industry, an organisation lives or dies by how it innovates.

Link

innovation seminar

Dealing with Intellectual Property of a different sort

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:21:46 +0000

Topic by Husker

Summary

IP battles waging in the advertising world

Content

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In a move that demonstrates a hardened stance on the issue of intellectual property, the 4A's is urging agency search consultants to adopt contract language that reflects advertising agencies' right to retain creative ideas presented during new-business pitches.

In a letter sent last night to some 30 major industry consultants -- which marketers hire to help find and evaluate prospective agencies to handle their ad business -- the trade organization wrote: "Members of the 4A's new business committees would like to encourage you to consider including a stipulation in all of your agency search agreements that specifies the rights to intellectual property created by agencies during the review process remain the property of the agency until the marketer either hires the agency to execute the work or the parties agree to a commercially equitable payment for the assignment of usage rights."

The 4A's letter was endorsed by nearly 50 Madison Avenue standouts, such as JWT, Anomaly and R/GA, which sit on the 4A's new-business committee.

The intellectual property debate is hardly a new one, but the trade group contends it is growing into a bigger problem, and more ad agencies are griping about it. As the recession squeezes agencies' margins -- and as more marketers are turning to their procurement departments to try to put a specific price on marketing costs -- Madison Avenue shops are trying to protect their piece of the pie. "There are more reviews that request some form of speculative agency work," according to the letter. "Because of the economics associated with changing industry dynamics, the importance of equitably structuring agency-developed new-business IP has become more compelling."

The 4A's says the issue has taken on increasing importance as the economy picks up for some marketers. "Since Labor Day, the level of review activity has picked up noticeably, and more and more reviews are requesting some form of speculative thinking or work," said Tom Finneran, executive VP-agency management services at the 4A's. "That may well be a byproduct of marketers and CMOs being under so much pressure for ideas that can move the needle now."

Rising tension
According to Mr. Finneran, the 4A's has seen a spike in recent months in agencies complaining about clients' desire to own ideas and work shown during the new-business process. "The nature of the complaints is that [requests for proposals] will come out, and, buried in the 14th paragraph of a [non-disclosure agreement], is a paragraph or sentence that says, 'Oh by the way, and in addition to protecting the confidentiality of our agreement, we the client want to own all ideas and work product that comes out of the review process.'"

Based on a number of search consultants Ad Age spoke to about the letter, the agency search community seems to generally agree with the sentiment outlined by the 4A's. However, they don't necessarily agree there's been a rise in advertisers asking to own ideas presented by agencies during pitches -- and consultants don't think the burden should fall on them to regulate the intellectual property issue.

"We totally agree with the 4A's stance on this, and we've always adhered to the same guidelines they are articulating," said David Beals, president-CEO at consultancy Jones Lundin Beals. "Having said that, we've not had a client in the 10 years I've owned this company that has disputed this take. We don't run into clients that unfairly ask for ownership ideas."

Additionally, said Mr. Beals, "What we don't agree with is the 4A's asking us to exercise some type of contractual formal agreements with our clients. ... This is a legitimate issue, but it's between the agency and the client prospect, not something to be asking the consultants to do. The agency should be the one to make the stand that 'No, we're not going to participate if they ask us to give the ideas away for free.'"

Consultants report that if marketers do request to own ideas, they'll be willing to pay for them. The biggest reason why advertisers ask to own ideas at all? They are fearful of being sued by a non-winning agency that happens to produce a similar idea to the winning one, consultants say.

Uncomfortable push
"It isn't because clients are assholes," said Hasan Ramusevic, owner of Hasan & Co. in Raleigh, N.C. "There are a lot of legal factors to consider."

Mr. Ramusevic said that about a year ago he voluntarily altered language in contract agreements to reflect that, in a pitch scenario, agencies should retain ownership of ideas if they are not the winning agency. Still, "I don't know how I feel about the 4A's pushing that on us," he said.

"I think that this has been an issue that's ongoing, not a rise in it," Mr. Ramusevic said. "The difference is that the agencies didn't fight back on the issue as much as they are today. There's a heightened awareness, and agencies are more willing to speak up about it."

Joanne Davis, head of Joanne Davis Consulting in New York, addresses the issue by requiring agencies to sign a letter acknowledging that, in the "likely situation" where multiple agencies submit similar ideas based on the same brief, or ideas similar to ones the client has developed internally, they will not seek to enforce copyright protection.

Ms. Davis said the problem manifests itself during pitches more often than one would think, recalling a situation a few years ago when two finalists in a pitch for a retailer presented the same tagline.

Still, Ms. Davis thinks the fact that 46 of the 55 agencies on the 4A's new-business committee endorsed the letter sent last night is noteworthy. "I was impressed with the number of agencies that signed it -- it shows you it's a widespread issue that affects large agencies, independent agencies, holding company agencies ... it's not just a few agencies who feel that they've been wronged complaining."

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AT&T using crowdsourcing to identify network outages (7 Comments)

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:32:31 +0000

Topic by Han Chang

Summary

AT&T using crowdsourcing to identify network outages

Content

Along the same lines of the DARPA example posted earlier, AT&T is using crowdsourcing to identify potential network problems. Basically, users can report a dropped call or data failure on their iPhone, and the error is sent along with the user's location to AT&T network operations.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/08/cnet.iphone.att.dropped.calls/index.html#cnnSTCText

This is an interesting way for AT&T to respond to some of the negative hits their brand's been getting due to poor quality. It gives the consumer the feeling that they can do something about a problem that used to be out of their control (although it remains to be seen whether AT&T actually takes any action or if it's a glorified complaint drop box or part of a way to counter Verizon's network claims). Assuming that AT&T does do something with the reports it gets, each user is now in a way an AT&T network monitoring technician, and AT&T gets free information about network performance that it could only otherwise get if it had a network scanning vehicle on every street corner.

P&G Opening Silicon Valley outpost to focus on social media (1 Comment)

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:55:32 +0000

Topic by Husker

Content

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) -- Procter & Gamble Co. loves Facebook after all, and besides encouraging brands to develop a presence there, the world's biggest marketer has opened an office in Silicon Valley to help develop social-networking systems and digital-marketing capabilities with the website.

P&G's outlook on Facebook and social media as marketing tools appears rosier.

Those messages came in a meeting last week between P&G executives and venture capitalists, recounted by David Hornik on VentureBlog in a post that quickly picked up currency over the weekend on, of all places, Twitter.

"P&G's explicit goal for 2010 is to assure that each of its brands has a meaningful presence on Facebook, and they are willing to pay dearly for that," Mr. Hornik wrote. "And while P&G's thought leaders expressed some skepticism about the efficacy of Facebook's 'engagement ads,' they certainly view Facebook as a must-have for digital advertising and brand building. They didn't quantify what they are paying for that exposure, but it is quite clear that the numbers are very big."

Mr. Hornik contrasted the enthusiastic outlook on Facebook to a less-enthusiastic one by P&G executives toward Twitter. "They described Twitter as 'much more like television than one might think.' To P&G, Twitter is a great broadcast medium -- it is best for one-to-many communications that are short bursts of timely information," he wrote. "P&G folks do not view it as particularly relevant to what they are doing on the brand-building and advertising side. ... They do not believe that Twitter will ever approach the value they can get out of a Google or Facebook."

Mr. Hornik, after being contacted by P&G over the weekend, did backtrack on one big number -- a projection he had attributed to P&G that Facebook would reach 5 billion members globally. That 5 billion is actually the number of consumers P&G hopes to reach globally, up from the current 4 billion.

By whatever count, however, P&G's outlook on Facebook and social media as marketing tools appears rosier than Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation, portrayed in a talk to a digital-marketing forum in Cincinnati in late 2008.

"What in heaven's name," he asked, "made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?"

"Who said this is media?" he said. "Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren't trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. ... We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it."

He went on to say, noting it was personal preference rather than company policy, "I really don't want to buy any more banner ads on Facebook."

He also expressed discomfort about the level of personalized targeting available through Facebook, though he said that Facebook applications are potentially valuable vehicles for advertisers.

In an e-mail, a P&G spokeswoman wrote that Mr. McConnell was speaking for himself, not the company, at the time. "P&G sees the value of digital and social media in consumers' lives and we want to connect with consumers in the environments where they are spending their time," she said. "For example, Facebook fan pages for brands [are] an easy way to engage with consumers in a forum where they've chosen to engage with us. (i.e. Pringles' fan page has over 2.8 million global fans). We don't have social media figured out, but we are encouraging our brands to include digital and social media into their holistic brand-building strategies."

She said the intended perspective on Twitter is that it's "a communication platform that is good for 'one-to-many' communication, similar to TV. Additionally, some of our brands are using Twitter to engage with consumers one-on-one when they have questions. We also view Twitter as a valuable listening tool."

She also clarified that what was referred to as an Innovation Center on VentureBlog is a "Connect & Develop" office near Palo Alto "to increase our presence in innovation hotspots," but is not the size of the sprawling complexes that P&G typically terms "innovation centers." Connect & Develop is a longstanding P&G program which seeks to solicit innovation from outside companies and consumers while also licensing its own technology to outside companies.

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You get a jet pack, and you get a jet pack, and you... (2 Comments)

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:34:36 +0000

Topic by Husker

Summary

New NASA Tech enables personal flight

Content

NASA’s Puffin Is Way Cooler Than a Jetpack

By Jason Paur
January 21, 2010 |
4:18 pm |
Categories: Air Travel, Autopia WTF? Dept.

The engineers at NASA have combined every one of our geeky transportation dreams into a single little vehicle called the Puffin. It takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane. It can cruise at 140 mph and, with a boost mode, hit about twice that. Oh — and it’s electric.

If that sounds too good to be true, it is — for the moment. But give it time. NASA unveiled the concept today at the American Helicopter Society meeting in San Francisco.

The tilt-rotor Puffin has a flight system similar to the V-22 Osprey, but instead of carrying a bunch of Marines and their gear, the Puffin carries one person in the prone position. The rotors are nearly 7.5 feet in diameter and the aircraft has a wingspan just over 13 feet. Thanks to carbon composite construction, the Puffin weighs in at less than 400 pounds including the lithium phosphate batteries.

The Puffin is designed to stand on its tail, which serves as the landing gear (check out the video). Once the Puffin transitions to horizontal flight, the pilot can cruise at more than 140 miles per hour. Hit the boost mode and this bird will do nearly 300 mph. The projected range is 50 miles on a charge. Yeah, that’s not much, but using electricity means the Puffin’s powerplant won’t be limited by air density. NASA says it should be able to climb under full power to around 30,000 feet before the battery pack would be depleted enough to require coming back down.

So why call it the Puffin?

“If you’ve ever seen a puffin on the ground, it looks very awkward, with wings too small to fly, and that’s exactly what our vehicle looks like,” Mark Moore, an aerospace engineer at NASA Langley Research Center, told Scientific American. “But it’s also apparently called the most environmentally friendly bird because it hides its poop, and we’re environmentally friendly because we have essentially no emissions. Also, puffins tend to live in solitude, only ever coming together on land to mate, and ours is a one-person vehicle.”

No word on when the Puffin will make its first manned flight, though NASA plans to finish a one-third size demonstrator by March and see how well it transitions from cruising to hovering. But it’s safe to say that if this bird flies — and that’s a very big if — we’ll no longer be dreaming of having our own jetpack.

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