The WTF Economy — The WTF Economy. WTF?! In San Francisco, Uber has 3x the revenue of the entire prior taxi and limousine industry. WTF?! Without owning a single room, Airbnb has more rooms on offer than some of the largest hotel groups in the world. Airbnb has 800 employees, while Hilton has 152,000. WTF?! WTF?! WTF?! What do on-demand services, AI, and the $15 minimum wage movement have in common? What is the future when more and more work can be done by intelligent machines instead of people, or only done by people in partnership with those machines?
Over the past few decades, the digital revolution has transformed the world of media, upending centuries-old companies and business models. I believe that the biggest changes are still ahead, and that every industry and every organization will have to transform itself in the next few years, in multiple ways, or fade away.
That’s why I’m launching a new event called Next:Economy (What’s The Future of Work?) We put on a lot of events at O’Reilly. 'Smart skin' senses when you've had too much UV radiation. RMIT researcher Philipp Gutruf with a transparent wearable sensor. Photo: Joe Armao You've heard of smart televisions and smartphones. Now get ready for smart skin. Able to alert the wearer to harmful levels of UV radiation which can lead to skin cancer, the technology developed by RMIT researchers involves wearing stretchy electronic sensors which monitor UV-levels in real time.
"If you are at the beach you could wear this device like a rubberband around your wrist or as a skin patch and jump into the ocean, it will be able to monitor the UV levels and tell you if you have had too much," material scientist Philipp Gutruf said. Developed by RMIT's Functional Materials and Microsystems group, the flexible material contains fine layers of zinc oxide which act as the UV sensing material. Zinc oxide is also used in sunscreens. Mr Gutruf said the patch or band could be wirelessly linked to electronic devices such as a mobile phone or tablet which would alert the user to high UV radiation levels.
Maria sur Twitter : "Smartphone converted into a microscope using a 3 cents lens: via @ScienceDaily #innovation. Lens turns smartphone into a microscope: Costs only 3 cents -- ScienceDaily. Researchers at the University of Houston have created an optical lens that can be placed on an inexpensive smartphone to magnify images by a magnitude of 120, all for just 3 cents a lens. Wei-Chuan Shih, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UH, said the lens can work as a microscope, and the cost and ease of using it -- it attaches directly to a smartphone camera lens, without the use of any additional device -- make it ideal for use with younger students in the classroom. It also could have clinical applications, allowing small or isolated clinics to share images with specialists located elsewhere, he said.
In a paper published in the Journal of Biomedical Optics, Shih and three graduate students describe how they produced the lenses and examine the image quality. The lens is made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a polymer with the consistency of honey, dropped precisely on a preheated surface to cure. "I put it on my phone, and it turns out it works," he said. UN Development sur Twitter : "A snapshot of @UNDPAsiaPac 2014 #innovations:
Asiapac-2014-innovation-snapshot. Asia Pacific Innovations 2014 - this year that was.... Rethinking business as usual Feedback loops & iteration User-centered design thinking Creating the space to experiment and fail early Changing our mindset and culture Encouraging agile programming Pushing our boundaries and taking risks for new ideas Designing for and with end users for enhanced impact We've set out & are en route to.. Add success stories picture here Bangladesh: Changing social norms behind transportation Bhutan: Youth employment and games China: E-Waste Disposal and Management Papua New Guinea: Phones against corruption Sri Lanka: Youth engagement in policymaking and implementation Thailand: Sustainable maize Viet Nam: Public legal literacy outreach of law universities Click the pictures to view Video: UNDP Development Innovations in Asia and the Pacific Nepal: Battling gender stereotypes and gender-based violence using social media and games Indonesia: One click system Indonesia: Low tech mobile app for disaster response.
All Female MIT Startup Makes Solar Powered Benches to Charge Phones. 301 Moved Permanently. Copyright’s Blind Spot: The Innovation Asymmetry. When it comes to innovation, copyright debates tend to be one-sided. Consider the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. SOPA and PIPA. Congressional hearings. The Department of Commerce “green paper.” To various degrees, each reveals a copyright setting in which innovation is neglected or, at a minimum, insufficiently appreciated. Why, for example, have copyright debates focused on piracy, theft, and rogue websites? I define the innovation asymmetry as an overemphasis on a technology’s infringing uses and insufficient appreciation of its noninfringing uses.
The costs of infringing uses can be quantified. The costs also are vivid in threatening copyright owners’ business models. In contrast, noninfringing uses are less tangible, less obvious at the onset of a technology, and not advanced by an army of motivated advocates. Second, they are more fully developed over time. Finally, future noninfringing uses are less likely to be advanced by a coordinated and motivated group of advocates.
PipelineLarge.jpg (JPEG Image, 800 × 607 pixels) PowerPoint Presentation - BoozCo_The-2012-Global-Innovation-1000-Results-Summary. Research and development Research and development business studies and business english. Most people associate the research and development (R&D) function of a company with the invention of new products. Whilst this is very important, the development of existing products is of equal significance because consumer preferences are continually changing.
The task of product research and development is to come up with the goods and services that meet the needs of tomorrow's customers. In any well-run company, research and development have strictly commercial functions - to further the company's business objectives by creating better products, to improve operational processes and to provide expert advice to the rest of the company and to customers. Some research is not expected to pay for itself within a foreseeable time span.
Large companies may allocate as much as one-tenth of their research budget to so-called blue-sky investigations whose most likely contribution is to the development of new products and a possible pay-off in the distant future. Research and development. Cycle of research and development The research and development (R&D, also called research and technical development or research and technological development, RTD in Europe) is a specific group of activities within a business.
The activities that are classified as R&D differ from company to company, but there are two primary models. In one model, the primary function of an R&D group is to develop new products; in the other model, the primary function of an R&D group is to discover and create new knowledge about scientific and technological topics for the purpose of uncovering and enabling development of valuable new products, processes, and services.
Under both models, R&D differs from the vast majority of a company's activities which are intended to yield nearly immediate profit or immediate improvements in operations and involve little uncertainty as to the return on investment (ROI). Background[edit] Business[edit] Present-day R&D is a core part of the modern business world. Technological and industrial history of Canada. The technological and industrial history of Canada encompasses the country's development in the areas of transportation, communication, energy, materials, public works, public services (health care), domestic/consumer and defense technologies. Most technologies diffused in Canada came from other places; only a small number actually originated in Canada.
For more about those with a Canadian origin see Invention in Canada. The terms chosen for the "age" described below are both literal and metaphorical. They describe the technology that dominated the period in question but are also representative of a large number of other technologies introduced during the same period. Also of note is the fact that the period of diffusion of a technology can begin modestly and can extend well beyond the "age" of its introduction.
Technology is a major cultural determinant, no less important in shaping human lives than philosophy, religion, social organization, or political systems. Energy[edit] Funding of science. Research funding is a term generally covering any funding for scientific research, in the areas of both "hard" science and technology and social science. The term often connotes funding obtained through a competitive process, in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most promising receive funding.
Such processes, which are run by government, corporations or foundations, allocate scarce funds. Most research funding comes from two major sources, corporations (through research and development departments) and government (primarily carried out through universities and specialized government agencies). Some small amounts of scientific research are carried out (or funded) by charitable foundations, especially in relation to developing cures for diseases such as cancer, malaria and AIDS. Government-funded research[edit] Government-funded research can either be carried out by the government itself, or through grants to academic and other researchers outside the government.
Research and development. 39924_PDF Proof.pdf. Technology life cycle. The typical life-cycle of a manufacturing process or production system from the stages of its initial conception to its culmination as either a technique or procedure of common practice or to its demise. The Y-axis of the diagram shows the business gain to the proprietor of the technology while the X-axis traces its lifetime. The technology life-cycle (TLC) describes the commercial gain of a product through the expense of research and development phase, and the financial return during its "vital life".
Some technologies, such as steel, paper or cement manufacturing, have a long lifespan (with minor variations in technology incorporated with time) whilst in other cases, such as electronic or pharmaceutical products, the lifespan may be quite short. The TLC associated with a product or technological service is different from product life-cycle (PLC) dealt with in product life-cycle management. The four phases of the technology life-cycle[edit] The TLC may be seen as composed of four phases: Diffusion of innovations.
The diffusion of innovations according to Rogers. With successive groups of consumers adopting the new technology (shown in blue), its market share (yellow) will eventually reach the saturation level. In mathematics, the yellow curve is known as the logistic function. The curve is broken into sections of adopters. History[edit] The concept of diffusion was first studied by the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde in late 19th century[3] and by German and Austrian anthropologists such as Friedrich Ratzel and Leo Frobenius.[4] The study of diffusion of innovations took off in the subfield of rural sociology in the midwestern United States in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1962 Everett Rogers, a professor of rural sociology, published his seminal work: Diffusion of Innovations.
Elements[edit] The key elements in diffusion research are: Characteristics of innovations[edit] Studies have explored many characteristics of innovations. Characteristics of individual adopters[edit] Process[edit] Decisions[edit]