1 year ago

The end is near…

Well it is nearly time for my blog to end (and the world if you think 2012 is the end), I have enjoyed looking into different companies, approaches and ideas relating to innovation. With the current financial state of the world, one thing that should flourish is innovation, people must be creative, adaptable and inspired to improve things and that will bring an entire new generation of people with new ideas, designs and visions. a recent article on the BBC showed the predictions of John Elfreth Watkins came true, his vision of the future predcited things like…

1. Digital colour photography

Watkins did not, of course, use the word “digital” or spell out precisely how digital cameras and computers would work, but he accurately predicted how people would come to use new photographic technology.

Grab from The Ladies' JournalA scan of the original article can be found online

“Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence, snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later…. photographs will reproduce all of nature’s colours.”

This showed major foresight, says Mr Nilsson. When Watkins was making his predictions, it would have taken a week for a picture of something happening in China to make its way into Western papers.

People thought photography itself was a miracle, and colour photography was very experimental, he says.

“The idea of having cameras gathering information from opposite ends of the world and transmitting them - he wasn’t just taking a present technology and then looking to the next step, it was far beyond what anyone was saying at the time.”

Patrick Tucker from the World Future Society, based in Maryland in the US, thinks Watkins might even be hinting at a much bigger future breakthrough.

“‘Photographs will be telegraphed’ reads strikingly like how we access information from the web,” says Mr Tucker.

2. The rising height of Americans

“Americans will be taller by from one to two inches.”

Watkins had unerring accuracy here, says Mr Nilsson - the average American man in 1900 was about 66-67ins (1.68-1.70m) tall and by 2000, the average was 69ins (1.75m).


Today, it’s 69.5ins (1.76m) for men and 64ins (1.63m) for women.

3. Mobile phones

“Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn.”

International phone calls were unheard of in Watkins’ day. It was another 15 years before the first call was made, by Alexander Bell, even from one coast of the US to the other. The idea of wireless telephony was truly revolutionary.

4. Pre-prepared meals

“Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishment similar to our bakeries of today.”

The proliferation of ready meals in supermarkets and takeaway shops in High Streets suggests that Watkins was right, although he envisaged the meals would be delivered on plates which would be returned to the cooking establishments to be washed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16444966

those are 4 of his predictions that came true another article below shows predictions we have made for the next 100 years…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16536598

which ones do you think will come true? and do you have any others you think we will see come about in our lifetimes? 

Innovation is not new, its just more known and people are ware of it, I think it will continue and play a big part in human life for a long time to come…and I might even keep you up to date about it on here!

(bbc Online)

1 year ago

Innovation is easy?

This guy was pretty strange, but some of what he uses is interesting. making the point companies need to stop copying each other and be unique, ‘they thing they have in common, is they have nothing in common’. This is a true statement which makes you think. watch of for the Seth Godin quote. 

1 year ago

The world of medicine

When we talk about innovation we tend to think business and products, but are they really the peak of the innovation industry or do other areas of greater importance go unnoticed?

some examples of innovations that help hospitals and the military are below. they are now key bits of kit that before designed and created were not available for people to use, these innovations are truly what we need to defend and care for ourselves…more important that chatting to your friend on-line…

MEDIWRAP® THERMAL BLANKET

Constructed from the highly thermally efficient MEDIWRAP® textile the MEDIWRAP® blanket helps to minimise all forms of heat loss.

The MEDIWRAP® blanket has been widely used by British Military Medics in both Iraq and Afghanistan to help prevent the onset of trauma induced hypothermia, assisting in immediate victim stabilisation and retrieval.

As a passive warming system the MEDIWRAP® blanket can be used anywhere without the need to connect to a separate heat supply. It is soft and comfortable on the inside, whilst being completely water resistant and draught proof on the outside, it is also latex free and invisible to x-rays.

UNO-FLUSH® IS AN ALL IN ONE HIGH ACTION CHANNEL CLEANSER AND SCOPE SPONGE DESIGNED FOR THE INITIAL FLUSH AND WIPE OF AN ENDOSCOPE IMMEDIATELY POST-PROCEDURE

The British Society of Gastroenterology, (BSG) European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, (ESGE) and World Gastroenterology Organisation (WGO) all state endoscopes must be pre cleaned with detergent sucked through the working channel, as soon as the endoscope has been removed from the patient.

Those are just two products but I think they key point I am making is that innovation is not something we should just assume with famous businessmen and products we use…its deeper than that and goes on in all areas of life, with some product innovation saving lives.

1 year ago

Sir Richard v Sir Alan v Sir Philip 

3 of the most famous and successful businessmen in the UK, but what makes them so special and can any of them be classed as innovative people. The money they have made is not disputed but the way they made it can be. Was it through amazing product design, brilliant customer service, image portrayal or just luck!

Virgin is one of the most recognizable brands in the world, started in the 1970s by Sir Richard Branson (Virgin Online, 19/1/12), Virgin has excelled in nearly all areas from trains to music, and now banking and space travel! I think if you look at why Virgin has grown and managed to compete in so many sectors you will see that is it not really anything to do with products. They did no invent the CD, they did not invent trains or Aeroplanes and they certainly were not the first bank around! The key to the success is HOW they use those products, and how they market them as there own and although many people do not class Richard Branson as innovative, I do… creativity as discussed in the last post is linked to innovation and he very creative in how he markets his ideas. Creating the image of ‘It’s not just a train, its a Virgin train’ may not be what people think of as innovative but to be able to get people to follow that belief is just as if not more impressive than coming up with a new product. Branson is innovative, to make money in the areas he is in you have to be and he does it very well! 

Alan Sugar is another who is no longer really classed as innovative, but I think people base this view on the fact they see him on TV, and assume that’s all he does. They forget the fact his his big break came in the way he designed a very cheap to build computer that retailed at over £300 (bigos.com) This was the stepping stone to the rest of his business and it was his idea which if someone came up with now we would call innovative…he improved a product, but we describe him as an entrepreneur… surely people can be both?

Sir Philip Green is the only person on this list I do not class as innovative, he followed a standard business plan and it worked for him, his Arcadia group has grown massively and has a massive market share in men’s and women’s clothing. He is an exceptional businessman but I would stop before I classed him as innovative. 

All three excel in what they do, but for the way in which they do it I believe Richard Branson and Alan Sugar will be remembered in years to come. 

1 year ago

Creator or Created?

A massive areas that surround innovation, particularly the people we class as ‘innovative’ is if these people are born creative or they develop it. The common belief is that creativity is something you are born with, which can not be understood and it just something certain people possess. 

Creativity on its own can be looked at as worthless without the resources around it. If someone is creative but has no backing, resources or faith in themselves this will hold them back. on the flip side if some who is creative is in the environment that creativity is encouraged such as Google, Apple and Facebook, these people can flourish and expand on the creativity they have. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvRMsl8hJYU

the video above ‘what is being creative’ explores what creativity actually is as well as addressing the way in which people view the word ‘creativity’ the video created by Kristian Ulrich Larsen and explains that creativity is not just associated with musicians and artists but is now associated with everyone. ’the ability and erge to make something of value, it can be big, or small’. it

The video makes you think more about creativity as little bits of everything, which everyone shares and everyone has strengths all of which can be linked to creativity. 

This is an opposite view to the only certain people are creative, but one that is in some ways more positive and does not want to say yes you are creative or no you are not, but instead get everyone to try and we will see what we get. I admire this view and wish I agreed, however I believe not everyone has the potential to be creative in any environment, just as I believe certain people will succeed in any situation and become creative and noticed for it. Luck and fate can be brought in to the argument, but in summary…you either have it, or you don’t! 

what do you think?

1 year ago

The end of the upgrade?

A “smart” internet-connected television that has the ability to have its hardware upgraded every year has been unveiled by Samsung’ (bbc online)

The way people watch things has changed a lot recently, with the days of having 4 channels on your TV at home ending, the minimum now is freeview along with all the radio stations. We seem to always want more way to watch things and more and more choice in what we watch. Could Samsung’s new TV be the final bit of kit anyone will ever need, an end to having to update your TV every 2 years, or buy a new DVD player. 

Samsung is to release a new TV that will have the ability to have its Hardware updated on a regular basis, new items can be added to it along with software updates, people can watch, record, listen and upgrade. 

To me this is a very innovative idea, but also an obvious one… surely anyone can see that an all in 1 TV would be great and yet only now has the idea come to life. Samsung aims to be the biggest television provider in the world and this is a bit step to doing that, but if others come up with similar ideas then we will be back to the biggest/richest companies looking for something else…which will mean that maybe even this bit of technology would become outdated? 

Cost will be another thing, the idea to have hardware upgrades is great, but if they charge to much people will be put off. It will be interesting to see if what on paper looks like the next big thing, actually turns out to be so!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16480712

1 year ago

3D Not so good?

3D films and TV have grown massively over the last year, nearly every other film that comes out is in 3D, but it does not seem to be having the effect the companies wanted…people are rejecting it. 

Disney recently spent $175 million on a film called Mars Needs Moms, expecting a massive return on the film it has made for 3D viewing, however it grossed less that $7 on its opening weekend and was a total flop (independent online, 21-3-11)

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/the-175m-flop-so-bad-it-could-end-the-3d-boom-2247778.html

other films have followed a similar pattern with many people preferring to watch the 2D version of films. people do not want to sit in glasses and have things fly at them. however there are films that have proved a massive hit. most notably 2009’s Avatar which grossed over $2 billion world wide and cost $500 million to make. other sucesses include Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland and Up.

So 3D films have generally made money but not the amount that was expected of them, films are now released in 3D just for the sake of it. Companies like Disney are slowing down and thinking more about if a film is going to generate more money in 3D or if in fact people would prefer to watch it in the traditional way.

the same applies to TV, with sports becoming a big hit, watching football in 3D is a noticeably diferent experience and has proved successful particularly in pubs and bars airing games. 3D TV is looking like it will be next craze to hit family homes with 3D TV’s constantly dropping in price and new 3D channels getting created all the time, including the launch in China of the countries first 3D channel.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16381069

the fast rise and easy access to 3D services is a very good example of how innovation can speed up the process of a product hitting the market, over the space of a few months 3D viewing is available in all aspects of life, only a few years ago it was just a small untested bit of technology that had potential. Once big companies choose to improve and use technology like this, what they do with it is amazing. 

the growth of the 3D world will be interesting next year…and I would suggest it will slow down and companies will use it when it can really benefit them. 

1 year ago
I found this guy and his company pretty interesting, he took a different approach and it took of at a rapid rate, I think this new outlook on business is becoming more popular, how long before this chilled out approach is considered the normal one? Andrew Mason is the unlikely CEO of last year’s unlikeliest breakout business. The 30-year-old Midwestern music grad has transformed the bottom-feeding coupon trade into a billion-dollar force that even sexy Google lusted after. A savior for small businesses, Groupon is the most exciting thing to happen to retail since eBay. Mason himself is a person of uncommon candor. “I feel like a lot of companies invest a lot of energy and money in trying to figure out who their customer is and how to be just like that, and it never comes across as genuine,” Mason told Fast Company from Groupon’s offices in Chicago (as rumors of an IPO swirled). “The companies that I like to do business with are—even if you find them a bit strange—genuine and real.” Groupon’s culture is an unusual amalgam of Second City humor, traditional newsroom (a few hundred employees have done time at one or the other), and good old-fashioned salesmanship. In a wide-ranging chat, Mason explained how all that came to pass. Did you model the company on other successful businesses, or was it all gut?  I was on track to get a degree in public policy, so I have no business training other than doing a startup for a couple years before we started Groupon as a side project. The original startup was a site called the Point; it was a social-justice platform that existed to solve the world’s unsolvable problems. When we launched Groupon, we were thinking this might allow us to pay the bills while we continue on this huge altruistic cause. We approached Groupon as what we had to do to not want to kill ourselves for hawking coupons every day. There was a kind of freedom that came with not caring if it failed, and caring primarily that it was something we could be proud of. So given your shift from public policy and social justice to retail, what would your 20-year-old self think of your 30-year-old self?  I never really planned my life more than one month in advance. I try to chase whatever I think is the most interesting thing to do at the moment, and if it becomes less interesting, I find something else to do. One of the eye-opening realizations I had was that most of the web businesses that have been truly successful at making the world better, that usually happens as a side effect to something that is fundamentally self-serving. Not to sound cynical, but if you look at Flickr or YouTube or Twitter, the primary-use case for those tools is something far more base than when they’re used to document protests or brutality or all the other ways they’ve helped usher in social change. I feel like Groupon falls into that category as well. When consumers are buying these half-off deals, they don’t realize it, but they’re playing their part in revitalizing their local economy and reversing the trend of people spending a larger amount of time in front of the computer screen and forgetting what it means to go out and experience life. People just think they’re getting a deal, but they’re getting so much more. At least, we rationalize it that way. How is the startup culture different in Chicago versus Silicon Valley?  The pro and the con is that there isn’t a strong cultural strand where people have preconceived ideas around you. It’s a pro because when we start a business, we think about it as more of a blank slate. People in Silicon Valley oftentimes fall into a trap of wanting to use technology to solve every problem, even when they’re problems humans would be better suited for solving. We have more than 4,000 employees now and more than half of those are in sales. If we were in Silicon Valley, we might have tried to automate the process. Silicon Valley looks at salespeople with the same kind of skepticism that we look at self-service. We believe that to have truly ubiquitous coverage with local merchants, human beings are an important part of the equation. The con is that we don’t have the depth of technology talent in Chicago. In November, we expanded our offices to Silicon Valley just to get the sheer number of engineers we need. There’s a natural fear that anything that rises quickly might crash equally quickly. Do you worry about Groupon’s meteoric rise?  You don’t have to rise this quickly to crash quickly. Even if we had taken our time, it wouldn’t save us from the possibility of catastrophic failure. I think a lot about the companies that have made it to our place, and they have their moment in the Internet spotlight: the MySpaces of the world. The common theme I see with those companies that had a flameout as spectacular as their rise is they lost focus on making their customers happy. I’m hopeful that as long as we continue to think that we suck and try to be better every day than we were the day before, then we can avoid a similar fate. Source: FastCompany.com. 30-11-11 Photograph by: Saverio Truglia

I found this guy and his company pretty interesting, he took a different approach and it took of at a rapid rate, I think this new outlook on business is becoming more popular, how long before this chilled out approach is considered the normal one?

Andrew Mason is the unlikely CEO of last year’s unlikeliest breakout business. The 30-year-old Midwestern music grad has transformed the bottom-feeding coupon trade into a billion-dollar force that even sexy Google lusted after. A savior for small businesses, Groupon is the most exciting thing to happen to retail since eBay. Mason himself is a person of uncommon candor. “I feel like a lot of companies invest a lot of energy and money in trying to figure out who their customer is and how to be just like that, and it never comes across as genuine,” Mason told Fast Company from Groupon’s offices in Chicago (as rumors of an IPO swirled). “The companies that I like to do business with are—even if you find them a bit strange—genuine and real.” Groupon’s culture is an unusual amalgam of Second City humor, traditional newsroom (a few hundred employees have done time at one or the other), and good old-fashioned salesmanship. In a wide-ranging chat, Mason explained how all that came to pass.

Did you model the company on other successful businesses, or was it all gut?

 I was on track to get a degree in public policy, so I have no business training other than doing a startup for a couple years before we started Groupon as a side project. The original startup was a site called the Point; it was a social-justice platform that existed to solve the world’s unsolvable problems. When we launched Groupon, we were thinking this might allow us to pay the bills while we continue on this huge altruistic cause. We approached Groupon as what we had to do to not want to kill ourselves for hawking coupons every day. There was a kind of freedom that came with not caring if it failed, and caring primarily that it was something we could be proud of.

So given your shift from public policy and social justice to retail, what would your 20-year-old self think of your 30-year-old self?

 I never really planned my life more than one month in advance. I try to chase whatever I think is the most interesting thing to do at the moment, and if it becomes less interesting, I find something else to do. One of the eye-opening realizations I had was that most of the web businesses that have been truly successful at making the world better, that usually happens as a side effect to something that is fundamentally self-serving. Not to sound cynical, but if you look at Flickr or YouTube or Twitter, the primary-use case for those tools is something far more base than when they’re used to document protests or brutality or all the other ways they’ve helped usher in social change. I feel like Groupon falls into that category as well. When consumers are buying these half-off deals, they don’t realize it, but they’re playing their part in revitalizing their local economy and reversing the trend of people spending a larger amount of time in front of the computer screen and forgetting what it means to go out and experience life. People just think they’re getting a deal, but they’re getting so much more. At least, we rationalize it that way.

How is the startup culture different in Chicago versus Silicon Valley?

 The pro and the con is that there isn’t a strong cultural strand where people have preconceived ideas around you. It’s a pro because when we start a business, we think about it as more of a blank slate. People in Silicon Valley oftentimes fall into a trap of wanting to use technology to solve every problem, even when they’re problems humans would be better suited for solving. We have more than 4,000 employees now and more than half of those are in sales. If we were in Silicon Valley, we might have tried to automate the process. Silicon Valley looks at salespeople with the same kind of skepticism that we look at self-service. We believe that to have truly ubiquitous coverage with local merchants, human beings are an important part of the equation.

The con is that we don’t have the depth of technology talent in Chicago. In November, we expanded our offices to Silicon Valley just to get the sheer number of engineers we need.

There’s a natural fear that anything that rises quickly might crash equally quickly. Do you worry about Groupon’s meteoric rise?

 You don’t have to rise this quickly to crash quickly. Even if we had taken our time, it wouldn’t save us from the possibility of catastrophic failure. I think a lot about the companies that have made it to our place, and they have their moment in the Internet spotlight: the MySpaces of the world. The common theme I see with those companies that had a flameout as spectacular as their rise is they lost focus on making their customers happy. I’m hopeful that as long as we continue to think that we suck and try to be better every day than we were the day before, then we can avoid a similar fate.

Source: FastCompany.com. 30-11-11

Photograph by: Saverio Truglia

1 year ago

I guess opinion varies…

So Apple won the most innovative company award from one group but if we look at another pole the winner is Facebook, the giant company that has become one of the most famous and popular websites in the world, with over 800 million users worldwide. It made me think that do people link power with innovation, if a company has power and influence do some people see them as innovative, as facebook is very clever and if you look at its basic concept it is very simple…not really what I would call innovative, but the concept of everything it does put together gives it a entirely different look, it is powerful, addictive and often in trouble for breaking privacy laws and failing to protect is users. 

I think all of the above together gives people a ‘false’ image of how innovative Facebook really is, it could be argued it has not improved out lives really but actually caused people to waste a lot of there life on it, not doing work, not thinking for themselves, and surely a product that does that can not be called innovative, or can it?

The list, compiled annually by Fast Company, a US magazine which focuses on innovation, digital media and technology, pulls together the 50 most innovative companies from around the world.

Last year Facebook did not even make it into the top 10, coming 15th in the list. The magazine awarded it the top spot, over Google, which came fourth this year, falling back from second position last year, and over Apple, which came in third, because of its fast levels of development and growth. “Somewhere along the road to becoming the platform of choice for 400 million users in every country on earth, the company grew up,” said Fast Company magazine.

“Today, Facebook feels the way Google, Intel, and Microsoft likely did at similar stages in their own life cycles - still agile enough to invent the future, but sufficiently stable to handle some real turbulence.”

Amazon, which came second this year, also experienced an impressive boost moving up from ninth slot. The magazine said: “Amazon is writing the book on how to diversify with ingenuity. It generated an estimated $24 billion in revenue last year (up 26 per cent from 2008) not simply through books, which it continues to dominate with the top e-book reader [the Kindle] and iPhone reader apps, but also through its growing data storage and computing service…Amazon is also expanding its music, video, and electronic check-out services, which are traditionally Apple and Google’s strengths.”

Last year’s number one, technology start up Team Obama, the e-campaigning team behind the successful presidential race, did not even feature in the entire list, while Spotify, despite not having yet launched in the US, came in 15th place. Microsoft only just made it into the list, coming in at 48, and dropped 14 places from its position at 34 last year. This was in spite of it being the year during which it launched the latest version of its operating system – Windows 7.

Twitter, which has enjoyed much positive press and hype, made its debut on the list but only made it to the 50th spot.

Source: 30,11,11, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/7291617/Facebook-worlds-most-innovative-company.html

1 year ago