The Wall Street Journal’s 2008 Technology Innovation Awards winners include: an IV alternative, a better way to make solar panels, a cheap, fuel-efficient car and a better way to see in the dark. The list of winners and categories can be found here.

I found it particularly interesting that a tiny, fuel-efficient, four-seat automobile priced at $2,500 was selected as the winner in the transportation category. The Nano, from Tata Motors Ltd., a unit of Mumbai-based Tata Group, is designed to appeal to millions of poor families in India who otherwise rely on motorbikes or other two-wheeled transportation. It promises to deliver 50 miles a gallon and emit less pollution than two-wheelers.

Earlier this year I blogged about the Smart Car, a pricier but similar-looking car introduced in the U.S in May. The Nano was unveiled in January. Tata Motors says it plans to begin selling the car before the end of the year, despite protests by farmers that have interrupted construction of the company’s plant in West Bengal.

I’m in Miami right now wrapping up a great conference with senior-level peers for two days of networking, relationship building and insights from some of the world’s leading consumer goods executives and analysts around driving innovation and sparking creativity.

The theme of this year’s CG Growth & Innovation Forum is Cultivating Innovation: Balancing People, Process & Technology, including topics that matter most to your business such as:

- Culture of Innovation
- Measuring Innovation
- Consumer-Focused Innovation
- Emerging Markets
- “Green” Innovation
- Product vs. Process Innovation
- Retail Innovation
- The Role of the CIO, CFO & CMO in Innovation

I am moderating a panel of executives representing marketing, supply chain and R&D about a cross-functional approach to innovation. We’re looking at how each function touches the innovation process and what effect it has on success.

We have a prolific group of panel speakers, including:
-Hal Carper, SVP of R&D, Tyson Foods Inc.
-Rob Everett, Global Director - Emerging Technologies, Kimberly-Clark Corporation
-Mary Beth Robles, Vice President External Development, Colgate-Palmolive Company
-Nik Modi, Associate Director, Sr. Analyst, USB Equities

Here’s a trend you can make work for you if you are savvy to the ways of marketing to the wealthy and wired. New findings released from the annual Affluent Survey of over 23 million households across the U.S.  shows that the rich are connecting to the Internet more than the rest of the population.

That means that if you are the breadwinner earning $100,000 or more a year, you spend almost an entire day (23.4 hours) per week online. you’re also spending more time on your cell phone.

The new Affluent Survey from Ipsos Mendelsohn (known as Monroe Mendelsohn Research, until Ipsos bought it earlier this year) for the first time includes data on the digital habits of the affluent; and found that as the rich get richer, they spend more time online. This group, which represents about 20 percent of U.S. households, goes online an average of about 26 times per week using a computer and 17.6 times using a cell or mobile.

While 40 percent of affluent households use hand-held devices to access the Internet, the percentage rises to 57 percent among those in the $250,000-plus bracket from 34 percent for those at the $100,000- to $149,999-level.

These findings have big implications for luxury goods advertisers and marketers wanting to experiment with mobile, as I’ve blogged about before.

I was pleased to read a fantastic interview by Invest Korea Journal that featured a friend and former colleague at Kimberly-Clark. The Journal spoke to Rob Everett about the Innovation Center in Korea, a project I was able to champion as the company's Chief Innovation Officer.  I enjoyed working with Rob and meeting the government officials in Seoul when we launched the center, dubbed "Innovation Center- Asia."

We wanted to leverage our joint venture with the Yuhan Corporation in Korea (Yuhan-Kimberly), our joint venture with Yuhan Corporation to boost our brand image as well as attract talented employees. The Innovation Center Asia continues to help K-C access innovative ideas and technologies throughout Asia like Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo and Australia. Check out the article here.

I am trying a lot of scientifically engineered home-cooked dishes these days, thanks to my husband Mark who recently ramped up his consultancy business. No, Mark didn’t become a chef by trade. His company keeps him very busy. But once an inventor, always an inventor! Now that Mark works out of the house, he’s been concocting some patent-worthy treats with the help of an innovative website called Cooking For Engineers.

I’ve been amazed and delighted with this great site. After all, cooking is a science in itself. But the popularity of this site is in the community of cooks and engineers it attracts to its forums and commentary pages. His site asks, “Have an analytical mind? Like to cook? This is the site to read!”  And engineers are getting busy in the kitchen thanks to the site’s creator, Mike Chu, whose bio page says he has worked as a network engineer, software programmer, PDA hardware designer, computer vision researcher, and, most recently, notebook hardware application engineer.

The recipes aren’t your run-of-the-mill cookbook fare. I love how Chu posts no fewer than ten photos chronologically capturing the science of the perfect soft-boiled egg! And of course engineers can’t resist restructuring experiments, so most of these posts have a dozen or two comments.

As for me, I’m heading home to see what Mark has invented for dinner tonight. If it’s anything like the grilled artichokes, it will be superb!

China knows how to put on a party, and it’s one I enjoyed being a part of a few weeks back –at least from my living room!. After hosting the most lavish Olympic Games ever by a developing nation, some experts think that the Chinese economy will now begin to level off. But but others think the timing is largely coincidental. Buoyant domestic demand and an infrastructure boom suggest that the slowdown will be less severe than Olympics pessimists predict. How China fares in that effort will ripple across the world.

Since it began opening its economy three decades ago, the nation has lifted more people out of poverty than any other nation in modern times and is poised to become the world’s third-largest economy. Maintaining that growth will not be easy, now that China’s population is growing older and more urban. As the nation adapts to this reality, it is putting it’s hope on consumers.

The rise of the Chinese consumer is an interesting phenomenon. China’s rising affluence, uneven though it is, is one reason for the strong feelings of optimism and nationalism on the eve of the Beijing games. Chinese exports to the developed world generate controversy, but China is now importing nearly as much as it exports — $1.2 trillion a year — and its imports from the U.S. have been skyrocketing. That doesn’t factor in the goods consumed in China made by Chinese subsidiaries of U.S. and foreign companies.

It’s likely that Chinese purchases of foreign goods will increase more quickly than we imagine. While the Chinese like their own brands, such as Li Ning sportswear and Lenovo computers, they seem even hungrier for foreign brands, which are signs of rising affluence and modernity.

I recently wrote an article for Infection Control Today Magazine about healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs), and how they afflict more than 3 million people every year in the United States alone. It’s a huge problem, and even more concerning is the statistic that says eight in 100 hospital patients acquire life-threatening infections during their stay. HAIs directly cause about 100,000 deaths annually and that number is growing rapidly due to new antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.

The problem is costly in terms of dollars as well. The estimated direct cost to the 6,000 registered hospitals for HAI treatment is more than $5 billion, and the total estimated cost to society is as much as $30 billion.

This trend is growing and will continue to impact the health care industry worldwide unless improper hand sanitation in hospitals is corrected. Forward-looking infection control experts all agree there are obstacles to hand sanitation and the need for new convenient, broad-spectrum and user-friendly hand sanitation techniques! Check out the article and browse the others on this great site while you are there.

The growing popularity of biopesticides and organic foods is not a passing fad, but a growing trend: a combination of the movement of green chemistry, trying to protect the environment, and how people are learning to view their own health — and the health of future generations.

Biopesticides are derived from plants, microbes, or other natural materials and are proven to be safer for humans and the environment.

Although sales of synthetic pesticides dominate the $30 billion pesticide market, the use of biopesticides is increasing. Global sales are expected to hit $1 billion by 2010 and grow 10 percent a year on average. Biopesticides could make up 4.25 percent of the global pesticide business in 2010, up from 2.5 percent in 2005. As they become more popular, synthetic pesticides are expected to shrink by 1.5 percent each year over the same period.

With the boom in consumption of organic foods creating a pressing need for natural insecticides and herbicides that can be used on crops certified as “organic,” there is now a new “green” pesticide scientists have extracted from the giant knotweed.

The 12-foot-high knotweed, named for the jointed swollen nodes on its stem, invaded the U.S. from Japan years ago and grows along the East Coast and other areas. The new biopesticide has active compounds that alert plant defenses to combat a range of diseases, including powdery mildew, gray mold and bacterial blight that affect fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals.

The product will be available this October for conventional growers. A new formulation has also been developed for organic farmers and will be available in 2009.

I’m excited to announce our top-notch roster of open innovation ambassadors to lead CoDev 2009! The must-be-there event is in Scottsdale, Ariz., Jan 26-28 at the Radisson Fort McDowell Resort. I am honored to kick-off this year’s event as Conference Chairperson.

After chairing CoDev ’08 and participating in multiple discussions on future trends in open innovation (OI) and how to get more value from OI initiatives, I was eager to assemble our CoDev ’09 steering committee. I recently began to piece together a conference agenda that would address these tough issues head on and provide proven strategies, tools and methods to achieve higher returns on your OI efforts.  I am pleased to report that CoDev ’09 will deliver!

Henry Chesbrough will share how early adopters of open innovation are going beyond low-hanging fruit opportunities to reap more value from their OI investments. Our keynote presenters include global innovation experts like:

•    Loria B. Yeadon, Vice President & General Manager, Honeywell Intellectual Property International, Honeywell International Inc.,
•    Dr. Kobus Neethling, President, South African Creativity Foundation
•    Beth Springer, Executive Vice President, Strategy & Growth, Clorox
•    Max von Zedtwitz, Ph.D., Professor of Strategy & Innovation, Peking University and author of  Managing Global Innovation

You’ll also hear brand new case presentations and practitioner insights from leading industry leaders from Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Frito-Lay, HP Labs, Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, Rubbermaid, WD-40, Sara Lee, R.J. Reynolds, Colgate and more!

These industry leaders will describe their open innovation journeys and will focus on how they have expanded their open innovation efforts beyond technology sourcing, shifted organizational structure and culture to support alternative open business models, as well as how they measure their OI success and its impact on the bottom line. Register before December 1 and get $200 off the conference price!

Here’s a great gadget I found for parents who want to protect their computers from kids. Kidsafe is a device

that works like a key, and boots the family computer up only if the key is inserted. It’s a reliable and convenient way to get around those filter- and passcode-breaking sites that teens are sharing on their

Myspace and Facebook pages!

Marketers know that AlphaMom will spend a little more safety, and Kidsafe is a gadget protects the younger generation of surfers from online dangers when she is not around.

The Kidsafe gadget can be plugged in via the USB port, and always asks for the key to unlock your computer.  So if you’ve ever taken away your teen’s computer priveledges, this can help remove temptation to log on when you’re not aruond. The beauty of this system is that it cannot be destroyed or uninstalled. It’ll also prevent booting the computer with bootable devices or CDs. For about $60, it can safeguard your computer from all possible access attempts by your kids.