Archive for Cool Inventions and gadgets
Innovation Example: Finding Synergy Between Functional and Decorative Elements
Toppan Printing in Japan has developed an innovative smart label that combines holographic security with RFID technology. The cool thing is that the metallic antenna needed for transmitting and receiving radio signals–normally a metallized spiral or other shape that tends to be unattractive–has become part of the aluminum metal of the metallic holographic label. This combination of two technologies with a single element uniting both in an attractive, appealing way is a good example of simplification through unification and finding synergy between technologies.
Toppan calls it the RFID Crystagram. An example of the RFID Crystagram is shown on the left below, and the act of electronically scanning the Crystagram is shown on the right.
Amyris: A Partner in Open Innovation for Sustainable Consumer Products and Biofuels
In our ongoing work on analyzing the intellectual property landscape in biofuels, one interesting company we’ve encountered is Amyris, an integrated renewable products company. Amyris was founded in 2003 by Kinkead Reiling, Neil Renninger, and Jack D. Newman who met at Berkeley. The company is now located in Emeryville, California. With a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, they first developed their technology under a non-profit initiative to provide a reliable and affordable source of artemisinin, an anti-malarial therapeutic. It was viewed as a long-shot, but they found success that led to growth into other areas. They are now developing new microbial strains that can produce other molecules from renewable feedstocks. This industrial synthetic biology platform is providing alternatives to a broad range of petroleum-sourced products. he extremely useful molecule farnesene is an important part of their business. It provides a compound that can be used to produce flavors, perfumes, detergents, cosmetics, biodiesel, and other products.
This week Amyris announced a record number of deals and partnerships for a single week (a record among bioenergy companies, according to Biofuels Digest). These partnerships include P&G, Total, Soliance, Cosan, M&G Finanziaria, and Shell:
Amyris has taken it up a notch with a series of stunners surrounding its synthetic farsenene, which it has named Biofene – the first product that Amyris is seeking to produce at commercial scale.
Beyond its success this week with Biofene announcements, which are the basis for the P&G, M&G and Soliance partnerships — there are the broader arrangements with Cosan to develop a platform in renewable chemicals, and the equity agreement with Total that will provide needed capital as well as a broader platform for Amyris’s expansion into hydrocarbon fuels.
The mysterious agreement with Shell, regarding diesel, is one to watch. The decidedly vague disclosure was buried in Amyris’ amended S-1A registration statement, but not otherwise mentioned in a flurry of press releases from the company as it promotes its expansion in this pre-IPO environment. Shell Western Trading & Supply is one of 17 Shell trading companies that buy and sell to customers within and outside of Shell.
This news shows an interesting example of companies forming partnerships with an innovative start-up with great technology and apparently highly valuable IP. According to my Patbase search, Amyris has 21 patent families, quite a large number for such a young company. They clearly have been active and aggressive in pursuing patent protection, and those patents are critical for the meaningful partnerships they are now forming. It’s a great unfolding story of open innovation and technology transfer.
The story extends beyond the US. They have operations in Brazil, for example, which is one of the world’s hotbeds for bioenergy, bioproducts, and collaborative innovation.
The innovative laser – a look forward and back
As I wrote this past weekend in my column, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the laser, a scientific innovation that has become commonplace in our everyday lives.
Combining scientific theory and brilliant engineering, it is one of the most innovative, fascinating, and commercially successful devices ever built. Lasers provide precise, selective and controlled high-power light beams for a variety of commercial and scientific uses.
In 1917 Albert Einstein (of course) first theorized the process that might make lasers possible. He called it “stimulated emission” (hence the “s” and the “e” in the laser acronym to go with “light amplification” and “radiation”), and his idea was harnessed in the first laser-like device (called a maser) built in 1959 by two Bell Laboratory scientists Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow. Their device was actually a microwave device, not a visible one, but their theory and publications led to the construction of the first light laser in 1960.
Help Dad go green with these seven innovative gift ideas
With Father’s Day coming up this Sunday, I thought it would be nice to blog about all the unique “Green” gift ideas for Dad. Most of these gift ideas I found online:
1. How about a Grow Your Own Beer Garden Kit (pictured on the left), which includes the barley, hops and wheat seeds, plus a place for them to sprout, the plant stakes, gravel and decals. It costs about $25 over at ThinkGeek.
2. If your dad likes to cook, consider an oven that uses the sun for energy. You can find the Sun Oven for about $300, or you can find online directions on how to make your own sun oven with cardboard for under $40.
3. Lots of dads want to know if their household appliances are costing them more than necessary in energy costs. He can use a nifty device called the Kill A Watt (pictured on the right). He just plugs the appliance into the outlet and a meter tells him how much energy is being used.
4. What dad doesn’t like to control the remote? You might want to check into energy-saving remotes like this one over at ethicalsuperstore.com.
5. Usually a game of golf involves green in nature only. But now dads who enjoy sustainability can tee off with 100-percent recyclable golf balls by Dixon Earth. Along with being recycled, the manufacturing process of these balls use no lead, cobalt, tungsten or heavy metals. You can order a package of six dozens for $40.
6. Dads who like to hike but need a charge might enjoy this solar panel backpack over at Amazon. At $220, it’s great for powering up cell phone batteries on the trail.
7. If you or your dad is a Father’s Day traditionalist (as in neckties and wallets), How about this innovative gift idea: a wallet made out of recycled neckties and suits! Designer Laura Skelton created the outside of the wallet from discarded silk ties, and lined the inside with a solid gray material from men’s suits. They sell for $28 over at UncommonGoods.
Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there!
The Future of Learning
Ask any student if they’d rather learn their lessons through online interactive tools or via a classroom lecture with textbooks, and you can imagine which method will overwhelmingly win out. Even a first-grader will tell you how they learn with computers and even handheld gameshow-like remotes and interactive white boards that help them participate during a visual presentation.
New ways of preparing students for modern society are constantly evolving. As conventional lectures and dry textbooks are giving way to interactive digital content, the options for electronic learning are increasing rapidly. From e-books to online video lectures, learning is becoming more fun and practical for everyone.
Today’s generation tends to think in more “web-like” or tangentially-connected ways. Universities have slowly recognized this and created more web-oriented curricula and content where technology is leveraged to increase student engagement and understanding.
In my next blog post I will share some exciting ways the college landscape is changing for students!
Innovation Trends: Smartphones and Agriculture
One of the interesting trends in emerging nations is the rapid spread of mobile phones without first moving to landlines. Millions of people who don’t have landlines and may not have the infrastructure for them are able to benefit from cell phones. As cell phones increasingly become smart, offering a variety of apps and services, their smartphones can change the way people work and live. That includes the way they farm, including they way they apply pesticides, apply water, manage the soil, and harvest crops. Look to agriculture and the related fields of water and soil management for added value in coming years.
Lindsay Corporation (no relation) recently announced a new cell phone application to help farmers track and control their automated irrigation systems such as the Zimmatic® system. Here’s an excerpt:
Lindsay Corporation, maker of Zimmatic® irrigation systems, announces the introduction of FieldNET Mobile—pivot control for smartphones. The new feature allows growers to fully control and monitor their irrigation pivots anywhere through the convenience of smartphones.
“FieldNET Mobile provides a labor-saving innovation with the convenience of web-enabled phones,” says Reece Andrews, GrowSmart™ product manager at Lindsay. “With full control and monitoring from anywhere, growers are more efficient with their time and always know the status of their irrigation systems.”
FieldNET Mobile’s graphical interface supports most industry-leading smartphones, including the iPhone®, Droid® and BlackBerry®, according to Andrews.
FieldNET is an award-winning web-based irrigation management system. With the addition of FieldNET Mobile, growers can view the current status of all their pivots in one list, receive system alerts, arrange pivots by predefined groups, view water usage reports and receive a history of pivot runtimes.
Innovators are already considering many other smartphone-enabled opportunities for improving the way we farm and manage water around the world. We look forward to seeing what we can do to further improve the quality of life through better agriculture practices enabled by the power of smartphones. Stay tuned!
What do you see as future applications of smartphones in agriculture? Interested in working with us to explore the IP landscape and innovation opportunities here? Give us a call!
Related reading:
Apple iPad a game-changer
“The Internet is supposed to be all about freedom and choice—yet here comes Steve Jobs with an Internet that is a completely closed system. Apple not only sells you the device, but also operates the only store on the planet that sells software for it.” –Newsweek
For all its coolness, the iPad is making for some interesting discussion about what the future holds for computing. A Newsweek article out last week promises the purse-sized computer will transform the way we use the Internet and herald in a new era of computing. I myself would love to have one, as I’ve seen how the intuitive touch screen will probably change my expectation by raising the bar on what I want my computer to do.
The Newsweek article also predicts a time when we will all have a persistent online connection along with a 24/7 link to whatever impulse purchases we’re inclined to make. “The iPad could eventually become your TV, your newspaper, and your bookshelf,” the author predicts. Or warns. Click here to read the article. Do you agree?
Innovation and Games Galore On Display
A lot of game-playing going on in San Francisco this past weekend, as thousands of game designers, programmers and executives attended the Game Developers Conference. The attendees gather each year to exchange ideas and shape the future of the industry.
From an innovation standpoint it was interesting to note the top buzz was around motion controls and social gaming. (I confess I personally don’t spend a lot of time on gaming apps for my iphone, but I think it’s important to keep up on trends in an industry so pivotal to the emerging generation!)
Sony introduced its PlayStation Move, a new wand-shaped PlayStation 3 motion controller system that will rival Nintendo’s popular Wii. Move’s system includes a PlayStation Eye camera to detect players’ movements. As designers and developers discover more capabilities with the hardware, they will no doubt find new applications for the games.
Social gaming was also a huge draw. With the success of games like Facebook’s “FarmVille” and the role-playing “Mafia Wars,” several conference sessions were dedicated just to these popular venues.
Then there is the VirtuSphere, a huge hamster ball-like virtual reality machine that allows users inside to control a character by walking around inside.
Getting a Grip on Innovation: Lessons from the Bionic Glove
The Bionic Glove
The most recent issue of Consumer Goods Technology has a cover story that indirectly reveals some secrets of successful innovation. Alarice Padilla’s “Game-Changing Innovation: The maker of Louisville Slugger Revolutionizes the Sporting Good Market with Bionic Glove Technology” describes the rise of a new sports glove that gives athletes better control. The glove has a unique padding system that fills recesses in the fingers and palm for better contact with whatever the hand is holding. This results in a better, more relaxed grip.
What I’d like to emphasize is that this innovation was the result of successful open innovation that began with a random encounter. Bill Clark of Hillerich and Bradsby Company, the company behind the Louisville Slugger and Powerbuilt Golf, was visiting the Louisville Slugger Museum when he met James Kleinert, a famous orthopedic hand surgeon. They began talking, and this would later lead to collaboration and the successful introduction of the only sports glove on the market designed by an orthopedic surgeon.
The real secrets for success behind this story, in my opinion, involve efforts to build and maintain relationships. First, Bill Clark wasn’t sitting at his desk. He got out into an environment where he could meet outsiders that might share some interest in the kind of products his company made. Then he took the initiative to talk with others and learn from them. When he found someone interesting through a chance encounter, he obviously took the initiative to follow up and keep that relationship alive long enough to explore the possibility of learning from or working with the new contact. I wish more had been reported on these steps, but it’s clear that it began with a seemingly random encounter enhanced with follow-up and and a willingness to collaborate for innovation.
Maybe Hillerich and Bradsby Company just got very lucky, or maybe they actively encourage open innovation approaches that motivate innovation leaders to get out and meet people, follow up, and collaborate when it makes sense. I hope the latter is the case. Whether it is or not, all of us can learn from this success. Creating an open innovation culture in your company and in your life will greatly increase the chances of random meetings leading to non-random success in innovation.
Want to add the power of successful open innovation and enhanced relationship building to your company? Our experience, tools, and training methodology may be exactly what you need. Innovationedge is a leader in open innovation and in building a culture of innovation within companies. We also have some remarkable diagnostic tools for understanding where you are today and what gaps you have in your internal and external relationships. Give us a call today and let us help you get a more advanced grip on innovation.
Home & Housewares show brings innovation opportunities
Looking for your next best selling product for the home? Check out this year’s upcoming International Home & Housewares Show. I’ll be over at the Inventors Corner Pavilion to speak on March 15. That’s where companies can go see actual product creations and their inventors on hand.
The International Home & Housewares Show is the world’s premier housewares marketplace, and it features more than 2,000 exhibitors and more than 20,000 buyers from over 100 countries around the world! It’s the one place you can go to see first-hand consumer lifestyle and product trends for all areas of the home, both inside and out, under one roof.
For my part I will be sharing best practices for taking innovation to the next step and discusses how to create a strategy, structure and culture to successfully drive innovation efforts. I am going to share insights on how to engage internal stakeholders, address innovation fatigue and overcome barriers to personal and corporate success, as discussed in our book Conquering Innovation Fatigue.
While I’m at the Inventors Corner I’m looking forward to meeting those inventors and seeing how are the most creative minds are solving the problems that consumers face each day.