From the same company that gave the world glow in the dark jeans comes a new denim line that makes scents. Naked and Famous Denim of Montreal has just introduced scratch-and-sniff, raspberry-scented jeans. The company says it uses only the most unique and rare denim fabrics from Japan.

How can clothing be scratch-and-sniff? A coating of scented micro capsules have been baked into the jeans, which release the fragrance of raspberry when the wearer rubs the fabric. Apparently, the scent is long-lasting and will not wash off or “fade” in the rinse cycle or dryer. The going price is about $140 — $240 per pair, and so far raspberry is the only scent available.

Related articles

• Scratch-n-Sniff Raspberry Scented Denim Jeans (laughingsquid.com)
• Scratch-n-sniff technology makes its way into jeans (dvice.com)
• Sweet-Smelling Jeans – The Scratch-n-Sniff Pants by Naked & Famous Denim are Enticing (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
• New scratch-n-sniff jeans make it fashionable to smell (digitaltrends.com)

In my consultancy I am seeing more and more institutions that are acting on the realization for the need to improve the art and science of education. They are looking to create an improved culture of effective education and make it available to a wider audience.

Institutions of learning have been around for quite a while, of course, so it’s not surprising that they may be entrenched in centuries-old approaches and methods. Regardless, the advancing pace of technology is driving a rapid evolution of education.

The tools are changing. Traditional chalkboard, textbook and lecture room are evolving to interactive electronic whiteboards, eBooks and video distance education. Video and Internet conferencing technology is now providing for the realization of quality long- distance education, and with mobile computing learning can be accessed anywhere at any time.

You don’t have to be a student at MIT or even live in Boston to listen in on some of their university lectures. Since 2001, through MIT’s OpenCourseWare program, not only introductory, but also advanced engineering, math and sciences courses have been made available to the public on the Internet and through iTunes U.

There are many other universities that also are making many of their courses available online, and it isn’t just interested students who are taking advantage. Many professional teachers are utilizing online courses to see how they might better organize and present their own material.

Tools such as interactive whiteboards and electronic voting systems, also known as “clickers” are not only helping students become better engaged in the conventional lecture, but also are providing almost real-time feedback to teachers and administrators on what is working and what isn’t.

Use of clicker technology can even allow instructors to better gauge the interest, experience or ability level of the audience early on and adjust their content or lecture style to match.

Electronic surveys allow teachers to get post-course feedback on what might need improvement in the future. From another perspective, surveys, blogs and social networking allow students to better match their interests with courses and teachers.

The best ways to use new tools will obviously evolve as their potential is better understood. Using these tools effectively will require time, training, and new approaches to the traditional classroom. However, it is clear that getting an objective handle on what works and what doesn’t ultimately stimulates improvement and can help our valuable educators succeed even more to their potential.

For teachers there has never been a better time to reach more pupils, and if you are a student, there has never been a more exciting time to learn.

Check out this article on Greener Package.com about a new package disrupting the detergent aisle. It has a molded-pulp outer shell made from  recycled cardboard and old newspapers, with an inner film pouch–both parts can easily be recycled. Read on:

Image via greenerpackage.com

 

Molded-pulp bottle disrupts laundry detergent category

Ecologic Brands has found a winning application for its multi-component molded-pulp package in Seventh Generation’s new 4X concentrated brand of liquid laundry detergent. The product has been on shelf for just 12 weeks (at presstime) and is already the number-three top-selling detergent in its category of 150 SKUs. The package was also a winner with the 2011 Greener Package Awards judges, who rewarded it with an Environmental Impact award in the Non FDA-Regulated Products category.

The Seventh Generation container consists of a molded-pulp outer shell made from 70% recycled cardboard (OCC) and 30% old newspapers (ONP) that can be recycled up to seven times. The material, without the paper label, has been certified through the Biodegradable Products Institute as being compostable per ASTM 6868. The package’s inner film pouch with spout has been constructed of polyethylene only, making it suitable for recycling with plastic grocery bags in retailer drop-off bins from Trex. When compared with a rigid plastic container, the pouch reduces plastic use by 75%, Ecologic informs. And, because the shells can be nested and the pouch can be transported flat to Seventh Generation, one truckload of the packaging materials equals nine truckloads of rigid plastic containers. Lastly, the package closure, as with most traditional laundry containers, is made from polypropylene, and is recyclable through Preserve’s Gimme 5 recycling program, found in Whole Foods Market stores. The result: A lighter-weight package that easily fits into the existing recycling stream.

Not that Seventh Generation is any newcomer to sustainable packaging advancements. At 80%, the company boasts the largest content of post-consumer recycled high-density polyethylene in its rigid laundry detergent containers. “We were reluctant at first to look at the molded-pulp bottle, because we had worked so hard at recycled HDPE,” says Peter Swaine, Seventh Generation’s director of packaging development. “But the reality is that only 29 percent of HDPE is recycled.”

Swaine attributes the low number to several factors, including lack of consumer education, confusion surrounding the SPI codes for plastics, and the lack of recycling in many U.S. municipalities.

With the molded-pulp bottle, consumers immediately understand the environmental proposition of the package. And, the likelihood of the molded-pulp shell being recycled is much greater, as OCC is recycled at a rate of 82% and ONP at 88%. “Recycled-content HDPE bottles are industry-leading,” says Swaine, “but it’s hard to tell the story because they look so much like traditional bottles. The new bottle is completely unique.”

As Ecologic founder and CEO Julie Corbett explains, part of that unique appearance also comes from the challenges associated with using recycled paper materials, which often have a large variance in the quality and origins of the feedstock. “Both these factors will have an effect on the color and outside appearance of the shell,” she says. “For example, small spots or flecks might be visible on the outside and inside of the shell.”

“If we want to continue to make products from recycled materials, this is something consumers will have to overcome. Our bottle’s general likeability and design will help consumers better understand that the beauty of a package is not only about the outside appearance, but also about the origins of materials.”

One current package-manufacturing drawback of the shell versus injection molding of rigid plastics is that the molded-pulp packaging requires the application of heat longer than required for plastic. Corbett assures that technology is quickly advancing to solve this issue. “The direction is the right direction, and this is an industry that has taken on a new life, but it’s kind of at its infancy in terms of infrastructure.”

Corbett reports that future projects in the works for Ecologic include the development of a 64-oz stock container, as well as other stock sizes, and “custom bottles for many other customers for liquids, dry ingredients, consumables, and non-consumable products.”

Says Greener Package Awards judge Jack DiMartino of Stonyfield Farms, “I love everything about this project; the amount of thought and consideration for its consumers and the environment puts Seventh Generation on a different level for sustainable packaging.”

It’s called the Food & Beverage 2011: Sustainable Innovation Summit, and it’s happening in Chicago August 9 and 10. This invitation-only event will bring together the top 100 innovation leaders from a multi-national audience of Chief’s, VP’s, Directors, Heads, Senior Directors and Managers of Innovation, R&D, Product Development, Open Innovation, Customer Management, and Manufacturing. My company, Innovationege, is proud to team up once again with the outstanding leaders at the Management Roundtable for this exclusive event.

We’re going to talk about everything from our changing regulatory landscape to the search for new market channels. We’re going to hear from leaders about those amazing innovation journeys, like how H.J. Heinz developed an interesting approach to honing their capability to deliver growth by identifying, developing and acquiring a continuum of incremental and disruptive technologies! Or how the J.M. Smucker Company quadrupled in size via a strategy of growth through acquisitions, and the choices they needed to make as a result.

And we’re going to challenge current thinking and approaches, set the stage for new trends in sustainable innovation and create a senior level networking community for ongoing support and dialogue. There are 100 spots open, and if you’d like to be a part just let me know. You’ll find all of the information about our keynotes, candid case studies, facilitated Q&A, networking sessions and a post-conference workshops on our Sustainable Innovation Summit site, where you can register and check out the facilities at Chicago’s Allerton Hotel.

I’ll see you in Chicago!

Henry J. Eyring kindly allowed me to interview him about this forthcoming book that is scheduled for release in August. He displayed great enthusiasm for taking the blessings of education to more people at lower cost, and applying new tools and business models that can make this possible without sacrificing quality. Henry is concerned that the cost of a 4-year college degree has increased by 2 to 3 times since the 1980s while starting salaries for graduate have remained essentially flat in real terms, leaving universities vulnerable to disruptive innovation in which a once easy-to-ignore “inferior,” low-cost alternative improves gradually to the point where it can become a serious threat.

Online course content, once viewed as inadequate, is now generally accepted by students and can result in better educational performance, especially when used in hybrid models with face-to-face elements and with adaptive tools that respond to what and how students learn. “Existing universities must view online learning as a sustaining innovation for their models,” Eyring says. Failure to embrace the potential of online learning will leave universities vulnerable to disruption, both from competitors and from budgetary pressures. “Even the best universities will be pressed to show better ROI.” They may need to become less universal, no longer offering the same graduate programs in all fields as they do in science and engineering. There is a need to change the very DNA of the university, the thrust of The Innovative University, a remarkable fruit of the collaboration between Henry Eyring, who began writing about the BYU-Idaho experience in 2008, and Clayton Christensen, who teamed up with Henry to add the framework of disruptive innovation and further insights from the Harvard perspective to complete this scholarly but highly readable work.

Like many of the best books about the future, this one is based upon a great deal of history. Much of the book explores the stages of development in education and business models for two very different schools, Harvard and Brigham Young University-Idaho (initially Bannock Stake Academy, then Ricks College and more recently BYU-Idaho). The scholarship is outstanding, the writing crisp and clear, and the stories told interesting and instructive. Some readers may not wish to grasp the historical foundations of these universities and the currents of change that have brought us to our present state. Fortunately, the book is organized to allow the impatient to turn to the latter portions of the book (say, Parts Four and Five) to access major conclusions and recommendations.

The authors chronicle the rise of BYU-Idaho from its humble rural Idaho roots to a bustling campus of over 22,000 students. Rather than ascend the traditional “Carnegie ladder” of adding ever more expensive programs and costly benefits, BYU-Idaho recently embarked on a path aimed at getting the most from the heavy investment in the physical campus and staff, while offering more students an enhanced education at lower cost. Much of this was driven by a Dr. Kim Clark, who came to BYU-Idaho after serving as a noted and respected Dean of the Harvard School of Business. Clark built on the foundation of major reforms already in progress under the previous president, David Bednar. The resulting innovations include:

• a new trimester schedule that keeps the campus in heavy use year round;
• dramatic revision in course offerings such as modular majors and carefully tailored GE courses making it easier and less costly for students to switch majors or to customize their education;
• strengthening of internship program to better prepare undergraduates for employment;
• elimination of expensive inter-collegiate sports programs;
• combining online content and face-to-face instruction to reach more students and improve education (with many innovations on the path to high-quality online content);
• augmentation of faculty teaching with peer-to-peer assistance in which students who understand the material efficiently help their peers;
• extension efforts in several cities where online content is coupled with face-to-face mentoring to reach more students;
• establishing a common “Learning Model” for education, with emphasis on learning experiences and case studies that can be enhanced with peer-to-peer interaction and supplemented with online content; and
• elevating faculty pay to above-average levels to compensate for the additional effort required of the faculty to make the more intense BYU-Idaho system succeed.

The importance of online content as an element of disruptive innovation is emphasized in the book, which offers numerous valuable insights into the business models and applications of the technology that have brought success to BYU-Idaho, as well as the foundations for Harvard’s success and leadership in education. Those interested in either school or in higher education in general should appreciate the historical development and insights. Many other innovative schools are also highlighted in case studies throughout the book.

The authors use the theme of DNA throughout the book, and argue that successful educational reform requires changing the DNA of a university. “Genetic reengineering” is needed to build new models and systems that will be sustained over time and grow. The book is aimed at identifying and spreading the new genes that will result in healthier, stronger education. For those that resist and cling to the old DNA, disruptive innovation could one day overtake the universities and leave them unable to compete and unable to serve, saddled with shrinking resources, higher costs, and fewer students willing to endure their increasingly less competitive programs.

The learnings from the journeys of BYU-Idaho and Harvard University are extended to the broader challenges faced by institutions of higher education worldwide. How can they adapt their programs to be more efficient, to better serve more students at lower cost? How can they provide education without requiring students to take on a mountain of debt? How can education be more personalized, more customized, to help students better prepare for the careers or graduate educational experiences they desire? How can universities better achieve the missions of teaching and research? What tasks do universities really need to focus on for the future? The authors offer valuable guidance, based on extensive research and insights.

Though higher education has remained relatively immune from the pressures of disruptive innovation for years, the power of new business models and technologies coupled with social and financial pressures will lead to change that may surprise and even pummel many universities now on the traditional path of making education more expensive and elite. Christen and Eyring offer a monumental guide to avoiding the pain of disruption and capitalizing on the promise of positive disruptive innovation for those institutions with the courage and vision to become an innovative university. For educators, policy makers, parents and students, I recommend The Innovative University for breakthrough thinking that can help transform education.

Local Motor’s rapidly growing community (12,000 participants so far) contributes designs and feedback to help in the selection of potentially successful aesthetic concepts for automobiles that Local Motors will then build locally in a microfactory, with final customization of the appearance being achieved with an environmentally friendly and durable vinyl wrap that eliminates the need for paint and gives the owner freedom to have a unique look. The final assembly is done with hands-on help from the new owner, who becomes intimately familiar with the vehicle and with its maintenance.

After Jay spoke, that evening I drove down to Chandler, Arizona and attended an open house at Local Motors hosted by Jay himself. He allowed photography, so below you can see some views of Jay speaking and some shots of his vehicles in various stages of construction. The Rally Fighter, for example, is an incredible rugged, safe, and fun car that is legal on the road but a load of fun off road as well. It’s able to do very nice jumps.

These cars weigh much less than other cars their size, offering a huge bonus in mileage. Great engineering and innovation at many levels makes this possible.

The microfactory concept involves assembly of a small number of vehicles at a time in sustainable, efficient processes. Very cool.

John Rogers, CEO of Local Motors

Jay discusses the rugged chassis of an embryonic Rally Fighter

Legal on the street, but built for off-road excitement, too.

Jeff Lindsay and a Rally Figher at Local Motors

Braden’s experience in innovation shows, for example, when he discusses the different innovation needs companies have depending on their innovation maturity level. Trying to run an open innovation program for a company just getting started on innovation could be a mistake–especially if internal systems for gathering and evaluating innovation concepts aren’t yet in place.

He also recognizes the need for long-term innovation strategy, not just short-term reactive strategy, to help a company survive in a world of disruptive innovation threats. Yet a focus only on long-term innovation bets could leave a company crippled by missing the short-term gains that are needed to still be thriving when the long-term bets pay off (if ever). His thoughts remind me of the Ascent of Collaboration™ model that Innovationedge uses in helping corporations decide where they are in terms of innovation maturity relative to open innovation and external collaboration. Guidance to the corporation must always be tailored to their level of development in innovation.

A strength of Kelley’s book is his use of numerous examples, mostly from large, well-known companies like Apple or Amazon. One of my favorite case studies occurs early in the book (pp. 14-16) and deals with the rise of General Motors and how they overtook Ford through the vision of Alfred Sloan, who saw the need for market segmentation, good design, and innovation in the business model by offering financial assistance to dealers and customers through GMAC.

Kelley provides practical guidance on some of the basic of innovation within a corporation. He offers, for example, an idea evaluation checklist (pp. 69-70) to assist in screening ideas from a brainstorming session. He also gives the very important lesson that innovation often must proceed slowly, and that a company must be prepared to pursue “slow innovation.” Companies must evaluate where they are on the innovation curve and determine when they must be prepared for many years of slow progress before a technology will be ready for commercial success. Such discipline in thinking and planning is essential to avoid rapid disappointment and premature abandonment of potentially successful concepts. Apple’s iPod is one of several case studies of slow innovation considered.

Kelley also addresses the major issues of organization, culture, and processes that are crucial for innovation success. Breaking down internal information and innovation barriers can be essential for improving innovation in a modern company. Creating a system that can manage innovation and maintain the flexibility needed for innovation success is a demanding challenge, but one that leaders need to face and embrace. Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire can help with that challenge. For both leaders and champions of innovation at all levels, Braden Kelley’s book is definitely worth the read.

The photo looks like something out of this world, doesn’t it? It’s not by coincidence that the shape of the car resembles a leaf. The word Yez is actually Mandarin for leaf.

The car is produced by a little-known company, SAIC, which stands for Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. SAIC is GM’s partner in China.  A few months ago SAIC showed off this innovative concept car which uses photovoltaic conversion, wind energy conversion and CO2 absorption to generate it’s power.

Even the wheels are energy efficient, acting like small wind turbines to capture and convert wind energy into electricity. I particularly like how its roof is filled with solar cells that can find the sun’s in the sky and then rotate to produce the maximum energy-absorption.

At the moment this is just an idea. The auto company says it is definitely something to shoot for in the future, but is for now far off from reality.

The university chose Minnesota’s largest orchard, Pepin Heights, to commercialize its new apple. But 15 other orchards say it’s not a sweet deal for them, and they’re suing. The school counters that research universities everywhere award exclusive rights to all kinds of intellectual property, and that the royalties are crucial for replacing shrinking public funding for research. It also says the deal is needed to protect the quality of an apple it spent more than a decade developing.

“When Pepin and the university signed this agreement, they had no consideration for what it would do to the Minnesota apple industry,” Frank Femling said. “The only thing they considered was their financial interests.”

The Femlings grow 13 kinds of apples at Afton Apple Orchard, about 15 miles southeast of downtown St. Paul. Most of their varieties came from the university, including the hugely successful Honeycrisp. They’re not growing the SweeTango, and they fear what will happen if it becomes as popular as the Honeycrisp. Cindy Femling said they’re already losing sales.

Mark Rotenberg, the university’s general counsel, said the school partners with private industry all the time to bring technology to the marketplace — not just apples but a myriad of other innovations as well, including lifesaving drugs and medical devices.

“This has become, for research universities across the United States, the dominant way in which basic research is made available to benefit the community at large,” Rotenberg said.

As an example, Rotenberg pointed to the technology transfer program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The 75-year-old Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation is considered a leader in turning university research into products that benefit society, and using the licensing income to support further scientific investigation.

Emily Bauer, a licensing manager at the foundation who specializes in plant technology, said it generally prefers nonexclusive licensing because it wants the technology to be widely used. She said the foundation doesn’t usually award exclusive licenses for agricultural products. But in some cases, she said, exclusive licensing is the only way to get the technology into the marketplace.

Rotenberg said the university believed Pepin Heights could do the best job of quickly getting SweeTango apples into the market.

Dennis Courtier, owner of Pepin Heights in Lake City, said restrictions on who grows it are necessary to protect the quality as it competes with other snack foods, including candy bars and potato chips….

[The university] also wanted to avoid a repeat of a significant problem with the Honeycrisp. Anybody could plant it anywhere, and the quality suffered in warmer growing areas, hurting its reputation. So it picked Courtier and Pepin Heights, who formed the “Next Big Thing” cooperative to manage and safeguard the SweeTango. It has 45 growers in five states — Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and New York — plus Quebec and Nova Scotia in Canada.

The university is hoping the deal yields a repeat of the more than $8 million it earned from the Honeycrisp. Besides a $1 per tree royalty, Next Big Thing pays the university 4.5 percent of the apple’s net wholesale sales.

Orchards outside of Minnesota that don’t join the co-op can’t grow it. Minnesota growers who aren’t in the co-op must sign an agreement with Pepin Heights and accept restrictions that plaintiffs such as the Femlings consider one-sided.

While we leave it to the parties involved to resolve the particular issues in this case, we do recognize that it is painful when competitors acquire a technology that has a competitive advantage. However, intellectual property owners generally have rights in determining how their property is used and by whom. Universities in the United States under the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act have an obligation to look for ways to benefit from IP that they develop. That doesn’t mean that they can only consider non-exclusive licenses. In this case, preserving the quality of the SweeTango brand may logically require a controlled approach to distribution of the crop, and the choice of one particular channel with added limitations in planting might make sense. Yes, the terms offered may be one-sided, which is the advantage of having a superior product and IP on your side. Those on the other side can agree to the terms or walk away and pursue alternatives, including developing or acquiring their own sources of competitive advantage. But we’ll have to let this case play out to see where the courts rule–there may be many details beyond the brief story we see in the press that could lead to unpredictable outcomes.

Nothing is safe in the business world. Disruption is always a threat. You may have a great product and a valuable crop, and the next day someone may develop something superior and not choose to let you in on the action or give you the terms you want. There’s a temptation to cry foul and look to the courts to even the playing field, but that’s rarely a fruitful approach.

Here’s a promotional video about SweeTango that discusses how long it takes to develop an innovation in apples. I especially enjoyed this because it features an inventor, the lead apple developer at the University of Minnesota, David Bedford.

I especially appreciate the story of SweeTango innovation since I’m an avid apple grower and apple processor myself. OK, I only have two trees, both Jonathans, but they put out about 1,000 pounds of amazing fruit that keeps me very busy for a couple of weekends and evenings in the first week of October–we’ll can well over 200 quarts of our secret-recipe applesauce, make dried apples, apple leather, various apple concoctions, and give away a couple hundreds pounds or so. The tart, juicy taste of our particular fruit when picked on a cool fall day beats that of nearly any product you can find in the grocery store, in my biased opinion, but I welcome every advance in this field and look forward to trying SweeTango.

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.

I can’t imagine that Townes and Schawlow would have believed how useful and ubiquitous their device would become today.

In medicine, lasers are routinely used as cutting tools with the added benefit that their burning action seals and clots a cut immediately. For example, in laser eye surgery or even ulcer removal surgery, tissue can be removed without damaging surrounding areas.

In consumer electronics, lasers are used to read the surface of CDs or DVDs so that digital bits on the surface can be assembled into bytes of information and converted to continuous analog signals for our listening or viewing pleasure. Today’s high-speed printers use lasers to precisely map locations where toner particles should (or shouldn’t) stick to an imaging drum where they are subsequently fused into place.

The pure frequency output of a laser makes them ideal tools for use in sensitive chemical analysis applications, while the precision and narrow beams of lasers also make them ideal for distance measurements. During the Apollo 11 mission a laser was used to bounce a beam off an 18-inch reflector set up on the moon, measure the round trip travel time and determine (within a few meters) the precise distance to the Earth.

Semiconductor lasers combined with fiber optics provide for high-speed data transmission among computers. Downloading of movies and data can be over an order of magnitude or more faster than over copper wires. With the information and entertainment data explosion that has been going on for the past 20 years, fiber optic connections will continue to become more commonplace.

The controllability, speed and precision of lasers are quite an advantage in many applications. Industrial uses of lasers include cutting, blasting and welding. In the military and defense arena, powerful ones are successfully being used in tests to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles in flight.

We have come a long way since the development of lasers. Who knows what advancements applications lasers will bring in the next 50 years?

To me the more interesting question is: What will be the next innovation that will have comparable long-term impact? And has its theoretical groundwork already been laid, awaiting the next Townes and Schawlow to make it a reality?

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:

• “How mobile phones might revolutionize agriculture in West Africa“
• “Grameen Foundation Expands Technology Program for Poor Farmers in Uganda“

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?

The information-rich world of the film Minority Report is becoming closer to reality each day, with some practical twists. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that Intel and Microsoft are teaming up to provide smart digital displays in retail stores that can look back at the viewer, identify gender and other information using cameras and image processing, and then automatically offer information about products that may be of interest to the viewer, including instant coupons, directions to the product in the store, etc. The article, “Intel, Microsoft Offer Smart-Sign technology” by Don Clark and Nick Wingfield (p. B6, Jan. 12, 2010), describes smart-signs as a way for retailers to fight back against online sellers. The technology builds upon the embedded computing capabilities that Microsoft and Intel have applied to point-of-sale systems, office equipment, car entertainment, and other systems. They are now collaborating to specify hardware and software components that could become a standard platform for other developers. They will seek to offer features similar to those provided by Amazon.com, which can identify returning customers and tailor promotions to them based on their history. It’s all about personalizing the shopping experience–but doing that without infringing upon consumer privacy may be a complex issue. A spokesman stated that the current technology does not identify individuals, only gender. Perhaps the future may involve an opt-in system for those who want to be identified and receive discounts or other benefits in return.

Meanwhile, a variety of companies are developing flexible thin-film displays. One interesting technology space is electronic paper, which reflects light like ordinary printed paper to create images or text. Rigid versions of electronic paper are in use in some popular portable readers, while flexible versions are being developed by companies like E-Ink. A variety of technologies that have been used for electronic paper are summarized at Wikipedia, including electrophoresis, electrowetting, and electrofluidic displays.

What could your business model do with flexible smart displays, if they become inexpensive and easy to program or control? What could you do by adding sensors (perhaps sensors that respond to pressure, temperature, or capacitance to detect touch, or micro-electronic devices such as accelerometers or level indicators)? If you could track and interpret the actions a customer takes with a smart tag, for example, could that help you? What could you do if your smart tags or smart panels could communicate with each other and a network?

Will flexible displays become integrated with smart-sign technology to provide, say, magazines that can read you?

There is a growing body of publications and patents addressing creative aspects of what can be done with these emerging technologies. What will it mean for you–or for your competitors? What will these technologies mean for your supply chain? What do they mean for packaging, for shelf management, for inventor management, for market research, or for product safety? Are you aware of the future and how it might impact the business? At Innovationedge, we’re ready to work with you to find these answers for your company and to generate the intellectual assets that you will need to be prepared for a smarter, information-rich future. We’re ready to help you develop strategies and tools to reduce the impact of competitive disruptive innovation, while increasing your own opportunities to create intellectual assets and benefit from the emerging capabilities of the future.

In fact, there is one other very cool technology from Asia that you ought to be thinking about when you start exploring a world with smart, flexible display technology. If that doesn’t ring a bell, maybe you should give us a ring and let us show you how to do targeted innovation to help you go beyond mere brainstorming by generating the intellectual assets you need for the future. We tailor our approaches to each client, but in this case, we are likely to apply some of the insights from our recent book, Conquering Innovation Fatigue: Overcoming the Barriers to Personal and Corporate Success, a John Wiley & Sons book by Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins, and Mukund Karanjikar. Call us at 920-967-0470.

May your innovations be flexible and smart!

I love imagining the exciting new possibilities the New Year brings!  What is on your radar for the coming year? How will the next big trends impact your business, your social life or your relationships?

Over at Trendhuntertv.com, the big prediction for 2010 includes “Rental Culture,” “Next Besting” and “Nomadabodes!”

You can read about it here. Or if you don’t have time to browse the list, Trendhunter has nicely summed it all up in this video: