via Flickr

I spotted this article over at Mashable.com today and thought I’d share it. What a great example of how Coca-Cola can tap into crowdsourcing in real time to understand how fans and customers think drinks.  And for customers who live in a larger town, there is a good chance they can take their ideas and quickly turn them around into a reality via a vending machine that dispenses their own unique concoction. I wonder how an application like this can help Facebook fans of other companies create their favorite restaurant meal, custom footwear or even the latest automobile design?

Coca-Cola on Wednesday rolled out a Facebook app that lets you mix your own Coke drink. The app is no online-only experiment, though: Real Coke vending machines that do the same thing are rolling out across the country.

The Coca-Cola Freestyle app, created by digital marketing agency 360i, lets you mix a drink using 125 Coke beverages, including Coca-Cola, Sprite, Fanta and Powerade. After choosing each, you hold down a “push” button to fill a cup of your choosing. When you fill your cup, you can name it. There’s also a game designed for the iPhone and Android formats.

The Facebook Page also directs you to Freestyle vending machines in your area and lets you ask for one in your town. There are now about 1,500 such machines in restaurants like Wendy’s, Burger King and Five Guys, but Coke plans to make more noise about Freestyle next year. The company is working with ad agency Ogilvy & Mather on a 2012 ad campaign for Freestyle, according to Advertising Age. Coke would like the apps to eventually generate a 2-D barcode, which could be scanned at one of the machines to create a blend, according to Ad Age.

Image courtesy of Mashable.com

I saw this article today over at InventionMachine.com, and thought it spoke to that insatiable desire to become more knowledge- and technology-intensive as we step up our game:

The world is hungry for innovation. So concludes a recent innovation study from the  National Science Foundation.   The upward trend of worldwide R&D expenditures has been doubling year-over-year for more than a decade and investment in innovation is now growing faster than total global economic output.

As one might expect, R&D investment growth of mature Science and Technology (S&T) countries differ greatly from the R&D growth rates of rising economies. The US, the EU and Japan averaged 5-6 percent R&D expenditure growth from 1996-2007 while India grew 9 percent and China over 20 percent.

The growth in Asian R&D spend (excluding Japan) resulted, says the National Science Foundation, in decreases in the percentages of world R&D expenditures for the mature S&T entities like the United States, EU, and Japan. These decreases in R&D spend were substantial, especially in view of the short period and large expenditures involved. North America’s  share of estimated world R&D activity decreased from 40 to  percent whereas the EU’s share declined from 31 to 28 percent. The Asia/Pacific region’s share increased from 24  to 31 percent  – even with Japan’s comparatively low growth).

Similarly, the growth in the global research pool varies from country to country (again, with APAC countries outside of Japan taking the lead in terms of growth), but trends in research growth point towards continued growth.  All these new researchers produce lots of research in the shape of patents, articles, reports, etc.  According to the National Science Foundation report, worldwide, the number of engineering research articles has increased substantially faster over the past 20 years than total S&E article production, particularly in Asia.

With science and technology no longer the province of mature S&T enterprises, how can countries and companies hold on to their lead in innovation?  Investments in higher education, and attracting and retaining talent and support for R&D top the list.

As established and up-and-coming organizations compete for every advantage, they must strive to continually make themselves more knowledge- and technology-intensive. Organizations that put repeatable innovation best practices in place  - incorporating people, process, platform and programs along with disciplines for connecting to and leveraging technical knowledge and know-how are sure to come out on top.

Sounds smart, right? But it gets even better. We’re now seeing an advanced metering infrastructure able to send data to the billing department at your utility company and then back home to you, the consumer.

As this article explains, it’s just one of many ways the new Smart Grid systems are evolving our electricity. Read on:

Image via Mashable.com

The “smart grid” is a rapidly growing set of technologies, processes, devices and applications that affect and enhance the traditional electric grid. These advances are partially driven by exponentially growing demands worldwide for energy as expressed in a commonly repeated statistic that “global electricity demand is expected to increase 75% by 2030.” What’s happening with the smart grid also reflects developments made in communications, from Internet to cellular to wireless, as well as higher expectations from consumers regarding energy availability, rising energy costs and access to their energy information. A smarter grid will also help integrate renewable energy including wind and solar into the energy mix.

To understand the smart grid, you first need to get familiar with the 125-year-old electric grid. Most people don’t think about where the electricity they’re using comes from or how it gets to their homes and offices. The electric grid consists of several main touchpoints in an overall system that gets electricity from creation to the end user:

Image via Wikipedia

As you will remember, we are big fans of idea parenting.

We believe the people who come up with a clever innovation idea should be the ones to shepherd it through the entire execution process and help introduce it into the marketplace. That way, the insight won’t get diluted along the way and we can make sure that the new product, service, or business model gets all the loving support it needs during development.

And we are also big believers in drawing the left and right brains of the organization. Some people are better at coming up with ideas (right brainers), and others are better at the implementation (left brainers). So it makes sense to involve everyone to make sure all the bases are covered.

Combining the two ideas, here’s where we come out: It is important to have an idea parent involved at each stage of the innovation process.

Expert Parents

To review a bit, we know that innovation occurs when: 1) There is a significant need or insight. 2) A product, service, or business model meets that need. 3) There is clear communication that connects No.1 to No.2.

From our experience, we know it is absolutely critical to create an innovation team with a “parent” for each of these three elements. These expert parents need to be deeply involved throughout the process.

Specifically, you need an insight parent whose “job” it is to make sure that the clarity of the insight she has found does not get blurred as the innovation process moves forward. You don’t have a good insight parent if:

• The team can’t answer precisely the problem they are trying to solve.

• Your customers don’t agree that your idea precisely meets their needs.

• Your insight does not remain focused on one core target that meets key criteria, e.g., a market that is growing, profitable, and open to your brand.

• You continually engage in more and more research and your instincts tell you that it is a “CYA” (cover your ass) exercise or you feel caught in analysis paralysis.

• Your concepts address multiple needs equally rather than doing a superlative job of addressing one specific problem.

An idea parent fully understands the need that the team is trying to fill and pushes for the most compelling, inventive, and appropriate new product, service, or business model to meet the need. The best idea parents know how to expand the boundaries of the idea while staying completely focused on the customer’s need.

You don’t have a good idea parent if:

• You are only producing safe, evolutionary ideas.

• The insight parent says the ideas you are producing are off base.

• The ideas don’t meet the criteria set by the leadership team.

• You are not scared by at least some of the ideas.

• You are producing too few ideas.

Parents are responsible for making sure the communication links the insight and the idea. Remember, a great idea poorly communicated is as effective as a bad idea brilliantly communicated—i.e., not very.

You don’t have a good communication parent if:

• You are not squarely speaking to the target about the identified insight.

• You are using language the consumer would not use or recognize.

• The other parents are disappointed with the less-than-evocative execution of the messaging.

The clear sign that you have a good communication parent is when your customer says “Finally someone listened to me.” It’s important to note here that there are very few renaissance people who can be a solid insight, idea, and communication parent. This is a marriage of varied skill sets and passions, where the right brain complements the left brain and the true respect of different experiences and expertise really matters. So don’t be surprised if you need three different parents to make sure your best ideas remain your best ideas as you move from idea to launch.

It’s usually easy to identify the maverick innovator in an organization, but when you dig deeper, you’ll find there’s always a doting parent (or three) responsible for the insight, the idea, and the communication. They may not get the glory, but like the best parents everywhere, they are very proud of the end result.

Courtesy: Vision Expo 2011

The International Vision Expo kicked off today in New York City, focusing on the most innovative eyewear technology of this year.

I’m among the nearly 150 million adults who wear glasses, and 50 million Americans carry multiple pairs – perhaps for reading, working, driving, or just watching TV. But soon you’ll need just one pair.Today attendees at the exhibit got an up-close look at a new all-in-one technology known as the “Superfocus” glasses, that can change the strength of their liquid lenses, enabling you to see different distances by moving a tiny, adjustable lever. The Superfocus allows you to customize your prescription for whatever you’re looking at. You can change the prescription at the push of a slider.

Another new development is in the weight of the glasses. PURE glasses by Legacie promise to be strong yet very light so that you hardly know they’re there. The innovation comes from a new alloy, Xandium, treaded through the glasses as a frame. The flexible frame has memory so it pops back into place if you bend them. The cost will be about $275.

Another trend we’re seeing is that people are hoping to be eco-friendly with their eyewear. You can donate used glasses to those in need when you update your style, or, you can purchase vintage specs. MODO Eco Glasses debuts an Eco line of glasses that are made out of recycled materials. MODO ships its glasses in sturdy, corrugated cardboard, and you can still mail your old pair in to get recycled into a new pair of glasses. For every pair of glasses they sell, they’re going to plant a tree. Prices range from $150 to $250 dollars.

There are more interesting glasses to see! Check out the big spectacle here.

Imagine a wheelchair that can be directed by brain signals detected from a unique cap worn by the user. THis is the work of scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland (EPFL).

The developers are using this technology to help people control machines via brain signals, which they say will  revolutionize the way the paralysed and disabled maneuver.

I find this video demonstration fascinating:

The main focus of bionics to date has been on providing prosthetics for amputees. Prosthetic arms can now be controlled by nerve signals in the remaining arm, which can be picked up by electric sensors on the skin.

Developers say the next innovation may be bionic limbs which are able to “feel.”

One of the bigger trends of course is our quest to understand how social media can grow and expand our business. I’ve noticed that this past year many more companies have used social media in their pursuit of useful ideas than ever before.  I enjoyed reading a report from Greener World Media about crowdsourcing when it comes to sustainability projects.

The article looks at three efforts by GE’s Smart Grid challenge, eBay’s Green Team, and a leading European retailer’s green customer foray and how those leaders used crowdsourcing to generate sustainability ideas. Check it out.

One example that stood out to me was this summer’s “GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid.”The company and other firms spent $200 million to grab ideas from society via a new website. Nearly 4,000 ideas were submitted over a three-month period, and at the end there were more than 70,000 comments to sift through. GE held a contest for the best ideas and announced the winners earlier this month.

If you want to try something similar, the article suggests three rules to make your campaign successful:

1. Be painfully clear about the results you want from your campaign.

2. Embrace transparency.

3. Link the campaign to co-value creation.

In GE’s case, it asked participants to send forth their best thinking to create initiatives that would enhance an aspect of their own lives. Making it personal was the evident key in this crowdsourcing experiment.

The Facebook Blog shows you how to tag using facial recognition technology.

As facial recognition technology becomes more user friendly for social media and other personal applications, we’re starting to see and hear reaction from those who have concerns and from people who think its great.

Facebook just launched a photo tagging application using the technology to help users tag photos faster. If you want to see how it works, pull up one of your Facebook albums that contain some group shots of friends you haven’t tagged yet and you will now see suggested tags.

I read an article about this last night on The Facebook Blog which says that Facebook has been working on the facial recognition platform since October.  First Facebook added group tagging, so users could type one name and apply it to multiple photos of the same person. This week Facebook announced new Tag Suggestions, making the chore of tagging multiple photos a single-click process.

Every day, people add more than 100 million tags to photos on Facebook. They do it because it’s an easy way to share photos and memories…Tags make photos one of the most popular features on Facebook.

While tags are an essential tool for sharing important moments, many of you have said tagging photos can be a chore. (Like that time you had to tag your cousin and her fiancé over and over and over again in 64 different pictures of their engagement party, and then go back and tag the guests.)

(Click the photo to read the full article)

That means that when your friends upload photos of this year’s holiday party, your face will automatically be recognized. According to The Facebook Blog, you can opt out of this by visiting your Privacy Settings, choose Custom, then change the setting for “Suggest photos of me to friends.”

The  Bureau of Labor Statistics says as our US labor force grows older, our percent of 55+ workers will be four times that of the overall labor force.

I see this happening in the corporations of many of our Innovationedge clients and certainly in many of our Fortune 500 companies. It’s projected to be the largest generational turnover we’ve ever seen in our job force.But hopefully those companies are heeding the statistics and making sure their retiring Baby boomers aren’t taking their years of knowledge and subject matter expertise with them.

What does this mean for companies continuing their focus on growth and innovation?  How is your company retaining knowledge and capturing best practices for future generations?

Photo courtesy NasaImages.org

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.

Many of them you’ve never heard of, but they will change the world–impacting business, industry and society.  You can read their profiles here.

This year’s selection process leaned heavily on companies that are committed to finding clean and green solutions to meet the world’s energy and consumer needs.

Here are the best of the best in innovation:  Adimab, Aster Data, Atlassian, Digital Lumens, Ecovative Design, Ferrate Treatment Technologies, Flexoresearch Group, foursquare, GetJar, Ion Torrent, Knewton, Layar, Medicine in Need, Molecular Partners, NetQin Mobile, Neuronetics, Novacem, On-Ramp Wireless, OpenDNS, OPOWER, Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies, Quintas Renewable Energy Solutions, ReputationDefender, Scribd, SecondMarket, Spotify, TaKaDu, Tendril, Topell Energy, Transonic Combustion, Vortex Engineering.

You’ll be hearing more about them in the news this week as they receive their awards and recognition at a ceremony in China.

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.

At first you might think it is easy to dismiss the mobile social-gaming phenom that awards the most frequent patron the title of mayor.  (Then you hear that some dirty politics may be developing around Foursquare mayorship, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported.)

BusinessWeek recognizes Foursquare’s co-founder Naveen Selvadurai as one of the best young technology entrepreneurs.

Check out this video on his take about why so many people are checking in everywhere they go:

Is Foursquare a fad or a phenomenon? That’s what the folks over at Mindshare.com asked a few weeks ago. Mindshare says that if 2009 was the year of Twitter, then 2010 most certainly must be all about Foursquare.  And with more than one million users, they might be right!

Those who want to understand how technology and social trends impact the face of their business might want to pay attention to Foursquare.

Read her contribution here.

The customers are test marketing the idea in two Holiday Inn locations in Chicago and Houston.

According to reports I’m reading, the system is called OpenWays, which sends a unique and encrypted audio code to a customer’s phone before arrival and check-in. He or she also gets a text message with the room number, allowing that weary traveler to skip the hotel registration desk.

The designers say it is safe as a hotel keycard to use, and will be tested in more hotels in June—just a few days away!

OpenWays is available to users on iPhone, BlackBerry and “Droid” phones, and will soon be usable on other platforms as well. I haven’t downloaded the app yet, but I may have to check this out!

The vision is to turn televisions into computer monitors for surfing the internet. About 5,000 people gathered at a news conference today so Google could demonstrate, and you can read about it here. In fact this new technology is already slated for sale in the fall, but the question remains on how much you would expect to pay.

Sony will make the TVs using microprocessors from Intel, while Google will provide the software and Logitech the special remote and wireless keyboard.
Check out the Google TV video the company launched today to promote their product, and you’ll get a good idea about how the companies are aligning expectations:

Here  is a look at a chart that ties the disaster together with amazing clarity. Another site is hosting some incredible photographs of the disaster including some from NASA that you might want to check out.

One blogger out there is calling for the most innovative minds to suggest possible solutions, and is promising to share those solutions with government authorities.

“One amazing idea could slow the Oil Leak modestly or even stop it, slow the spread, or minimize effects, then every day wasted is measured in real environmental, human, and economic toll,” says blogger Dwayne Spradlin of Perspectives on Innovation.

I do agree that there needs to be a formalized system in place when these unexpected disasters happen.  But just as important: preventive safety measures. Like that $500,000 safety valve BP could have used to prevent the now-estimated 60,000 barrels a day from spilling into the ocean.

A few hours ago Google Inc. announced that for the first time it is making a sizable investment in renewable power as a way to accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to the search engine giant. (Read about it here.)

Google’s $38.8 million investment in an incredible wind energy project in the North Dakota plains involves two wind farms owned by NextEra Energy Resources that generate 169.5 megawatts of energy, or enough to power more than 55,000 homes.

Not every company is investing locally. One trend we are noticing is that clean energy technology has globalized and  innovation has followed suit.

One nation in particular continues to reap the benefits of this trend. Companies like GM, Dow and and Intel have constructed high-tech research labs in China. In fact the Chinese have 750 foreign-funded R&D centers in China—up from 50 just 13 years ago. Meanwhile the number of R&D sites in the United States dropped from 60 percent to 52 percent in the past decade.

You can read more about this phenomenon in a new Business Week article titled America’s Green Innovation Problem. The report does a good job explaining the numbers, and showing that as many companies are becoming truly global in their R&D, manufacturing and marketing, they’ve been collaborating even more with foreign companies and governments.

Another great story out of Africa is the Forbes article, “Can This Bicycle Save Lives In Africa?” by Stephanie Finch. After achieving international success with his bicycle innovations, Frederick K.W. Day noticed that many streets in Africa were lined with abandoned, broken down bikes that quickly fell apart on the rough streets of Africa. He also saw that the huge diversity of bikes being sent to Africa made it very difficult for mechanics to repair due to lack of proper parts and tools for the diverse designs. He is now working to bring rugged, low-cost, easy-to-repair bikes to Africa:

Through his World Bicycle Relief charity the ponytailed entrepreneur hopes to put millions of sub-Saharan Africans aboard special heavy-duty bikes designed to withstand the continent’s rugged roads while carrying 200 pounds of cargo–enough for a weaver to bring his rugs, or a farmer to tote his produce, to market. Moreover, he aims to promote a self-sustaining bicycle economy with regional operations assembling the bikes and area mechanics trained to repair them.

Frederick is making many changes in the bike as well as crafting a business model for distribution and maintenance that will meet the needs of many parts of Africa. It’s not about getting rich, but about truly making a difference in the world for thousands of people. That’s inspiring innovation!

What are your favorite examples of altruistic innovation or social entrepreneurship helping Africa?

Bloomberg/BusinessWeek’s Most Innovative Companies report has been published each April since 2005, although in the beginning it was the Top 20 list. The results are based on  a 21-question poll to senior executives around the globe. The 1,590 respondents, who answered anonymously, were asked to name the most innovative companies from outside their own industry in 2009.

What many will find surprising, I think, is that when Bloomberg/Businessweek started ranking innovators in 2005, only six of the Top 20 were headquartered outside the U.S. A third of 2005′s American champs (3M, Starbuck, eBay, etc.), no longer make the Top 50.

Check out the article & the Top 50 list here.