Archive for Uncategorized
Numbers offer more opportunities than realized
I’ve talked before about the growing science of analytics, where companies are using data to make better decisions faster, throughout their organizations. Analytics is going beyond traditional sources into the realm of text.
Analytics naturally came about as a result of today’s prolific generation of electronic data. The amount of numerical information created every day is staggering.
I have seen statistics that claim all of us are generating more than 2 million emails per second, and a similar quantity of tweets on Twitter. Then there are the electronic documents that are created and published from so many sources. Google processes dozens of petabytes of information per day — that’s millions of gigabytes.
Of course all of the text data that is being generated isn’t publicly available, but where it is, organizations are looking to exploit it to extract the useful business intelligence that may be buried within. The approaches being explored go beyond numerical analytics or information searching and retrieval, to add in academic-sounding techniques like artificial intelligence, natural language processing and semantic analysis. It’s definitely cutting edge, but traditional companies are using it.
For example the refrigeration and cooking appliance company Sub-Zero/Wolf Appliance is mining their massive text databases to cut the time it takes to identify and address product defects. They are sifting through their customer service data, inventory information, and warranty claims to help determine trends in product quality issues. Using these approaches the company has claimed to cut the time required to identify quality problems by more than 50 percent. More importantly product failures have been reduced, and of course this is yielding improved customer satisfaction.
A company called ChinaHR.com is using text analytics to extract data from resumes received online and match it with key data provided by prospective employers.
One global consumer products company is using the approach to look through online responses to new marketing campaigns. Text analytics is being used here to quickly sort through volumes of customer comments and discussions to organize and better understand consumer sentiments, and to provide better direction for future marketing efforts.
These are just a few examples, but applications such as these reduce resource requirements, along with administration costs.
Applications of text analytics to extracting hidden market insights are poised for significant growth. Business insights gained from mining social networks or online media has the potential to yield guidance to market research, provide competitive intelligence, or even illuminate perceived brand reputation or corporate image.
As with numerical analytics, the key to using some of the text data that is being generated is to get guidance for making better decisions, and for making them quicker and more efficiently. It may not be hard to understand the general usefulness of extracting information from text, but imagining where it might be applied specifically in your business is what might make a difference.
It isn’t just about the numbers anymore. There could be hidden treasure in your text.
Related articles
- Text Analytics v. Semantic Content Enrichment (semanticweb.com)
- Text Analytics Gurus Discuss the State of the Industry (arnoldit.com)
- The Importance of Text Analytics: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (java.dzone.com)
- Text Analytics Basics (mediatemetrics.wordpress.com)
- Are SEO-optimized articles any good?
Want to quicken innovation? Rapid prototyping helps you see it and touch it!
Innovators, whether part of a large organization or simply an individual inventor, are struggling with two things right now as they travel on their innovation journey — time and money.
As I recently said in my weekly newspaper column, many have created more than enough ideas to move forward, but have a hard time getting support and/or resources behind their ideas to actually advance them through to commercial successes. One way to help generate excitement for an idea is to make it a reality with a prototype.
Often when we help inventors advance their ideas and get an invention ready for the marketplace, we relate it to connecting an electrical circuit with multiple components, connected in the right order, allowing the energy to flow and do useful work. The energy of innovation requires what we call “completing the Circuit of Innovation.” This includes both a market roadmap, a holistic intellectual asset strategy that goes beyond simply getting a patent, and constructing prototypes to demonstrate how the invention comes to life.
Over the years, the need to quickly and inexpensively create prototypes has grown significantly, especially for true ground-breaking innovation. It is hard to influence leaders, key stakeholders and investors about a disruptive idea if it cannot be seen, touched or felt.
We have resources like the Fab Lab right here at Fox Valley Technical College Campus to help with this challenge. Fab Lab is an abbreviation for a fabrication laboratory and is home to readily available industrial-grade fabrication and electronics tools. The lab can be used to help advance an inventor’s early stage prototyping for product innovation and development by allowing them to more easily design, fabricate and test prototypes of their inventions without investing unnecessarily is expensive specialized equipment.
There are also other ways to rapidly prototype inventions using new techniques and systems. For example, a scale model of a part or assembly can be virtually constructed using 3D computer-aided design. It is even possible to take this design from the virtual world into the physical one using 3D printing technology. Even overnight, these technologies can sometimes produce prototypes that have production-quality working parts.
Another disruptive method for modeling being explored is called “smart sand.” This rapid prototyping tool has been developed by the Distributed Robotics Laboratory at MIT’s Computer Science department. An object is immersed in a special group of small, sand-size particles. These tiny cubes relay location information to each other of how they are connected to the surface of the submerged object. From this data, a map of the topology of the object can be created and the object can then be replicated. This is still a rudimentary and developing technology, but with improvements and smaller particle size the technique might one day yield an inexpensive in-house object modeling solution.
Regardless, if you want to save time and money, and generate enthusiasm, go beyond just descriptions and business plans. Computer design and rapid prototyping should be a necessary part of your innovation arsenal. And don’t be discouraged if you don’t have the capability or expertise in-house — there are many outside resources that are readily available.
Related articles
- Sample Innovation Services (cognitivenoise.wordpress.com)
- The Tools That Make It Happen: Pratt Institute – Industrial Design (design-milk.com)
- Visual Prototype iPad and Android Emulator (drdobbs.com)
- Dive into Responsive Prototyping with Foundation (downes.ca)
- LEAP Unveils Cutting Edge 3-D Printing Machine (detroit.cbslocal.com)
- Wisdom of the Crowd: The Amazing FlipSteady iPad Cover, Best Ever. (solidsmack.com)
A little espresso in your dashboard!
No driver ever wants to nod off on those long drives, and now a French company has come up with a handy take-along device that allows you to whip up a shot of hot espresso as you travel. The company, French Handpresso, have invented and launched the Handpresso Auto E.S.E., an espresso machine built specifically for use in automobiles. It’s part of a growing trend in the Food and Beverage industry that is seeing new innovations designed to help consumers get their quick coffee fix wherever they happen to be.
The Handpresso fits in a standard cup holder and runs electronically via any 12V cigarette lighter. Perhaps a passenger should be the one designated to add the water and coffee pod. But a driver could easily prepare the water receptacle and pod ahead of the trip, just for safety’s sake.The espresso brews in two minutes, and the device beeps when the beverage is ready to drink.The video below gives you an idea of how Handpresso Auto works:
(Notice the driver pulls over!)
The device sells for about $200, and is currently available in Europe.
Related articles
- Handpresso Auto creates piping hot espresso right in your car (digitaltrends.com)
- Handpresso Auto can give you fresh espresso on the road (redferret.net)
Developing nations see transformation through technology and innovation
Image by Espen Faugstad via Flickr
In my weekly newspaper column I talk about how we’re hearing that innovative technology is beginning to transform the poorest areas of developing nations in South and Central America, Africa, Asia and beyond. This is great news: New well-drilling equipment and water filters are providing clean drinking water to many impoverished communities. Inexpensive mobile phones, laptops and even computer tablets are now available to children and schools where people are struggling to pay for basic necessities like housing and food. Programs like Intel’s Classmate PC and One Laptop Per Child are giving children across the developing world access to education and information the children, their teachers and parents might not otherwise have.
I also take a look at another big challenge in addressing hygiene and safe waste disposal in nations where infant mortality rates are high due to illnesses caused by bacteria.
Some facts: 40 percent of the world’s population does not have access to flush toilets. Millions of people have no other choice but to go in the open or in rivers and lakes, contaminating the ground and the water. The Centers for Disease Control says 1.5 million children die each year from diarrhea, which could be prevented via improved sanitation.
Some good news is on the horizon, thanks to private and corporate donations from the United States. This summer Microsoft founder Bill Gates talked to the media about the importance of sanitation improvements, hoping to get the message out to the world that new, bright ideas need to play a role in meeting this enormous challenge. Gates then promised to reinvent the toilet, by contributing $42 million towards a goal of finding a way to bring flushable systems to villages and homes that lack plumbing for conventional toilets.
Citing his desire to vastly improve the living conditions of millions of people, Gates pointed to the fact that no innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve heath than the invention of the toilet.
Part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s goal is to use the donation to fund eight research labs at universities around the globe to generate new ideas for turning waste into energy and clean water. Gates calls it his Reinventing the Toilet Challenge, and is encouraging technologists to invent a stand-alone unit that can be fully operational without piped-in water, a sewer connection or outside electricity. The toilets also need to operate on about a nickel a day.
Ideas are already coming to the forefront, and soon we will see the results of this call for innovation in the form of healthier children and adults in areas of desperate need.
Innovation’s “three parents”
Here’s an interesting article I saw in Business Week some time ago, but the content still poses intriguing questions for innovators today: Does innovation need a parent or two? Or three? Notice that innovation teams are working through three stages of innovation. I would agree that this type of idea parenting needs to be a part of each of the three processes in order to inspire a customer to say, “Finally, someone listened!” Read on:
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.
Yez, please! First car with negative footprint is a dream for China
Imagine a car that has a negative carbon footprint. In China, a new concept car called the 2030 Yez is the first automobile that promises to remove more pollution from the air than it creates. It’s an electric car that also combines several other technologies.
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.
Eyes to the future
We know that green and clean technology and the “Click Stream Customer” are two of many trends that will impact the way we do business in the future.
Trend watching has become a business in itself. Futurist James Canton is one of many business futurists who make a living by interpreting the signs of what will be in 5 or 10 years.
But what about translating those trends into a solid business strategy? Interpreting and then planning for the future is crucial to your innovation strategy. It’s one thing to have information on climate shifts or economic conditions that affect our bottom line, but quite another to interpret these signs in a useful way that will help your business ride the wave and come out on top.
College “on-demand”
With two sons now in college, I’ve had some great opportunities to see how the traditional college scene is not what it was when I attended!
It’s exciting to see not only how conventional learning has evolved, but also how a new way to learn is emerging for those students who don’t consider themselves a traditional tuition-paying, degree-seeking member of a university.
All you need today to be a collegiate learner is a computer. A number of schools have created on-demand downloads and videocasts of their content. The OpenCourseWare movement from MIT and many other universities around the world is one example. iTunes U is another.
An effort known as Project TUVA us under development by Microsoft where online they making available lectures given by some of the brightest and most well-known scientists. Although the lectures themselves may be conventional, they are being enhanced with written captioning, expert commentary, and a note taking ability that can be synchronized with the lecture.
In Project TUVA one can easily navigate within the lectures, and the application even allows transcript searching and skipping directly to that point in the lecture. For their first demonstration they have provided a series of very interesting lectures on physics given by Professor Richard Feynman of Cal Tech in the 60’s. Feynman had the fascinating ability to make complex science fun and interesting. Even though the lectures themselves are old they are worth checking out.
All of these offerings provide a wide range of courses, but generally they are not complete in any specific degree area, and there is not as of yet an affordable selection of advanced or graduate level courses. There is still much improvement to be made in the quantity of content.
Obviously the thought is that universities don’t want to give away their product for free, only samples of what they provide. But even if they don’t provide them to the public, why wait to start building a potentially valuable “library” of lectures? Colleges and Universities could start recording much of their content now, and not just let it slip away in the memories of their students.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someday all of that content could be incorporated into a repository like Project TUVA to be accessible by youth all over the world – especially by those who will never be able to afford or participate in a conventional college education? Perhaps this is one area were available public funding could be used to better invest in our future.
The application of new technology to education is requiring creative thinking around user interface design, storage, and media searching and indexing. There is so much opportunity to bring more powerful experiences to the process of learning and allow more people to participate in the learning experience.
It is a highly exciting time. We are beginning to be able to subscribe to the learning outlets that we want. Take advantage of it where we can. Download a free e-book or watch a lecture. You don’t need a specialized reader like a Kindle or an iPad; all you need is a computer or a smart phone (and of course some spare time!).