Innovation of the Week: Jim McNerney’s Thoughts on Innovation and Invention
Posted by: meikah | 7 August 2008 | 9:42 pm
To invent is to discover and to innovate is to renew.
Jim McNerney, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Boeing Company, shares his thoughts as the inaugural speaker of the James R. Mellor Lecture Series.
McNerney speaks:
Dean Munson, thank you very much for a very generous introduction.
Long before the Wright brothers invented it, people dreamed of human, powered flight. We know that from the many myths and fables about flight.
In ancient Greek mythology, Daedalus built the famous Labyrinth in Crete — and was later imprisoned in his own invention. (We’ll come back to that in a minute.) Ever resourceful, Daedalus made wings out of feathers tied together with linen threads and fastened with wax. Rising on their wings, Daedalus and his son Icarus escaped the Labyrinth.
Filed under: Innovation Update, Innovation, Aviation, Boeing
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Innovation of the Week: MySQL’s Collaborative Community
Posted by: meikah | 11 July 2008 | 12:02 am
As the World Wide Web grows, most of the information that you would want to find or that you need has become available and free.
The concept of collaborative community is the principle behind MySQL, touted as the world’s most popular database. The company has been committed to “open-source” innovation since its founding in 1995.
In a recent interview, MYSQL chief Marten Mickos shares his ideas about why MySQL’s Internet-age version of a barn raising produces superior innovation and what motivates all those developers.
He spoke with Josh Hyatt, contributing editor of MIT Sloan Management Review, for the Business Insight Journal Report.
BUSINESS INSIGHT: What would cause a company like MySQL to make the radical move of open sourcing its product? Does a business just have to be born with that tendency toward transparency?
MR. MICKOS: Interestingly, the whole company was started by the founders writing the product code themselves. They were thinking of a closed-source product. Then one of the founders saw a presentation about open source and convinced the others that this was the way the world was going to go. That was in the first year, 1995.
Filed under: Software/Technology, Team Dynamics, Innovation Update, Innovation, MySQL
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Innovation of the Week: Sitemasher’s Platforms
Posted by: meikah | 27 June 2008 | 2:06 am
Sitemasher, a Vancouver-based start-up company received the inaugural Blue Sky Award, which recognizes leading innovation developed on the Microsoft-based platform.
Mediacaster Magazine reports:
Established in 2007, Sitemasher is a SaaS-based platform for building, managing, and optimizing sophisticated websites.
Phil Calvin, chief technical officer, began developing Sitemasher in 2005. He was intent on transcending traditional website building platforms and Web content management system (CMS) solutions by providing an integrated, search-engine friendly platform to address the entire website lifecycle.
Filed under: General, Software/Technology, Innovation Update, Internet, IT
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Innovation of the Week: China Mobile, Softbank, and Vodafone to Set Up an Innovation Lab
Posted by: meikah | 2 May 2008 | 2:22 am
ChinaTechNews reports that China Mobile will set up an innovation lab. The project is a joint endeavor with Softbank and Vodafone.
The joint innovation lab will serve as a platform for the parties to develop mobile services and drive innovation and synergy in the industry to the benefit of their combined global customer base, and it will also launch projects based on emerging technologies and market demand.
The Lab reportedly will focus on pushing the development of new mobile technology, application and services such as mobile widgets. In the initial stage, it plans to develop a platform for mobile widgets to encourage the development of innovative new services that can leverage mobile operators’ unique capabilities.
The mobile telecom is really on a roll these days, and I’m guessing that there’ll be more innovation efforts in this industry in the future.
Filed under: Telecommunications, Innovation Update, Technology, Innovation
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Innovation of the Week: An Invitation to Open Innovation
Posted by: meikah | 28 March 2008 | 2:43 am
Open innovation is taking a hold in most companies. It can work if the proper measures are drawn up. Here’s how to do it.
Check outl, BusinessWeek Online’s A Ripe Time for Open Innovation.
“Recessions present a good opportunity to collaborate with others on finding, developing, and marketing new ideas.” Continue reading…
Filed under: Innovation Update, Innovation
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Innovation of the Week: Tata’s Nano
Posted by: meikah | 7 March 2008 | 1:32 am
Much has been written about Tata’s Nano.
An article on BusinessWeek online says that the innovations of the $2,500 car carry important lessons for Western executives.
How could Tata Motors make a car so inexpensively? It started by looking at everything from scratch, applying what some analysts have described as “Gandhian engineering” principles—deep frugality with a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. A lot of features that Western consumers take for granted—air conditioning, power brakes, radios, etc.—are missing from the entry-level model.
Filed under: Manufacturing, Innovation Update, Innovation, Tata Motors
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Innovation of the Week: Trapped Rainbow Effect for Computers
Posted by: meikah | 16 November 2007 | 12:44 am
This innovation will use a rainbow-like effect to produce ultra-fast computing. Possible? Here’s the story:
The technique, called ‘trapped rainbow’, would help optical data storage, with light replacing electrons to store information, according to their paper published today in the journal Nature.
Controlling light would also help engineers control major nodes where billions of optical data packets arrive at the same time.
By slowing some packets to let others through, rather like a traffic congestion scheme, the flow of data can be boosted.
Source:
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Corporate Communications
Filed under: Software/Technology, Innovation Update, ABC
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Innovation of the Week: Solar-powered Airplanes
Posted by: meikah | 9 November 2007 | 1:59 am
Having solar-powered planes flying over us is a big step toward cleaning up our Mother Earth. The sooner we get to fly these planes, the better.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Corporate Communications website reports:
The prototype of a solar energy-powered plane has been designed and should make its first piloted flight late next year, the Swiss project leaders say.
The reduced-size model, which has a 61m wingspan, is now being built in northern Switzerland to test the technology involved in the full-size Solar Impulse aircraft.
If the first flight is successful, the 1.5-tonne plane will make a 36-hour flight through the night in 2009, piloted by round-the-world ballooning pioneer Bertrand Piccard.
Filed under: Travel, Innovation Update, Aviation
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Innovation of the Week: Wiki City Rome
Posted by: meikah | 28 September 2007 | 12:13 am
Mobile phones find another use in Rome aside from making calls and sending text messages.
These phones are being used in the map project, known as Wiki City Rome.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports:
A futuristic urban map, featuring the dynamics of the Italian capital in real time, made its debut at the weekend.
The map project is continuously fed data through wireless technology such as mobile phones and global positioning systems on city buses and taxis.
Developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the project was launched during Rome’s Notte Bianca (White Night), an all-night festival of 400 events, which drew about 2.5 million people onto Rome’s streets.
This is a good way to check on traffic and perhaps untoward incidents, which can be tracked real time.
Filed under: Telecommunications, Innovation Update
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Innovation of the Week: Mind Mapping or “Personal Brain”
Posted by: meikah | 31 August 2007 | 1:25 am
Are you facing a complex task and you seem to be getting nowhere at organizing all your thoughts? Well, Mind Mapping, otherwise known as “Personal Brain” could be the answer.
According to TechNewsWorld Product Review, Mind Mapping software is hot!
Mind mapping, for the uninitiated, is a visual method for organizing ideas — a sort of project management tool for the mind. It often involves lots of thoughts in “bubbles” connected by lines.
The language used to describe the elements of a mind map — root idea, children, siblings, etc. — parallels that used by software outliners, except mind maps don’t have the rigid vertical form outlines have. Mind maps have an air of horizontal chaos about them.
