Innovation is about finding a better way of doing something. Like many of the new development buzzwords (which many of them are over-used on many business documents), the concept of innovation originates from the world of business. It refers to the generation of new products through the process of creative entrepreneurship, putting it into production, and diffusing it more widely through increased sales. Innovation can be viewed as t he application of better solutions that meet new requirements, in-articulated needs, or existing market needs. This is accomplished through more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments and society. The term innovation can be defined as something original and, as a consequence, new, that “breaks into” the market or society.
Innoveracy: Misunderstanding Innovation article points out that there is a form of ignorance which seems to be universal: the inability to understand the concept and role of innovation. The way this is exhibited is in the misuse of the term and the inability to discern the difference between novelty, creation, invention and innovation. The result is a failure to understand the causes of success and failure in business and hence the conditions that lead to economic growth. The definition of innovation is easy to find but it seems to be hard to understand. Here is a simple taxonomy of related activities that put innovation in context:
- Novelty: Something new
- Creation: Something new and valuable
- Invention: Something new, having potential value through utility
- Innovation: Something new and uniquely useful
The taxonomy is illustrated with the following diagram.
The differences are also evident in the mechanisms that exist to protect the works: Novelties are usually not protectable, Creations are protected by copyright or trademark, Inventions can be protected for a limited time through patents (or kept secret) and Innovations can be protected through market competition but are not defensible through legal means.
Innovation is a lot of talked about nowdays as essential to businesses to do. Is innovation essential for development work? article tells that innovation has become central to the way development organisations go about their work. In November 2011, Bill Gates told the G20 that innovation was the key to development. Donors increasingly stress innovation as a key condition for funding, and many civil society organisations emphasise that innovation is central to the work they do.
Some innovation ideas are pretty simple, and some are much more complicated and even sound crazy when heard first. The is place for crazy sounding ideas: venture capitalists are gravely concerned that the tech startups they’re investing in just aren’t crazy enough:
Not all development problems require new solutions, sometimes you just need to use old things in a slightly new way. Development innovations may involve devising technology (such as a nanotech water treatment kit), creating a new approach (such as microfinance), finding a better way of delivering public services (such as one-stop egovernment service centres), identifying ways of working with communities (such as participation), or generating a management technique (such as organisation learning).
Theorists of innovation identify innovation itself as a brief moment of creativity, to be followed by the main routine work of producing and selling the innovation. When it comes to development, things are more complicated. Innovation needs to be viewed as tool, not master. Innovation is a process, not a one time event. Genuine innovation is valuable but rare.
There are many views on the innovation and innvation process. I try to collect together there some views I have found on-line. Hopefully they help you more than confuze. Managing complexity and reducing risk article has this drawing which I think pretty well describes innovation as done in product development:
8 essential practices of successful innovation from The Innovator’s Way shows essential practices in innovation process. Those practices are all integrated into a non-sequential, coherent whole and style in the person of the innovator.
In the IT work there is lots of work where a little thinking can be a source of innovation. Automating IT processes can be a huge time saver or it can fail depending on situation. XKCD comic strip Automation as illustrates this:
System integration is a critical element in project design article has an interesting project cost influence graphic. The recommendation is to involve a system integrator early in project design to help ensure high-quality projects that satisfy project requirements. Of course this article tries to market system integration services, but has also valid points to consider.
Core Contributor Loop (CTTDC) from Art Journal blog posting Blog Is The New Black tries to link inventing an idea to theory of entrepreneurship. It is essential to tune the engine by making improvements in product, marketing, code, design and operations.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
They slice. They dice. Is there anything modular instruments can’t do?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/test-cafe/4440040/They-slice–They-dice–Is-there-anything-modular-instruments-can-t-do-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150901&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150901&elq=bad9feb5d41d4f228e10d545791ff304&elqCampaignId=24586&elqaid=27842&elqat=1&elqTrackId=d5f961c99ac443ab9d4fceb5555515ea
My recent column Prediction: Microwave coming to PXI – big time! has caused the most essential engineering question to be asked of me, “Are there any measurement limits to modular instruments, such as those in PXI or AXIe?” Or, put another way, is there some frequency too high or signal too small that a modular instrument can’t make the measurement?
A frequency too high? No. A signal too small? No.
We’ve seen this play out in the test community before. In the 1980s, when Microsoft Windows was taking off, there was a lot of talk that Windows could never be a decent engineering platform.
Today, as I mentioned in a previous column, we test professionals are addicted to Windows.
We’ve seen the same thing play out in modular instrumentation. “Sure, modular instruments are OK for low frequency data acquisition”, I’ve heard many times in the past, “but try to do precision RF with it.” Well, today we have powerful RF PXI products
Engineering happened, that’s what.
Engineers love a challenge. You should never tell an engineer “that’s impossible”, unless you have some basic law of physics that will be violated. Even then I would be hesitant. “That’s impossible” is an asymmetric statement that can always be proven false by example, but rarely proven correct.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Engineering Lessons from Pluto
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/embedded-basics/4440230/5-Engineering-Lessons-from-Pluto?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150901&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150901&elq=bad9feb5d41d4f228e10d545791ff304&elqCampaignId=24586&elqaid=27842&elqat=1&elqTrackId=06ba9f8cc21140c1ae477df75c36dd65
Lesson #1 – Be persistent
Lesson #2 – Reuse can drastically reduce project costs
Lesson #3 – Reuse can dramatically shorten deployment time
Lesson #4 – Plan for glitches
Lesson #5 – Low power design isn’t just for IoT
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nick Bilton / Vanity Fair:
Observations of notable investors as they confront the seemingly ubiquitous signs of a tech bubble — Is Silicon Valley in Another Bubble . . . and What Could Burst It? — With the tech industry awash in cash and 100 “unicorn” start-ups now valued at $1 billion or more, Silicon Valley can’t escape the question.
Is Silicon Valley in Another Bubble . . . and What Could Burst It?
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/08/is-silicon-valley-in-another-bubble
With the tech industry awash in cash and 100 “unicorn” start-ups now valued at $1 billion or more, Silicon Valley can’t escape the question. Nick Bilton reports.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Do So Many Tech Workers Dislike Their Jobs?
http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/09/02/1951206/why-do-so-many-tech-workers-dislike-their-jobs
So what if you work for a tech company that offers free lunch, in-house gym, and dry cleaning? A new survey suggests that a majority of software engineers, developers, and sysadmins are miserable.
it’s nonetheless insightful into the reasons why a lot of tech pros apparently dislike their jobs.
Why Tech Pros Aren’t Happy
http://insights.dice.com/2015/09/02/why-tech-pros-arent-happy/?CMPID=AF_SD_UP_JS_AV_OG_DNA_
In a bid to keep top tech talent in the building, some tech companies have resorted to extraordinary perks, from free sushi at lunch to in-house gyms and dry cleaning. But is the talent actually happy? According to a new survey, software engineers, developers, and sysadmins are pretty miserable in the office.
The company conducting the survey, TinyPulse, asked 5,000 employees in the tech space about their individual experience on the job, including overall happiness. Only 19 percent of respondents felt overwhelmingly positive about their work life; another 17 percent said they felt valued at work; and a mere 47 percent believed they had strong relationships with co-workers.
Compared with the responses from employees in marketing and finance (also surveyed by TinyPulse), those numbers are dismal. In addition to generalized unhappiness, only 36 percent of tech employees felt their promotion and career path were clear—compared to 50 percent of non-tech employees.
“There’s widespread workplace dissatisfaction in the tech space, and it’s undermining the happiness and engagement of these employees,” TinyPulse concluded. “The problem goes beyond workplace satisfaction—Gallup found that engagement is one of the key ingredients for employee innovation.”
THE STATE OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IN TECH
4 Big Bad Trends That Are Hitting This Workforce Hard
https://www.tinypulse.com/resources/the-state-of-employee-engagement-in-tech
The answer is: not well. It was clear that there’s a significant disparity between the two groups, with tech employees falling behind on several areas of job satisfaction.
Here are the major areas of concern:
An unhappy work experience: The workplace is being dragged down by dissatisfaction. Only 19% of IT employees gave a strongly positive answer when asked how happy they were on the job.
Feeling trapped: Among non-IT employees, a solid 50% say their promotion and career path is clear to them. But for IT employees, that number drops to 36%. Employees don’t see any opportunity for professional growth, either because there aren’t options or they don’t have support from management to pursue them.
Thankless work: Only 17% of IT employees feel strongly valued at work. What’s more, there’s a strong relationship (r = 0.56) between how valued an employee feels at work and the likelihood that they would reapply to their job.
Alignment with the company: Only 28% of IT employees know their company’s vision, mission, and cultural values — 15% less than of all other employees. Worse, some of them do know the company values but disagree with them, or at least how they’re being put into practice.
Relationship with coworkers: Job dissatisfaction makes for poor teammates, at least according to our survey respondents. Only 47% of IT employees say they have strong relationships with their coworkers. In other industries, that number jumps to 56%.
All these roadblocks are holding IT employees back from doing their best work. This isn’t just bad news for the tech industry — it hurts everyone whose work relies on their innovation. If your business benefits from having newer and better technologies, then you should be paying attention.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Recycled Factory Recycles Soda Bottles
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/02/recycled-factory-recycles-soda-bottles/
All over the world, mountains of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics are available for recycling in the form of soda bottles. And wherever there is enough cheap raw material, a market is sure to emerge for it. One brilliant inventor in Brazil has decided to capitalize on this market by building a magnificent factory to turn PET bottles into threads, rope, and other products.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwqhNIryohk
Tomi Engdahl says:
Back-to-school tech: 9 devices and kits for the budding engineer
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/now-hear-this/4440231/Back-to-school-tech–9-devices-and-kits-for-the-budding-engineer?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150903&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_weekly_20150903&elq=58f65a70bbe94ce98c0344f09c7bd6b7&elqCampaignId=24640&elqaid=27917&elqat=1&elqTrackId=41d0a7e229cc4349ab71288ec6cc104f
In this roundup, we will be taking a look at some of the more interesting kits on the market that can be had by those eager to learn anywhere from grade school to college and beyond.
MATLAB and Simulink Student Suite
Entry-level Arduino
Solar backpack
Handy tool kit
Russian Nixie tube alarm clock kit
’80s kit throwback
Experimentation Kit
Fast prototyping kit
Inexpensive 3D printer
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digital Health
Take a Deep Breath, Then Check Your Smartphone
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/bringing-the-stethoscope-into-the-smartphone-era/
The stethoscope, that iconic tool of doctors, has been upgraded several times since it was invented two centuries ago. Eko Devices, a start-up led by three recent graduates of the University of California, Berkeley, is betting that it is time for another innovative overhaul.
Last Friday, the fledgling company received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to market its Eko Core, a digital device that attaches to a conventional stethoscope and allows it to record, amplify and wirelessly send audio and sound wave images to an iPhone application. Its software meets federal standards for privacy and security, the founders say, and it can transmit its heart sounds and waveforms to the electronic health records used in hospitals and clinics. An Android app is scheduled to be released early next year.
The Eko Core device goes on sale on Wednesday, priced at $199, and a complete stethoscope with the same capabilities will sell for $299.
“This is probably one of the most important innovations in the plain old stethoscope in recent years,” said Dr. Charanjit Rihal, chairman of the division of cardiovascular diseases at the Mayo Clinic.
There are cardiologists who regard the stethoscope as a relic that should be jettisoned, given the scientific precision of ultrasound technology and echocardiograms. At first, members of the Eko team thought they would reimagine heart sound detection in a way that would be less costly than ultrasound but would look very different from a traditional stethoscope. An early prototype resembled a hockey puck, Mr. Landgraf recalled.
When they took their idea to doctors, they learned a lesson. “Physicians love their stethoscopes,” Mr. Landgraf said. “It was shocking to us, but really important.”
After seven months, in early 2014, the Eko team had a prototype that resembled its current product.
Beyond its devices and mobile app, the company is developing a decision support software algorithm that compares a patient’s heart rhythms with a cloud-based data library of heart sounds. The smartphone app then classifies the patient’s result as normal or abnormal.
https://ekodevices.com/index
Tomi Engdahl says:
A remedy for your health-related questions: health info in the Knowledge Graph
http://googleblog.blogspot.fi/2015/02/health-info-knowledge-graph.html
Think of the last time you searched on Google for health information.
this stuff really matters: one in 20 Google searches are for health-related information. And you should find the health information you need more quickly and easily.
So starting in the next few days, when you ask Google about common health conditions, you’ll start getting relevant medical facts right up front from the Knowledge Graph. We’ll show you typical symptoms and treatments, as well as details on how common the condition is—whether it’s critical, if it’s contagious, what ages it affects, and more.
We worked with a team of medical doctors (led by our own Dr. Kapil Parakh, M.D., MPH, Ph.D.) to carefully compile, curate, and review this information. All of the gathered facts represent real-life clinical knowledge from these doctors and high-quality medical sources across the web, and the information has been checked by medical doctors at Google and the Mayo Clinic for accuracy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Q.
If necessity is the mother of invention, what’s failure the mother of? Improvement?
A.
Indeed. The failure is the mother of learning (like in learning from mistakes) and the mother of evolution (like in replication mistakes that leads to mutations and diversity, which combined with the selection of the best fitted leads to evolution).
Source: http://hackaday.com/2015/09/07/led-matrix-failure-and-vindication/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Learn 3D Modeling in Your Browser
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/03/learn-3d-modeling-in-your-browser/
If you have a 3D printer, it is a good bet you’ve at least seen or heard of Tinkercad. There’s pros and cons to doing your design in a Web browser, but Tinkercad is very easy to use and great for making simple objects. However, there are other 3D object designers you can use in your browser, too. Tinkercad is just the one that everyone seems to know about.
Programs that generate 3D objects tend to fall into two categories: visual and parametric. Visual tools emphasize drawing shapes with a mouse while parametric tools tend to make you describe what you want numerically. This is one of those things where your intuition may lead you astray. It seems like visual drawing is the way to go, right? People are visual. But most people are also inexact. If you want to lay out, for example, a front panel for a piece of custom test equipment, it is hard to get everything lined up perfectly and spaced evenly.
Sure, tools like Tinkercad have alignment and spacing tools and that’s great. But for complex designs, making a change can cause a flurry of mouse activity. Professional CAD programs often combat this by allowing you to set constraints, but that’s generally not easy to learn and, as far as I can tell, is unheard of in a browser-based tool (except for Onshape
The opposite of the pure visual approach is a program like OpenSCAD. You don’t draw anything. You describe your shapes using something that looks like a programming language and then you can see a visual representation of it that you can’t edit graphically. You might think OpenSCAD isn’t a browser-based program. You’d be right, but there are several versions of it on the web. One is the aptly-named openscad.net, and it is probably the closest to the desktop experience.
If you write OpenSCAD code correctly, it is nothing to make an adjustment here or there. Need another hole in that front panel? Add it and all the other holes move to adjust. However, not everyone writes flexible code.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Trends That Drive Automotive Innovation
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327618&
The study identifies five technological trends that will keep automotive engineers busy over the decade ahead. These are:
Electrification. By 2030, the market share of vehicles with some kind of electrical powertrain will rise to 65 percent — up from 2 percent in the present time. The rise will be driven by sales of hybrid electric vehicles.
Connectivity. By 2025, fifty million vehicles will be connected. Currently, about 18 millions have access to the Internet.
Autonomous driving and software complexity. Software will be the distinguishing feature of cars. And the complexity of the software will further increase. Whereas today the cars contain “only” some 100 millions lines of code, the market watchers expect the software content to grow to 300 millions lines of code.
Internet-based production organisation, aka Industry 4.0 or Industrial Internet. The digitization of industrial production enables further cost reductions. The costs for quality control can be reduced by as much as 20% through data-based real-time production process monitoring and, as a consequence, fewer rejects.
New materials. The content of lightweight construction materials such as high-tensile steel, aluminium and carbon-fibre reinforced polymers will increase from 21 to 67 percent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
On the High-speed Train to Handset Innovation
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327612&
Here’s an inside view on China’s market dynamics and how local vendors are accelerating their innovations.
With almost 500 million mobile phones projected to ship in China for 2015, Chinese companies like Meizu, Xiaomi, Huawei and Lenovo are collectively churning out smart phone models faster than any other manufacturers in the world. The question is “how?”
The answer is multi-faceted. Like the United States, China has a strong domestic handset market with sophisticated expectations in terms of both hardware and software functionality. Chinese handset manufacturers have a tremendous incentive to match — and even attempt to outperform — the rest of the world in terms of innovation.
This is not difficult to do with the exceptionally strong and complete infrastructure of component, technology and manufacturing suppliers that can be found right in its own back yard.
China is uniquely blessed with access to the entire mobile handset supply chain. After all, there isn’t a major branded handset sold anywhere in the world that isn’t made in China.
China also has a very pragmatic relationship with available operating systems, especially Android-based ones.
Google services are not directly available in China, so there is no compelling reason to strictly follow Android OS requirements, except as directly benefits individual handset manufacturers and their user ecosystem.
In my many trips to China, I observed a willingness to take risks and adopt new technologies as well as a try-it-and-see philosophy that allows new ideas to come to market quickly.
The Chinese companies with whom I’ve worked understand that differentiation through innovation is key to long-term success and the prevention of margin and market share erosion. In addition, their decision-making process is based upon speed, so it is well matched to the pace of change inherent in this ultra-competitive market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software Is Hiring, But Manufacturing Is Bleeding
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/09/08/1641237/software-is-hiring-but-manufacturing-is-bleeding
Which tech segment added the most jobs in August? According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, tech consulting gained 7,000 positions in August, (Dice link) below July’s gains of 11,100, but enough to set it ahead of data processing, hosting, and related services (which added 1,600 jobs) and computer and electronic-product manufacturing (which lost 1,800 jobs).
The latest numbers reflect some longtime trends: The rise of cloud services and infrastructure has contributed to slackening demand for PCs and other hardware, eroding manufacturing jobs. At the same time, increased appetite for everything from Web developers to information-systems managers has kept employers adding positions in other technology segments.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Celebrate an Engineer!
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/designcon-central-/4440284/Celebrate-an-Engineer-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150908&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150908&elq=3e2894a10e914a628916ec431f15c72e&elqCampaignId=24673&elqaid=27950&elqat=1&elqTrackId=87f727b46cbd4feca1c3856e366fa528
It’s time to nominate a deserving engineer for the DesignCon Engineer of the Year, which will be awarded at DesignCon 2016 . The DesignCon Engineer of the Year Award, sponsored by National Instruments, includes a $10,000 grant that the winner can designate to his/her choice of institution of higher learning.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The downsides of tech complexity
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4440280/The-downsides-of-tech-complexity?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150909&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_consumerelectronics_20150909&elq=bbafbd82010148b5a56da12276597399&elqCampaignId=24689&elqaid=27974&elqat=1&elqTrackId=184544e293904d7aa97c42e32b308cab
An ongoing theme of many of my writeups involves the downsides of complexity; by making technology too difficult for consumers to understand and implement, you’re limiting your business opportunity both in the short term (due to customer returns) and long term (by shortchanging market adoption).
Eventually (and time-inefficiently, since I was debugging from afar), after fruitlessly searching for interference sources in the form of neighbors’ access points, changing Wi-Fi broadcast channels, and doing other basic troubleshooting steps
Although this situation might be understandable to a hard-core techie, I hope you can comprehend how bewildering it might be to a typical consumer.
My solution might have been in the spirit of “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail,” but it was effective. It didn’t have to be this way, however. Simply telling a consumer that the gateway broadcasts two wireless signals, one potentially faster than the other but also more limited in its range, would have gone a long way. And the gateway’s funky dual-subnet behavior should get tossed, too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lacking innovation
IFA this year was a throng of throw-away announcements about bog standard laptops, tablets, smartwatches and a few top-end smartphones, but there wasn’t anything truly innovative on show this time. Sony’s latest smartphone screen showed us something new in terms of design tech, but there was little else for us to gawp at when walking around the show floor.
Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/2424888/ifa-2015-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly
Tomi Engdahl says:
You Can’t Understand Business Without These Master Works
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/cant-understand-business-without-master-works/
There are seminal books, movies, articles, and more that you’ve been meaning to get to but just haven’t made the time for. Well, the time is now, so here’s some essential background material for helping you understand the world of business today.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Uber for Anything? Yawn. Meet Uber-for-Uber for Anything
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/uber-anything-yawn-meet-uber-uber-anything/
Uber has inspired countless new “on-demand” apps that promise to bring you what you want with just a tap of the screen. There’s an Uber for dog walkers, There’s an Uber for booze. There’s even Uber for cops. Now email marketing company Constant Contact is ready to unleash a hoard of new on-demand apps thanks to a tool that promises to make it dead simple to build your own Uber-style service.
The SmallBusinessAPI is a web-based service that app developers can use to automatically send orders to local businesses.
How It Works
A developer could use the SmallBusinessAPI to create an app that enables users to request a dry-cleaning pickup based on their current location. The app would bounce this request over to the SmallBusinessAPI, which would send it out to its network of nearby dry cleaners.
The Moonshot
The SmallBusinessAPI may seem like an odd thing to come out of an email marketing company, but Miller argues that it’s really just another way for Constant Contact to help its customers market themselves. “Imagine that you’re a dry cleaner and you’re already using us to send out newsletters and coupons,” he says. “They can just plug in to this to bring in this whole new channel to drive more business.”
The project was created by Constant Contact’s “Innovation Team,” which is tasked with creating new products for the company. And while Miller admits that the team won’t ever go as far into blue skies research as a company like Google, they’re interested in finding new ways to help their customers drum up new business, and they’re not limiting themselves to email.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Democratizing the Maker Movement
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/09/09/1638209/democratizing-the-maker-movement
To its advocates and participants, the Maker Movement resonates with those characteristics that we believe makes America great: independence and ingenuity, creativity and resourcefulness. But as impressive as today’s tools are, they’re not accessible to many Americans simply because of their cost and high technological barrier to entry.
Democratizing the Maker Movement
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-dubrow/democratizing-the-maker-m_b_7960540.html
Vanguard researchers design tools, technologies and approaches for more awesome, inclusive making
The fact that millions of Americans are building airplanes in their garage, meeting at makerspaces to work with strangers on customized robots, and collaboratively solving society’s problems at hackathons, is a beautiful thing.
To its advocates and participants, the Maker Movement resonates with all of those characteristics that we believe makes America great: independence and ingenuity, creativity and resourcefulness.
But as impressive as today’s tools are, they’re not accessible to many Americans simply because of their costs and high technological barrier to entry.
Though the price of 3-D printers has come down considerably and continues to drop, the tool still costs several hundred to thousands of dollars to buy. And mastering even the simplest computer-aided modeling tools requires a bit of dedicated study and technical savvy.
This begs the question: How can we continue to bring this nascent revolution to everyone who is interested?
Hurst’s experiences working with a diverse population — including individuals with intellectual disabilities and visual impairments, power wheelchair users and physical therapists — led her to realize that many people couldn’t access the supposedly “easy-to-use” DIY tools currently on the market.
Moreover, she found most people didn’t necessarily want to create unique 3-D models or original objects; they wanted to replace, repair or customize objects they already owned.
These insights led Hurst and her team to develop a series of new tools and platforms under the banner: “Making for All.”
“We’re empowering people to incorporate making into their daily lives to solve their own accessibility challenges,” Hurst said.
Support for Hurst and others like her from the National Science Foundation (NSF) is helping to expand and improve 3-D printing and design technologies, to make ‘making’ more accessible to all people.
“NSF invests in the innately curious, creative and self-motivated people who engage in various forms of making,”
NSF’s role in making actually started decades ago, before the movement had a name, a grassroots following and a presidential champion.
Today, NSF and DOD aren’t alone in this effort. NASA, NIST and the Department of Energy are involved in 3-D printing and additive manufacturing R&D as well, expanding the materials, techniques and applications to which the technology can be applied.
This federal-supported foundational research has led to the development of many of the tools that play such a big role in DIY activities, from machine-controlled CNC routers, to Computer Aided Design (CAD) and the Scratch programming language.
Makerspaces in expected and unexpected places
In addition to funding the creation of the tools and technologies that underpin making, the agency has helped launch several makerspaces in communities, schools and universities across the nation.
Learn+Build+Launch
“Our mission is to usher the best IT and engineering ideas into the real world where they can make a difference for the better,” said Wright, chair in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley.
At the National Makers Faire, graduate students from the lab showed off smart furniture they’d designed in class and demonstrated “Skintillates,” an interactive electronic temporary tattoo invented in the lab that won a “Maker of Merit” award at the fair.
“Unlike many of the more complex 3-D printing and design projects we hear about, Skintillates can be produced in much the same way kids create arts-and-crafts projects and cost less than a few dollars to make,” said Joanne Lo, a graduate students at UC Berkeley and one of Skintillates designers.
Defining making
The maker movement is so new and diverse that it has a bit of a ‘definition problem’, according to experts. For that reason, it’s critical for researchers and practitioners to describe the dimensions and intended outcomes that characterize their particular approach to making to determine whether they are successful.
“It’s a turbulent sea out there right now, with museums, public libraries, universities, youth-serving organizations and makerspaces all getting into the game and exploring different approaches,” said Al DeSena, an NSF program director and former director of the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh.
So at the same time that NSF is supporting makerspaces and the underlying technologies of making, the agency is also encouraging researchers to study how making happens at diverse sites, what the real benefits are, and how they can be measured, analyzed and repeated across the nation, whether in classrooms or extra-curricular settings.
Despite the differences they found three unifying themes that they believe are common to makerspaces broadly:
Makerspaces’ multidisciplinarity fuels engagement and innovation;
makerspaces have a marked diversity of learning arrangements; and
learning is in and for the making.
“Making as a discipline allows learners to take project-first approach, where learning to use tools and materials are all in service of getting your work done,”
In May, NSF invited proposals for “transformative research ideas or approaches that advance the frontier of knowledge with respect to STEM learning and design thinking.”
The solicitation encourages the community to submit ideas to:
study the processes and potential benefits of learning in the maker context;
test its role in improving formal and informal learning pathways;
investigate new approaches to design and innovation enabled by makerspaces and practices;
create new tools and knowledge for design and prototyping across all disciplines; and
further the understanding of innovation processes from prototypes through their transition to products.
That’s a tall order, but one NSF believes the research community can achieve.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wait. Organizing hackathons is your day job?
Koomen explained, “I earn my living from being a freelance brainstormer, facilitator of creative sessions and meetups (such as hackathons), innovation consulting.”
This is no ordinary business consultant.
Koomen said, “I tinker on problems to generate ideas that resonate with people’s hearts and minds. That is my mission. Not sure if I always succeed in it. So, in a sense, I have many day jobs. Some fill my bank account, others fill my heart. The best ones do both.”
Source: http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327635&
Tomi Engdahl says:
DARPA Enlists Civilians to Secure U.S. Tech Lead
“Wait What?” predicts future tech
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327662&
-The “Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum” sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a three-day effort in St. Louis to unite industry, universities and government researchers behind keeping the U.S. ahead of the rest of the world in technology. “Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum” was keynoted by the U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and the DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar.
“The ‘Wait, What?’ conference is a fusion of the Department of Defense (DoD), companies and universities who have done so much for this country,” said Secretary Carter during his keynote.
The attendance at “Wait What? A Future Technology Forum” was limited
Secretary Carter spoke of how innovations started at DARPA for military dominance, now benefited the entire world, such as global positioning systems and for that matter the Internet itself, once called ArpaNet when invented at DARPA’s predecessor, Arpa, to provide government researchers with secure communication.
“The U.S. has the greatest fighting force the world has ever known, by virtue of our technology,” said Secretary Carter. “Because we are building and rebuilding a bridge between government and industry and universities. Our military excellence is not guaranteed, but has to be earned over and over again and again.”
Unlike days of yesteryear, today much of our military technology is also commercial technology, which means that others now have access to it, including other governments and even non-government actors like terrorists, Secretary Carter pointed out.
“We are standing on the shoulders of history, inventions like the x-ray, gasoline, the airplane were all demonstrated at the St. Louis World’s Fair 111 years ago in 1904,” said Secretary Carter. “Now we stand on the verge of another new century, the difference being that the attendees here are going to shape that future.”
“DARPA is just a part of a bigger stage–our job is to take the risk to fund experimental research to advance national security,” said Director Prabhakar.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Silicon 60 v16.1: A Tale of Two Cs
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327639&
This year’s Silicon 60 list proves there’s no shortage of entrepreneurs and university graduates with bright ideas.
The number of startup companies that have appeared on the EE Times Silicon 60 list of emerging technology companies during its existence since 2004 has risen to more than 370. That includes the 30 startups brought on to the latest iteration — version 16.1.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Americans agree computer science is important—but only one-quarter of US schools teach it
http://qz.com/502478/americans-agree-computer-science-is-important-but-only-one-quarter-of-us-schools-teach-it/
Despite massive and growing demand to fill high-paying computer science jobs in all kinds of organizations and industries all over the world, a mere one in four principals in the US report offering computer programming or coding in their school. And as we argue about what should and shouldn’t be taught in US schools, it turns out we agree on at least one thing very clearly: Computer science should be taught. A surprising 85% of parents, 75% of teachers and 68% of principals say that computer science education is “just as important” or “more important” than teaching required courses like math, science, history and English.
Let’s rewind that finding and state it again for emphasis: The vast majority of parents, teachers and principals say computer science is just as important or more important than the core subjects taught in school now. Yet, only a quarter of schools nationwide offer it.
The reason this is not just an issue for school—but rather an issue that involves our entire talent development ecosystem in the US—is that rapid responses to high-demand opportunities require educational institutions, industry, the nonprofit sector, as well as local, state and federal governments to communicate, collaborate and take action.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Report: Computers ‘Do Not Improve’ Pupil Results
http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/09/15/1725223/report-computers-do-not-improve-pupil-results
A report issued by the UK’s Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has evaluated how technology in classrooms affects test results, and found that the availability of computers provides “no noticeable improvement” to students’ test scores.
Computers ‘do not improve’ pupil results, says OECD
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34174796
Investing heavily in school computers and classroom technology does not improve pupils’ performance, says a global study from the OECD.
The think tank says frequent use of computers in schools is more likely to be associated with lower results.
The OECD’s education director Andreas Schleicher says school technology had raised “too many false hopes”.
It says education systems which have invested heavily in information and communications technology have seen “no noticeable improvement” in Pisa test results for reading, mathematics or science.
Unplugged
“If you look at the best-performing education systems, such as those in East Asia, they’ve been very cautious about using technology in their classrooms,” said Mr Schleicher.
“Those students who use tablets and computers very often tend to do worse than those who use them moderately.”
Annual global spending on educational technology in schools has been valued at £17.5bn, by technology analysts Gartner. In the UK, the spending on technology in schools is £900m.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Programming Education
APIs, Not Apps: What the Future Will Be Like When Everyone Can Code
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/09/15/2138230/apis-not-apps-what-the-future-will-be-like-when-everyone-can-code
There’s been a huge push over the last few years to make programming part of the core academic curriculum. Hype or not, software developer Al Sweigart takes a shot at predicting what this will be in a future where some degree of coding skill is commonplace and he has an interesting take on it: “More programmers doesn’t just mean more apps in app stores or clones of existing websites. Universal coding literacy doesn’t increase the supply of web services so much as increase the sophistication in how web services are used.
Almost every major website has an Application Program Interface (API)
The vast majority of users don’t use these APIs—or even know what an API is—because programming is something that they’ve left to the professionals. But when coding becomes universal, so will the expectation that websites become accessible to more than just browsers.”
APIs, not apps: What the future will be like when everyone can code
http://opensource.com/education/15/9/apis-not-apps
Being code literate doesn’t mean understanding the details of sorting algorithms or object-oriented design patterns. The tasks that coding can help with are the ones that a typical office worker would be faced with:
Reading through a large amount of PDFs, Word documents, or other files looking for particular information. (Chapter 13)
Programmatically updating the Excel spreadsheets that many offices use to organize their data. (Chapter 12)
Organizing folders on your hard drive by copying, renaming, moving, or deleting files. (Chapter 9)
Web scraping to grab information from the Internet as it’s updated. (Chapter 11 )
Sending out automated emails or text messages notifications to free you from having to check in on your computer yourself. (Chapter 16)
Basic debugging skills to figure out how to fix your code. (Chapter 10)
These are areas where non-programmers can significantly boost their productivity by learning to code. This is different from everyone becoming a software engineer. When I say learn to code, I don’t mean develop software professionally. Almost every adult has a driver’s license, but only a minority are cab drivers or NASCAR racers.
Will this influx of amateur programmers drive down the demand—and salaries—of developers? I doubt it.
I admit, from the vantage point of the start of the 21st century, achieving universal programming ability seems as ridiculous as achieving universal literacy did at the start of the 20th century. But today, even in developing countries, it’s more common to be literate than not.
Almost every major website has an Application Program Interface (API), a formal specification for software to retrieve data and make requests similar to human-directed browsers. Facebook, Wikipedia, Amazon, Twitter, Google, and Reddit all offer APIs so that their users can automate their interactions with the site. The vast majority of users don’t use these APIs—or even know what an API is—because programming is something that they’ve left to the professionals. But when coding becomes universal, so will the expectation that websites become accessible to more than just browsers.
The APIs-Not-Apps future is a natural extension of the open source movement. Programming is not just writing software from scratch or forking existing projects. Many users have nice-to-have ideas for features that would benefit their individual workflow, but are too niche to be considered. Making a programmatic interface for software a common expectation opens a lot of possibilities. A form of this exists now, although the access that APIs provide is often incomplete and burdened under license agreements. This is far from the open source ethos.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why You Should Build a Clock for Social Good this Week
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/16/why-you-should-build-a-clock-for-social-good-this-week/
We’ve seen a wide range of emotional responses regarding [Ahmed Mohamed]’s arrest this week for bringing a clock he built to school. No matter where you fall on the political scale, we can all agree that mistaking a hobby engineering project for a bomb is a problem for education. People just don’t understand that mere mortals can, and do, build electronics. We can change that, but we need your help.
Our friends at NYC Resistor came up with a great idea. Why don’t we all build a clock? I want you to take it one step further: find a non-hacker to partner with on the project. Grab a friend, relative, or acquaintance and ask them to join you in building a clock from stuff you have on hand in order to promote STEM education.
9th Grader Arrested, Searched for Building a Clock
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/15/9th-grader-arrested-searched-for-building-a-clock/
A 14-year-old in Dallas, Texas has been arrested for bringing a clock to his school. [Ahmed Mohamed] could be any one of us. He’s a tinkerer, pulling apart scrap appliances and building projects from the parts.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/potus/status/644193755814342656
President Obama Verified account
@POTUS
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jessica Guynn / USA Today:
Microsoft to spend $70 mln to boost computer science in schools
Microsoft to spend $75 mln to boost computer science in schools
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/09/16/microsoft-70-million-investment-computer-science-underrepresented-women-minorities-satya-nadella-brad-smith-education/32519869/
Microsoft will invest $75 million over the next three years in initiatives to increase access to computer science education for youth.
Microsoft’s Satya Nadella made the announcement during his keynote speech at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual gathering in San Francisco for its customers and partners.
This marks a major expansion of Microsoft’s YouthSpark program, the company’s effort to get young people hooked on computer science and build a larger, more diverse talent pool for the technology industry.
The shortage of computer science graduates is one of the most pressing issues facing the industry, as is the underrepresentation of women and minorities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers in a Golden Age of Code
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327716&
Software engineering is today’s hot profession, underpaid grunt work, all of the above and everything in between.
We’re living in a golden age of software. So much code is being written and re-written at a time when the underlying technology is evolving at a heady pace, but the benefits for software developers themselves seem to be mixed at best.
I got a taste of the new reality this week sitting in packed sessions in the At Scale conference hosted by Facebook. In one session, a senior staff engineer from Twitter talked about how the company’s engineers built the largest application to use the relatively new Ruby on Rails Web framework that has ridden up and down the hype curve, then needed to migrate it and prune back separate, sometimes competing systems developed in Java and Scala.
“I am bombarded every day with new ideas from developers,” he told me after his talk.
All engineers like to make stuff, a trait that goes viral in the hands of software engineers who can spin up code for a new subsystem during a coffee break. New languages and techniques sometimes make code shops look like overgrown gardens, the Twitter engineer said.
For its part, Facebook wants to harness the chaos by inspiring engineers to create open source code.
To some extent, Facebook wants to make software a commodity.
Like Facebook, Google sees the Android mobile OS as a giveaway in its effort to win eyeballs on smartphones and tablets. It’s a relatively new tactic, one that has proven powerful enough to force Microsoft to give away the latest version of Windows, software that was once the most expensive component of a PC.
Of course, much of today’s deluge of code remains a proprietary differentiator. Amazon, Apple and Google put abstraction layers on top of their most precious code so they can sell businesses and consumers access to their cloud services.
Cloud giants like Amazon, Facebook and Twitter provide jobs for thousands of young coders.
There’s no doubt in my mind that software technology is evolving faster than ever. I think it remains an open question how that fact will affect the profession of software engineering. Coders
Tomi Engdahl says:
The psychology behind why couples always fight when assembling Ikea furniture
http://qz.com/504668/the-psychology-behind-why-couples-always-fight-when-assembling-ikea-furniture/
But why, exactly, is assembling flat-packed furniture so contentious for couples? How do conversations about sofas so often lead down such dark corridors?
Quartz spoke with a number of research psychologists, behavioral experts, and family therapists who explained why each step of the Ikea process is rife with emotional triggers and how, once identified, those triggers can be avoided.
“Little things like putting a set of shelves together will bring up some ancient history with the partners,” Don Ferguson, author of Reptiles in Love: Ending Destructive Fights and Evolving Toward More Loving Relationships, told Quartz. “Do you trust me? Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I have no skills? Do you wish your old boyfriend was here doing this?”
The reading of the instructions
Designed for use in any culture or language, Ikea’s deceptively simple assembly manuals give users the (often incorrect) impression that the project can be accomplished without much time or effort.
“The question is, do people have a tendency to blame the other person, or to understand that things just happen?”
(He was also part of the Harvard Business School team that in 2011 identified “the Ikea effect,” the observation that people love a thing more if they participate in some small way in its creation.)
The “IKEA Effect”:
When Labor Leads to Love
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/11-091.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Spending $75M To Boost K-12 CS Education, Put TEALS In 4,000 Schools
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/09/19/1626228/microsoft-spending-75m-to-boost-k-12-cs-education-put-teals-in-4000-schools?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
An NSF-funded evaluation of the Microsoft TEALS program — which sends volunteer software engineers with no teaching experience into high schools to teach kids and their teachers computer science — isn’t scheduled to be completed until 2018. But having declared a K-12 CS education emergency (which it’s linked to an H-1B visa emergency), Microsoft is going full speed ahead and spending $75 million to boost computer science in schools. The software giant told USA today that it aims to put TEALS in 700 high schools in the next three years and in 4,000 over the next decade, focusing on urban and rural districts to reach more young women and minorities.
Microsoft to spend $75 mln to boost computer science in schools
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/09/16/microsoft-70-million-investment-computer-science-underrepresented-women-minorities-satya-nadella-brad-smith-education/32519869/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Here’s an offer from Intel and the guy behind all of reality TV [Mark Burnett]: win a million dollars for making something. Pitch an idea for wearable electronics to the producers by October 2, and you might be on a reality TV show about building electronics which they’re calling America’s Greatest Makers. With this, Intel is promoting the Curie module a tiny, tiny SoC with Bluetooth, IMU, and DSP functions.
Source: http://hackaday.com/2015/09/20/hackaday-links-september-20-2015/
Intel, United Artists Media Group, and Turner Broadcasting System are bringing a national makers’ challenge to television in 2016.
Makers Wanted
America’s Greatest Makers (working title) is coming to television in 2016. Are you ready to build the next truly amazing device? Bring your big ideas to life with Intel, in collaboration with Mark Burnett, United Artists Media Group, and Turner Broadcasting System.
Competitors will vie for a $1 million grand prize.
For your chance to be on America’s Greatest Makers (working title), submit a complete application packet along with an image of your team or product.
Source: https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wearables/americas-greatest-makers.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V for DNA
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/20/ctrl-x-ctrl-v-for-dna/
Once upon a time, the aspiring nerdling’s gift of choice was the Gilbert chemistry set. Its tiny vials of reagents, rack of test tubes, and instruction book promised endless intellectual stimulation and the possibility of stink bombs on demand. Now a new genetic engineering lab-in-a-box Kickstarter, with all the tools and materials needed to create your own transgenic organisms, may help the young biohacker’s dreams come true.
The Kickstarter has been wildly successful.
Create new lifeforms by cutting and pasting DNA!
by GlowGene
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glowgene/glowgene-create-new-lifeforms-by-mixing-up-dna/
A lab-in-a-box that lets you create cells that glow, eat plastic or create fuels etc. using DNA from other animals.
GlowGene lets you you extract genes from other lifeforms and put their DNA inside your cells, giving them traits of that animal. You can make glowing cells using jellyfish DNA, red cells that produce hemoglobin, cells that create ethanol, cells that eat plastic, cells that produce light and so on.
You can combine DNA from multiple organisms to create very complex cells.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Engineers in a Golden Age of Code
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327716&
Software engineering is today’s hot profession, underpaid grunt work, all of the above and everything in between.
We’re living in a golden age of software. So much code is being written and re-written at a time when the underlying technology is evolving at a heady pace, but the benefits for software developers themselves seem to be mixed at best.
Ruby on Rails Web framework that has ridden up and down the hype curve, then needed to migrate it and prune back separate, sometimes competing systems developed in Java and Scala.
“I am bombarded every day with new ideas from developers,” he told me after his talk.
All engineers like to make stuff, a trait that goes viral in the hands of software engineers who can spin up code for a new subsystem during a coffee break. New languages and techniques sometimes make code shops look like overgrown gardens, the Twitter engineer said.
For its part, Facebook wants to harness the chaos by inspiring engineers to create open source code. It claims engineers who have attend At Scale have contributed 4,500 open source projects, nearly five new projects a day since the event began and 1,500 projects followed by a million engineers since last year’s conference.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Hardware Development Takes Longer in the West Than in China (Video)
http://build.slashdot.org/story/15/09/21/1841222/why-hardware-development-takes-longer-in-the-west-than-in-china-video
this section of Tim’s lengthy interview with people from the Popup Factory seemed like it would be of broader interest to Slashdot people — and your coworkers, bosses, and friends who may be involved in device production or prototyping. There are some hard words
Comments:
It takes longer in the west because you have to pay your workers, pay attention to environmental impact, and provide for at least minimal worker safety. Yeah, but I am sure co-location is a huge win, way bigger than free-ish labor, and no accountability.
If you’re in Shenzen you can take a walk and pick up all the components you need for your prototype project in the morning and assemble them in the afternoon.
Here in the US we have to order the components from china and it takes weeks to months.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Company-Funded Hackathons; Now That’s a Great Idea
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=216&doc_id=1327753&
In addition to being fun for the employees, hackathon projects can be used to inspire customers to think outside the box.
Synapse have some rather interesting ultra-low-power wireless mesh network technology called SNAP, which is a bit like ZigBee except that it works (LOL).
Having fun things like hackathons are the sort of thing they do there, where these events are open to every member of the company — engineers and non-engineers alike.
The participants can use off-the-shelf Synapse wireless modules and suchlike as part of their projects, and the company also gives each of the participants $200 to use for additional components and supplies as required. Furthermore, the participants can band together to form teams if they wish (teams typically range from one to six people), in which case they can also pool their resources.
And the prize is… bragging rights, which is the way it should be. At 8:00 a.m. on Friday morning, after working on their projects for 24 hours, the teams get to present their masterpieces to each other. Later, they will also give a company-wide presentation at the next quarterly engineering meeting.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zero to Market in Under 6 Months!
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327741&
Chinese smartphone vendors are setting a record pace in fast decision-making and enabling new features.
China is a unique balance of pragmatism, speed and high tech. I am continually impressed by the unparalleled pace at which Chinese manufacturers move from concept to production of highly complex products, which was the focus of my last EE Times blog, “On the High-speed Train to Handset Innovation” (September 4, 2015).
Other than China, I cannot think of another country where a new smartphone could reach consumers in just a few months. But that is exactly what happened when PNI Sensor began working with Hisense, the world’s fourth largest maker of TVs and an emerging player in smartphones, primarily for the massive Chinese market.
Amazingly, within 24 hours of first presenting to Hisense, we learned that we had a new design win in the next Hisense smartphone. Needless to say, it was a very stressful few hours for our traveling team.
The resulting product, HS-E622M, is a large-screen, thin, light and attractive smartphone running Android 4.4 KitKat on a 1.2 GHz quad core processor. The phone began shipping in March 2015 — a mere five months after our first meeting.
I now know why we feel like we can barely keep up in the electronics industry: China is setting a new record pace.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jessica Alba and Susan Wojcicki on How to Get More Women in Tech
http://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/king-wojcicki-alba-fireside-chat.html
On a Dreamforce panel together, the two entrepreneurs talked about what it’s going to take to finally change the gender gap in tech.
The tech sector will become more inclusive of women–just watch. That’s what YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Honest Company founder Jessica Alba told CBS anchor Gayle King during a fireside chat Thursday night at Dreamforce.
“I know for sure that technology is changing our lives in ways that we can’t even imagine now, and that it’s really just getting started. And technology has to become more inclusive, and it will become mainstream. I know that will happen over time,” Wojcicki said to a crowd of thousands that packed San Francisco’s Moscone Center.
To make gender parity a reality, the two said coding needed to be better integrated into education and workplaces needed to be more flexible for parents.
Wojcicki said paid maternity leave is good for business because it helps companies retain the women they’ve hired.
First, Wojcicki said, tech CEOs need to take charge and lead by example by making efforts to recruit employees from underrepresented groups; second, the pipeline of talent needs to be strengthened through the integration of computer science into school curricula.
“I think long term the only real way to fix it is to make it be a required class for everybody,” said Wojcicki, explaining that once everyone has access, “everybody can become a computer expert.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How bimodal IT is helping companies hire and retain workers
http://www.cio.com/article/2985258/it-strategy/how-bimodal-it-is-helping-companies-hire-and-retain-workers.html
Bimodal IT is a fairly new concept, but if you embrace it you can empower your workforce. With the right employees in the right work environment, risk takers and more traditional IT pros are much less likely to butt heads.
The technology that helps run a successful business is no longer confined behind the walls of the IT department. It’s slowly seeped into nearly every department within a company. For example, your marketing department might deploy a new cloud technology, without consulting IT. As a result of this growing need for technology across departments, in many enterprises IT has been split into two entities — a trend that Gartner dubbed bimodal IT in 2014.
Bimodal IT breaks down into two camps and the first group resembles a traditional IT structure, with a stronger focus on the most critical aspects of technology in a business. This first group is more practical, and they ensure systems run smoothly and efficiently, while keeping the business safe and secure on the backend. They also keep an eye on the bottom line, cutting costs where necessary.
resume makeover executive
The second group is more focused on innovation and moving the company forward as new technology emerges. It focuses on new business applications, customer-facing software and technology that makes it easier for the business to meet goals and stay ahead of the curve. Unlike the first group, this second camp is not as interested in the bottom line and they are considered risk takers.
Peter Sondergaard of Gartner describes bimodal IT as “one organization operating at two speeds,” and notes that while the two groups may be focused on different aspects of the business, both maintain communication and work together to reach one common goal; increased productivity and innovation.
Part of the shift of bimodal IT stems from the fact that technology providers now target specific departments, rather than selling directly to IT and CIOs.
By defining the two separate camps of l IT, Hurley says it can help target the right hires for the job.
Consequently, by defining these roles, Hurley states it can lead to higher retention rates, since you won’t be unintentionally misleading new employees. “Employees who are more comfortable taking risks are not going to be happy in a job that doesn’t allow them time to explore new technologies. Conversely, those who like to manage and maintain systems aren’t going to be content in a role that requires them to also be visionaries,” says Hurley.
Another benefit of embracing bimodal IT is that it helps create a culture of innovation within the company, according to Hurley. Companies realize now more than ever how crucial it is to stay on top of the latest software and hardware in order to remain relevant in today’s market. Understanding your overall IT goals can help move innovation and empower employees by employing them on the right side of bimodal IT.
Since bimodal IT presents a clear delineation between the practical side of IT and the riskier side, neither one will have to spend much time negotiating with managers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Do not do what Nokia did:
Who Killed Nokia? Nokia Did
http://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/who-killed-nokia-nokia-did-4268
Science paper how Nokia failed:
Distributed Attention and Shared Emotions in the Innovation Process: How Nokia Lost the Smartphone Battle
http://knowledge.insead.edu/sites/www.insead.edu/files/images/asq_2015_print_vuori_huy_distributed_attention_and_shared_emotions_in_innovation_process.pdf
We conducted a qualitative study of Nokia to understand its rapid downfall over
the 2005–2010 period from its position as a world-dominant and innovative
technology organization. We found that top and middle managers’ shared emo-
tions during the smartphone innovation process caused cycles of behaviors that
harmed both the process and its outcome. Together, organizational attention
structures and historical factors generated various types of shared fear among
top and middle managers. Top managers were afraid of external competitors
and shareholders, while middle managers were mainly afraid of internal groups,
including superiors and peers. Top managers’ externally focused fear led them
to exert pressure on middle managers without fully revealing the severity of the
external threats and to interpret middle managers’ communications in biased
ways. Middle managers’ internally focused fear reduced their tendency to share
negative information with top managers, leading top managers to develop an
overly optimistic perception of their organization’s technological capabilities and
neglect long-term investments in developing innovation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How An Angry Letter Led to an Engineering Job
Mentors are life changing
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=28&doc_id=1327777&
Engineer Sanjaya Maniktala shares this life-changing and life-saving story about the power of a good mentor.
Mentors are Life Changing
http://www.planetanalog.com/author.asp?section_id=3065&doc_id=564051&
It was a day to remember—the day I met “Doc” in Bombay (now Mumbai) decades ago. I think it changed my life, perhaps saved it too.
I had picked up a popular English magazine from a roadside stall to glance at. I was quite interested in its cover story featuring India’s rising technology baron, Mr.Sam Pitroda, who is today often credited as having single-handedly brought both the computer and telecom revolutions to India.
Almost without thinking, I wrote a rather anguished, if not somewhat angry, letter addressed to Mr. Pitroda himself, via the “Weekly”
In it I mentioned some of my innovations thus far
I complained that I was not getting my dues! I think I was trying to make the point that they, the government, need to encourage struggling entrepreneurs like me if they really want India to progress. But was anyone listening?
To my surprise, the letter was published. Of course you expect it to end right there. But a couple of months later, to my complete astonishment, I received a letter from a member of the technical staff at C-DOT in Bangalore (now Bengaluru) asking to see my circuit designs
for six months after that. I almost forgot about it. Then suddenly a letter arrived from one of the co-founders of C-DOT, Dr. MV Pitke Bangalore
Dr. Pitke informed me that Dr. Murthy was heading an upcoming electronics R&D center in Bombay, and was looking for talented people. One thing led to another and a few days later I was sitting across Doc in his Bombay office, showing him my circuits. An hour later I walked out of Doc’s office to a neatly typed-out job offer waiting for me just outside.
companies invariably demand not only an EE degree, which I didn’t have, but also several years of experience right off the bat—for even the most junior-level job in electronics.
He finally revealed that he himself was from a physics background, and was therefore sure “we physicists” could teach the electronics (EE) graduates a thing or two—eventually. I guess he was right after all.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Prescription Drugs Get So Wildly Expensive
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/prescription-drugs-get-wildly-expensive/
Martin Shkreli is the Internet’s villain of the week. After buying and then immediately jacking up the price of a drug that treats a potentially deadly parasite, he’s become a sneering meme in social media
Drugs start in laboratories. Some scientist—at a university, government lab, or pharmaceutical company—finds a chemical compound that seems to have some effect on some malady. She or he isolates the compound and tests its effects on individual cells in petri dishes, then animals, building a case for human use. This preclinical work, called drug discovery, can take three to four years, and only about one in 1,000 compounds survive to get tested on human beings.
Human tests—called clinical trials—are the gauntlet of drug development, and have three phases.
Time (plus scientists, plus lab space, plus equipment, plus patient recruitment, plus test after test after test) is money
the average cost of going from chemical compound to clinical trials to FDA-approved drug is $2.7 billion
Even drugs that fail early can cost companies millions.
“There’s a saying, that it costs a billion to produce the first pill, and 10 cents to produce the second,”
Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of hay about these costs, but they aren’t the end-all be-all for a drug’s final price
“What the market will bear” is an phrase you’ll hear frequently when you start asking people about drug costs. What it means is nobody outside the company really cares how much a pharmaceutical company spent developing a drug. Markets care about a drug’s perceived value.
pharmas have to negotiate their prices with insurance companies.
“You have the FDA imposing requirements that drive up the cost of making the drug, and insurers on the back end can often negotiate prices.”
Perceived value is complicated (it’s economics, after all), but for drugs it pretty much boils down to three things: How many patients the drug will treat, how many similar drugs are on the market, and how much a drug improves a patient’s life.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Clocks for Social Good
http://hackaday.com/2015/09/22/clocks-for-social-good/
The point is that our society — which has pretty much universally accepted everyday carry of complex electronics — has no idea what goes into electronic design. How are we supposed to get kids excited about engineering if they are never able to pull back that curtain and see it in action?
Build something simple that can be understood by everyone, and show it off in a way that invites the uninitiated to get excited. What’s simpler than a clock? I think of it as the impetus behind technology. Marking the passage of time goes back to our roots as primitive humans following migratory herds, and betting on the changing seasons for crop growth. Our modern lives are governed by time more than ever. These Clocks for Social Good prove that anyone can understand how this technology works.
Clocks for Social Good
https://hackaday.io/list/7675-clocks-for-social-good
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Disruptive Innovation’? Take this theory and stuff it: MIT Profs
The inexorable rise of Silicon Valley’s unchallengeable mantr
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/28/disruptive_innovation_theory/
“Disruption” – Silicon Valley’s favourite buzzword for intimidating other, profit-making parts of the economy – has taken a knock.
Founder Clayton Christensen, a Harvard business Prof, spawned a consultancy and investment company off the back of his 1998 business bestseller, The Innovator’s Dilemma. The buzzwords “disruptive innovation” and a cult followed.
Christensen posited that managers are too busy taking care of business as usual, or “doing the right thing”, to notice and respond effectively to competitive change brought about by new technology. Companies often have the capacity to respond, but don’t. The Harvard man took disk drive maker Seagate as his main example and took it from there. But the Christensen theory is deeply flawed, even by his own elusive and shape-shifting definition.
Interestingly, King and Baatartogtokh point out that companies that failed because of “disruption” were often failing already, but the flaws were glossed over.
The backlash against the mindless “disruptive innovation” mantra blossomed after a terrific and well-argued assault in the New Yorker on the theory last year by Jill Lapore, also a Harvard Prof – this time of history.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sherry Turkle / New York Times:
How smartphones change what we talk about and the connection we feel in in-person conversations
Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/opinion/sunday/stop-googling-lets-talk.html?_r=0
COLLEGE students tell me they know how to look someone in the eye and type on their phones at the same time, their split attention undetected. They say it’s a skill they mastered in middle school when they wanted to text in class without getting caught. Now they use it when they want to be both with their friends and, as some put it, “elsewhere.”
These days, we feel less of a need to hide the fact that we are dividing our attention. In a 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, 89 percent of cellphone owners said they had used their phones during the last social gathering they attended. But they weren’t happy about it; 82 percent of adults felt that the way they used their phones in social settings hurt the conversation.
What has happened to face-to-face conversation in a world where so many people say they would rather text than talk?
When college students explain to me how dividing their attention plays out in the dining hall, some refer to a “rule of three.” In a conversation among five or six people at dinner, you have to check that three people are paying attention — heads up — before you give yourself permission to look down at your phone. So conversation proceeds, but with different people having their heads up at different times. The effect is what you would expect: Conversation is kept relatively light, on topics where people feel they can drop in and out.
Young people spoke to me enthusiastically about the good things that flow from a life lived by the rule of three, which you can follow not only during meals but all the time. First of all, there is the magic of the always available elsewhere. You can put your attention wherever you want it to be. You can always be heard. You never have to be bored. When you sense that a lull in the conversation is coming, you can shift your attention from the people in the room to the world you can find on your phone. But the students also described a sense of loss.
Studies of conversation both in the laboratory and in natural settings show that when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on a table between them or in the periphery of their vision changes both what they talk about and the degree of connection they feel. People keep the conversation on topics where they won’t mind being interrupted. They don’t feel as invested in each other. Even a silent phone disconnects us.
The psychologist Yalda T. Uhls was the lead author on a 2014 study of children at a device-free outdoor camp. After five days without phones or tablets, these campers were able to read facial emotions and correctly identify the emotions of actors in videotaped scenes significantly better than a control group. What fostered these new empathic responses? They talked to one another. In conversation, things go best if you pay close attention and learn how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is easier to do without your phone in hand. Conversation is the most human and humanizing thing that we do.
In solitude we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come to conversation with something to say that is authentic, ours. If we can’t gather ourselves, we can’t recognize other people for who they are.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Our Brains Trust Brands The Same Way We Trust Our Friends
We look at familiar logos like we look at faces. That’s depressing.
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3051009/our-brains-trust-brands-the-same-way-we-trust-our-friends?partner=rss&utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds
We perceive brands the same way we perceive other people’s faces. That’s the conclusion of a study by Anne Lange and Rainer Höger, which tested 18 well-known brand logos to see how trustworthy we find the companies behind them. The results were compared with a previous study doing the same thing for human faces, and the conclusion was startling.
The study, from the Institute for Experimental Business Psychology at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany, asked subjects to rate brands (including Coca Cola, Apple, Rolex, Porsche, BP, Marlboro, and Nivea) based on their “intentions to ordinary people,” their ability to implement their intentions, and whether or not the brand “consistently acts with the public’s best interest in mind,” amongst other criteria. They were also asked whether the brands were trustworthy, caring, or dominant. The results were then compared with a previous study that did the same for faces.
The conclusion? “The mechanisms of brand perception and face perception seem to be similar,” say the researchers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Slush and Accenture will help new ideas to the surface of 10 000 euro prize awaits
The student teams are the first step towards Slush event is all-day brainstorming workshop ADIC15 Case Day where students can hone digital innovations together with partner organizations and Accenture experts and Slush organizers.
Accenture and its investors and growth companies Slush event have launched cooperation, the purpose of which is to bring Finnish organizations, the digital business innovation and start-up spirit. Cooperation offers young talents the opportunity to demonstrate innovation in their abilities and work together with leading Finnish companies and organizations.
Finnish university and university students formed teams compete for the prize money of EUR 10 000, the possibility of expert sparring and networking, as well as access to pitchaamaan ideas Slushin ADIC15-stage.
“For digital innovation in Finland is a good foundation. Large organizations can be found in the requisite infrastructure and expertise, but they need assistance in adopting new, agile approaches required digital business models, “says Accenture’s Nordic and Finnish President and CEO Frank Korsström.
“Co-operation with events, such as start-ups and Slushin provides an excellent opportunity for both Accenture and for our customers to find innovative solutions, which will eventually lead to better ways of doing business.”
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/slush-ja-accenture-auttavat-uusia-ideoita-pinnalle-10-000-euron-palkinto-odottaa-3487068
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are Enterprise Architects the “Miltons” of Their Organizations?
http://it.slashdot.org/story/15/09/29/0126248/are-enterprise-architects-the-miltons-of-their-organizations
InfoWorld recently pointed out that the “architect” part of enterprise architect is a misnomer, because what they are building can’t be a static, unmoving structure or it will fail. Businesses need to remain fluid and flexible as technology and consumer behaviors evolve, so modern enterprise architects must “develop frameworks with constant change as a first principle.”
Why we need enterprise architects now more than ever
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2984914/enterprise-architecture/why-we-need-enterprise-architects-now-more-than-ever.html
In the era of decentralized IT, enterprise architects will find fresh opportunity to help businesses meet their most important objectives
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s not a Maker Faire unless there’s fire
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/maker-faire-/4440444/It-s-not-a-Maker-Faire-unless-there-s-fire?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150928&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20150928&elq=c1005f1dfbc94102961e3ab2814e2e6c&elqCampaignId=24949&elqaid=28312&elqat=1&elqTrackId=3726579ab97248e89a9765bd158050cf
When the temperature begins to drop below 70 degrees here in New York and school buses begin to drive the streets again, it means it’s that time of year again. It means it’s time for World Maker Faire, one of the greatest show and tells on Earth.
World Maker Faire has taken over the New York Hall of Science in Queens every late September since 2009, drawing masses of crowds to its fairgrounds for the largest gathering of the maker community on the East Cost of the United States.
The weekend event overflowed with creativity and innovation. In many ways, that creativity has begun to represent itself in useful ways that will soon truly benefit the masses. As example, 3D printing is now utilized in medical treatments, wearables can be found in stores, and Arduino has spawned other easy-entry DIY platforms that will help spread engineering knowledge.
However, in some cases, the creativity found at Maker Faires represents itself in less than mainstream ways (some would say outright weird).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Talking Science and God With the Pope’s New Chief Astronomer
http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/09/29/2319237/talking-science-and-god-with-the-popes-new-chief-astronomer
http://news.sciencemag.org/europe/2015/09/talking-science-and-god-popes-new-chief-astronomer
On 18 September, Pope Francis appointed Jesuit brother Guy Consolmagno as the new director of the Vatican Observatory, which employs a dozen astronomers to study asteroids, meteorites, extrasolar planets, stellar evolution, and cosmology.
“First of all, I want to provide space for other astronomers to do their work.”
” If you think you already know everything about the world, you are not a good scientist, and if you think you know all there is to know about God, then your religious faith is at fault.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Former Cisco CEO: China, India, UK Will Lead US In Tech Race Without Action
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/09/30/2119220/former-cisco-ceo-china-india-uk-will-lead-us-in-tech-race-without-action
Former Cisco CEO John Chambers says the US is the only major country without a proper digital agenda and laments the fact none of the prospective candidates for the US Presidential Election have made it an issue. Chambers said China, India, the UK and France were among those to recognize the benefits of the trend but the US had been slow — risking any economic gains and support for startups.
We are the last major developed country in the world without a digital agenda.
Former Cisco CEO: USA Is Only Major Country Without Proper Digital Agenda
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/cloud/cisco-john-chambers-box-government-178036
Chambers said many companies had previously looked to acquisitions to maintain growth, but the future was in partnerships. Cisco has partnered with a number of firms, including Box, and believes this is the way forward.
“Watch strategic partnerships,” he said. “Most won’t work, but the ones that do will change the industry.
“I think you’re going to see large and companies work together. Unfortunately, most of them will still fail.”