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:
Emma Brown / Washington Post:
Top tech leaders, with 27 governors, urge Congress to boost computer science education, announce private donations of $48M, of which $23M will go to Code.org — Top business leaders, 27 governors, urge Congress to boost computer science education — Leaders of dozens of the nation’s top businesses …
Top business leaders, 27 governors, urge Congress to boost computer science education
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/top-business-leaders-27-governors-urge-congress-to-boost-computer-science-education/2016/04/25/f161cbde-0ae7-11e6-bfa1-4efa856caf2a_story.html
Leaders of dozens of the nation’s top businesses — from Apple and Facebook to Target, Walmart and AT&T — are calling on Congress to help provide computer science education in all K-12 schools, arguing that the United States needs far more students who are literate in the technologies that are transforming nearly every industry.
They worry that the United States could lose its competitive edge without significant efforts to boost computer science among the nation’s youth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If Your Science Professors Aren’t Confusing, They’re Doing It Wrong
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/science-professors-arent-confusing-theyre-wrong/
Let me set a scene. It’s just after a physics class in which students wrestled with a complicated idea. Perhaps they measured the electrical current in different resistors and must build a mathematical relationship between change in potential, resistance, and electric current.
“I’m just not very good with the science in this class. I’m much better when everything is clear cut—like in biology. In that case you know the answer. But here, you collect data and it doesn’t always agree with your ideas. After that, the instructor doesn’t just tell you the answer.”
This isn’t something from one student. I have seen and heard many students express this idea.
Nothing is Clear Cut
Despite what these students think, biology is not clear cut. It’s not always the case that “this” is the answer and “this other thing” is not. The real world isn’t like that. Besides, if knowledge really was about correct answers, why even go to class? Why not just look up the answers online? Surely, that would be easier. If learning was all about answers, I (the instructor) could just hand out answers or post them online. That would be much more efficient, right? Students could write these things down and memorize them for the test. Then again, why test on memorization when we have Google and Wikipedia?
Despite how it appears, biology is not “clear cut.”
Part of the problem lies in how teachers teach a class. We often present a case to students that makes it appear that the answers are clear cut when in fact they are not.
I hate to say that physics is different, but it’s kind of different. Even if you believe professors should focus only on the answers to questions and the answers should be clear cut, the process of reaching these answers is just complicated enough to make it difficult for the student to see it as such. So in the end, some students think there aren’t clear answers in physics.
I think the only solution is to keep confusing students. Sorry students, there is no shortcut to real understanding.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dyson’s First-Ever Hair Dryer Will Make All Others Look Weak
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/dyson-continues-take-home-making-hair-dryer/
A couple years ago, Dyson’s New Product Innovation team started buying up human hair, by the tress-ful.
Dyson bought all these strands because, after years of building vacuums, hand dryers, fans, and air purifiers, the company has decided to make a hair dryer. Dyson doesn’t do half-hearted product development (we’ve noted previously the company’s tendency to over-engineer), and testing its high-tech hair dryer on miles of human hair was essential to getting the device ready for market. Four years after its conception, it’s ready: the British electronics company unveiled the Dyson Supersonic hair dryer today. It will become available in the United States later this fall, through Sephora.
Supersonic is every inch a Dyson product. It’s small for a hair dryer, about the size of a travel one, but is packed with technology like Dyson’s Air Multiplier feature, a digital motor, and heat sensors.
Supersonic shares its aesthetic with the line of bladeless fans the company debuted in 2009. The tech is the same, too: as mentioned, the Supersonic features Dyson’s Air Multiplier technology, which uses a motor and tiny jets to blow a thin sheet of air, rather than the big, choppy gusts you’d typically get from blades.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Only 5% of Health Orgs Operate at Peak Digital Efficiency
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329539&
A new study reports only 5% of health organizations operate at peak digital efficiency.
At the same time that reports show the semiconductor industry is in a slump, there’s an emerging market that’s desperate for digital innovation.
Healthcare, perhaps the last major field to embrace the digital revolution, is now rushing full speed to make up for lost time.
But this is about much more than playing technology catch-up or providing business opportunities. Health will always be a critical issue at every level of society, from personal to global.
And while it’s evident to employers, parents, patients, providers, insurers and hospitals that healthcare today needs rethinking and re-tooling, getting agreement on the solution among those various stakeholders is another matter.
Yet for the tens of billions of dollars invested in digital health innovation in the past five years by groups like Rock Health (rockhealth.com), Startup+Health (startuphealth.com), only five percent of health organizations are operating at highest level of digital health innovation proficiency and expertise.
That finding is the result of a new, first-of-its-kind study on “The State of Digital Health Innovation,” conducted by Fard Johnmar, a digital health strategist, and founder and president of Enspektos. http://digitalhealthmaven.com/state-of-digital-health-innovation-wave-1-report/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Evolving our Ideas to Build Something That Matters
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/27/on-how-to-build-something-that-matters/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Almost Two-Thirds of Software Companies Contributing To Open Source, Says Survey
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/04/28/168248/almost-two-thirds-of-software-companies-contributing-to-open-source-says-survey
Open source’s march toward preeminence in business software continued over the past year, according to a survey released by open source management provider Black Duck Software and venture capital firm North Bridge. Roughly two-thirds of respondents to the survey — which was administered online and drew 1,300 respondents — said that their companies encouraged developers to contribute to open-source projects, and a similar proportion said that they were actively engaged in doing so already. That’s a 5% increase from the previous year’s survey.
Almost two-thirds of software companies contributing to open source
http://www.networkworld.com/article/3062031/open-source-tools/almost-two-thirds-of-software-companies-contributing-to-open-source.html
Open source’s march toward preeminence in business software continued over the past year, according to a survey released today by open source management provider Black Duck Software and venture capital firm North Bridge.
Roughly two-thirds of respondents to the survey – which was administered online and drew 1,300 respondents – said that their companies encouraged developers to contribute to open-source projects, and a similar proportion said that they were actively engaged in doing so already. That’s a 5% increase from the previous year’s survey.
“Open source today is unequivocally the engine of innovation,” he said in a statement. “[W]hether that’s powering technology like operating systems, cloud, big data or IoT, or powering a new generation of open source companies delivering compelling solutions to the market.”
About 60 percent of respondents said that open-source participation is a competitive advantage, and roughly a third said they had full-time resources dedicated to open-source projects, the survey found. Increasingly, open-source software is viewed as highly competitive on features, in addition to having lower total cost of ownership and the ability to avoid vendor lock-in.
The Tenth Annual Future of Open Source Survey
https://www.blackducksoftware.com/2016-future-of-open-source
Open source viewed as today’s preeminent architecture and an engine for innovation, but significant challenges remain in open source security and management practices
Open Source Participation on the Rise
The survey revealed an active corporate open source community that spurs innovation, delivers exponential value and shares camaraderie:
67 percent of respondents report actively encouraging developers to engage in and contribute to open source projects.
65 percent of companies are contributing to open source projects.
One in three companies have a full-time resource dedicated to open source projects.
59 percent of respondents participate in open source projects to gain competitive edge.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reduce your prejudice to innovation
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/measure-of-things/4441939/Reduce-your-prejudice-to-innovation-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160504&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_today_20160504&elqTrackId=3a6352d0571643068ddbe53938f53347&elq=702a447dfe0e4fbcaa3dd73d02a9344f&elqaid=32108&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28028
NIH is prejudice against ideas that were not invented here. Every team, every group, every company faces NIH to some degree and engineers and scientists are among the worst NIH practitioners. We’re so damned smart that we think we know everything already—and we’ve proven ourselves right often enough that most of us nearly believe it.
Consider the latest innovation from your competitor. It might make big news here at EDN, might even win awards, but in most cases our initial reactions to incremental technical improvements in our regions of expertise are negative. Obviously if it were such a great idea, such a stupendous vision, such a disruptive invention, you would have thought of it first. Therefore, an invention that isn’t invented here can’t possibly be great.
The consultant’s dilemma: You can have it good, fast, or cheap—pick two.
Natural selection chose fast and cheap: fast processing that gets an answer just good enough to keep us safe and sexy while burning as few calories as possible (i.e., cheap).
Your brilliant, mostly serial top-down conscious self can juggle the 3-10 (maybe a dozen) thoughts at once with a refresh rate of about the time between heartbeats. Your mostly parallel bottom-up unconscious self has scads of processors creating millions of results all the time. When one of those bottom-up thoughts is sufficiently important or novel, it percolates up and becomes one of the 3-10 in your conscious awareness.
Prejudice: the ultimate form of laziness
To innovate, to unleash our creativity so that we can introduce something new, novel and effective, something that doesn’t honestly fit into one of our pre-existing categories of ideas, we have to reduce our idea prejudice. To reduce our idea prejudice we have to reduce both types of inhibitory impulses.
By practicing vigilance, we can learn to catch ourselves when we deliberately inhibit an idea. Then we can back off and consider it, even if it’s NIH, try it on, feel it out and in many cases find something useful, a piece to a puzzle we didn’t even know existed and put it to work. Since we can’t possibly turn off all of our inhibitory neurons, signal to noise won’t be a problem for ideas that manage to percolate up into consciousness.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ericsson: 5G brings the Technological Revolution
5G network technology means a lot more than the ability to download online videos faster than before. – The future network society represents a huge change at all levels. This is a technological revolution, said Ericsson Chief Technology Officer Ulf Ewaldsson yesterday EDA Cadence CDNLive-house developer at the meeting.
- This is the next generation of the Internet. All equipment which can be implanted in the microprocessor and access to a network, get one. All those who will benefit from the network which is connected to the network.
This connection must also be real-time. – We test already connections with latency, or delay from the terminal via the cloud back to 2-3 milliseconds. It allows, for example, real-time remote controlling robots, Ewaldsson stressed.
- This is all a big change
- Thinking now about, say, the world’s most useless device, which is a chain saw. It is used for half an hour once every two years, using the scared all the time and just hoping that someone else would use it on our behalf, Ewaldsson laughed.
- In the future, people are buying only the tree felling. This is a big change that will make a breakthrough in all areas and which all of us must be prepared. Also, network equipment manufacturers
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4362:ericsson-5g-tuo-teknologisen-vallankumouksen&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Whose responsibility of the intelligent technology of the future?
Digitalization and smart technologies raise ethical issues in companies including use of new technologies, says Accenture consulting firm Avanade done by a clearing. According to the intelligent digital technologies can while getting great improvements in sales, customer experience and job satisfaction.
the benefits of the introduction of intelligent technology are clear and attractive, but the senior corporate management is battling to a study commissioned by Avanden with ethical questions imported by smart technologies with them.
“In the future, the algorithms will begin to make decisions on our behalf – for example, they determine how the self-guided car and must act to minimize damage in collisions, says Avanade Finland’s innovation leader Johanna Juuvinmaa.
Enterprise and 78 percent of IT executives report estimates that their organization is not considered the ethical issues in the use of smart technologies to increase sufficiently brought by the workplace.
“The introduction of intelligent technologies can be seen as a threat, but in reality, successful organizations make the results they have already and are planning the following investments in intelligent technologies,”
However, the trend is clear, as the majority of the target up to ten percent of the IT budget on smart technologies for the next five years. Juuvimaa believes that smart technologies can make a digital workplace more humane as well as to help organizations acquire and payroll precisely the expertise that they will need in the future.
The main results
63 percent of companies have already received significant benefit from its investment in smart technologies. These benefits include increased turnover and improved customer experience and satisfaction.
92 percent of respondents believe that organizations will be easier to attract and retain top professionals on its payroll by increasing the use of intelligent technologies.
73 percent of respondents said their organization in need of new skills, while smart technologies will be to work alongside the people.
The main competence needs are problem solving (61 percent), data collection and analysis (59 percent), critical thinking (51 percent) and collaboration (51 percent).
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/05/03/kenen-vastuulla-tulevaisuuden-alytekniikat/
More: https://www.avanade.com/en/thinking/research-and-insights/~/media/asset/point-of-view/smart-technologies-delivering-benefits-pov.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Information Age is over; welcome to the Experience Age
http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/09/the-information-age-is-over-welcome-to-the-experience-age/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity_1462_-1580978442120517870
Twenty-five years after the introduction of the World Wide Web, the Information Age is coming to an end. Thanks to mobile screens and Internet everywhere, we’re now entering what I call the “Experience Age.”
When was the last time you updated your Facebook status? Maybe you no longer do? It’s been reported that original status updates by Facebook’s 1.6 billion users are down 21 percent.
The status box is an icon of the Information Age, a period dominated by desktop computers and a company’s mission to organize all the world’s information. The icons of the Experience Age look much different, and are born from micro-computers, mobile sensors and high-speed connectivity.
The death of the status box is a small part of a larger shift away from information moving toward experience. What’s driving this shift? In short, the changing context of our online interactions, shaped by our connected devices.
Facebook is an Information Age native. Along with other social networks of its generation, Facebook was built on a principle of the desktop era — accumulation.
But mobile has changed how we view digital identity. With a connected camera televising our life in-the-moment, accumulated information takes a back seat to continual self-expression. The “virtual self” is becoming less evident. I may be the result of everything I’ve done, but I’m not the accumulation of it. Snapchat is native to this new reality.
the real innovation of Snapchat’s ephemeral messages isn’t that they self-destruct. It’s that they force us to break the accumulation habit we brought over from desktop computing.
Show, don’t tell
The central idea of the Experience Age is this — I’ll show you my point of view, you give me your attention. I hear you yelling, “That’s always been the story of social!” And it has. But what’s changed is that the stories we tell each other now begin and end visually, making the narrative more literal than ever.
In the Information Age, the start of communication was information.
By contrast, Snapchat always starts with the camera. Feedback is sent passively — swiping up on your story reveals which friends watched your snaps. In the Experience Age, the primary input is visual and the dominant feedback is attention.
Today the feedback loop connecting sharing and attention starts and ends on mobile; in the future, it could start with contact lenses and end in VR, for example.
This reality frames Facebook’s recent investments, which bring live video, 360-degree cameras and VR as products all into a single portfolio. But Facebook isn’t the only tech giant looking ahead and seeing how all these technologies might line up.
The experience stack will drive new products to market faster as each layer can grow independently, while at the same time benefiting from advancements in the layers below. An example of this phenomenon is high-speed 3G enabling Apple’s App Store, which together advanced mobile as a whole. The best products of the Experience Age will be timely new applications that leverage step-change advancements in bottom layers. Given that some layers are still nascent, tremendous opportunity is ahead.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don Clark / Wall Street Journal:
HP launches HP Tech Ventures to invest in 3D-printing, VR, AI, wearable, and IoT startups
HP Launches Group to Invest in Startups
HP Tech Ventures will target fields such as 3-D printing, virtual reality and artificial intelligenc
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/hp-launches-group-to-invest-in-startups-1462885202-lMyQjAxMTI2MzE2MDMxOTA1Wj
HP Inc., a descendant of Silicon Valley’s original startup, plans to bet on the next generation of entrepreneurs.
The company, made up of the personal computer and printer operations of the former Hewlett-Packard Co., on Tuesday announced the launch of HP Tech Ventures, an investment arm targeting early-stage companies developing technologies that could help its business.
HP’s announcement was mainly a formality. The investment group, which already was operating quietly, grew out of activities begun before the Hewlett-Packard breakup completed in early November
The group will target fields such as 3-D printing, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, wearable technology and the trend called the Internet of Things, Mr. Wall said.
“What we have been focusing on is investments that help us accelerate a current business, or help us accelerate disruptions that are now in the lab,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Innovation’s Knocking: Who’ll Open the [Boardroom] Door?
http://businessvalueexchange.com/blog/2016/02/22/innovations-knocking-wholl-open-the-boardroom-door/?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral
Is your IT organisation tapping politely on your boardroom door? Well it really shouldn’t be. Right now, your technology team should be hammering down that door. Never before has IT been so well-positioned to innovate and contribute directly to business strategy.
In the digital economy, I believe the biggest risk to the enterprise is not being risky enough. Now’s the time to explore new innovation ideas…and I’m sure that your IT organisation is going to have plenty to contribute.
Consumerisation, everything-as-a-service and digitalisation are driving fundamental changes in the IT organisation today. Technical specialists are collaborating and communicating with each other far more than ever before, aiming to establish a culture and environment in which software is built, tested and released in ways that are fast, frequent and reliable (a movement the techies call ‘Agile’ and ‘DevOps’). They are also centralising control of the business processes that impact enterprise services (‘service orchestration’). And they are working hard to integrate multiple suppliers of IT services to achieve a single business-facing IT organisation (‘service integration’). – See more at: http://businessvalueexchange.com/blog/2016/02/22/innovations-knocking-wholl-open-the-boardroom-door/?utm_source=taboola&utm_medium=referral#sthash.FSuyIvP9.dpuf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scientists Found 74 Genetic Variants Linked To Education Level
https://science.slashdot.org/story/16/05/11/1938256/scientists-found-74-genetic-variants-linked-to-education-level
Scientists have found 74 genetic variants that are associated with educational attainment. In short, that means some people have variants of genes in their DNA that are correlated with completing more schooling. But this finding, published today in Nature, should be taken with a grain of salt. Together, these variants explain less than half a percent of the differences in educational attainment seen in the population studied
Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature17671.html
Educational attainment is strongly influenced by social and other environmental factors, but genetic factors are estimated to account for at least 20% of the variation across individuals1. Here we report the results of a genome-wide association study (GWAS) for educational attainment that extends our earlier discovery sample1, 2 of 101,069 individuals to 293,723 individuals, and a replication study in an independent sample of 111,349 individuals from the UK Biobank. We identify 74 genome-wide significant loci associated with the number of years of schooling completed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘I Know How To Program, But I Don’t Know What To Program’
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/05/11/1731247/i-know-how-to-program-but-i-dont-know-what-to-program
An anonymous reader has shared an interesting article that talks about one of the most common challenges faced by novice developers: “I know how to program, but I don’t know what to program.” The author of the article also shares his views on some of the most common solutions for that problem: “do programming challenges”, “contribute to an open source project”, or “make a game.” From the post:
Doing programming challenges is good mental practice, but they do little to help someone learn how to create a new program. Contributing to an open source project is a step up.
From the post:
I’ve seen the same mentality with musicians. Trying to create a masterpiece on their first attempt, putting all their energy into one song and not seeing a bigger picture. The bigger picture being, you will write LOTS of songs over time, not just one!
“I know how to program, but I don’t know what to program”
http://www.devdungeon.com/content/i-know-how-program-i-dont-know-what-program
Doing programming challenges is good mental practice, but they do little to help someone learn how to create a new program. Contributing to an open source project is a step up. You might learn about how a real project is structured and improve your skill with the programming language, but won’t learn much about the full lifecycle of a project. Some projects are very complex too which can be intimidating for a novice. Making a game is another step up. Games are fun! I started by programming games in QBASIC. The same dilemma arises though. “I want to make a game, but I don’t know what to make.”
As someone who teaches music students as well as programming, I have recognized the same pattern with music students. “I know all the chords, and my hands feel comfortable, but I don’t know how to write a song.” With music, we actually have a good answer. There is a path for learning to create. Musicians don’t typically just start writing their own music from the beginning. Some musicians never progress to composing music and spend their whole life only playing music from other people. In the programming world, the attitude is a little different though.
In the software community the general attitude is “don’t reinvent the wheel.” It’s almost frowned upon if you rewrite a library when a mature and stable option exists. While it is a good rule in general, novices should not be afraid to reinvent the wheel. When it is done for learning or practice, it’s totally OK to make a wheel! It is an important part of learning.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t Sit Back On Your Success
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329649&
Businesses, like sports teams, often keep doing the same successful things until they fail.
So often, sports teams and companies seem unstoppable. They’re clearly far ahead of others and are positioned to win and win big. The advantages of being in front would appear to be demoralizing to those behind. But, why does it happen so often that these frontrunners are overtaken, especially in the last quarter? In many sports, big leads suddenly disappear as the team behind gets the momentum and surges to victory.
In business as in sports, we call this “sitting on the lead.” In other words, the leading company fails to take advantage of its front position in the market and gives up the prime spot to an advancing rival. All of us wonder as to why this happens.
Defense vs. Offense
In business, protecting the lead becomes paramount. More risktaking is judged as undesirable. Thus, the methodology becomes “stay with what has worked for now.” Plans to expand or enlarge a company’s product line get shot down, which can lead to defensive behavior.
Big companies are prone to this disease. They got to be big by sticking to their “knitting.” Large companies have process. Endless rounds of presentations, rebuttals, and buyins are the norm. New ideas are rapidly shot down in the process. After all, backup proof for a good decision requires a rearview mirror rather than a look into the future.
Contrast this to startups or smaller, more agile companies. Ideas are welcome. They are informally debated.
Good ideas can be found at both large and small companies. The difference is that the road to approval is a tough climb in a large organization. Large organizations require documentation, market data, approval cycles at every level, etc. They mean well and want to be successful. But the higher level approvals get farther from the market and technology needed to make good decisions. All upper level managers can go on is reports and slide presentations about directions that are unfamiliar. The whole process is inverted.
These marketing guys wanted their system to be built and delivered to beat any competitive entry. They knew that their company had the resources and expertise to do it, but they knew from past experience that it would take at least another year for approvals, buyins, and endless meetings to just get approvals. So, they came to a much smaller company where the people who made the decisions were right there at the meeting. The result was that they delivered their new product in record time and we received significant business from them.
This story highlights the problem of large enterprises. By their very nature they can’t be nimble and quick. For many engineers this is frustrating and leads to their exit to startups or new ventures.
What can be done to change this for larger companies?
Great leadership in new product direction is the answer
Upper management must know the technology well and the markets even more.
Without this leadership, companies default to acquisitions to fill the product chain. This is what money managers do. They try to buy what is missing. But seldom will this do anything useful.
When a company’s leader or leadership consists of money managers, accountants, or manufacturing people, the company will almost always sit on the lead given or make poor decisions. Mostly, they have no “feel” for the technology or markets. They resort to monetary measurements or objectives that frankly are pulled from “thin air,” but dressed up to look respectable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Banning computers makes students do better on exams – MIT
We don’t need no .edu
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/12/mit_study_finds_students_assisted_by_computers_do_worse_in_exams/
Students who have access to computer devices in the classroom do significantly worse than colleagues without them, a study has found.
In a study by MIT’s School Effectiveness & Inequality Initiative, titled The Impact of Computer Usage on Academic Performance: Evidence from a Randomized Trial at the United States Military Academy, students whose classroom access to computer devices was prohibited performed better in exams.
The researchers found that “permitting computers or laptops in a classroom lowers overall exam grades by around one-fifth of a standard deviation.”
The reasons for this were unclear, however, as a number of factors could potentially contribute to the lower scores, including the ease at which students could be distracted by surfing the internet, lowered note-taking skills, and changes in the teacher’s behaviour when interacting with students on a computer.
The Impact of Computer Usage on Academic Performance: Evidence from a Randomized Trial at the United States Military Academy
https://seii.mit.edu/research/study/the-impact-of-computer-usage-on-academic-performance-evidence-from-a-randomized-trial-at-the-united-states-military-academy/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Measure of Things
Reduce your prejudice to innovation
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/measure-of-things/4441939/Reduce-your-prejudice-to-innovation-?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160513&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_funfriday_20160513&elqTrackId=2fa9290fdb274842a03d3a04f87b069e&elq=f50a6744d13b43fcb0bc7f95157d0626&elqaid=32248&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=28166
NIH is prejudice against ideas that were not invented here. Every team, every group, every company faces NIH to some degree and engineers and scientists are among the worst NIH practitioners. We’re so damned smart that we think we know everything already—and we’ve proven ourselves right often enough that most of us nearly believe it.
Consider the latest innovation from your competitor. It might make big news here at EDN, might even win awards, but in most cases our initial reactions to incremental technical improvements in our regions of expertise are negative. Obviously if it were such a great idea, such a stupendous vision, such a disruptive invention, you would have thought of it first. Therefore, an invention that isn’t invented here can’t possibly be great.
I know this, for I am the king of NIH.
I’m trying to convert my kingdom into a democracy, introduce a little perestroika, open my perspective to ideas I may have been ignoring.
The consultant’s dilemma: You can have it good, fast, or cheap—pick two.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Finland’s second race of the software
Canadian fuel cell developed by Austin Wang won 75 000 USD Gordon E. Moore Award for Intel Science competition. Software Category Rudolph Timonen came second in the blood of the blood collection service optimization tool.
Finnish software-part of the second
Finnish Petteri Timonen was awarded the race with Intel’s work on blood transfusion service, blood collection Optimizer. He received a 1500 scholarship to the US dollar.
The awards were presented this year’s Intel International Science and Engineering event, which is the world’s largest scientific research competition in secondary schools. This year’s awards were divided into approximately US $ 4 million.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/05/16/suomi-toiseksi-ohjelmistokisassa-sirupioneerin-palkinto-kanadaan/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scientists Crowdfund The Theory of Everything
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/05/15/1910225/scientists-crowdfund-the-theory-of-everything
Danish scientists are seeking to fund their research on the theory of everything in a rather unconventional way, namely via crowdfunding. The two researchers have launched a campaign that as of writing is 55% funded….
“Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life searching for an answer to the deepest question about the universe: does a fundamental principle, that governs all of reality, exist…?”
Danish researchers looking to crowdfund ‘Theory of Everything’
http://cphpost.dk/news/danish-researchers-looking-to-crowdfund-theory-of-everything.html
Danish theoretical physicist Jesper Møller Grimstrup and mathematician Johannes Aastrup are confident they are on the cusp of discovering how everything in the universe works – and they’re now offering mere mortals a chance to get in on the action, reports Vindenskab.
The elusive Theory of Everything, which has been sought after by physicists for decades, would finally reconcile Einsteinian relativity with quantum mechanics.
And these two Danes may have finally cracked the code: they claim they have discovered a mathematical principle that they believe explains quantum gravity. They call their theory quantum holonomy and are now looking for the funds to continue working on it and to be able to support themselves with a modest salary.
Unusually, they have chosen to crowdfund the operation and have set up a page on Indiegogo. Anyone is welcome to contribute.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sarah Jeong / Motherboard:
Oracle v Google trial, which is based on the notion that APIs are copyrightable, hinges on a judge and jurors who don’t have a firm grasp of FOSS philosophy — The problem with Oracle v. Google is that everyone actually affected by the case knows what an API is, but the whole affair …
In Oracle v. Google, a Nerd Subculture Is on Trial
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/in-google-v-oracle-the-nerds-are-getting-owned
The problem with Oracle v. Google is that everyone actually affected by the case knows what an API is, but the whole affair is being decided by people who don’t, from the normals in the jury box to the normals at the Supreme Court—which declined to hear the case in 2015, on the advice of the normals at the Solicitor General’s office, who perhaps did not grasp exactly how software works.
In a world where Silicon Valley is coming into dominance, Oracle v. Google is an unusual instance in which the nerds are getting totally owned by the normals. Their judgment on the technologies they have birthed is being overridden by old people in black robes; their beloved traditions and mythologies around free and open source software are being scoffed at by corporate stiffs in suits as inconsistent hippie nonsense.
Silicon Valley wants to live in a world of its own, where it sets its own rules and writes its own laws. Oracle v. Google does little to change its mind that this is only right and fair.
And to be fair to Oracle attorneys, although the copyleft idealism of the free and open source software movement infects Silicon Valley at its very foundation, Silicon Valley is a capitalist enterprise, and has always had an ambivalent relationship with FOSS.
Oracle v. Google is the revenge of the normals, bringing a hammer down on the customs and practices that the nerds decided for themselves.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UK needs comp sci grads, so why isn’t it hiring them?
Report blames unis for crappy coursework
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/16/comp_sci_jobs/
Computer science degrees need to have a clearer focus on making grads more employable. In fact, according to a report into the low employment rates among students, institutions offering comp-sci courses are so terrible at it that employers look to holders of other degrees to fill the comp-sci-shaped hole.
Unemployment among CS graduates is currently running at 11.7 per cent
This is despite a strong demand for computer science skills, with the UK Commission for Employment and Skills predicting that by 2022, some 518,000 additional workers will be needed for the “digital economy”.
“It would benefit all stakeholders, including graduates, if employment outcomes, and employability, were to become a more central part of accrediting a degree programme,”
“We have also been aware of anecdotal evidence within the computer science community that graduates from other STEM disciplines are helping to fill the gaps left by the apparent lack of suitably skilled Computer Sciences graduates.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computer Science grads still finding it hard to get a job
Skills gap? What skills gap?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/12/computer_grads_still_finding_it_hard_to_get_a_job_despite_skills_gap/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Miguel Helft / Forbes:
Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirms “Area 120” corporate incubator plans, says it is about “giving people a chance at 20% time more formally”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai Confirms ‘Area 120′ Corporate Incubator
http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2016/05/19/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-confirms-area-120-corporate-incubator/#d69036d4f73b
Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed to FORBES that the company is planning to set up a new corporate incubator dubbed “Area 120.”
“We’ve always had a strong interest from within Google for people to go work on new things and have developed many of our products internally that way,” he said. “At our scale, we want to make sure that there is a thoughtful way by which you give an avenue for those projects to be ambitious.” He said there was a lot of internal interest in the idea.
Google famously has allowed its engineers and other employees to spend a day a week (or 20% time) on side projects, but the program has been pared down significantly. The company has also sought to satisfy the entrepreneurial itch of many of its employees in different ways, allowing some to start new projects internally, and using its venture arm, now called GV, to finance the startups of some of those who choose to leave.
Area 120 is a new approach, part incubator, part new take on the spirit of the 20% time program. (It’s name, sometimes shortened to 120, is a reference to the 20% time idea).
“It is giving people a chance at 20% time more formally,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hack the turbine
http://embeddedexperience.blogspot.fi/2016/05/hack-turbine.html
Final day of Fortum IndustryHack is over (13-15 of May, 2016) and the winner is a joint team of IBM and Ixonos. IndustryHack is a Finnish company that organizes series of hackathons with various industries. Past hacks have been organized with many international enterprises like Nokia, Kone, and Konecranes. Company hosting the event opens access to data via APIs and competing teams innovate new digital value-add services a top of that.
IndustryHack defines itself as bringing together software developers and tech startups to create new product concepts. Hack event is open to anybody to attend, but in practice most of the attending teams are organized by software consulting companies. This time, the list of winners is following:
1. IBM + Ixonos (software consulting company)
2. Cybercom (software consulting company)
3. Symbio (software consulting company)
The IndustryHack has emerged quite far away from the original idea of hackathons bringing students, hobbyists and makers together, this time there was no student or hobbyist team involved. The new concept is rather unique; leading software companies are bringing their best forces, free of charge, to innovate new solutions for the given host company, during a weekend event. Ideas are pitched and shared publicly among participants.
“You are what you share” is the slogan of the new sharing economy. Expressing your ideas with your competitors does not necessarily make you weaker but stronger. Motivation for companies to do so is the positive PR, this is what we can and that’s how we do it. Some lucky one may also end up in having commercial contract for actual implementation project.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tristan Harris:
Ten ways tech products are designed to manipulate users to spur usage — Estimated reading time: 12 minutes. — I’m an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities. That’s why I spent the last three years as Google’s Design Ethicist caring about how to design things …
How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist
https://medium.com/@tristanharris/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3#.5bt7ry6g3
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU countries call for the removal of barriers to data flows
https://flipboard.com/@thenewsdesk/technology-shjum1jiz/eu-countries-call-for-the-removal-of-barriers-to-data-flows/a-b6a2lIgLRRCcbwYV_GtDXw%3Aa%3A43591897-039294f897%2Freuters.com
Half of the European Union’s member states on Monday called for the removal of barriers to the free flow of data both within and outside the 28-nation bloc to ensure the continent can benefit from new data-driven technologies.
“It is vital for European competitiveness to take a positive approach to new advancements in digital technologies and business models,”
“Europe can benefit significantly from new data-driven technologies if the right future-proof regulatory framework is established.”
The Commission last year unveiled its Digital Single Market strategy, a wide-ranging plan to knock down barriers in the online world to give Europe a better chance of competing with mainly U.S. tech giants.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Australian Greens don’t believe Silicon Valley can save the world
Election shocker as disruptive meta-disruption comes to Australian politics
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/12/election_shocker_greens_dont_believe_silicon_valley_can_save_the_world/
If there’s one thing that Australia’s two main political parties agree on, it’s that replicating Silicon Valley on local shores is a Very Good Thing.
The governing Liberal/National coalition and opposition Labor party are both advocating more spending on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teaching and back tax tweaks to replicate American arrangements felt to foster startups.
But now The Australian Greens have disrupted that cosy narrative, with candidate Jim Casey dropping the bombshell below in The Grauniad:
“While the smart kids in Silicon Valley may claim that data, artificial intelligence and new technologies like block chain will turbo charge technology and solve that old problem of resource depletion – I argue it won’t. The robots won’t save us from water scarcity, the loss of arable land or indeed the loss of fish stocks as the oceans become more acidic.”
Here at El Reg we think his remarks about technology are far more dangerous, because as we all know Big Data and the Blockchain will revolutionise everything, more or less instantly, so that the Internet of Soil becomes a reality and deals with that depletion problem.
Don’t the Greens realise that the Silicon Valley way of getting stuff done is the best way to do anything! Never mind that there’s no affordable accomodation within 50kms of San Francisco!
Tomi Engdahl says:
GoDaddy launches Flare, a community app for sharing and rating business ideas
http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/26/godaddy-flare/
Internet domain name registrar and Web hosting giant GoDaddy has launched a new mobile app designed to help entrepreneurs garner feedback for new business ideas.
Flare, which launches on iOS today in North America followed by Android next month, invites anyone with a new business idea to submit concept overviews to a community and arrive at a general consensus on whether the idea has legs. It’s touted as a “cross between Shark Tank, LinkedIn, and Tinder” — users swipe right if they like a submitted idea, and swipe left if they don’t.
While it’s clear what’s in this for the entrepreneur, what exactly is to be gained from those giving feedback? Well, it seems that GoDaddy hopes that the tried and tested practice of crowdsourcing will be enough to ensure the general public will wish to “become advisors to great ideas and play an active role throughout its journey,” according to a statement. In other words, for exactly the same reason that millions of people donate their time to editing Wikipedia articles or adding a new street in OpenStreetMap — people like to be helpful.
The social, community-driven approach not only lets experts in a given field impart their knowledge, but they can also pledge to become a future customer, which could prove to be the ultimate sign that the entrepreneur is sitting on a winning idea.
“Everyone has ideas, but too often they don’t go anywhere,” said Reinsberg.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU wants open science publication by 2020
Axe hovers over journal publishers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/30/eu_wants_open_science_publication_by_2020/
Bet on furious lobbying to prevent this: the European Union’s Competitiveness Council has recommended all scientific papers be made “open access” by 2020.
The Dutch presidency of the EU has issued this media release explaining what’s on the table.
“From 2020, all scientific publications on the results of publicly funded research must be freely available. It also must be able to optimally reuse research data. To achieve that, the data must be made accessible, unless there are well-founded reasons for not doing so, for example intellectual property rights or security or privacy issues”, the release states.
The release says EU ministers responsible for innovation agreed unanimously on the proposal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UCSF Pioneers Precision Medicine at Center for Digital Health Innovation
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329782&
The Center for Digital Health Innovation is looking to technology for both disruptive and incremental improvements to healthcare.
As the boundary between digital technology and physical well-being shrinks, professionals in various fields who never had any reason to speak to each other before are now finding common ground for fruitful cooperation.
About 50 miles north of Silicon Valley, on Parnassus Heights in the approximate center of San Francisco, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)—dedicated solely to medicine and health care—is actively establishing links to the digital ecosystem all around it, and beyond.
With roots going back to the Gold Rush days, UCSF has since evolved into a world-class medical center producing five Nobel laureates.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Estonian President Expresses Desire For More Digitally-Integrated Europe
https://slashdot.org/story/16/05/30/1754253/estonian-president-expresses-desire-for-more-digitally-integrated-europe
In a wide-ranging interview with Ars Technica, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik talked about European Digital Single Market (DSM), an ambitious goal that seeks to make commerce flow as smoothly across the 28-member block as it does in the United States
Why can’t the Estonian president buy a song off iTunes for his Latvian wife?
Toomas Hendrik Ilves really, really wants a much more digitally integrated Europe.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/why-cant-the-estonian-president-buy-a-song-off-itunes-for-his-latvian-wife/
We have the technology
When I asked President Ilves how he observes Estonia’s technological, social, and cultural changes from 2006 until now, the first thing he mentioned was the advent of fully digital prescription. Estonia, like nearly every other EU member state, has universal health care. Since 2002, Estonia has issued digital ID cards to all citizens and legal residents. These cards allow access to a “citizen’s portal,” enabling all kinds of government services to exist entirely online: essentially any interaction with the government can be done online, ranging from paying taxes, to voting, to even picking up a prescription.
“In the United States, 5,000 people die a year because of doctor’s bad handwriting,” he said. “It’s very simple. You go to the doctor, and he writes the prescription in the computer, and you go to any pharmacy in the country, and you stick your card in the reader, and you identify yourself, and you get your prescription.”
As he pointed out repeatedly, “the stumbling blocks are not technological,” but rather, are bureaucratic.
In many ways, the European Union is far more federated than the United States. After all, there are 28 nation-states, each with their own languages and traditions that have bound themselves together in a loose political union that has a (mostly) unified economy and freedom of movement, and yet they have their own bureaucratic systems in most cases. But that’s slowly starting to change.
What Estonia and Finland are doing is a step towards the DSM—but there remain all kinds of national-level laws that stop Europe from being truly unified.
“A secure identity is the sine qua non for any kind of process for technology in general,” he added. “The new role in this age is the state as the guarantor of your identity.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
US computer-science classes churn out cut-n-paste slackers – and yes, that’s a bad thing
while(1) { copy_from_stackexchange(); }
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/31/itif_bemoans_quality_of_us_it_courses/
Computer science (CS) students in the US aren’t being taught properly, and their classes are too limited in scope, says one IT think-tank.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) says that its most recent study [PDF] of curriculum in the US has found that not enough schools are offering computer science classes, and those that do aren’t going in-depth enough.
As a result, the ITIF says, many universities are failing to produce the diverse, well-trained graduates that companies seek to hire.
“There is the possibility that interest in the field could again wane like it did in 2003 following the burst of the tech bubble,” ITIF warns.
“To maintain the field’s current momentum, the perception of computer science needs to shift from its being considered a fringe, elective offering or a skills-based course designed to teach basic computer literacy or coding alone.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t go chasing waterfalls, please stick… Hang on. They’re back
Culture wars, generation shift… hipsters
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/07/problems_for_agile/
Since the publication of the Agile Manifesto, there’s been a steady acceptance that Agile is the way to go when it comes to software development. The old waterfall method was seen as something rather quaint and old-fashioned, the equivalent of hanging onto your vinyl LPs when the rest of the world was downloading onto their iPods.
And yet, just as vinyl is making a comeback so we see that waterfall is still clinging on tenaciously. In fact, it’s not just clinging on but positively ruling the roost. According to Gartner’s IT Key Metrics Data, waterfall methods were employed on 56 per cent of development projects in 2015.
So, given that it’s generally accepted that agile projects offer much scope for effective development, why are organisations still clinging to the old methods?
Old school is cool
“There is the organisational drift back to Waterfall where a company has moved to agile practices and not changed the culture.”
The hold-up with agile is not due to technical issues – agile deployment remains the best option for most software projects – rather cultural obstacles need to be overcome.
Middle management wall
Translation: middle management, which is like permafrost – something that’s hard to penetrate. “If they don’t change, then we say that the agile antibodies aren’t strong.”
“You get these guys in their 50s, with no social skills and they’re the ones who maintain the systems. The company can’t get rid of them as the kids haven’t got the right skills,”
Typically what happens, our analyst explained, is that management will decide to “go agile”.
“They’ll drop in some new age guru who will use agile to develop a web-based system at the front end. At some point, however, they have to speak to the backend and connect to the CICS, DB2 and COBOL applications and that’s where it all breaks down,”
In such situations, it’s important that companies move gradually.
Church of Agile
One of the problems, however, is that there’s a tendency for there to be an almost evangelical belief in agile as a methodology and that this sets up conflict.
He sees that agile has become accepted because it’s fashionable: “Agile is a hipster methodology – it’s when methodology becomes a religion that you get problems.”
Adam stresses he absolutely agrees that agile development is the way forward but – and this is the big but – he points out that the methodology isn’t really that important. What is important, he says, is that there’s a strong leader – one with vision.
It’s not only management that can hinder agile rollout. According to Wayne Harris, a product owner at Chroma Sports, agile doesn’t sit very easily with the Prince 2 project management methodology, for example. “Trying to run an agile project with Prince 2 project management is a nightmare,” he says.
There are other methodologies out there, too, that agile must contend with: PMP and CAPM to name just two.
There is no reason why new development projects need revert to waterfall but the business culture has to alter first: without this, companies will be stuck in the old ways.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech & Compassion Aren’t Mutually Exclusive
Health Tech Forum pursues ‘common good’
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329916&
“Compassion” and “kindness” were the stated goals of a tech conference recently held at Stanford Univ. The Health Technology Forum is exploring the intersection of digital innovation and health care.
A remarkable conference took place recently at Stanford University to consider how a combination of innovative technology, best practices in public health, and a rethinking of traditional procedures, might introduce compassion and kindness into a health care system on the verge of collapse.
In my own 35-year career writing about technology, this was the first time I ever saw words like compassion and kindness as the stated goals of a technical conference. For that reason alone, I was intrigued.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How web search data might help diagnose serious illness earlier
http://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/06/07/how-web-search-data-might-help-diagnose-serious-illness-earlier/#sm.0018qtf6313jgehksw91oag4ome77
Early diagnosis is key to gaining the upper hand against a wide range of diseases. Now Microsoft researchers are suggesting that records of the topics that people search for on the Internet could one day prove as useful as an X-ray or MRI in detecting some illnesses before it’s too late.
The potential of using engagement with search engines to predict an eventual diagnosis – and possibly buy critical time for a medical response — is demonstrated in a new study by Microsoft researchers Eric Horvitz and Ryen White, along with former Microsoft intern and Columbia University doctoral candidate John Paparrizos.
In a paper published Tuesday in the Journal of Oncology Practice, the trio detailed how they used anonymized Bing search logs to identify people whose queries provided strong evidence that they had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer – a particularly deadly and fast-spreading cancer that is frequently caught too late to cure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Project Malmo: Using Minecraft to build more intelligent technology
http://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/03/13/project-malmo-using-minecraft-build-intelligent-technology/#sm.0018qtf6313jgehksw91oag4ome77
That may seem like a pretty simple job for some of the brightest minds in the field, until you consider this: The team is trying to train an artificial intelligence agent to learn how to do things like climb to the highest point in the virtual world, using the same types of resources a human has when she learns a new task.
“We’re trying to program it to learn, as opposed to programming it to accomplish specific tasks,” said Fernando Diaz, a senior researcher in the New York lab and one of the people working on the project.
Microsoft researchers are using Project Malmo for their own research, and they have made it available to a small group of academic researchers under a private beta. This summer, Project Malmo will be available via an open-source license.
From doing to learning
Over the past few years, artificial intelligence researchers have gotten very good at teaching computers to do specific, often complicated tasks. Computers can now understand speech and translate it. They can recognize images and write captions about them.
But despite all these advances, computers still aren’t very good at what researchers call general intelligence, which is more similar to the nuanced and complex way humans learn and make decisions. A computer algorithm may be able to take one task and do it as well or even better than an average adult, but it can’t compete with how an infant is taking in all sorts of inputs – light, smell, touch, sound, discomfort – and learning that if you cry chances are good that Mom will feed you.
“The things that seem really easy for us are actually the things that are really difficult for an artificial intelligence,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fool-Proof Electronics to Boost Kids’ Creativity
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1329918&
Elex Pipe, a kit of safe-to use and fool-proof electronic components designed to be magnetically assembled and connected into 3D electronic circuits.
“I remember that as a child, I would always disassemble electronic or mechanical devices to understand how they worked or to build something else. I would ruin everything most of the time. But on some occasions when I was able to re-assemble something properly and it worked again, I had the greatest feeling. So I wondered how I could share the feeling of excitement that I had when creating something that worked” continued Démi.
The Elex Pipe has been his pet project since then, requiring nearly two years of development, with the company buying new tools and materials, tinkering with electronic components and embedding them into transparent plexiglass pipes with aluminium endings and snappy magnets.
“It took us some time to figure out what would be the right size, the right options to offer, circuit elements and connectors, and also to develop educational applications, with puzzle-like challenges for kids to try and learn by solving electronic circuits manually”.
The Elex Pipe elements include various LEDs, lasers, pivoting mirrors, batteries, interconnects of different shapes, programmable elements (through a Bluetooth connection to the Elex Prof smartphone app), digital counters, voltmeters, potentiometers, capacitors, reed relays, various switches, metal detectors, infrared detectors and magnetic polarity detectors. The equivalent of a bread board for all these chunky but safe elements, the Elex table provides a readily powered prototyping area to play with.
“Every element has built-in protection, you can shortcut it, stress it to overvoltage, so you can discover and build new circuits through trial and error without ruining the parts”
The kit is really geared towards education. “We wanted to avoid creating a lego-type thing where the wires are abstracted. Instead, the pipes are like real wires, and kids have to figure out how to route the current across different points, sometimes in 3D. On each component, we drew the electronic symbol representative of that component, so kids learn the real symbol as it used in real life by electronic engineers”
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/168687327/elex-pipe-3d-circuit-building-game/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Naysayers Add Value, Too
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329924&
Those who doubt the validity of an engineering project can make you think things through.
One of my greatest joys in running a company for many years was directing the product direction and development of the company. Embarking on an important new project, getting all the participants involved and excited, was thrilling. It represented the future for all of us. Either we got it right or we’d have a lot of egg on our faces. My inner goal was to have all the engineers, marketers, and management as excited as I was.
How could we use the Naysayers comments and get everyone onboard?
Using Naysayer Comments to Get Others Involved
In every meeting, there are those that feel free to express their opinions while others sit quietly and just absorb everything without commenting. My role was to get them involved. Essentially I would ask pointedly, “Bob, can you give us your viewpoint of Tim’s concerns.” This prompted everyone’s attention to one of the quieter attendees and expanded the discussion. I would continue around the room until there were comments from just about everyone. The result: a more well-rounded discussion.
Valuing all Contributions
Building a team to get projects done was my objective. Certainly great engineering is necessary, but all it takes is another member of the team to not do their part well, to sink a project, or at least set it back. By getting divergent team members in a room once per week and going through many of the thoughts, pro and con, getting out all the objections of the naysayer and the counterpoints to these thoughts, worked well. By completed development and full announcement time each was proud of their part in making a great product. The naysayer and his counterparts embraced what was accomplished – because each felt that it was theirs.
My take is that the naysayer performed a valuable service.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Do You Know When an Engineer is Cooked?
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=30&doc_id=1329667&
How can you tell when an engineer is ready to leave the nest and soar wild and free through the engineering skies?
I was just chatting with a friend as to how one knows when an engineer is cooked. No; sticking a fork in him or her is not the answer we’re looking for; by “cooked” we mean “matured” or “qualified” or “done” — that is, ready to leave the nest and soar wild and free through the engineering skies.
John explained that he viewed each engineer as progressing through the following five stages:
Stage 1:Having been assigned a project, the engineer would commence work. John would keep a watchful eye on the engineer’s progress and recognize when he had run into a problem. However, in Stage 1, the engineer wouldn’t actually recognize that there even was a problem and would carry on regardless.
Stage 2: With a little more experience, the engineer would recognize when he ran into a problem, at which point he would approach John who would guide him to a solution.
Stage 3: In addition to recognizing that there was a problem, the engineer would come up with a number of solutions to present to John
Stage 4: Having determined that there was a problem and evaluated a number of solutions, the engineer would approach John and present his recommended course of action.
Stage 5: The engineer would recognize that there was a problem and evaluate a number of solutions, then select the best approach and implement it without talking to John at all (the engineer would, of course, have maintained a record of all problems and decisions in his engineering log book; also John always kept an eagle eye on what was going on around him).
Actually, now that I come to think about it, the steps described above are applicable to just about any profession.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sphero’s Ball-Bot Teaches Kids How to Roll Their Own Apps
http://www.wired.com/2016/06/sphero-sprk/
Sphero, that cute robotic ball that proves that BB-8’s underlying physics work, is more than a toy. It’s a great way of teaching children how to code. Kids have made everything from sea vessels to modern art with the little ball-bot.
The company just updated the SPRK edition designed specifically for tinkering. The Sphero SPRK+ features a more scratch-resistant transparent body so youngsters can see what’s inside. Pairing the ball to a phone is simpler; you can just tap the two together to sync them up. A revamped app also helps teachers hone their students’ programming skills
Sphero says it designed the $130 SPRK+ and its OVAL programming language for kindergartners and college students alike.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google to offer better medical advice when you search your symptoms
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/20/google-to-offer-better-medical-advice-when-you-search-your-symptoms.html
Google wants to make it easier for users to find answers to their symptom-related questions.
The internet search engine said Monday it’s improving its catalog of searched Googled health symptoms by adding information on related health conditions that have been vetted by the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School.
Type “headache on one side,” for example, and Google will offer up a list of associated conditions like “migraine,” “common cold” or “tension headache.”
For general searches like “headache,” the company will also give an overview description along with information on self-treatment options or symptoms that warrant a doctor’s visit, according to the company’s post.
In Google’s official blog, the company said roughly 1 percent of the searches on Google, which equals millions of searches, are related to symptoms users are researching. But search results can sometimes be confusing, and result in “unnecessary anxiety and stress,” Google said.
I’m Feeling Yucky
Searching for symptoms on Google
https://googleblog.blogspot.fi/2016/06/im-feeling-yucky-searching-for-symptoms.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wanted: Clinical Pull, Not Tech Push
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329938&
Doctors’ roles and patients’ expectations have dramatically changed over the last decade. Is today’s engineering community designing what the healthcare community is looking for?
1. The doctor’s changing role:
Study on health, not diseases
Monitoring 24/7 activity
Big data leads to precision health
Look for clinical pull, not technology push
2. On the patient’s side:
Generational digital divide
Stress caused by technologies
Science and technology (including the practice of medicine) have largely avoided issues like values and meaning over the last 400 years. We got very good at measuring things, but less so at understanding the meaning of things. We can gauge quantity very precisely, but have no agreed-upon definition of quality.
We need to embark on that voyage now, and this emerging redefinition of healthcare of the person-in-the-community is a good time to start. Can one be healthy in a stressed-out, polluted, anxious society?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Natasha Singer / New York Times:
Amazon unveils Inspire, an online education service for teachers, offering free lesson plans, teaching modules, and other digital resources
Amazon Unveils Online Education Service for Teachers
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/technology/amazon-unveils-online-education-service-for-teachers.html?_r=0
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Research Blog:
Google announces Project Bloks, a new open hardware platform to make coding physical for kids, still in development — Posted by Steve Vranakis and Jayme Goldstein, Executive Creative Director and Project Lead, Google Creative Lab — At Google, we’re passionate about empowering children to create and explore with technology.
Project Bloks: Making code physical for kids
https://research.googleblog.com/2016/06/project-bloks-making-code-physical-for.html
At Google, we’re passionate about empowering children to create and explore with technology. We believe that when children learn to code, they’re not just learning how to program a computer—they’re learning a new language for creative expression and are developing computational thinking: a skillset for solving problems of all kinds. In fact, it’s a skillset whose importance is being recognised around the world—from President Obama’s CS4All program to the inclusion of Computer Science in the UK National Curriculum. We’ve long supported and advocated the furthering of CS education through programs and platforms such as Blockly, Scratch Blocks, CS First and Made w/ Code. Today, we’re happy to announce Project Bloks, a research collaboration between Google, Paulo Blikstein (Stanford University) and IDEO with the goal of creating an open hardware platform that researchers, developers and designers can use to build physical coding experiences. As a first step, we’ve created a system for tangible programming and built a working prototype with it. We’re sharing our progress before conducting more research over the summer to inform what comes next.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Launches ‘Project Bloks’ Toys To Teach Kids To Code
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/06/27/1950252/google-launches-project-bloks-toys-to-teach-kids-to-code
Google has launched a hardware project dubbed ‘Project Bloks’ to help teach kids how to code. There are three components to the learning experience: Brain Board, Base Boards, and Pucks. The Brain Board features a processing unit that is based off of Raspberry Pi Zero, which controls and provides power to the rest of the connected components. It does also interact with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices. The Base Boards are connective units that let users design instruction flows.
https://projectbloks.withgoogle.com/
Introducing Project Bloks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuRTS35ouTs
Google launches ‘Project Bloks’ toys to teach kids to code
http://thenextweb.com/google/2016/06/27/google-launches-project-bloks-toys-teach-kids-code/#gref
Google wants to help teach kids how to code, so now it’s launching a hardware platform for kids (and curious) adults to learn the principles of code. It’s called Project Bloks.
There are three components to the experience.
The Brain Board houses a processing unit based off of Raspberry Pi Zero, both controlling and providing power to the rest of the connected units. It can also interact with WiFi and Bluetooth devices.
Meanwhile, the ‘Base Boards’ are connective units that let you design instruction flows.
Tomi Engdahl says:
We have hit peak Silicon Valley: New crazy goal to disrupt entire cities
Y Combinator becomes its own spoof
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/27/peak_silicon_valley_reinventing_cities/
Ever wondered what would happen if you gave that stoner dude with the far-out ideas millions of dollars?
Well, wonder no more, because like some bad 1980s comedy, we have startup funder Y Combinator’s new research arm, YC Research – a venture with reportedly $100m to waste on hare-brained schemes.
Just before the weekend, the organization said it would run a pilot on basic income
This week, the research arm stepped things up by claiming it is literally going to reinvent cities. And it is hiring full-time researchers to figure out how.
And it has a manifesto to prove it: a manifesto that reads like it was written at 3:00am after you and your friends had expanded your minds and realized things didn’t have to be this way.
Among the insights:
We don’t need to build cities near rivers any more, man.
The internet has changed, like, everything.
Rent is, like, crazy high – let’s find a way to build new houses that are really cheap but also super cool.
Of course, all this is couched in Valleyspeak: people “aren’t realizing their potential” because cities “don’t provide the opportunities and living conditions necessary for success.”
And it has a manifesto to prove it: a manifesto that reads like it was written at 3:00am after you and your friends had expanded your minds and realized things didn’t have to be this way.
https://blog.ycombinator.com/new-cities
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hillary for America:
Hillary Clinton’s tech agenda: invest in CS and STEM ed, build out broadband for all, fix copyright, defend net neutrality, safeguard privacy, support USDS — Today’s dynamic and competitive global economy demands an ambitious national commitment to technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Hillary Clinton’s Initiative on Technology & Innovation
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2016/06/27/hillary-clintons-initiative-on-technology-innovation/
Today’s dynamic and competitive global economy demands an ambitious national commitment to technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. America led the world in the internet revolution, and, today, technology and the internet are transforming nearly every sector of our economy—from manufacturing and transportation, to energy and healthcare. Hillary Clinton’s priority is to harness the power of technology and innovation so that it works for all Americans, creating good-paying jobs throughout the country. Doing this right will not only boost economic growth, it will lead to immeasurable social benefits—home monitoring options for seniors will improve health outcomes and relieve pressures on family members; interoperable and next-generation public safety systems will mean faster response times and safer communities; smarter transportation networks will lead to less congestion, fewer accidents, and lower energy costs; and widely-deployed digital infrastructure will allow for wrap-around learning for our students in the home and in our schools. Hillary believes that with the right public policies, we can ensure that technology is a force for broad-based growth, reducing social and economic inequality, and securing American leadership on the global stage.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Satya Nadella / Slate:
Examining principles for the development and applications of AI as well as the human skills and values future generations must prioritize — Advanced machine learning, also known as artificial intelligence or just A.I., holds far greater promise than unsettling headlines about computers beating humans …
The Partnership of the Future
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/06/microsoft_ceo_satya_nadella_humans_and_a_i_can_work_together_to_solve_society.html
Microsoft’s CEO explores how humans and A.I. can work together to solve society’s greatest challenges.
Advanced machine learning, also known as artificial intelligence or just A.I., holds far greater promise than unsettling headlines about computers beating humans at games like Jeopardy!, chess, checkers, and Go. Ultimately, humans and machines will work together—not against one another. Computers may win at games, but imagine what’s possible when human and machine work together to solve society’s greatest challenges like beating disease, ignorance, and poverty.
Doing so, however, requires a bold and ambitious approach that goes beyond anything that can be achieved through incremental improvements to current technology. Now is the time for greater coordination and collaboration on A.I.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oliver Suess / Bloomberg:
Siemens plans to invest $1.1B over next five years in a new startups unit focused on developing AI, decentralized electrification, blockchain apps, more
Siemens to Spend EU1 Billion on ‘Disruptive Ideas’ Startups
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-28/siemens-to-spend-eu1-billion-on-disruptive-ideas-startups
Siemens AG is setting up a unit to invest 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) over five years on “disruptive ideas,” the latest bid by Europe’s largest engineering company to move into digitalization and shed a reputation for being slow and cautious.
Named next47, the unit will initially be overseen by Chief Technology Officer Siegfried Russwurm and begin operations Oct. 1 from Berkeley, Shanghai and Munich, Siemens said in an e-mailed statement Tuesday.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Innovators are spontaneous – how else?
People can Aalto University survey, classified into four groups according to how they learn new ideas or thoughts. According to the report innovators are spontaneous and they have their own ideas. Others are prone to learning, learners also stable. In addition, there is immune, learning opposed to individuals.
Aalto University that social learning is the fastest, while constantly and spontaneously learn to inspire more slowly self-learning to imitate them.
According to the survey, people can be classified into four groups according to how they learn new ideas or thoughts. Innovators are spontaneous and they have their own ideas, in addition to which they have sufficient social networks to be able to effectively influence others.
through social interaction for teaching include not only the learning-prone, also stable learners who require more influence integrate new things. In addition, there is immune, learning opposed to people who are never going to adopt a new issue or phenomenon happens around them no matter what.
According to him, the innovators and the willing learners, in turn, assure learners broadly stable, and this in turn combine local social learning networks become a global phenomenon
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2016/06/30/innovaattorit-ovat-spontaaneita-miten-muut/