Innovation Perspectives - 911 Call for Innovation and Revolution
This is the fourth of several 'Innovation Perspectives' articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on 'What product or sector is in desperate need of innovation?'. Here is the next perspective in the series:
by Ric Merrifield
I define innovation as figuring out a way to accomplish the same outcome, the "what" we do, in a way that doesn't resemble "how" we used to do it. Flight check-in over the web doesn't resemble the experience of talking to the airline employee at the counter, but it accomplishes the same three outcomes (confirming a reservation, conducting a survey, and managing logistics when there is luggage). A revolution, by contrast, I would define as an innovation that results in a dramatically different, or richer experience. E-mail and text messaging haven't just replaced prior forms of communication, they have revolutionized the way we communicate in ways we couldn't imagine 20 years ago.
Right now, I see very distinct places where innovation is desperately needed, and at the same time, I see a place where a revolution isn't quite overdue, but it's getting there.
The most urgent innovation needs are in U.S. health care and energy. People in Washington are chipping away at ways to improve the administration of health care and the role of insurers and doctor incentives, and while I will grant that those are all big messes that need cleaning up, that's not where the greatest need is. The greatest need is to stop people from needing to see the doctor in the first place and the way to do that is managing wellness in a structured, disciplined way. People get there insurance through their work in the US, and the companies should mandate regular checkups and the insurers should provide statistics (not at the individual level - for obvious privacy reasons) as to where the risks are and then invest in wellness programs accordingly.
Just at Microsoft alone, if they don't take action on diabetes and obesity alone, in less than six years they will have to spend about $70 million more each year - and most of that will be avoided if the high risk employees lose just six pounds before they turn 46 (source: The American Diabetes Association, and Microsoft Corporation). People ask about the return on investment from wellness programs - there it is. Energy - this one is harder but more obvious. The car replaced the horse, we need something to replace our dependency on petrochemicals. I don't know where it will come from, waves, wind, cold fusion, whatever, but we need it soon.
As for where the revolution is needed, or why, I would say we need it because we are in a new era - the era I will call post-decentralization.
We grew up in a world of a finite number of TV stations, the record labels decided what music we would listen to, and we all got newspapers (all very centralized sources of news, entertainment, music, and information). Now, we are in a very different world that includes social networking, YouTube, blogs, iTunes, and the iPhone. Most of the sources information, music and content have become almost cartoonishly decentralized.
That's great from a control perspective, but except for those who are really on top of it all, it's hard for people to feel comfortable that they are getting connected to the right stuff that's most aligned with their needs and interests. We need innovations to do better match making between consumers and all of these decentralized sources of apps and content. I shouldn't have to find the best news articles, blogs, video clips, and music, they should find me based on who I am and what I am interested in. I happen to have some ideas on how that will happen - but that is going to allow us to really fulfill the potential of the internet, and it will be awesome.
You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles from the different contributing authors on 'What product or sector is in desperate need of innovation?' by clicking the link in this sentence.
Ric Merrifield is known at the "Business Scientist" at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA and is the author of "Rethink". He blogs about ways to rethink through getting out of what he calls "the 'how' trap".
by Ric Merrifield
I define innovation as figuring out a way to accomplish the same outcome, the "what" we do, in a way that doesn't resemble "how" we used to do it. Flight check-in over the web doesn't resemble the experience of talking to the airline employee at the counter, but it accomplishes the same three outcomes (confirming a reservation, conducting a survey, and managing logistics when there is luggage). A revolution, by contrast, I would define as an innovation that results in a dramatically different, or richer experience. E-mail and text messaging haven't just replaced prior forms of communication, they have revolutionized the way we communicate in ways we couldn't imagine 20 years ago.Right now, I see very distinct places where innovation is desperately needed, and at the same time, I see a place where a revolution isn't quite overdue, but it's getting there.
The most urgent innovation needs are in U.S. health care and energy. People in Washington are chipping away at ways to improve the administration of health care and the role of insurers and doctor incentives, and while I will grant that those are all big messes that need cleaning up, that's not where the greatest need is. The greatest need is to stop people from needing to see the doctor in the first place and the way to do that is managing wellness in a structured, disciplined way. People get there insurance through their work in the US, and the companies should mandate regular checkups and the insurers should provide statistics (not at the individual level - for obvious privacy reasons) as to where the risks are and then invest in wellness programs accordingly.
Just at Microsoft alone, if they don't take action on diabetes and obesity alone, in less than six years they will have to spend about $70 million more each year - and most of that will be avoided if the high risk employees lose just six pounds before they turn 46 (source: The American Diabetes Association, and Microsoft Corporation). People ask about the return on investment from wellness programs - there it is. Energy - this one is harder but more obvious. The car replaced the horse, we need something to replace our dependency on petrochemicals. I don't know where it will come from, waves, wind, cold fusion, whatever, but we need it soon.
As for where the revolution is needed, or why, I would say we need it because we are in a new era - the era I will call post-decentralization.
We grew up in a world of a finite number of TV stations, the record labels decided what music we would listen to, and we all got newspapers (all very centralized sources of news, entertainment, music, and information). Now, we are in a very different world that includes social networking, YouTube, blogs, iTunes, and the iPhone. Most of the sources information, music and content have become almost cartoonishly decentralized.
That's great from a control perspective, but except for those who are really on top of it all, it's hard for people to feel comfortable that they are getting connected to the right stuff that's most aligned with their needs and interests. We need innovations to do better match making between consumers and all of these decentralized sources of apps and content. I shouldn't have to find the best news articles, blogs, video clips, and music, they should find me based on who I am and what I am interested in. I happen to have some ideas on how that will happen - but that is going to allow us to really fulfill the potential of the internet, and it will be awesome.
You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles from the different contributing authors on 'What product or sector is in desperate need of innovation?' by clicking the link in this sentence.
Ric Merrifield is known at the "Business Scientist" at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA and is the author of "Rethink". He blogs about ways to rethink through getting out of what he calls "the 'how' trap".Labels: Innovation Perspectives, Ric Merrifield
posted by Blogging Innovation at 12:31 AM
2 Comments:
Cold fusion is closer to commercialization than most people realize. The nanoparticle technique pioneered by Arata (U. Osaka) is particularly promising, because it takes no input power, it produces steady heat, it works at high temperatures, and it works every time. Last year it was independently replicated at Kobe U. and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, which ran the experiment hundreds of times in a row, all successfully, with automated equipment.
Unfortunately, there is a great deal of opposition to cold fusion in the U.S., because of academic politics. There is practically no funding available. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency published a report in November 2009 calling for more funding.
Only about a hundred people worldwide are working on cold fusion. Most are retired professors working on a shoestring, with 30-year old equipment. A good experiment costs anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million. A tiny amount of funding would do wonders for this field.
There is some support in other counties, particularly China and Italy. The Chinese government is paying for the most advanced research in Japan, at Osaka U., and they have sent several top-notch people to Osaka to conduct experiments, learn the techniques and replicate the work in China.
Last year, the 15th ICCF conference in Rome, Italy, was sponsored by the ENEA (the Italian DoE) the Italian Physical Society, the Italian Chemical Society and the National Research Council (CNR). This support is welcome but there is still practically no funding, even in Italy.
I have a collection of 1,200 peer-reviewed papers on cold fusion copied from the library at Los Alamos, plus 2,500 others from conference proceedings, national laboratories and other sources. I have uploaded about a thousand of these papers here:
http://lenr-canr.org
The Defense Intelligence Agency paper is featured on this page. Papers from the NRL describing their nanoparticle work is also available, as well as links to the May 2009 "60 Minutes" program on cold fusion, which was excellent.
Let me add that if cold fusion can be made practical, it will be revolutionary. It will produce energy at a cost several orders of magnitude cheaper than any other source, with virtually no pollution (only minute amounts of helium). At present energy consumption rates the fuel will last for billions of years.
These assertions are based on experimental observations, not theoretical calculations. Cold fusion devices have already produced power density and temperatures equivalent to a fission reactor core, so there is no question the reaction can be used as a practical source of energy, if it can be controlled. It has produced roughly 10,000 times more energy than any chemical reaction with same mass of reactants. The upper limit is not known, but it is likely they can produce millions of times more energy than chemical fuel. Cold fusion devices have operated without input power, in fully-ignited reactions lasting from hours to weeks. Most produce only a watt or so, but some have produced ~100 W, and ~300 MJ over 3 months. This is why I say they are closer to being a practical source of energy than most people realize. However, an immense amount of work will be needed before they can be made practical. At the present pace of the research this will take decades, and unfortunately most of the researchers are elderly professors who will not live much longer.
It is a terrible shame this research cannot be funded in the U.S. It is deeply unfair that the professors and others who wish to do research in this topic are blocked by academic politics.
The recent Defense Intelligence Agency paper was reviewed by nearly a hundred U.S. scientists working in different branches of our military R&D organizations. (There are only 6 authors listed but many others reviewed it.) All of them are convinced that cold fusion is real and potentially important. All of them wish to do research on this topic, and so do dozens of academic researchers at universities. I think these researchers deserve the opportunity to do this. We should have more academic freedom and less politics in science. The cost of doing cold fusion experiments is trivial compared to many other areas of science, such as plasma fusion, and the potential return is beyond all imagination.
Fortunately, progress is being made in Italy, Israel, Japan and China.
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