Picture - Trends for the 2010s

by Venessa Miemis

Here are a few recurring themes that have been popping up on my radar.
(click to enlarge)



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Venessa Miemis is a Media Studies graduate student at the New School in NYC, exploring what happens at the intersection of technology, culture, and communication. Connect with her at www.emergentbydesign.com and on Twitter @venessamiemis.

Fantastically, Brilliantly, Insanely Amazing

by Kevin Roberts

One thing about the January 27th launch of the Apple iPad clashing with President Obama's first State of the Union address was that they both focused on Jobs.

And check out the awesome enthusiasm Steve Jobs and his team have for their new baby in this video!





A lot of hype and hyped-up criticism have accompanied the launch of the iPad. Nothing new there. Apple attracted lots of criticism with the launch of the iPod in 2001 (total sales: 220 million) and the iPhone in 2007 (total sales: 34 million). They centered on a perceived lack of functionality. So it's not surprising to hear gripes that iPad doesn't support HDMI or Flash graphics, or have a built-in camera.

The critics have missed the point. The iPad is not a netbook or scaled-down laptop. In fact, it is only a distant relative to the traditional PC or Mac. Instead, its lineage is the DVD player, the VCR, the television set, the radio, the newspaper, the telephone, the telegraph. It is not a workhorse loaded up with functions and hardware. It is a platform for story-telling, interactive, personal and immediate.

The story of human technology is the relentless advance in the direction of greater utility, connectivity, immediacy, affordability and flexibility. The iPad represents a quantum leap in that direction.

We want to communicate with each other, cheaply and easily. We want information where and when we need it. We want to be entertained and to entertain ourselves. We want to get closer to the people and the things we love. The iPad promises to do that. Technology that fails to serve that purpose is just a gadget, suitable for little more than collecting dust.

There's an interesting blog post in the NY Times predicting that the iPad will become an irresistible toy for children because kids will love the tactile nature of the device (they love to jab at things!), 'painting' software allows for mess-free splatter, it's an ideal distraction for car trips, and the screen offers endless story opportunities. I couldn't agree more, but the author could go even further: They are pretty compelling reasons for adults to get their hands on an iPad, too.

Related Articles:

• Radical Innovation of Meaning


• Apple's Hidden Disruptive Innovation


• Insights to Drive Apple iPad Success


• Will Apple Introduce the Innovation Expected From Google?

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Creating Customer Value and Conversation

by Braden Kelley

On playfool.com I came across a very interesting potential partial solution to the societal problem of drunk driving using an integrated approach, that combines an interactive game with advertising and the services of the local taxi association. And of course, the bars and clubs are happy to participate in order to reduce their risks (or maybe out of the goodness of their hearts). This is a great example of how to create customer value and conversation instead of just shouting at potential customers via traditional advertising.

So, without further ado is an interactive marketing experience not likely to be mistaken for the Wii:





Are you creating customer value and conversation with your marketing efforts?

Can you think of other interactive experiences or innovations to help combat societal ills?


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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Watch Out Nintendo

Apple Is Pushing The Limits Of "Interactivity" And Going 3D

by Idris Mootee

Apple is going to push the limits of "interactivity" and planning to go 3D. Using a camera to detect a user's position and overlay it onto an any on-screen object, giving the impression of a "reflection" and creating a more immerse experience. Apple's latest technology would address that through the use of a camera or appropriate "sensing mechanism."

Apple is filing a patent on this innovation. The technology is capable of defining the visual properties of different types of surfaces and decide on how well it would reflect light. Using this, images of the user and their environment could be recreated on the screen with effects added. "Using the detected position of the user, the electronic device may use any suitable approach to transform the perspective of three-dimensional objects displayed on the display," the application reads. "For example, the electronic device may use a parallax transform by which three-dimensional objects displayed on the screen may be modified to give the user the impression of viewing the object from a different perspective."

"To further enhance the user's experience, the detected environment may be reflected differently along curved surfaces of a displayed object (e.g. as if the user were actually moving around the displayed object and seeing his reflection based on his position and the portion of the object reflecting the image." It's a kind of a virtual reality, crossing over the real world with a digitally created one, but giving the visual perception that an object is real.

This provide game developers new ways to use their imagination to come up with new games that cross the two worlds. It is a direct challenge to Wii. Nintendo has a lot to worry about. Gaming will go 3D very soon. The Blu-ray Disc Association released its finalized 3D specifications. 3D playback will be "display agnostic," meaning that the format will be compatible across "any compatible 3D display." What exactly a "compatible 3D display" is still an unknown, but I believe we need to get a new TV to watch 3D. PS3 is probably ahead in the game.


Editor's note: Will Apple incorporate this kind of technology into the rumored Apple tablet?

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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Apple, Nintendo, Innovation, and the CEO

by Braden Kelley

I came across this quote from Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo:


"My job is to find the potential in something that others can not see, to secretly pour our resources into them and turn them into hits before anyone else catches on,"


The quote was too long to fit in Twitter, so I thought I would share it here because I love the insight. This is the key to successful innovation captured in a single sentence. This quote also highlights one of the most important jobs of a CEO - to lead innovation:

1. To invest in the insights research and exploration necessary to identify the next innovations


2. To fund projects built on these insights (even though they may be risky)


3. To shield the exploration efforts of the company from its ongoing exploitation of current products, services, and markets


4. To build a balanced innovation portfolio


5. To build a tolerance for risk taking and individual project failure within the portfolio


6. To encourage collaboration and to serve as a bridge across silos


7. To be a champion for innovation both inside the company and externally amongst suppliers, partners, and even customers

The quote came from a Wall Street Journal article where the author implies that Mr. Iwata thinks that Nintendo and Apple aren't competitors. In my view, Mr. Iwata is either posturing so that the press doesn't hype the rivalry, or he is a bit blind because Apple most definitely views Nintendo as a competitor.

The real question though is who will dominate mobile gaming five years from now?

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

What's Your Blockbuster Strategy?

by Steve McKee

Six months ago the Blockbuster Video store a mile from my house closed. Last week, the store three miles from my house closed. I don't even know where the next closest location is, so I guess my family has rented its last Blockbuster video.

While I was surprised that both locations near me were shut down, I had read that Blockbuster recently announced it would be closing up to 40 percent of its locations in order to shore up operating profit and reallocate its growth capital. Whether or not the move will save the company is an open question, but it does offer a good case study of the never-ending cycle of creative destruction that continues every day in a free economy.

The video rental business has always been a game of distribution. A generation ago Blockbuster put thousands of mom-and-pop video stores out of business by offering better selection, efficiency and convenience. Today, Blockbuster is a victim of those same forces via a host of competitors, from premium cable to pay-per-view to Netflix to Redbox. As technology rapidly evolved, Blockbuster's bricks-and-mortar strategy increasingly looked like an anachronism.

The company is trying to evolve by experimenting with its own mail-order, online, kiosk, and even cellphone download options. But it may be too little too late. The lesson for those of us in other industries isn't if you live by the sword you'll die by the sword--in business, we all live by the sword. The lesson is no matter how big, strong and successful any of our companies may be, there are always competitors out there honing their blades. And their advances may not come from the avenues we expect.

Stay sharp.

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Steve McKee is a BusinessWeek.com columnist, marketing consultant, and author of "When Growth Stalls: How it Happens, Why You're Stuck, and What To Do About It." Learn more about him at www.WhenGrowthStalls.com and at http://twitter.com/whengrowthstall.

Innovation in Education

Teaching Moves Beyond the Classroom

Somewhat surprisingly, and despite huge advances in technology and communications, very little has changed in the way we teach - either in formal educational settings or in the world of work.

Whereas the ways we learn and access knowledge in our day-to-day lives are almost entirely informal, the vast majority of teaching is still done in classrooms and lecture halls. We learn through examples, trial and error and discussing ideas - with everyone acquiring knowledge at their own pace and in formats that suit them. We teach through one-size-fits-all curriculum and 60 minute classes where sharing is akin to cheating.

The good news is that this is starting to change - albeit slowly - as educators and trainers are increasingly experimenting with new technologies.


Making Use of Social Media Tools

Social media would appear to lend itself neatly to education - social learning if you will. From YouTube videos (see below) to classroom wikis, educators are starting to see the value in cooperation via social networking tools. The tool of the day, Twitter, has found some particularly interesting uses. Dallas history professor, Monica Rankin, has been experimenting with using Twitter in the classroom - using a weekly hashtag to track comments, questions and feedback posted by students during class. As she noted in her blog:

• "Most educators would agree that large classes set in the auditorium-style classrooms limit teaching options to lecture, lecture, and more lecture. And most educators would also agree that this is not the most effective way to teach. I wanted to find a way to incorporate more student-centered learning techniques and involve the students more fully into the material."

(Further reading: Twitter in the Classroom).


Online Video Creates a Global Classroom

The idea of openly sharing course content via video first gained notoriety with MIT's 'open courseware' model. The idea is simple, and it's spreading. Academic Earth provides access to video lectures from some of the world's top professors at Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. The Open Educational Resources Hub brings together free to use teaching resources suitable for primary, secondary and post-secondary educators - all freely submitted by other educators. Even Britain's grandly named Royal Society provides free webcasts of their events and lectures.


Gaming Gets Serious

Nintendo's series of 'brain training' games are the consumer-incarnation of the growing serious games industry. Companies and organisations like the Serious Games Institute are championing the use of virtual reality simulations, RPGs and even simple PlayStation and Wii style games to help deliver everything from literacy and numeracy training to health and safety modules.

PSPs (Playstation Portables) in particular have been growing in popularity with some educators due to their portability and multiple functionality - which allows for both display and capture of multimedia content. A once failing school in England recently saw huge improvements across the board after introducing games like Thrillville (which challenges players to run a themepark) into the business studies curriculum and encouraging history students to use the PSP to record classes for later study and view historical documents in detail.

(Further reading: Futurelab's article on PSPs in education).


Mobile Learning Comes Into Its Own

In a similar vein, as mobile phones become more like tiny laptops (and more powerful than many), their use in education and training is ever more prevalent. A quick stroll through the iPhone app store reveals simple educational tools like FlashMath which helps teach arithmetic to elementary school level. At a recent elearning conference, British Army Major, Roy Evans discussed how iPods were being trialled in action in Afganistan as an alternative to printed language flash cards. The only negative feedback was that soldiers didn't need the Army issued iPods, they had their own.

Of course there have always been pioneers making innovative use of technology in education but as the Net Generation come of age, they are bringing with them a new way of working, and learning. The beginnings of a groundswell of change in how we teach perhaps?


About the Author

Mark Nagurski writes about innovative new business ideas at iddictive.com and elearning in the public sector at elearninglounge.com

Disruptive Innovations in the Gaming Industry?

I came across an article on Windows Live the other day highlighting a couple of potential distruptive innovations in the gaming industry that I thought I would share with you.

The first is OnLive, based in Silicon Valley, which simply put is Video Games On Demand. No downloading, no physical media, just click and play. All you have to do is plug in a sleek mini-console (about as a big as a pack of cigarettes), or load a 1mb plug-in into your PC browser. The company was founded by noted technology entrepreneur Steve Perlman (WebTV, QuickTime). OnLive spent seven years in stealth development before officially unveiling at GDC 2009 for a Winter 2009 Launch - check out the video (53 min):





Zeebo Inc. is the second company attempting to challenge the gaming industry leaders with disruptive innovation. Zeebo Inc.'s "video game console for the next billion" is aimed at countries like India, China and Eastern Europe where a PlayStation 3 might be out of reach. Games will be distributed through cell-phone networks, using Qualcomm technology. Graphics quality isn't leading edge, but Zeebo is wagering that developing markets will think that it is good enough. They have launched it in Brazil so I guess we will find out quickly whether it will succeed with customers.

What do you think?

@innovate