“… will require changes in product design and business approaches that have ripple effects throughout supply chains and economic systems.”
What are multi-level solutions? How is MIT driving innovation towards zero waste in circular economies? Can apps really fuel data-rich pictures to save the planet? What’s on the near horizon for healthcare? Is money really the root of all evil? Or, is it simply an entrenched mindset highly resistant to change?
And, finally why are physicists “high-fiving” themselves for discovering a formula for water drops? Is it about the potential commercial opportunities from the formula’s cascading, rippling effects?
We Need a Data-Rich Picture of What’s Killing the Planet
“To tackle the marine litter mystery, Eriksen and other antipollution groups built an app that hundreds of volunteers used to map the banks of the Los Angeles River, where trash was entering the marine ecosystem. Now cities can use that data to do surgical interventions, like identifying hot spots that need more trash cans or more frequent cleanup. “It’s totally scalable,” Eriksen says, and groups from Ecuador to Hawaii plan to use the app for their own surveys.” WIRED · by Clive Thompson Illustration CAITLYN GRABENSTEIN
Calling Innovators To Join The Circular Economy Challenge
“This realization, fuelled by escalating consumer concern, is driving businesses to find multi-level solutions for circular economies with zero waste. In support, MIT’s Solve initiative is calling for innovators to submit their sustainable solutions. The leading question is, ‘How can people create and consume goods that are renewable, repairable, reusable and recyclable?’ Generating these solutions, Solve proposes, ‘will require changes in product design and business approaches that have ripple effects throughout supply chains and economic systems.’” by Natalie Parletta ROMOLO TAVANI, ADOBE PHOTO STOCK
The next frontier in health care: regenerative medicine
“This is done through diet, lifestyle, acupuncture — which stimulates the body’s own stem cells — mindset and other practices. Regenerative medicine is an exciting aspect of this care. ‘Prescriptions and surgery certainly have their place in health care, but I think people in general are recognizing the need to be stewards of their own health,’ Dr. Lawrence said. ‘If we can look at the whole person and picture, we can see a long-term better result. Hopefully this is where we’ll see healthcare going — with different health care providers coming together.’” By Lauren Glendenning Shutterstock images
Rise of the Extinction Deniers
“What does all of this serve? Obviously, just as with climate denial, the more you deny that extinctions happen or that they’re a problem, the more you can drill, blast, pave, extract or eliminate—all so you can remove any barriers to your “freedom” and make as much money as you want. Amidst a very real extinction crisis affecting species around the globe, that’s the type of mindset that needs to go extinct.” Scientific American By John R. Platt Credit: Paul Brennan Pixabay
Scientists Discover an ‘Unexpectedly Simple’ Formula Behind The Nature of Water Drops
“This infinitesimal phenomenon has been studied by physicists for decades, but while the overall concept may be easy to imagine, discerning the mathematical relationships that underpin such electrified explosions has been anything but. Now that it’s been figured out, scientists say this one formula could lead to new advancements in everything from space propulsion to mass spectrometry, high-resolution printing, air purification, molecular analysis, and more.” BY PETER DOCKRILL (peter bocklandt/iStock)
If you find this digest valuable, please visit us at Know Laboratories and sign up to receive free email updates about “Thriving in an Age of Accelerating Uncertainty.“
“I am not a huge fan of perpetual clichés like, “The world will be changing faster than ever before,” and “This time is different,” 
“Yoshua Bengio wants to stop talk of an AI arms race and make the technology more accessible to the developing world. Alongside 
“Machine learning is 
“
“Today digital technology is all the rage because after decades of development it has become incredibly useful. Still, if you look closely, you can already see the contours of its inevitable descent into the mundane. We need to start preparing for a new era of innovation in which different technologies, such as genomics, materials science, and robotics, rise to the fore. You can’t rapidly prototype a quantum computer, a cure for cancer, or an undiscovered material. There are serious ethical issues surrounding technologies such as genomics and artificial intelligence. We’ve spent the last few decades learning how to move fast. Over the next few decades we’re going to have to relearn how to go slow again. So while the mantras for the digital age have been agility and disruption, for this new era of innovation exploration and discovery will once again become prominent. It’s time to think less about hackathons and more about tackling grand challenges.” 
“Our analysis suggests the same will be true of AI, robots and related technologies, but the distribution of jobs across sectors will shift considerably in the process.” PwC said about seven million existing jobs could be displaced by AI from 2017-2037, but about 7.2 million could be created, giving the UK a small net jobs boost of around 200,000. Some sectors would benefit disproportionately, however, with jobs in health increasing by 22%, scientific and technical services by 16% and education by 6%. By contrast manufacturing jobs could fall by 25%, transport and storage by 22% and public administration by 18%, PwC said.” 
“1. New global landscape. The global economy is being redefined by frequent political and societal changes, which increase uncertainty and risk for businesses, the report noted. 2. Rethinking business models. That means enterprises must rethink the way they have traditionally run their companies, and embrace new tools like digital technologies and data analytics to evolve and remain relevant. 3. Human and machine collaboration. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have already impacted the workforce, and the relationship between humans and machines will likely continue to augment human skills, more so than replace them, the report noted. 4. Digital workplace. The digital workplace involves flexible, connected workspaces, as workers’ digital lives become integrated across their job and home, according to the report.” 
“Appealing to people’s emotions helps new ideas cut through the clutter. A “best beats first” innovator takes the measure of a competitor who may be dominating a market with an acceptable product, and then leaps to the front with something even better. It’s about winning through cunning, instead of using the conventional playbook of scaling a similar product with heavy investment to maintain share. Many innovators told us that the “fast follower” meme is bereft of emotion: no one ever wins people over by talking about their capacity for imitation.” 
“They include a set of artificial intelligence technologies – computer vision, deep learning and natural language generation – aimed at helping firms “build decision engines that increasingly automate operations and engagement processes,” Forrester analysts said in the report. Other key technologies include business networking fabrics, blockchain and other distributed ledgers, edge, quantum and serverless computing, additive manufacturing, and virtual, augmented and mixed reality. Unlike building up a company’s tech foundation by leveraging various IT products and services, CIOs are increasingly being tasked with deploying and overseeing capabilities with the goal of “creating breakthrough business solutions.” Mr. Hopkins said. 
“The world is constantly changing and improving, which means any business that does not innovate will be outpaced by the rest of the economy. To ensure your company evolves with the times, consider the following tips: 1. Find inspiration in unlikely places. Some industries, such as health care, endeavor to avoid disruption by placing strict regulations on what and how providers can serve customers. Countless companies have tried to disrupt health care over the years and always encounter plenty of red tape. The latest attempt is a joint venture by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. Stay tuned: The disruption there may be big. 2. Stay ahead of technology trends. 3. Lean into disruption as a positive force. In all fairness, disruption is no fun for established businesses. Leaders who are able to view the shifting sands as a prompt to improve their organization and evolve with consumer demands, however, stand to gain financially.” 
“For many support workers, robotic surgery is much less satisfying than open surgery. There’s a huge amount of solitary setup work to allow the robot to work, then there’s a big sprint to get the robot draped and docked to the patient. And then…everyone watches the procedure on TV. While the surgeon is operating via an immersive 3-D control console, the scrub folds his arms and waits. The nurse sits in the corner at a PC entering data, or sometimes checking email or Facebook. There’s not a lot to do, but you always have to be ready. Compared to open surgery, it’s clean, safe, and dull work.” 
“Researchers suggest artificial intelligence is now better and faster at detecting cancer than clinicians. Squamous carcinoma. An AI system distinguishes dangerous skin lesions from benign ones. More accurate than dermatologists. An 
“Businesses are changing right before our eyes as the digital transformation takes place around the world. And yet many dinosaur leaders, as I like to call them, are still in these businesses risking extinction if they can’t adapt to this ever-changing environment. It’s true that leaders must be willing to 
”Technology- and data-based transformation has arrived in full force. And if you think that your company or industry is immune, think again. Only twelve percent of the Fortune 500 companies who were in business in 1955 are still around. Before stepping down as CEO of Cisco Systems in June of 2015, John Chambers spoke at a conference and bluntly told attendees, “40 percent of businesses …unfortunately, will not exist in a meaningful way in 10 years. If I’m not making you sweat, I should be. In an era of constant disruption and economic volatility, more and more companies are being forced to confront the reality of diminishing profits, stagnating growth and organizational uncertainty. Regaining the agility to compete comes down to more than simply cutting costs. It’s about embracing new ways to drive cost-consciousness and transparency, identifying mispent (sic) resources in order to unlock new sources of revenue and growth, and creating an operating model that can deliver on business strategy while supporting a culture of continuous transformation.” 
“Turo has a stable of owners who want to rent out their vehicles. Then there are people like me who want to try different makes of cars. Based in San Francisco, Turo makes its money on the margin between what the car owner charges it and what the rental customer is willing to pay, less its costs for insurance, overhead, etc. The company has been around since 2009, but under a different name, RelayRides. It was rebranded in 2015, and has grown exponentially. Turo is now in 49 states (not New York, for insurance reasons) and has about six million customers and 250,000 cars up for rent, according to a company spokeswoman. Satellite operations are now in 56 countries. Once I installed the Turo app on my iPhone and signed up for the service, I put in the dates that I wanted my Corvette, and where I wanted to pick it up.” 
“Hosting applications on cloud platforms is becoming increasingly common, if not an enterprise standard. Among the potential benefits are rapid scalability and elasticity—enabling systems to grow with changing business demands while minimizing costs—as well as on-demand availability, providing agility and faster deployment. Such benefits can be particularly valuable for innovation, which may help explain why cloud computing is growing so quickly. Worldwide, public cloud services revenue is 
“A typical 600-megawatt power plant used at half capacity to handle peak power demand uses as much water as 100,000 people would in a year. Cooling towers at power plants use massive amounts of water–in the U.S., around a trillion gallons a year–to cool down high-temperature steam. Right now, much of that water is just goes back into the atmosphere as plumes of vapor. Varanasi estimates at a 600-megawatt plant, the new technology could save 150 million gallons of water per year.For power plants, or other buildings with cooling towers, using the new equipment could save millions on water bills, in some cases. Industry could reuse the captured water directly. But because the cooling towers create distilled water, it could also be treated further and used for drinking water. “If you install a cooling tower, it’s like doing desalination,” says Varanasi, who estimates that the technology could offset the need for building 70% of new desalination plants in the next decade.” 
“With blockchain technology, South Tyrol can create a chain of certification that authenticates and maintains people’s data indefinitely — instead of having to verify every instance of someone’s data each time a citizen enters their personal information. Moreover, Gasslitter believes blockchain can act as an integration layer to help simplify the province administration’s IT landscape. He says, “We have more than 1,000 different software applications to store and use citizens’ data. Every agency is like a small kingdom and doesn’t share data. Our goal is to simplify processes and increase transparency. We’re creating a model of data sharing within South Tyrol that we hope can be scaled across Italy.” 
“Spider silk transformed into fiber for tissue reconstruction; paper that conducts electricity; renewable diesel fuel; and new techniques for regenerating aging or diseased skin. These are just a handful of examples from a new 
“It took us months to realize what was going on here: The most resistant scientists and engineers saw open source methods as a fundamental challenge to their professional identities. They defined themselves as “problem solvers,” but open innovation crowdsourcing platforms didn’t let them play that role; instead, they had to frame problems for someone else to solve. “I’ve always been attracted to places that allow you to be able to think and solve greater problems,” one scientist told us, “If I can’t do it at NASA, what is keeping me from going somewhere else?” By contrast, there were other scientists and engineers who perceived the open methods as an opportunity to enhance their role and capabilities. As some engineers described it, this transition was a shift from thinking “the lab is my world” to “the world is my lab.” They argued for the need to let go of the “how” of their work and refocus on the bigger “why.” They called on their colleagues to shift their professional identities from “problem solvers” to “solution seekers.” 
“But in this moment, few business trends can compete with the magic of 
“Earlier, entrepreneurs used to call data analysis “business intelligence,” which perfectly characterizes the essence because data could provide a competitive advantage to those who used and interpreted them properly. Nowadays, a new term for referring to business intelligence was coined: “big data.” This name also makes a good sense because since the times of “business intelligence” the volumes of data became incredibly large. As the result, more effort should be applied to deal with them and make it useful for analytics professionals.” 1. 
“SOMETIMES THE FUTURE shows up so fast it hits us in the face, like a brick wall in a VR headset. Other times the miraculous promises of technology—the rearrangement of our very DNA, the blockchain-enabled toppling of Facebook—are frustratingly slow to arrive. But either way, the future is coming, and we should be ready. In the following pages we lay out a series of predictions, starting with some changes that are immediately upon us. Then, looking down the road, we get ever-bolder in our prognostications, year by not-so-far-off year. —The Editors
“1. Start The Low Hanging Fruit
“No other organization in the world better embodies the power of audacious and continual disruption than Amazon. This is the company that, upon its founding by Jeff Bezos in 1994, took on publishers and booksellers around the world. Along the way, it forced many incumbents to disrupt their business models or turn off the lights. At the heart of everything Amazon does is a short and simple mission statement: “Our vision is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” There is always the risk that Bezos and his team will lose focus in their never-ending quest for the perfect disruption. But for the time being, at least, Bezos has not only sustained his position as the master of business disruption but has also become the richest man on the planet. The company he founded 24 years ago is set to achieve $200 billion in revenue sometime this year, sustaining an annual compounded growth rate of 41 percent.” https://www.entrepreneur.com John F. Furth Image credit: Michael Tullberg | Getty Images
“Here are four examples where crowdsourcing can help drive healthcare innovation.
“While Bitcoin and cryptocurrency may have been the first widely known uses of blockchain technology, today, it’s far from the only one. In fact, blockchain is revolutionizing most every industry. Here are just a few of the practical examples of blockchain technology.
“The Mariana Trench—the deepest point in the ocean—extends nearly 36,000 feet down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. But if you thought the trench could escape the global onslaught of plastics pollution, you would be wrong. A recent study revealed that a plastic bag, like the kind given away at grocery stores, is now the deepest known piece of plastic trash, found at a depth of 36,000 feet inside the Mariana Trench. Scientists found it by looking through the Deep-Sea Debris Database, a collection of photos and videos taken from 5,010 dives over the past 30 years that was recently made public.” https://news.nationalgeographic.com Sarah Gibbens A plastic bag floats through Manila Bay in the Philippines. PHOTOGRAPH BY RANDY OLSON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
“If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America—and the Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic-wrapped snacks—their plastic trash would likely still be around, four centuries later. If the Pilgrims had been like many people today and simply tossed their empty bottles and wrappers over the side, Atlantic waves and sunlight would have worn all that plastic into tiny bits. And those bits might still be floating around the world’s oceans today, sponging up toxins to add to the ones already in them, waiting to be eaten by some hapless fish or oyster, and ultimately perhaps by one of us.” Laura Parker Photographs by Randy Olson
“Entrepreneurs and investors operate leanly. They know big-bang innovation rarely ever works. Instead, they take small, smart steps toward a solution without worrying about nitty-gritty features. In contrast, enterprise teams are content to chew through budgets on the wrong things because they worry they won’t receive the same monies the next year if they don’t. Talk about wasteful! See your product or service from a scrappy, entrepreneurial viewpoint. Don’t waste time on that obscure API or flashy layout. If users want it, they’ll tell you during the prototyping phase. Spend where your product provides value, and innovation will follow. Far too many firms don’t connect the dots between their budgetary input and innovation output. It’s not as simple as spending more money. The truth is, it’s about agile planning, frequent failure, and regular reallocation of resources. The sooner your innovation budget accounts for those things, the better your balance sheet will look.” 
“Many of these problems can be traced back to a basic economic distinction: the difference between invention and innovation. Invention is defined as the discovery of a new exciting idea, product or approach. Innovation means applying that idea through changes in operating models and mindsets. Too many areas today contain the invention but not the innovation. This harmful decoupling is driven by a combination of biases, blind spots and inertia (knowing you need to do something different but ending up doing more of the same). In too many cases, the flaw has less to do with the need to come up with a brilliant idea, and more a matter of embracing it and adapting accordingly. That requires being curious, open-minded, willing to listen, open to experimentation, creating safe zones for candid discussions and learning from failure. Economics has persistently failed to address this fundamental — and solvable — problem. The gaps between inventions and innovations have led to too many foregone welfare-enhancing opportunities for individuals, companies, governments and society.” 
“It will likely take a decade or so until some AI technologies become the norm. While that provides plenty of lead time for the transition, few companies are taking action now to train their workers. Another little-noticed problem is that the AI systems themselves are being created with data and algorithms that don’t reflect the diverse American society. Accenture research shows business leaders don’t think that their workers are ready for AI. But only 3% of those leaders were reinvesting in training. At a Davos meeting held by Accenture, Fei-Fei Li, an associate professor at Stanford University and director of the school’s AI lab, suggested using AI to retrain workers. “I think there’s a really exciting possibility that machine learning itself would help us to learn in more effective ways and to re-skill workers in more effective ways,” she said. ‘And I personally would like to see more investment and thought going into that aspect.‘” 
“Clarifying these seven factors for each critical decision throughout your organization will help you get started on identifying opportunities for AIs to either reduce costs or enhance performance. Here we discussed a decision associated with a specific situation. To get started with AI, your challenge is to identify the key decisions in your organization where the outcome hinges on uncertainty. Filling out the AI Canvas won’t tell you whether you should make your own AI or buy one from a vendor, but it will help you clarify what the AI will contribute (the prediction), how it will interface with humans (judgment), how it will be used to influence decisions (action), how you will measure success (outcome), and the types of data that will be required to train, operate, and improve the AI.” 
“In quantum technology, information is carried on quibits, single photons. For the quibits to be actually useful in quantum technologies, though, they need to be produced by Single Photon Emitters that work at room temperature (it’s just practical, really) and at telecom wavelength (the most efficient way to transfer information via optical fibres) all at once. It wasn’t easy, but they’ve done it. Those plucky Australian Scientists have gone and done it. And they did it using a material found in DVDs.” 
”’Dick Feynman relished the pleasure of finding things out, and he had a remarkable knack for conveying the excitement of science to a general audience,’ says John P. Preskill, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech. ‘We hope this event will capture some of that boundless curiosity and sense of fun that made Feynman such a treasured colleague.’ The event will be divided into two days, with an evening celebration on Friday, May 11, and a scientific symposium during the day on Saturday, May 12.” 
“The notion of an underlying quantum probability proved to be too much for Einstein (and Schrödinger as well), who would now turn his back on the new quantum mechanics forever to pursue his dream of a causal unified field theory. In the end, Einstein would never realize this final dream, and the “strangeness” of quantum mechanics continues with us today.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.