I was looking through some older emails today and I came to the conclusion that I have a bad habit of emailing myself links to interesting articles or newsitems I find, but not getting them out on here. So here’s and effor to catch up.
An article on Superpaper made from clay platelets. The article claims that is it will revolutionize the composites industry as it can replace high strength carbon fiber or even sheets of nanotubes. Here is the original press release for you to decide what you make of it. Considering the final material is succeptible to water it will take this plus another advancement to make it revolutionary. Here is another link from NetComposites.
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Akron have developed a process for making polymer surfaces covered with carbon nanotube hairs, imitating the thousands of microscopic hairs on a gecko’s footpad.
Other researchershave new data from studying the compressive fatigue properties of carbon nanotubes and report that they are surprisingly resiliant.
Here a link to an article on Roland Piquepaille’s blog conerning some prototype electrochromic sunglasses put together by the University of Washington. What I really liked about this example is not that electrochromic materials are totally unknown as there has been significant work on them for decades. It was that they built a prototype to try it. I also see applications like sunglasses as the perfect enabling application for electrochromic materials. The fact they they are fault tolerant, non-mission critical, and bring a new axis of differentiation, and are adjacent to the “real” or “large” market. Applications like these allow for processors, material suppliers, and designers to become comfortable with a new innovation and accelerate the acceptance in the markets that will ubiquitize electrochromics (Building and Construction).
I was doing some searching on LinkedIN the other day and ran across this list of tips on LinkedIN. I am not sure I agree with some of it, but wanted to point to the various links and let you decide for yourself. (Note: Originally from a LinkedIN Questions post.)
I found the presentation to be quite refreshing and eye-opening. She specializes in designing solutions for the other 90% of the world. Engineering solutions to common, but life-threatening problems in developing countries. Highlighted in the talk are designs for cleaner burning cooking fuels made from local resources that achieve equivalent performance to wood based charcoal.
For those of us that develop products or design something for a living, it was a kick in the teeth. Many of us work very hard to solve difficult problems (sometimes very niche I must admit) with some of the very latest technology at our disposal. This is a reminder of:
#1 Try to solve those problems that are important.
#2 Get your head up out of “the way” things are done and look at what works.
#3 Look at how to match your resources, methods, and economics with the environment and situation at hand.
Guy Kawasaki has a great interview with Jeffrey Pfeffer (Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University) related to his book What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management. What really struck me as interesting was how true some of sentiments rang with me. I few Questions and Answers that really hit home are quoted below.
Question: What can companies do to get smarter? Answer: Companies learn just like people learn—by trying new things and seeing what happens. That requires, first, a tolerance for failure, since by definition, learning means doing things you aren’t very good at.Second, it requires structured self-reflection—after-action or after-event reviews so that instead of having one year of experience repeated 20 times, people and companies actually accumulate learning over time.”
Question: What are the characteristics of a good work week and vacation policy? Answer: We live in a world where ideas and innovation are paramount. But people can’t be creative if they are exhausted. And when people work when they are tired, they make mistakes. If we have learned anything from the quality movement, it is that the cost of finding and fixing mistakes is greater than the cost of preventing them. So, give people time off. And, by the way, the younger generations want a life as well as work. Work-life balance is a great way to attract—and retain—great people.
Question: What are the characteristics of a good incentive plan? Answer: Incentives should be large enough to provide an occasion for celebrating success but not so large as to distort behavior. And incentives can include recognition and things other than money. Companies get themselves into trouble all the time by being too clever with their incentives.
Stock options did reward leaders for getting the price of the stock up—it’s just that it was often for a short period, and was accomplished by distorting earnings. Be careful what you pay for—you might just get it.
Question: What role should budgets play in the management of an organization? Answer: Budgets should be general guidelines. As hard and fast rules, they become subject to “gaming.” People delay doing sensible things, push expenses around, hide sales, etc. And also, budgets often just reward the best forecasters and negotiators. It is possible to make “budget” as you lose market share and go broke, as long as the targets are set low enough.
Think about your organization and how these questions and opinions line up with what your company does or does not do? How would some of this advise go over at your company? Is it unconventional or down-right heresy? Have some of the effects mentioned by actions in these questions come true at your organization?
One interesting item on the site I didn’t list above is the Nano Google Maps Mashup. One static image is shown below that shows the relative activity in Nano across the United States. At the link you can zoom in on your area and see the companies locally are working in Nano. Looking at my area, I know the data collection is not complete, but the concepts is a nice way to visualize the geographical relationships to data.
So is your company on the map? If it is you should at least check out the rest of the data at the site.
