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I finally had a few minuted to breath and think today and what a timely arrival was the latest email from TEDTalks in my inbox. I have heard a great number of mentions on “cradle to cradle” design over the past couple of years. Most of this in a negative or absurd light as what some people consider a knee jerk reaction and unrealistic for a real manufacturing society. As I am almost never dissapointed by TED, I listened to the embedded talk below. (Click Here if your corporation blocks embedded video)

For those of you that may not be familiar with William McDonough here is an introduction from the TEDTalk site that might give you a little insight.

“Architect and designer William McDonough asks what our buildings and products would look like if designers took into account “All children, all species, for all time.” A tireless proponent of absolute sustainability (with a deadpan sense of humor), he explains his philosophy of “cradle to cradle” design, which bridge the needs of ecology and economics. He also shares some of his most inspiring work, including the world’s largest green roof (at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan), and the entire sustainable cities he’s designing in China.”

Here is a link to the website for his book “Cradle to Cradle“.

For those of you interested in design, lifecycle, and how to couple the two, you are in luck. Check out the TEDTalk topic of “Design Like You Give a Damn“.

I have visited slideshare quite a few times in the past, but really didn’t capture it’s full potential until today. I was originally linked into this presentation on “Death by Powepoint” by Alexi Kapterev.

I then looked at the associated links ala youtube style. It was interesting to see the wealth of presentations when you search for innovation. This is really a way you can cross-pollinate and get outside what you are used to without leaving you computer. For those of you on LinkedIN check out “leveraging Social Networks for Results below”

• Word of Mouth Marketing, WOMM
• Outside Innovation
• Leveraging Social Networks for Results (Interesting)
• CX Innovation Summit 2007, Miami
• Speeding Up Innovation
• BusinessSummaries.com summary of the book Seeds of Innovation
• Finding Innovation in the 500lb Gorilla
• The Art of Innovation by Guy Kawasaki
• 10 Lessons of Innovation - Idris Mootee Keynote

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.

• This was one of the earlier links I sent to myself pertaining to enzyme based fuel cells.
• 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).

[Here is the original article for the work above]

I was reading over at endless innovation this post which points to a presentation by Amy Smith at TED.

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.

TEDTalk - Ideas worth spreading.

I was reading Endless Innovation (I find myself a regular reader lately) and read this post on Nokia’s Brand and Design Priorities.

If you don’t see the embedded slideshow the direct link is Here on Slideshare.net.I thought some of the excerpts were quite succinct and powerful.

It was unfortunate that I found this great example of innovation through through a tradegy. Engadet has a post on the unfortunate death of a man while operating this piece of equipment. The piece of equipment is the Spider radio controller slope mower. made by Dvorak Machine Division.

First let me point out that this particular unit is a radio controlled unit and not a robot per se, but a remote controlled machine (more like an RC car).

What caught my eye was the innovative nature of this piece of equipment and how it is an interesting solution to a well-defined niche market in the lawn care world. It is very common to find steep embandments and slopes around roadways, overpasses, dams, reseviors, lakes, or other municipal areas. If you look at what are the alternatives and current incumbents in the area mowing slopes, you will see the uniqueness of this offering by Dvorak.

Although I can’t quote direct prices, the spider looks like it could have a significantly lower cost of ownership than the usual tractor-swing arm or standard ride-on slope mowers. The productivity for the spider versus the hand held trimmer was approximately 6-1 from the spider commercial video at their site. It really changes the user expectation in terms of mode of interface, capital investment, and operator safety (in the long term). It is also interesting in that it might be much more successful than other remote controlled mowers (examples of few robotic lawnmowers). The key here is that most people initially think to replace the largest volume of mower on the market which is the home user base. In this setting the concept of a remote controlled mower is a luxury and feature overkill. Where in the specific market of slope mowing The Spider offers a unique value proposition when you compare the Spider Slope Mower to the rest of the market. This is an example of a disruptive technology to this particular sub-segment the lawn care market.

I have a couple of interesting links that people may be interested in.

• My friend forwarded this transcript of a pre-commencement lecture given by Narayana Murthy (chief mentor and chairman of the board, Infosys Technologies) at the New York University (Stern School of Business) on May 9. The theme of the lecture was the great impact that chance events played in shaping his life. Quite a good lecture. It really got me thinking as to the random events that lead to long friendships, family, professional success, and perception altering moments.

• I got a note in my email today with links to 3 new TED Talks.
  • John Doerr: Seeking salvation and profit in greentech
  • Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Photosynth demo on SeaDragon and PhotoSynth (AMAZING)
  • Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: How to help Africa? Do business there

• Also some interesting articles in SmallTimes this month. NanoDynamics is planning an IPO.

• The rankings for the top Schools with Nano programs according to SmallTimes is out. ( or the quick view for the impatient).
• The SmallTimes mergers and acquisitions summary this month seem to have quite a few interesting tid-bits.

  • Xradia with it’s minaturized microscope offerings with some new funding.
    
  • NaturalNano Funding deal is in there (Notice the much improved website with their new money).
  • SolarDiesel with a huge buyout deal on the plans to builds the worlds largest biodiesel plant.
  • Arrowhead Research Corporation continues its end-run to gobble up all the SWNT patents it can find with the purchase of C Sixty Inc. and CNI

• This story from Seth Godin about alignment is concise and to the point.

“When there’s a gap between someone doing her job and doing the right thing, then management has failed.”

Over the last two days I was pointed to two interesting on-line moneymakers. They were interesting in how they make money. One sells something that is ubiquitous and in most caes considered a nuisance, while the other harnesses the power of a distributed crowd to provide a service at a very low cost.

The first example is http://www.prairietumbleweedfarm.com/ where Linda Katz of Garden City, Kansas sells, you guessed it, tumbleweeds on the internet. The original post I ran across is over at Unusual Business Ideas That Work. This excerpt from the linked article pretty much explains the origin of the business.

“It all started as a joke,”says Katz, 49. She asked her son to build her a family Web page so she could communicate with friends and give it the tongue-in-cheek name Prairie Tumbleweed Farm. Never mind that she didn’t even live on a farm, but in a subdivision. Nevermind that you can’t cultivate tumbleweed, which spreads its seed as it tumbles in the wind. For authenticity’s sake, Katz added a price list ($35 for a big weed, $25 for a midsize one, $20 for the small economy model)

So tongue-in-cheek or not, Katz created a business when she wasn’t looking for one. It turns out that her buyers range from people looking to decorate their houses, to movie studios, to academic researchers, to people in love with Westerns, and even for tumbleweed Christmas trees (picture at right by erissiva). Seth Godin has a comment on this site on how this site emerged totally from organic search engine traffic.

The second site is www.pickydomains.com where they have an original take on making money off the domain name trade. Most people make money (some say a lot) by speculating on domain names. Some companies can hire consultants for thousands of dollars to come up with a catchy and traffic-driving domain name. Pickydomains takes the “power of the crowds” approach. As a person/entity wanting to use their service, you pay $50 and a list of requirements for your domainname. For example you would provide the basic site type, hyphens/no-hyphens, .com or other, mandatory keywords, etc. Pickydomains would post this to their list of users, a large list. The users would submit possible solutions. If the users’s submission is chosen, pickydomains shares half the $50 fee. PickyDomains also can buy any ones the customers don’t want, but they think are worth something. If they don’t provide something you are interested in, they refund your fee. This is a great example of having a crowd solve a problem that it is difficult to solve as an individual or a small group. Interesting business idea. If you do to the site you can see some exmples of successful wins. The one comment I have is that this service is too inexpensive. Just like the previous post Here, people expectation are linked to evironment and pre-text.

I just made a post recently about Glowing Bacteria and how it is a good example of “convergence problem solving”. Basically where you are leveraging advances in adjacent fields with your core piece or expertise of technology to really do something beyond the scope of any of the individual pieces you are combing.

I think this advancement is a great example for a creavity excercise I call “List Combination”. This is a great example of convergence for one application. Where else can I use this same solution to make money in another application or field? (Something we all wish we could do more of?)

It basically works like this. In this case I have a new technology which might turn out to have a short list of useful attibutes (lets us use 3, while this technique works well with less 3 or 4, you’ll see why later, any more you can’t get it done).

• It allow you to spread out a liquid or paste
• Detect something you usually can’t see
• Does it quickly in a remote location (with a device you can carry).

S o here is the excercise. Start by making a couple of lists of answers to questions based on your 3 attributes. Be careful and general in your question definition. In my case I would use.

1. What can I spread a paste or liquid onto?
2. What would I like to detect that I can’t see?
3. Where (or in what context) do I need to know something is present?

Now make a list of answers to your questions. Set a target # that you want to work with for each list (example start with 25). It is really important to set a target for the list length, because you have to make it high enough to get out of the context you have already created in your mind. This is really effective if you can get someone to help you that you haven’t told the example technology to yet.

The next step is to build the three possible 2-D matrices where Lists 1-3 are your axis. So cross lists 1/2, 2/3, and 1/3. I do this in Excel . Basically start picking cells at random and decide if the juxtaposition you have created for each X & Y combination makes sense. If so put a X or a green color in the box. For those you don’t like or don’t make sense color them grey or red. Do this for all threee matrices separately. Then take the green squares and list out your combinations or your short lists of only the green cells.

At this point you will have 3 lists of pairs based on your three lists. Now iterate through these combination lists with whatever 3rd axis you didn’t do in teh combination. So these are the three: (If I have 4 attributes, I choose to do only the best 2 combinations I see and combine those, 6 combinations to start with is too many)

1. Intersection of List 1 & 2, with List 3
2. Intersection of List 2 & 3, with List 1
3. Intersection of List 1 & 3, with List 2

Given this activity you should be able to generate 3-5 good adjacent markets or uses for this convergence technology that you can then go and explore in detail. I really like this because of the juxataposition that occurs as you do the list comparisons. Set your lists big enough that you have to get outside your first assumption. And this really works in 2 or 3 man teams. Sometimes those crazy combinations get you very far away from what you were thinking.

Good luck and think about this next time you have to look at the “Where else can I take this Convergence Technology?” type of problem.

If you use this to solve a problem, let me know by dropping me an email or comment.

Disclaimer: I cannot remember seeing an example of this anywhere but can’t be sure that someone else didn’t come up with this method 1st as it seems pretty intuitive.