Information systems innovation

Archive for the ‘Analysis’ Category

Mercedes-Benz has released Active Night View Assist Plus in cars which is meant to detect pedestrians on the road ahead by highlighting them on the display in the car using infra-red light projectors.  Once a pedestrian is detected, a spotlight is shown on them, meant to warn the driver and pedestrian.  A person can be detected from 262 feet away and has been proven to help alert people of oncoming traffic.  The spotlight is not a distraction to other drivers according to this article.

I would consider this an incremental sustaining innovation in car/headlight safety.  There are many preventative measures added to cars to prevent accidents and death; this is one of them.  According to the article, this innovation is one of many being done to headlights in cars.  Since more pedestrians are killed at night than during the day, this seems to be a great innovation that will help alert drivers of people on the road, giving them time to decrease their speed and avoid the person.  I would like to see this in all makes of cars and not just Mercedes.  I am unsure as to whether this Active Night View comes standard in the cars or if it costs more to have put in.

Thoughts?

http://www.gizmag.com/mercedes-benz-active-night-view-assist-plus-spotlight/17224/

Thanks to http://www.popsci.com

IBM Unveils Nanophotonic Chips that Could Lead the Exascale Computing Revolution

“IBM is prepped to lead the way into the next era of exascale computing…saying its next-gen silicon chips that communicate via pulses of light, rather than electrical signals, will be commercially available starting next year.

This would allow for chip technology and processors that are 1,000 times faster than today’s petascale computers.

This switch from copper to light is what would make chips that communicate over optical interconnects rather than electron swapping connections can perform much faster. And the more optical connections you have, the better the performance.“

This would be a radical disruptive innovation, however due to its price being higher (at least initially) it would take time for it to be cost effective for overshot and more importantly mainstream customers. However, the businesses which employed these chips would be given an excellent “sword” and create a higher motivation to innovate with the added possibilities.

The biggest winner here will be whoever can produce the cheapest nanophotonic, allowing for successful penetration of the mainstream client base and retail level sales. This will rely heavily on new, standalone value networks, as using overlapping ones will not have the materials needed to create this type of chip. This will create asymmetrical motivation and allow a firm to release up-market disruptive innovations.

I read an article on Philly.com regarding Comcast’s new Internet TV service. The article goes over how Comcast is offering it’s Xfinity TV service to Comcast cable customers. I think that with the success of  Hulu, and online television as a whole the Cable Giant is trying to break out into a new-market. This service is also aimed at existing customers.

Chttp://www.philly.com/philly/business/homepage/20101025_Comcast_offers_TV_online_to_its_TV_subscribers.html

The Edge's facebook complaints----CLICK to view on Facebook.com

Everyone is probably familiar with the Edge and Temple’s student housing….and how incredibly slow and painful it can be to get anything fixed or replaced. The Edge has taken a bold, highly-innovative move and has allowed their facebook page to become a medium for resolving maintenance requests and allowing students to gripe in general. I think this is a great example of the asymmetrical motivations of various organizations, as they are coming in under the shield of more accessible and simpler customer service. This difference could potentially become their sword, as people might be drawn to the Edge because of their high-level of attentiveness to service issues.

However, I would also point out that this method places much pressure on the company to vigilantly watch the page and professionally respond to each post. Missing just one may cause an irate tenant who feels they were intentionally ignored. Plus, an outsider may come across their page and view the many service requests as a sign of a run-down building with a lot of unnecessary hassles involved.

I believe the Edge is right in taking this risk, however I would make a different page for service requests than the actual main page advertising their business though.

I remember discussing some aspects of new gaming innovations earlier in the semester, so I thought it would be interesting to discuss Xbox Kinect that is due to be released next month.

Click on the image below to see a video of the gaming console in action.The whole idea behind Xbox Kinect (also know by its development name, Project Natal) was to create a gaming console that in essence turned a person’s entire body into its own game controller.  This new technology builds upon what other consoles like the Wii have started with motion sensor technology.  Kinect is a sustaining innovation in that it improves upon what already exists in the gaming world.  It aims to attract undershot consumers who are looking for newer, better technology to get the most out of their gaming experiences.

I think the success of gaming systems is dependent on how well they can seamlessly link the real world with that of the digital.  By creating game controls that are reliant on a persons movement alone, one can create a game system that is naturally intuitive.  By removing the physical controller its like removing a barrier between the two worlds.   The actions a user performs in a game become less foreign and more an extension of the gamer’s own human ability.

I think that is the goal or at least should be the goal of any new technology that attempts to attract undershot consumers.  Innovative technology needs to be able to remove the barriers that limit interaction and it needs to make use of or enhance human sensation.

What are your thoughts?

Charged just by being in the room

Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla, who went on to father many of the inventions that define the modern electronic era, was the first to let electrons off their leash, in 1890.

Tesla based his wireless electricity idea on a concept known as electromagnetic induction,holds that electric current flowing through one wire can induce current to flow in another wire, nearby. The product of the 21^st century is an inductive device, much like the one Tesla envisioned, but a lot smaller. It looks like a mouse pad and can send power through the air, over a distance a few inches.

Michigan-based Fulton Innovation unveiled its first set of wirelessly charged consumer products at the Consumer Electronics Show early this year.

Their product can be viewed here: http://www.powermat.com/

I don’t have a new innovation to post but instead had a hypothetical situation I thought would be interesting to discuss.

I was reading an article about the Nobel Prize winner Ivar Giaever.  He stated that in science the basic laws of nature are known and that there is essentially nothing left to discover.  He stated that many of the research being done today is simply expanding or improving upon existing truths.

Do you think the same rational can be applied to technology?  Will we ever reach a point where there are no more truly new innovative technologies that create entirely new markets?  Will there ever come a point where producers have to focus entirely on over and undershot consumers because all they can do is simply improve on older technology?

I think the idea has some validity.  It made me think just how many undershot and overshot technologies were mentioned as examples of new innovations in this class.  There are so many technologies like mobile phones for example that simply build upon older technology and there seems to be a technology that already exists for almost every task we have to do on a daily basis.

Where does innovation come from? What are the signals that can lead us to innovative products or services? This week we will focus on Chapter 1: ChristensenSignalsofChange.

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Business Week has an article called “How to Measure Innovation”, wherein it discusses a British team and their goal to create an index to asses innovativeness in each industry.

Claiming that the original standard of money invested in R&D does not correlate properly with innovations, since banking and other industries spend very little on R&D yet have made some of the largest leaps in their field. Some of proposed criterion for this new innovation index:

organizational change

investment in management and skills training

competitive performance over time

a peer review in which company executives both help to define the innovation indicators and rate each other.

“Innovation today is multidirectional, not only about producing new products but also about services, technical standards, business models, and processes.”

So I guess this is considered “innovative innovation”?

Article: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jul2008/id20080716_335504.htm