innovation playground Idris Mootee

Virtual Reality Is The Next Big Thing. Beyong Shocking And Disruptive. It Will Create Tens Of Billions Of Value. Who Will Win This Game?

The world is becoming crazier and more exciting as Virtual Realities are becoming more real and the lines between our physical world and virtual word are fast becoming blurred. Next year 2016 will be an important year as companies are finally making virtual reality real with only 2 main players participating on the race: HTC/Valve, Facebook/Oculus will be making VR products available. Microsoft is partnering with both Valve VR and Oculus while Sony is pushing hard not to miss the bandwagon with Morpheus.

The user behavior of VR has yet to come to shape and will be evolving for the next 5 years, the idea of information conveyance is interesting and playing a special role in the realm of virtual and augmented reality. We are learning to design cues in the VR world to tell users where to move or go or to touch. This is still a challenge as don’t think about it that much in the physical world. We walk into a room assuming the chairs are moveable and the cabinets are not. That sense of reality has changed in the VR world. Anything can happen to everything. It is like living in a dream.Those who have experienced the HTC/Valve Vive were completely fascinated by the experience. HTC Vive is clearly ahead of the game.

For VR, unlike 2D gaming or in the real world, we have arrows and signage to tell people where they can go. In the VR world when user is wearing a head-mounted display, the users are actually operating in two realities – the real, knowing that the user is wearing these gears and the virtual, which is so immersive (more so for the HTC/Vive roomscale technology that allows you to walk around the room) and therefore difficult to find a frame of reference.

The question is do we want user to have the feeling of wearing a space suit or simply feeling they are acting as normal with no gears on them? The awareness of wearing a suit will remind people they are in a VR world unless the suit is a normal suit. While body motion sensing is great when body movements are being interpreted by motion sensors as perceived input and turns it into commands and controls. Basically, with this technology, you are the controller.

KOR-FX is making an interesting gaming VR vest that uses acoustic feedback that, in turn, is processed into haptic feedback. Its software analyzes the feedback felt by the user, depending on what’s going on with the on-screen and what the user is doing it with. The controller “acousto-haptics” is to define acoustic feedback that is being felt.

Sixense is another company currently developing a wireless solution to hand input in virtual reality with the STEM System making use of alternating current (A/C) electromagnetic field to accurately track body movements in terms of position and orientation within a radius of a stationary base.

In designing VR experience, the haptic side of things is perhaps the most difficult to address. Oculus has yet to demonstrate an “official” control mechanism for the Rift, instead letting each developer use the peripherals they find most suitable. I am speculating they may end up figure out a visual hand-tracking technology from a front mounted camera. So what is the best way to navigate in the VR world? Input is still a key challenge for VR as a pure look-based movement (turning your heads) supported with some analog input (mouse in your hand as an example) but sometimes the head is looking at a different direction and the hands are not in sync. This can causes problems as if the system is receiving two very different commands.

Expanding information conveyance is still early in the usability learning curve and we are a few years away before arriving at a dominant model. There are still many creative options we can explore and they are not mutually exclusive either. A voice based system guiding the user as an example. Once we start adding social interaction in shared virtual environments, it will explode. Social VR means social presence and this is a $20 billion dollar business at a minimal.

The inevitable evolution of inputs in some form of controllers will keep coming. Xbox and Playstation will need to think how to migrate their current controllers to take advantage of the new requirements (not easy) and we can expect to see more innovation from start-ups including companies such as Razer Hydra from Sixense, or camera-based systems which are limited by the camera’s line of sight. HTC/Valve is also working on some cool solutions aiming to provide the best and not just the first.

Immersive VR systems that alter your sense of physical reality can give user the illusion that you are located inside an unreal virtual environment – or a telepresence - the ‘sense of being there’ or ‘feeling of being there’. In the early 1990s this idea was transplanted to virtual reality, where instead of being at the remote physical environment, the participant was in a virtual environment with a sense of being at the place depicted by the virtual displays.

A Swiss healthcare hybrid MindMaze announced its pioneering move into the VR and gaming spaces with MindLeap. Combining headset-mounted neural sensors and motion-capture cameras, the system is designed to “facilitate neuro-powered immersive virtual and augmented reality” on consoles platforms as XBOX, PlayStation and Android. This is still in development and I am not sure if it can be done soon. They leverage technology developed by the company for a range of medical applications in treating neurological deficits, such as helping amputees control robotic limbs. Neurologial control is still a bit of science fiction and will be a long way before it can be mass commercialized. I like to dial my HTC M9 with my brain some day.

For now, we will be sticking with head-mounted and handheld controllers. They are enough for us to re-create boundaries and rethink presence. Every time you pick up a HTC Vive,  you are about to enter a virtual boundary that didn't exist before. Exciting and also scary!

There Is A Difference Between Business Turnaround and Business Transformation. It Is Easy To Tell Which Is Harder.

All companies go through some kind of crisis at some point but what does it take to get out of it? There aren’t many successful turnarounds in large companies and the bigger the company and the longer the history, the more difficult it is for any turnaround and its success rate is lower. 

Harley Davidson in mid-life crisis when Richard Teerlink joined the company in 1981 as CFO, the company had US market share of 15% and reported a loss of $15m. The company was killed by its strong Japanese competitor led by Honda. In 1989, he took over as CEO and returned the company's focus to increasing quality, improving service and producing world-class heavyweight motorcycles. In the end it is the product that turned the company around. Harley Davidson recovered its U.S. market share to 50% and posted annual sales of more than $1.7 billion. Teerlink left his post as CEO in 1997, and served on Harley Davidson’s board of directors for another 5 years. He did a great job as a turnaround manager.

The story of IBM’s brush with bankruptcy is another greatest business comeback of all time. IBM’s problem was that it was quickly becoming irrelevant and experiencing zero growth. The company had also made some bets that didn’t work out. Lou Gerstner took control in 1993 and created more focus in the company. He did a great job as a transformation manager.

One lessons here is not mix up a turnaround with a transformation. It’s very important to distinguish between a transformation and a turnaround.  A turnaround involves a company that has fallen off the rails and has executed poorly and still competing in the same product/market space. It takes a tough driven executive to make it work.

A transformation is truly a lot more difficult and takes a lot more deep wisdom with execution playing a secondary role. The company must fundamentally change its mental and operating model. It is a reinvention and companies who are used to doing things their way find it difficult to start doing things differently. This is not a 3 or 6-month initiative. It’s very, very strategic, foresight driven and problematic.

For any successful transformation, it takes leadership rather than management. “I hire people brighter than me and I get out of their way” as Lee Iacocca puts it. I am not sure who said something like “Inventories and supply chain parts can be managed but people must be led.”

I’ve both architected and supported quite a few successful turnaround behind the scenes as strategic consultant in my career, my simple advice for transformation leaders is people don’t just care what you know unless they know that you care.  You need to earn that by caring and then knowing.  It takes inspirational motivation to motivate managers to commit to the vision of the organization no matter how hard it is to achieve the vision. It also takes intellectual stimulation to foster innovation and creativity to challene the groupthink or yesthink. It is as much an intellectual undertaking as much as an executional exercise.

The world is not ending. Winning for tomorrow requires a vision. Brilliant strategies don’t show up spontaneously particularly for complex and fast moving industries. It comes from strategic dialogues, strategic foresights, options, even failures and mistakes. The ability to see the problem as a whole and then integrate a variety of perspectives and not simple quick fix. There is no simple quick fix.

The Come Back Of Hardware. Is Software Becoming A Commodity?

The world is suddenly obsessed with smart technologies and this time around it seems unstoppable. Our everyday electrical and mechanical industrial object will now be occupied and ran by software and connected to the cloud. It also means each object (as small as some smoke detectors and as large as automobiles) will now be equipped with tons of sensors and can be able to adapt to different environment and individual needs.

It is essential that the next wave of industrial revolution will make us more efficient and empowered (and more human I hope), and data will be at the heart of this revolution. That's another big conversation. All the Nest, GoPro and Beats received multi-billion-dollar valuations through private investments or acquisitions and everyone is wondering why these hardware companies suddenly in such high demand. Because hardware and software are going through different commodity lifecycles and now software is becoming a commodity. They used to be difficult and expensive to develop and even to deploy, that that is changing. It is hard for software company to get into hardware much as hardware companies struggle to get into software. Hardware cannot be done by a few geeks in the basement, and involves massive R&D and specialists including megatronics engineers, electrical engineers, industrial designers, wireless engineers and usually takes a longer time to develop.

Software you can fix it with a download, and hardware you can’t. They are massive supply chain challenges when it comes to logistics and component supplies. The value of firms who can marry software and hardware will have a competitive advantage over their competitors. Essentially everything we use today will be fitted with some sensors, processors perhaps, and may be a screen and will recarnate and become of Internet of Things. For the last three decades, software engineering has advanced to a state that sophisticated codes can be embedded into machines. And the availability of cheap sensors and super powerful processors is powering this cycle of data revolution. All of a sudden, software, hardware and communications infrastructure are advancing us into a new era. Old world manufacturing + low cost computer processing + ubligious computing + cloud = smart new world and many cool products.

It sounds like the Apple story all over again, does it? The hardware and software integration capability of Apple, the ecosystem, the brand and user experience are now not only inspiring consumer gadgets company, not it’s influence is beyond its own industry. I know this is an overused story, but he Apple influence is still here, and perhaps it will be here for a long time even when the company stop creating great stuff one day. Microsoft ex-CEO Ballmer saw that coming in 2012 in a letter to shareholders. "It's important to recognize a fundamental shift under way in our business, we see ourselves as a devices and services company." Microsoft had the strategy right but couldn’t execute it fully with the exception of X-Box. Microsoft’s future revenue will still be coming in from software and it isn't going to change anytime soon. The transformation from software to hardware is harder that you think.

The idea that hardware is now the new software is pretty real. There is a business model implication here. These hardwares are mostly priced between $100 to $250 and they a gateway and great way to sell software. We are seeing a revival of hardware and this time, it is hardware first and software and then date on the cloud, it will bring new technological advances in cloud-powered hardware that boosts productivity, efficiency and manifests as beautifully designed objects that fit into our hands and homes.

Now 3D Printers Will Become More Affordable. Can You Think Of Something You Want To Print At Home?

There has been a lot of hype on 3D printers at last year CES and now this year I saw tons of competitors offering low-end models as well as high-end professional desktops. XYZprinting Inc. from Taiwan, a new entrant revealed their da Vinci 3D printer with a starting price of just $499, cost as much as a color laser printer a few years back. It is a simple plug-and-play design for small business and personal use. Now I am not sure how often if you need to use one if you’re not a designer. The nice thing is it allows access to a database for free 3D models and 12 different color filaments to choose from. I guess you can print your iPhone case, earings or even chess set. Still hard to think of a reason to own one at home other than novelty.

On the higher end,ChefJet 3D printer and the ChefJet 3D Pro printer costing between $5,00 to $10,000. There is the Solidoodle’s 4th generation printer priced at $999 which I have not tried out. And there is the MakerBot’s Replicator priced at $2,899 but this year they introduced a compact Replicator Mini which will cost $1,375. Another 3D printer maker Cube will be introducing a new model which will be priced under $1,000. We can see these printers selling below $500 in a year as they will get aggressive in pricing to gain market share. The quesion remain what is the reason to own one?

I don’t think the business is in home 3D printers, the real money is in the business market such as the ability to print spare parts, or complete part without assembly and complex inner structures too difficult to be machined. 3D printing makes it possible to manufacture pretty much anything in just 5-10 hours depending what you’re printing, and, as you can surely imagine, this capability would come in very handy in product parts which sometimes take days to locate and ship due to inventory supply issues. A piece of equipment breaks and your repair technician can print it for you.

3D printing has attracted a lot of interest but still at it's infancy, the material science necessary for a lot of these claims about printing tooth or even human organs just isn't there yet. You can't use the same plastic or metal for different parts. It comes down to different tolerances and they are critical. So we’re a few years away. And we will get there.

The Future of Wearables? Everyone Will Get It Wrong. And The Winner Won't Be Google, Apple, Sony Or Microsoft.

Wearable is hot. It is supper hot. The billion-dollar question remains, “How do we create the iPhone of wearables?” and “How do we create sub-ecosystems around these wearables?” and "What new business model opportunities will emerge?" The buzz is here but the money is not here yet. Everyone is betting on it and no one can afford to miss the train. Most wearable out there are just toys for the geeks. I can't find a reason anyone wants to buy this Sony Watch. Wll now everyone can see my Facebook messages. What is dumb idea! OK I can use it to tell time and the weather.  Apple’s iWatch or whatever it will be called and Google Glass are getting so much attention and everything is figuring out what are the high value potential applications. Google has openly promoted its potential as an always-on, always with you computing device but it has yet to find a killer application beyond the obvious. They are hoping someone out there can figure that out for them.

And China is watching and Baidu is rumored to be working on a "Baidu Eye," an internal code name for a wearable device that features speech recognition for Mandarin, as well as image search technology, which pulls up relevant information based on a photo. So if you see a product, it will search for product info and price and availability. That take 'showrooming' to a new level.

 
The path to mass adoption for wearables will not be a straight-forward one and there are technology, user behavior and production economics barriers to cross.  Apple, Google, Samsung, Sony and LG are all committed to play this game. Apple recently acquired a small company Passif Semiconductor founded by two Ph.D. students from the University of Berkeley, worked on developing chips with radios that consume very little power and work with the Bluetooth Smart (a.k.a 4.0 and low energy) standard. The acquisition will provide Apple with addition al expertise and expect an acquisition boom as players gearing up for the big game.

With all these buzz and emerging innovative conceptual designs competing for the dominant design there are still many questions to be asked about what the future holds and how consumers will adopt different product paradigm. Even the smartphone itself is still shaping our behavior today and we are still actively reprogramming ourselves. Smartphone is becoming the operation system of our professional and personal life and our relationships with the outside world and emerging systems around it.  And when it comes to Operating System, the main battle will be an OS that will interoperate across all devices. This is the big play.

Expect to see all sorts of novelty design coming into the market. There are lots of novelties out there including a wearable electronic synthesizers to be embedded into T-shirts turning them into human musical instruments. There are also people using neurophysiological signals and brain waves to play video games. These will never be mainstream wearables.

The success of any dominant design for wearables will be based on successfully tackling of the 3Bs: Balance, Benefit and Beauty.

Balance: The design of the wearables needs to fulfil the requirements of fitting comfortly with our bodies and many human factors considerations. The design needs to include studying the anthropometric measures of the human body and of the equilibriums between the various zones of the body. The connection between the physical form of wearables and their active relationship with the human form will be key to the concept success. These nerdy high-tech design will not cut it. Other considerations include comfort, the design to adapt to different body type (male vs female, tall vs short) and study of non-obtrusive shapes and the optimal conditions to let the sensors work well.

Benefit: The designers must first determine the real problem the wearable concept is trying to solve and needing to solve and able to solve. The benefit doesn’t have to be a known benefit today and could be some needs user don’t even know they exist until they see it. The design can open up new possibilities for people and  must fit within the context of the user’s lifestyle and experience and the infrastructure around us.

Beauty:  Consumer needs to love the design. It needs to have the visual appeal that the user won’t look like something you see in a Sci-Fi movie. It needs to be expressive and it doesn’t only limit to the form factor, but the overall interactive experience. The connectivity piece is key it needs to allow for seamless wireless connection. The interactions or interface design is the most tricky one. Are we thinking touch screens, gestures or eye tracking?

More next week. I won't tell you what works. I can tell you what definitely won't work. And like everyone else, I could be also be wrong.

Idea Couture Is Ready To Take Innovation And Design Thinking To The Next Level.

This has been a very tough two months for me in terms of time and I have not been spending much time writing my blog as much as I used to. It is getting a bit difficult to find the time as we were going through a reorganization, adding new offices, putting new management system in place and at the same time trying to finish my two books on the weekends which will be published in May and Oct this year.

I am excited about my new Design Thinking and Strategic Innovation book that I hope to fill a gap in the market place. And management of the company is taking more and more of my time. So the time I can afford to touch projects is shrinking, I think I only spend 25-30% on projects these days instead of 40%. And people think I spend a lot of time on my MISC magazine, the reality is it is less than 2% of my time. I have a great team helping me with that. I only pick the theme, cover girl and the designs.

We have always designed Idea Couture to be a company that is agile, high style and deserve great love. But we recognize this is an ambitious goal because we want style, speed and substance. Not everyone can make it. I remember someone said something like "Out of difficulties and impossibilities grow miracles." Perhaps we’re naïve. Idea Couture is not a place for small thinkers or people with big egos. It is place for people who believe in being AWESOME and won’t spend time fighting for excuses.

I take pride of seeing people that I mentor growing everyday. We’ve come a long way since launching what we called an innovation firm – whatever that means. It is not a design firm with MBAs; or management consulting firms with some designers or digital agencies calling themselves innovation agencies. We are built from the ground up to do what we’re supposed to do – we work with organizations to uncover innovative ideas that sustainably grow market share or create new markets through powerful customer experiences innovation. We are close to the completion of our reorganization and I am very excited to wait for more new people joining us every week.

Our technology team is amazing and we’re now adapting new methodologies so we can deliver better and faster cross-platform solutions. Our strategy team is growing and growing and have so much untapped potential (unsolicited resumes are flying in dozens everyday).

Our design team is world class and I personally make sure they will remain the best all the time. They not only produce great work, but also open minded and egoless, and fun. At Idea Couture, design is at our very core, not the surface. Design here is under transformation and it is not done within a studio, it is done in the real world in future tense. Design is where technology and art breakeven and where love and logic intersects.

Our insight team is AWESOME with all capital and it is our intellectual powerhouse. When the company advanced forward to a new stage, our foresight capability was not meeting the standard that I required both in terms of strategic knowledge and professionalism. So we needed a full upgrade. Now we have a new global team and a plan to fully integrate that into our innovation process.

We have no time for amateurism. People are committed to giving their best. We just launched our idea couture culture page, which is my personal most favorite part of our site that best represents us. It shows us who we are as individuals which really what this company is all about. People are here for a reason, not for a job. They find their best and it is our job to bring out their bests. It is not always easy. It is how they find meanings. There is a strong correlation between job satisfaction and meaning.

We refuse to act like a "grown-up" company; however at times the company and will always want to think we’re small even though we have 6 offices around the world.

We refuse to act like a “think tank" as we don’t just think, we do.We don't just produce report, we ation on them. We use visual output for sensemaking and mobilizing change that increases organization adaptability and agility.

We refuse to act like we "know it all" but we believe we are equipped to find the best available solutions.

We refuse to accept any "best practices" as we are the one who invent “next practices”.

We refuse to accept that “amateur foresights” is better than no foresights. Actually it is better to have no foresights than wasting time on amateur futurists.

We refuse to accept that "ideas are everything", in fact ideas don’t worth much. They are cheap. There are no shortage of people with ideas and can never execute anything. The art of jump starting innovation is strategic commitment and it is more valuable because nothing happens until someone do something.

We refuse to accept people with "big egos", it is simply not part of our culture. But there is one nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk and think about other people at all.

Idea Couture is a working prototype and will remain a working prototype in time to come.

Will The Facebook Phone works? And For Microsoft and Samsung, The Future Of Smartphones Is Dual-Screen.

The Facebook phone is here.The Facebook phone rumor has been around for a while and it is a matter of time it becomes real. I think they should have done it earlier and should have larger ambition other than just trying to design a ‘home’ for Android.  Home sounds like a PaaS personalization tool and not sure how many FB users will want this. FB see the potential for them but it is hardly a threat for others but Android might modify their terms so this won’t happen again in the future.

With FB already commands more than 20% share of people's time on mobile devices (excluding Instagram), it can further boost FB mobile usage particular for younger users. Will FB take over 20% of all Android phones, we have yet to find out. For now, FB is pretty convinced that people will want a phone designed around it and perhaps with additional hardware feature that is uniquely FB. 

FB should really be making its own phone, it is reported that they are working with mobile chipmaker Spreadtrum to pre-optimize its software for the cheapest Android handsets. It is hard to compete on the high end with Samsung and Apple, if Facebook prodcued its own low end phone, though, it could create a new business model in the mobile market and FB could negotiate better data plans for their members or partially subsidize them with advertising. This is not easy for Facebook to jump in and get carriers to agree to sell its phone.  For me, I see no reason to have a FB phone.

For Microsoft, they are waiting to see how well Nokia's Lumia phones Windows Phone 8x and 8s sell before making a strategic decision to enter the smartphone market on its own. I think it makes perfect sense for them to decide to play in the hardware space. They have made that decision with  Surface tablets. It is a matter of time that they will play in this smartphone market, they risk becoming irrelevant as market is switching into different computing format.

Microsoft is thinking dual-screen and has applied to patent a dual-screen phone interface. One screen for device interface and the other as a monitor and is detachable. NEC is making one and is marketing them as the "best cloud device," the dual-screen Android from NEC handset also has a super powered battery to keep both displays running.

It will be interesting to see what can we do with two screens. We're already designing dualscreen user experience models and I think this is catch on. The mobile industry is changing faster than anyone could have imagined and the interface paradigms there have been static. Here is the opportunity for us to introduce new ways of interacting with others and new ways these machines can understand what we need.

 

This Is Just The Begining Of The Mobile OS Battle. Plenty Of New Players Will Join The Game.

The mobile OS war is getting more interesting and the current market share battle is between iOS and Android will go on for a while. Will there be a breakout of it will be more like a Pepsi vs. Coca Cola market share battle that has been lasting for decades? Android is getting better momentum the last two years and I expect that to continue. I think the overall market share is stabilizing and the other two Windows and Blackberry will remain niche players. Newcomers will join the game and there are three in the US and they are Mozilla, Tizen and Canonical. There are a few emerging ones in Asia and they all worth keeping a close watch, especially those up and coming companies in China.

In China Android accounts for 86% of all new smartphones sales and there are three times as many Android users than the US. The business model is basically freemium, developers hoping to make money from in-app purchase. The Android ecosystem is growing like crazy as people find iPhone is getting a little boring and may be too restricted.  

There will be surprises that in the next 12 months perhaps cool smart phones from China that came from nowhere selling for half the price and have even better performance.  There was a private lab test done on the top 10 most popular smartphone in China a few months back and the result was 5 of the 10 most popular Android devices from local Chinese manufacturers perform better than the imports. They include the Lenovo A750 and the XIAOMI MI 1S.  

Apple is watching the market closely and also struggling whether to add a stylus for the next iPhone,  it will be a tough one as they have always been strongly against it and the Samsung Galazy stylus is nicely designed. There are no definite right or wrong in this business and the behavior changes so quickly.

Expect some big design shift for the next iteration of Android that leverages more of the Hybrid Card layout.  Android needs to jump into the next game in terms of user experience and it demands a shift in overall visual language from current Jelly Bean paradigms to something really different. The jump from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich was a big jump. I believe Android will be looking at gestures control beyond the screen, perhaps the back and even the side. Apple already has a patent filed 2006 relating to using gestures on its back and a recent Google patent might bring that concept to next generation of Android phones. The principle is as easy as touching the back casing of the Android device in order to interact with the gadget and that can drastically improve the user experience. Imagine back tapping to change page or call list etc. It will be powerful when combined with acoustic feedback. The battle of mobile interfaces design has barely begun. And Facebook is joining the party.

How Imagination Can Create The Future? Start With Those Old Comic Books and Sci-Fi VHS Tapes From The Flea Markets.

For centuries we show our human spirit with stories about our glories,hopes, desires and dreams for a better future, one filled with modern machines that enable us to do things we long to do from being invisible or traveling in flying cars or telepods (may be not telepods as I always worried that something would go missing during the transmission). These stories manifested itself in art, comics, fictions, movies and even science discoveries.

What was known as “futurism” is the artistic movement that began in Italy and Russia that fast-forward us to the future of the machine age into progressive state of mind. Futurism also championed speed, technology, science, youth and also a lot of uncertainties. It's mantra was that the answers to humankind’s problems lay in the future driven by technology – and not the past. The main literary work of the movement was Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, published in 1909, and generally considered the beginning of Futurism. I still enjoy reading that once in a while.

To invent the futures that we desire, business and government leaders need to see things in new ways that trigger their imagination to dream of new possibilities. Many of them are too "stuck" in the present. That’s when Design Thinking comes into play. Design Thinking is not just about understanding  people's needs.  It can also be used to bring people's imagination to propel us into the future. To see the future, Design Thinkers are equipped to creating guidepost for developing strategic foresight. It is called Future Casting.

Future Casting is how people from the past thought of the future. I remember visiting an exhibition in Prague where artists from the former USSR were imagining how the future was like with its futuristic art of space vehicles. Those Russian Futurists were fascinated with the optimism, speed, and restlessness of modern machines and urban life. They were actually performing Future Casting for the public.

I grew up watching Thunderbird and Ultramen and as a boy and they were the only things that were available for me that I could use as a guidepost for imagination. Funny enough, Ironman is like an unfinished prototype based on Ultraman design with the same battery problem. Ultraman highlighted the bottleneck of all technologies decades ago which is the battery. From iPhone to the latest Boeing 787 we still have not solved the battery problem.

We have always tried to look into the future and try to figure out what comes next. Sometimes we create fictions, fantasies of what may come. Will some of these fictions ultimately become real? There is no scientific evidence for this, I suspect the percentage of fiction becomes real is way higher that some thought our research based predictions that never made it close to become real. These materials open a window into the past and in term a perspective of the future… how the future should have been or their fears of how they were afraid it would turn out.

The realities of tomorrow are the fictions of today. If you want to have good strategic foresights, don’t hire designers or futurists. Hire Sci-Fi writers! And pair them up with behavioral economists and anthropologists and you will get good foresights.

The latest issue of MISC The Gadget Issue which has a special design feature Project 2020 about the future of sex, social and beauty. There is also the main feature How New Technologies With The Power To Evolve, Disolve, Disrupt and Democratie Industy which is fun to read. MISC is now in bookstores in 26 countries. And you can get it from Amazon too.

Can Gadgets Save Healthcare? What's The Next Big Disruptive Technology That Can Reinvent Healthcare? But The Fact Remains That Our Health Care System Sucks, And Will Continue To Suck.

I like the lastest Bond movie and the only thing I missed is smart gadgets. Bond needs to have latest tech toys. I don’t want to see Bond becoming Jet Li. Half the fun of watching a Bond movie is reveling in the odd ingenuity of the clever devices. Bond needs all the tech innovation he could use. Her Majesty's government is not investing enough in innovation for sure. Mi5 has a lot of catch up to do. Perhaps they should retain Idea Couture to develop an innovation roadmap? I might get a call from Sir Jonathan Evan!

In Bond's world, the smart phones have access to intelligent databases; miniaturized radio homing beacons operate on their own encrypted frequencies, the cars come equipped with bullet proof glass—semi-autonomous or remotely controlled—and become invisible to the naked eye. Implantable, traceable RFID chips confirm your identity and carry your medical history. And a smart scan to show when enemies are nearby too. And no, Bond does not need speed dating gadgets at all.

Bond gadgets may have once seemed far-fetched, but in our tech-addled age most are at least possible, if not realized already. In 2009 Harvard Chemists collaborated to successfully develop a low cost micro-fluidic "lab-on-a-chip" (actually it was on paper) solution to identify various biomarkers related to the AIDS virus. This idea of a miniaturized bio-chemical lab is a solution currently being funded and developed by DARPA to get ahead of the bio-weapons curve.

In Casino Royal, a similar device helped save Bond's life after he was poisoned. After plugging into a cell phone, the data from his blood sample was transmitted in real-time back to HQ for analysis. A dedicated team of medical professionals including molecular biologists; immunologists, neurologists and virologists provided advice on how to mitigate the sticky situation of being infected with a designer biological agent from half a world away. The biggest idea here is this can become the premium health service for those who can afford it, specialists are all standing by and all one click away to saving your life. That’s an innovation.

Today, self-diagnostic technologies in tandem with the hundreds of personal health and wellbeing apps have emerged to take advantage of our over-connectivity. We are all a click away from massive global expert networks for information and advice related to described symptoms. Our helathcare economics is not working doesn't matter becasue the cost is too high and doesn't matter who is paying for it. The biggest opportunity for smartphone is not smartphone, it is Personal Health Device. That’s a $20 billion plus industry from the start. We need geniuses and mad scientists and designers to make his real and affordable.

“All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards thier goal. The great scientists, the philosophers, the religious leaders - all maniacs. What else but a blind singlenee of purpose could have given focus to thier genius, would have kept them in the groove of purpose. Mania ... is as priceless as genius.”

                                            ― Ian Fleming, Doctor No

This is anexcerpt from an article co-written with M. Lincez to be appeared in the March issue of MISC magazine the Gadget Issue.

I Imagine Over 95% Of All Patents That Apple Filed Are Useless. Here's A Good Example.

The patent wars are continuing as we speak. With the proliferation of cheap sensors people are talking about putting them everything. We use them in our cars to see if the tire pressure is correct and washroom etc. It is part of our everyday lives already.

Apple just filed a patent application to put sensors in your sneakers so they can send signals to your iPhone to tell you it is time for a new pair. If I am Nike, I would file 100 patents to put sensor in everything from sneakers to sport pants. Is this patent really useful? I think we all have a pretty good sense when do we need to replace them just by looking at it. I don't need sensors to tell me.

The application describes a "Shoe wear-out sensor, body-bar sensing system, unitless activity assessment and associated methods." The application's summary describes the system thus:

A body bar sensing system for sensing movement of a body bar may be provided. The body bar sensing system may include a housing having a coupling mechanism operative to couple to the body bar, a detector disposed within the housing and operative to sense movement of the body bar when the housing is coupled to the body bar, and a processor operative to determine a number of repetitions of the movement based on the sensed movement. In one embodiment, a shoe wear out sensor includes at least one detector for sensing a physical metric that changes as a shoe wears out, a processor configured to process the physical metric, over time, to determine if the shoe is worn out, and an alarm for informing a user of the shoe when the sole is worn out.

I really think this is a pretty useless patent. Perhaps a more useful one is we can have them in our leather shoes and it sends a warning signal to me when the pavement is slippery just like my Mercedes. Today’s sensors are mostly simple designed for specific purposes, like measuring temperature, gas, light or tyre pressure.

Most sensors are designed as part of a closed system design and not connected to any networks. Future network sensors will drastically expand the possibilities by using wireless, radio waves, ultra sound and infrared signals to connec to big systems, we can do a lot with the information that they collect.

The most fascinating ones are those we can put under out skin. LifeCare in Bergen is working on the development of a new type of sensor that can be placed under the skin for measuring the blood glucose level.  It is small enough to be injected underneath the skin and no operation is needed. A nano membrane moves when the blood sugar concentration is irregular. One big challenge is power supply because all sensor needs energy. You don’t want to rely on battery. Some researchers have consequently developed wireless energy transfer between the glucose sensor and a bracelet carrying a battery. 

What I find really cool is the EPOC's Neuroheadset. It is the next competitive field in gaming. The headset features 14 saline-based sensors and a gyroscope and is primarily designed to gamers. Think shoot and think jump! Another application is to help people with disabilities to regain control of their lives. It includes EmoKey, which is a lightweight application running in your computer's background to allow user ot to map out thought-controlled keystrokes. This headset is the used by the Dartmouth Mobile Sensing Group, which created a brain-to-mobile interface that allows you to call your friends by thinking about them. Imagine I am looking at other people’s Facebook pages and it will leave a comment or 'like' for you.

More Gadgets..Smarter Devices...CES Doesn't Want Us To Stop! Where Do We Go Next?

In Vegas for the CES, it is exhausting. I skipped last year but didn’t feel I missed anything. I was not a fan of 3D TV and not impressed with the Microsoft / Ford automobile operating system. It has been a crazy first week this Jan with lots of management stuff to get done as well as finalizing the March issue of MISC magazine to print. It is the GADGET issue. Very happy with it and couldn’t wait to see it out in bookstores and newsstands in eight weeks.

Here I am prepared to be exposed to all kinds of crazy gadgets once I set foot on CES, as usual many are useless and hopeless. There is distinction between the two. “Useless” is product that does not answer to any customer unmet needs, it is just novelty. “Hopeless” is me-too product that tries to compete on price. I hate to think how many tablets will end up going to the landfill. With no Apple presence, it is like everyone here is try to compete with Apple. It is the world against Apple.

Many of these consumer electronic gadgets solve our problems. Problems that we know and problems that we know we have. Often they create new ones while solving the old ones. Humans are supposed to be good at problem solving but we’ve become so reliant on the gadgets in our lives that there are problems we find ourselves unable to solve without them. Sometime in the not too distant future gadgets will not just respond to our commands, they will be able to understand our mood, read our minds and learn our preferences.

When I was sitting at Starbucks, my mind was trying to visually map all those data exchanges between Macs, tablets, mobile devices, watches, cameras, and people. The visual just blows my mind and we forgot how crazy and connected we are.

Never before we have that much access (and speed) to information and knowledge at the palm of our hands and we can almost (yes almost) live our lives without thinking. We tether our brains and other senses to our smart devices and relying on them to tell us when we’re sad, confused, tired, hungry, where to go and what to buy. How far are we before we’re ready to raise the white flag and formally “surrender” to our cognitive independence? What about humanity?  

We are living in a technology-addled age, our gadgets are necessity. I wonder what’s the average number of apps for iPhone users? And how many of them they rely on in their everyday lives? We are becoming lazy. We do less walking because we have cars. Now we do less thinking because we have smart gadgets. Your brain is like a muscle. If you stop using your cognitive skills and instead rely on gadgets to do the thinking for you, in time, those skills will start to atrophy. For me, I used to be able to do complicated calculation looking at tons of numbers and within a few minutes come to sense of what it is telling me. Now I can’t even add up a restaurant bill without a calculator (app). I used to be able to map out the route mentally when I drive from one place to another, now I just listen to the command of my GPS. I used to be able to spell and thanks to auto correction, my spelling is worst than when I was 12.

May be the next innovation is not a product. Just like we’re try gin to think of ways to encourage people to walk or bike to make us more healthier and do less damage to our environment, we should be thinking about applying design thinking to help us to use our brain more – and use less gadgets. What does computational humanity means? Time to get back to the show.

 

10 Big Reasons Why Most Innovative Products / Services Fail? How Many Of Them Are Avoidable?

Why innovative new products fail? Because marketers believe they know the industry, the product market and the customer and their needs.  And after going through cycles of input gathering and any orginal innovative ideas were ultimately turned into something that a lot like their existing products with minor improvisation. Sounds familiar?

Too many firms “innovate” with very few real insight about the market, their customers, or customers’ aspirations, needs or wants. Rather than go out and understand what customers need and expect, they rely on anecdotal evidence and market research, or simply perform some "ethngographic" study performed by traditional marekting research companies. "ethnographic" field work performed withour an anthropologist is like goging to bungee jump without an instructor.  This is a ley failure point of the first order, like jogging on the rooftop blindly down a path that ends off the building.

What leads some innovative products and servies to succeed and others to fail? The answer to this question encompasses a number of different factors. In some cases, the product cannot deliver the promised performance, capability or attract sufficient interest.

Even if potential can be demonstrated early on, it may take a substantial amount of time to reach the projected adoption figures. Or the product’s innovative feature is being replicated by an existing product as an added function and there is no need for a stand alone new product. Or the economics of the new product is not attractive enough and cannot hit a critical mass. Insight into the minds of the early adopters can greatly reduce the risks of failure, which is generally due to one or more of the following reasons:

1. The innovative new products are not shown in the right user context thus creating a misunderstanding of the applications
2. The new technologies behind the innovative product are not linked to an exciting and worthwhile market opportunity or are too niche
3. The innovative new products are not positioned within any product category and also fail to open up a completely new category
4. There is insufficient knowledge and resources for marketers to drive consumer adoption
5. The core functions of the innovative new products cannot support themselves as stand alone products and only work as features.
6. The promised performance of the innovative new product does not materialize and does not provide enough customer value
7. The innovative new products were distributed through the wrong channel and compromise the value propositions
8. The innovative new products perform only a small function and can be included by others in other products as an additional feature thus diminishing the demand
9. The expectation of consumers adopting the new products is over estimated
10. Products are pushed to a skeptical customer group and fail to neutralize the perceived risks associated with the new product.

The innovative new products require an ecosystem of support which did not exist or were not built fast enough. Determining the suitability of market research for innovative new products or services is a challenge. Insights are not only needed in the early phase of ideas gathering, it is equally critical at the pilot stage. Many traditional market research methods are inherently more tactically focused (orientation on the customers of today) and lead to the development of small improvements in existing products and the big ideas eventually diluted. Read more of this in the next big INSIGHT issue of M/I/S/C available in bookstores in 28 countries.

Random Thoughts On Muggles, Magic And Design Thinking.

For those of you who are not familiar with Muggles, they are people who are incapable of magic, and who are usually unaware of the wizarding world. Design Thinking is sort of like wizardries, it takes certain type of people with the certain type of training, Hogwarts or Harvard.

When Muggles think Design Thinking, they see nothing new there and they believe it has been around for a long time, it basically means they still don’t get it and may never will. They hardly see the real challenge, it is simply not to invent a better mouse traps. We care capable of doing more and being more innovative. The power of our imagaination is what it is.

"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."  ~J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 1999, spoken by the character Albus Dumbledore

Design Thinkin is alot more than lateral thinking and creativity de Bono style or ad agency style brainstorming. Design Thinking fills the gap created by management theories and business schools which analytical thinking and data-driven decision making override intuition where empathy is never part of the equation.

Companies have been battered by system level economic failure, extreme uncertainties, and the failure of traditional forms of strategic making, leadership styles and management model. These wounds have left businesses gazing hopefully towards Design Thinking. Design Thinking is bringing a refreshed, revitalized, and rejuvenated approach to management and strategic thinking- however, design thinking is far from a cure-all. It takes a certain type of people who are comfortable with different thinking styles. I’ve read so much poorly written papers about design thinking and many of them don’t even grab the basic principles and its true transformational power.

Often people talk narrowly about design and prototyping, but Design Thinking is not just bringing the power of empathetic creative problem-solving to bear on a human needs, it is an organization culture, a mindset, a framework and a toolkit to solve complex wicked problems that we created. It provides a balance between the needs to create customer value, shareholder return and social value. Design Thinking is strategic.

Everyone comes to me hoping to join Idea Couture claims they are creative, they have great ideas and can turn ideas into great products and create new markets. Go deeper and I ask the how… there comes the sound of silence. Great Idea, great products, great business is a tagline, not a strategy. Design Thinking can be applied to fill the gaps of traditional strategic thinking. The increasingly complex needs of the business need a new toolkit and Design Thinking is exactly what is needed. It helps to uncover new needs, creatively redefine value, reconfiguration of value-chain activities, develop compelling brand narratives and create markets that are yet to exist. When my friend Roger Martin advocates Design Thinking, he is not talking about ethnography or prototyping; he is talking about a whole new management paradigm.

Everything is designed—from behavior, systems, organizations to public policies. Design is universal. The dirty secrets of why how big corporations destroy shareholder value are actually no secrets. Everyone from the board of directors to the frontline employees knows 'why' a company is 'stuck.' Because their structures and management systems are so rigid and can’t adapt to changing market shifts or respond to any disruptions; their over focus on core competencies and optimization that prevent them to see beyond the core and; fail to see and anticipate the future and even if they see it they fail to act on it. This is where Design Thinking comes into play.

Everyone understands the need to make money and everyone hope they can do magic. And everyday many moguls are trying to create magic with cute packaging and fancy taglines and hoping to make a lot of money, off course it won’t work. The real magic lies in understanding deep human desire and unmet needs and anticipate emerging behavior, not every company truly understands how to do it. They teach those at the Ministry of Design Thinking.

There's Gotta Be Easier And Cooler Ways To Transfer Files Between Devices. A Lot Of People Are Working On It.

When people talk about innovation generally people are quick to refer to something completely new. The question is how many new ideas are really new? Or recanation of old ideas or new applications of old ideas? Or just new ways to package old ideas? It is not uncommon that multiple companies or people are working on the same new idea but no one knows each other are working on the same thing?

So many people are working on innovative ways to send and receive files over a wireless network which is done through Bluetooth or infrared or whatever. Some engineers are playing with the idea of using the optical spectrum that offers better security and higher transfer rates. Engineers from Pennsylvania State University have now succeeded in moving data outside the usual line of sight restrictions at speeds of over one gigabit per second, more than double the max speed available today.

The engineers have developed a system where a high-powered laser diode transmits data by converting electricity into infrared light, which then bounces off any walls and surfaces before being received by an avalanche photo diode, where it's converted back into electricity and translated into usable data. Using it in a room with no windows will ensure that any transmitted signals do not escape and cannot be intercepted or less interferences. Not sure how many rooms are completely closed with no windows.

One creative application could be the "wireless projection of HD television. Currently, two high definition broadcasts exceed the bandwidth of any radio system, but with a 1.6 gigabit per second gigabit system, two HD channels could be broadcast," according to Professor of Electrical Engineering Mohshen Kavehrad.

At Idea Couture we’ve been playing with the idea for more than 18 months exploring new ways to transfer files between devices using simple touch gestures. We called it “Touch-and-Send”. Obviously there must have been dozens of start-ups or labs working on solving file transfer problems or creative ways to do that using similar approach. Currently there is no simple way to move things, plugging into the USB is still the simplest way and requires no set up. 

But a new research project at MIT called Sparsh is also working to fix the file transfer problem. Sparsh (Hindi word for "touch") is a virtual cloud-based clipboard where any data, like a phone number or photograph, can temporarily live until it's "pasted" to another device. It is kind of like the mailroom.

To make it work, both devices need to be Sparsh-enabled and the person touches data on a device, such as a picture or a music file can be sent through the cloud and receive by another device. Right now, Sparsh is at a concept satge at MIT's Media Research Lab. Very exciting idea indeed.

Expect to see many more innovations enabled by the cloud. The sky is the limit.