innovation playground Idris Mootee

Random Thoughts On Maturing Companies and Start-Ups. When Do You Need A Reset?

In an interesting conversation with clients this week and discussions were around the question: “should companies plan for the distant future (10 years and beyond) and what is needed to get out of a death spiral where a slow death is in the making?”

There is a big difference between growing with age and growing old. With age, it sometimes comes with wisdom. With more than a dozen of C-suite execs that I have worked with or coached, for most of them, the wisdom came one day after they had passed the age of 50. Growing comes with age, which sometimes take away the energy and urge to make radical change. Ask yourself or your organization, the last 5 years your company or yourself should be referred to as a “growth experience” or “aging experience”.

A CEO’s job is to make sure the company is growing with experience” and not “aging with experience”. Company needs constant renewal, the leadership team is expected to generate enough energy to motivate the entire company. You need a strategy to energize and motivate. Not empty speech and propaganda video and banners. Time doesn’t mean we gain more experience. Reinvention, renewal and resetting are mantras for growing experiences. We shape what we become. When companies are stuck in a stagnant mode or worse in a downward spiral, it is because of the experience they have. Not because the new things that they try. They are usually too old (state of mind), conservative, naive and irrelevant and that managerial mindset is holding the company back for serious reinvention.

A look back at many failing leaders’ biggest attempts to bring their companies back for the past 10 years reveals an embarrassing series of missteps, mistakes, and flat-out bad products, culminating in a flurry of poorly-executed uncommitted attempt to create and own a distinct market positioning. Most of the time, the product failed before they are being introduced. No one can do anything at that time. Think about the following:

• We have been very good in making this and we should be fine.
• We always do things this way. It is too risky for us to change.
• Let’s watch where the market is going first. We can wait.
• We need to do what Apple, Nike, Amazon and Starbucks do.
• We should hedge our bets and try different things too.
• Let’s give the market what they want and make sure we have a competitively cheaper offer.

If you do one or a few of the above, you will most likely be somewhere along the downward spiral. For companies to end the spiral of death, it takes more than cost-cutting and requires an orchestrated effort for everyone involved to imagine and see the possibility forward. It is about applying a practical future-oriented foresight to drive strategy and unleashing the company from legacy people, thinking and even management board. There is no place for the “old" in the world of constant resets.

In Algorithms We Trust. Do We?

Let's try to paint a likely not-too-distant future. In this future, everything around us will be managed by algorithms. They manage and recommend what we want to watch; they control traffic of our driver-less cars; they control those drones which deliver our pizza; predict for you which one of your friends will become your future spouse, etc. They will make our life effortless and predict what things will happen next or what's best for us. We all wish that it is that simple.

As we are picking up massive data every second, algorithms are critical to how we make sense of them and our reliance on algorithms is growing by the second. But how much faith should we put into those algorithms, and how reliable they are depends on who you talk to. The accuracy of the algorithmic differentiation (automatic differentiation) is key in dealing with data volatility in many complex cases where accuracy of data is critical to the final outcome. I don’t know when we can have statistical evidence comparing how often driverless cars mistakes and how often human drivers make mistakes or how well a software program investing in stocks makes mistakes and human making investment mistakes.

We need to develop programs to check whether algorithms are working as they were intended and monitoring algorithms by the results they produce based on machine performance metrics. Vetting algorithms in advance isn't practical at all as many are too complex for their outcome to be predicted. Algorithmic differentiation is used to fine tune algorithms that are complex to optimize. We will be placing our faith into the accuracy of these algorithms and trusting that they will deliver. I think we may be over-optimistic and mining a lot of data using statistical analysis still has a very strong random component to it. To optimize these models we need algorithmic differentiation and sometimes it feels like a scientific random number generator. The more data we have, the more simulation is needed and the more reliance on the significance of data, and significance means sensitivities. We’re in the midst of a transformation when industries are exploring how to use big data to create new business models.

There’s one certain thing in big data, it’s that all algorithms are not created equal. The biggest question is how many jobs will disappear when algorithms take over human jobs? People ask the same question during the first industrial revolution when machines started making goods a lot faster and cheaper. Are we entering a world in which the algorithms themselves will be competing with humans? Honestly, I just don't like it when algorithms make decisions for us. They can help me analyze my options and probabilities, but not making a decision until they prove that they can think smarter than me. And so the game begins…

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!

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.

The Bionic Man/Woman Is Now Possible! It Gives New Meanings To Wearables!

Remember that Six Million Dollar Man TV Series? When ace test-pilot Steve Austin's crashed, he ended up in a poor shape that his only chance of survival was to replace human spare parts with technologies. That was the beginning of “wearables” I supposed. The government decided to invest millions to use the latest technology to rebuild him with cybernetic parts which gave him superhuman speed, response and strength and the superagent.

Thirty-five years later, DARPA's Reliable Neural-Interface Technology (RE-NET) is working on it and  trying to improve the speed and accuracy of neural interfaces. Such interfaces can happen in the brain, as in the case of Hemmes, or someplace else farther down the line, closer to the missing limb. It is a highly complicated task to try to translate these commands to muscles that drives the myoelectric arm. Most important is that any of these won’t need a brain surgery or implant. The challenges include weather change and other external factors can affect the myoelectric arm and there is the issue of electrodes slipping on the skin.

The idea of implanted electrodes is very attractive with the goal to provide near-natural hand movement. Another sign og progress is FDA just approved the world’s first approved bionic eye. The Argus II, which treats patients with the rare genetic condition known as retinitis pigmentosa was approved by the FDA after twenty years of research and $200mm of investments. The Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System, which was approved to treat people with severe to profound retinitis pigmentosa, doesn't actually restore vision or allowing them to see, just enough to detect light and dark and the contrast can identify the movement or location of objects. Almost like the first generation of cell phones. We are a few years away before they have advance features. When the photoreceptor cells in the eye's retina are damaged, people can tell the difference between light and dark.

To restore light and dark vision, a tiny chip containing many electrodes is implanted on the patient's retina. The patient wears a pair of glasses with a video cam attached to it. The camera sends the recorded image wirelessly to the electrodes in the chip, which then turns the information into a signal that the brain can understand. It will be a low-resolution 60-pixel image only and enough to give people a sense of what’s in front of them.

The breakthrough in nanochip will open up tons of opportunities to improve our senses or replace in medical cases or enhance in other cases. In less than ten years, those who can afford to spend $25,000 can get a bionic eye to capture wider light spectrum or advanced your visual search functions through Google. I won’t be an early adopter for sure.

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.

What Do You Want A Smart Watch To Do For You? Or Do You Really Need One?

So you’ve bought yourself a Pebble and you're showing off to your friends. May be you’re even one of those thousands of people who crowd funded them for over $10m in pre-orders last year. In that case you will be among the first to receive $150 slim devices that you can read e-mail, text and Facebook messages that sent from your Smartphone.  I really can’t think of a good reason to get one.

I’ve seen dozens of different smart watches and most of them are cool at a glance, but very limited in function and I can’t see them becoming mainstream. There are others playing the game including Apple’s iWatch, ConnecteDevice (Cookoo watch), I’m Watch, and Sony’s SmartWatch and many others. I’m pretty sure, though, that people saying smart watches will replace smart phones at some point are way too optimistic, it is hard to predict the technology dynamics and how our behavior will evolve, but I am quite confident that it won't be a watch. Sorry Apple.

Apple probably have over 150 engineers and designers working on the development and hopefully to bring something to the market in 12-16 months. It will be the first post-Jobs product/platform and everyone is watching. People will buy because it is an Apple, but can it sustain itself and becoming a success is indeed a big question? I don’t like the watch idea for a number of reasons. First it is purely a novelty and too gimmicky. It is a totally new behavior to read text messages or email from your watch and no reason I need to alter my current behavior. Ok it has a touch screen, big deal. My smartphone is just fine. The smartwatch is at best a niche category.

Any innovation needs to anchor on unmet needs, not cool technology. Apple needs to decide what problem it is trying to solve. It might need to switch to a new interaction paradigm to see the opportunity differently. Apple is too stuck with the world of Apple. I believe there’s no stopping the trend of wearables and but don’t expect to see a clear winner anytime soon. The market potential is huge.

While analysts are expecting people to purchase about 15 million wearable devices this year and growing year after year, but they can’t tell you what that device looks like. We need to examine different adoption barriers and drivers that impact how wearables could bring along next platform wars. It goes beyond sensor and interactions into voice play. Mobile voice recognition, one of the thousands of artificial-intelligence applications, could reach one billion in 2017 from $73 million today, according to ABI Research. AT&T has devoted more than 1 million hours of research to develop AmI technology that can convert speech into text, and deliver responses to spoken questions. The future is exciting. And the future is here. And the future is unknown.

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.

Strategic Foresights Is Used To Make Sense Of Patterns Of Threats And Opportunites. Companies Barely Understand How To Use It.

“Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.”   ― Alain de Botton

What's the future of interactive glass windows, interactive eyeglasses and 3D mirrors etc? Via a pair of glasses information and apps can be projected into the air and controlled by gestures and eye movement or just a thought? It is hard to imagine what's the future of Nokia, Ericsson or even Blackberry. What does strategy mean to these companies when there are so much unknowns?

Strategic planning is changing and many organizations are not designed or equipped for the changes we see happening. And with many business models going out of date in such rapid mode, every manager is trying to find ways to see the future. And they must adopt a different approach and mental mindset as it tries to embrace disequilibrium. The ability to imagine, analyse and prepare for the future is becoming very important. It does not only apply to technology or biotech industries. It is about survival for every business.

Preactivity basically guides all approaches to future studies, forecasting, scenario planning and strategic foresight. Proactivity aims to bring about the desired changes by means of strategic planning to effectively deal with not just the speed of change but also complexity, uncertainty and paradox and that's the reason why Strategic Foresight goes hand-in-hand with Deisgn Thinking. The future arises from a constant stream of individual, organizational and policy decisions, strategies and commitments that have to be made in the present, with as much understanding of risks, possibilities, wisdom and foresight as possible.

Strategic Foresight is not a tool kit. Or some wild card ideas.It is not fancy (and useless) diagrams or algorithm. It is both a process (transformational) and an outcome (results in knowledge and artifacts for, from, and about the future). Strategic Foresight is not about predicting the future. Rather it is more about framing, reframing, informing, opening up minds, and inspiring strategic dialogues about possible futures. You still need a good understanding of industry economics in order to apply it. It is not a design exercsie.

Strategic Foresights is still in its early stage of adoption and takes a while before it comes a core part of strategic planning. It enables companies to use weak signals to identify opportunities and threats. Weak signals are defined as poorly understood drivers of change and/or signals which are currently unconnected with a trend, industry or market and appear irrelevant on the surface. The identification and correct interpretation of weak signals can be vital to the success or survival of an organization.

An executive team equipped with powerful foresight capability will be able to make sense of, and respond to, the emerging pattern of threats and opportunities, and to use this understanding to manage risk and capitalize on opportunitie. It is not just about keeping the bad from not happening, afterall business is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual reframig and reshaping your plan.

The Future Of Retail Is Full Of Challanges As Well As Opportunities.

Retailers are goign through strutural changes as many proven formats are out dated and "showromming" is impacting many. The massive pentration of smartphones are driving showroomers for comparing prices and features. Amazon has even given users of its mobile shopping app the ability to simplify price lookups on its site by letting them scan product bar codes using their smartphone cameras. So we end up having 1/ the Amazons of the world where they have full range of products at a super competitive price of 2/ Experience-based stores that people that offers more than making a purchase. They provide a very different kinds of retail relationships with different brands and it is Cirque du Soleil meets Nordstrom.

There are no shortage innovations happening in the word of retail design. Most aim to integrate online retail with the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ experience. Giant interactive screens, talking mannequins and RFID tags are bringing the virtual into ‘real’ retail spaces and tablet computers are turning up at pos’ from independent boutiques to multi-national chains.

Stores such as Tesco in the UK have introduced a ‘scan as you shop’ system that allows shoppers to bypass checkout lines; SK Telecom, a South Korean mobile tech company, are trialing a ‘smart cart’ a trolley complete with wi-fi enabled tablet computer that provides product information and collects data as people shop; Nordstrom, Harrods and Target are all trialing in-store navigation smart phone apps to give product location and stock information.

And for those who don’t like trying on clothes, there’s now a virtual answer: The AR Door prototype. UK high street store Top Shop introduced the virtual change room to shoppers in Moscow last year. Using Kinect motion sensor technology together with an Xbox console, the prototype allows shoppers to see how clothes will look without trying them on, via a full-length mirror/screen. There are also companies working on virtual ‘touch’ for users to ‘feel’ the texture of products they want to buy. While still in development stage, the innovation would address one of the main problems of shopping online. Shopping is as much a tactile experience as a visual one. 

Mobile payment systems are also infiltrating retail spaces. US hardware giant, Home Depot introduced PayPal to almost 2,000 stores last year. Square, the mobile payment system, that streamlines point-of-sale payments, has recently partnered with Starbucks to implement a smart phone app allowing Starbucks customers to pay via QR code or NFC-tap.

It’s not just bricks and mortar retailers breaking down digital barriers in retail, online retailers, such as the online grocery store Peapod, are establishing a physical retail presence. Product images and QR codes line the walls of transit stops in the US, shoppers can simply scan items to order while they wait for their train.

In a creepy addition to the tech enabled retail experience, mannequins may now be watching you as you browse. Via built in cameras and facial recognition software mannequins are now able to collect data on your race, age, gender and shopping habits to assist retailers in their marketing strategies. While it’s not quite new, retailers have been using in store cameras to collect data for years, the addition of facial recognition is making it a simpler process. So watch out for those mannequins!

 

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.

At CES Everything Is Touch, Touch, Touch. Will Touchscreens Make Typing Obsolete Soon?

At CES this year everything is touchscreen, TV, laptops, tablets and kitchen appliances. Is the future of interfaces is moving to touchscreen? Is this the end of keyboards? We are seeing a completing transition in the design of user experiences to software based and touchscreens. The notebook computer is the final piece of the migration. Most people would find no reasons to touch a screen on a laptop or notebook, but we are also increasing used to the habit of touching screen even most of the time even we’re not aware of. Thanks to the iPhone and iPad.

Our view will change even when we don’t think touchscreens on laptops are useful; just see someone use a keyboard with an iPad or Galaxy. For many, it just feels more natural to touch the screen. I sometimes find myself touching the screen forgetting that it is not a touchscreen device.

Blackberry will join it even they will still keep the keyboard as an option for people like me. Automobile entertainment will move there too. Your next laptop will likely be touchscreen and you might not have any choice, whether you like it or not. I wonder when will Apple launch a touch screen macbook? I think it is only a matter of time before all laptops become touch-enabled. LG was showing a prototype of interactive retail display so you can try differetn outfits without going into the changing room.

With touchscreens, we will never worry about spilling coffee onto your keyboard but will have to deal with the problems of greasy fingers. I think touch will become the key user experiences but there is still a lot of room for innovation. Touch-enabled devices will accelerate adoption in the enterprise market and next will be education market. The next generation of workers will forget what a physical keyboard looks like.

Hong Tan, a professor at Purdue University who works for Microsoft came up with an interesting way to add the feel of buttons and other physical controls to a touch screen by using vibrating piezoelectric actuators installed on the side of a normal screen generate friction at the point of contact with a finger. The nice thing about the innovation is it can make an ordinary sheet of glass feel as if it has physical buttons or even a physical slider with different levels of resistance. That is a bug jump forward from just touchscreens. The haptic feedback could help users find the right control on compact or enable the use of a touch screen without needing to look at it.

RIM is working really hard to win this. They called it a “writing without typing”, a technology only apply to the keyboardless Blackberry London devices. This is a riksy bet as Blackberry loyalist (like me) likes typing on physical keyboards rather than tapping on a screen. I am eager to get my hands on the new Blackberry London... a few weeks I will know if that works for me.

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.