The joy of less (min for the max)

A great piece by Pico Iyer, The Joy of Less, in the New York Times, in which he captures the essence of my personal philosophy — Minimum for the Maximum (minformax) — though he says it all much better….

Still an Idealab

Nearly a decade after rising to popularity during the dotcom boom and then melting into obscurity, Idealab is surprisingly still around.

Every time I pass by the offices in downtown Pasadena, about five minutes from where I live, I wonder what’s going on at the incubator that put so many Web startups on the map. If you’re wondering too, their investments — sidestepping much of today’s popular stuff like Web 2.0 technologies — show strategic plays in security, energy and robotics. Like many investors in Southern California and elsewhere today, Idealab seems to be just flying below the radar.

Commercializing new inventions

Could be another useful Webinar from Caltech: Assessing the Commercialization Potential of New Inventions, covering key topics on recognizing and capitalizing on opportunities:

• Nine key questions to better assess the commercial potential of new inventions
• Critical skills your company should possess to move inventions to the marketplace
• How to involve your customers in the commercialization process
• Taking technological leadership through acquisition of external inventions

Marketing and the tech innovation process

This could be an interesting Webinar from the California Institute of Technology on laying the foundation for the commercial success of inventions: Marketing and the Technology Innovation Process. I like these short case studies on innovative companies — this week’s focus is on how Corning has sustained invention for the last 100 years.

Emerging markets ripe for product innovation

Here’s an approach to innovation that’s becoming popular — first design and develop products for emerging markets where necessity demands lower barriers to access and adoption. In the article Innovation Trickles in a New Direction, BusinessWeek takes a look at how large corporations like GE are selecting products traditionally created in rich nations but choosing to develop and test them in emerging markets first before mass marketing them in established markets. This is an R&D strategy (and a potentially cost effective one) that many companies may start paying more attention to in virtually every sector, especially in tough economic times.

Your pledge: Start with just 5 hours

If you’re thinking about how to make a difference in your community, the Corporation for National & Community Service proposes a good and easy way to start — by volunteering just 5 hours of your time, maybe to a food bank, a nonprofit, helping local families in need or cleaning up your community. And now, as an added bonus, Starbucks will give you a free brew if you sign up in the next couple of days. It’s really easy to get involved, lots of volunteer opportunities to choose from, free coffee, and best of all you can make a difference.

Building a green city: The Masdar Initiative

My family lived in Dubai years ago, at the beginning of the massive economic and building boom, but even then it was clear that the United Arab Emirates was undergoing some dramatic changes.

The Masdar Initiative to build a ‘green city’ is one such monumental effort worth tracking. It provides a platform to find and build solutions including those involving sustainable energy and water conservation, and to drive the commercialization of these research technologies. It will also create new industries and new markets for the UAE, and provide an interesting model for the rest of the world.

Aguanomics

Take a break from all the election coverage to learn more about Aguanomics. Economist David Zetland started out tracking water management practices in Southern California, but his research now has far reaching implications for the economics of water.

His theories are factored into the Global Innovation Outlook’s deep dive into tackling the problem of our oceans and water through creative solutions. One of the primary questions is the diamond-water paradox — we all know that water is more valuable and useful to us that diamonds, but why are diamonds much more precious?

The paradox has been outlined as one of value versus utility: The one may be called ‘value in use ;’ the other, ‘value in exchange.’ The things that have the greatest value in use frequently have little or no value in exchange; and those that have the greatest value in exchange frequently have little or no value in use.

With much of the world’s water sources allocated to growing food, and factoring in the changing global climates and drought, water is becoming more precious. Follow the GIO’s discussion on the price and value of water.

On entrepreneurship

Although it’s a well-worn cliche, great ideas really can come from anywhere. Innovation can happen in big companies as well as in garages. Someone who passionately takes this view is blogger and technology sage Guy Kawasaki, as he relates in this interview in the New York Times.

The creators of cool visualization techs

After every presidential debate, I’ve been pleased to see people using Many Eyes for visual analysis of the speeches and the occurrence of specific words. Many Eyes is an info visualization tool that also allows collaborative visualization by groups of users. It’s one of our most popular services on alphaWorks.

While I frequently talk about new technologies that we launch, you don’t always get to know about the great people that create these innovations. The Many Eyes team, for example, is part of the Visual Communications Lab at IBM Research, where they’re working on numerous innovative projects that will hopefully see the light of day soon. The team includes researchers Fernanda Viegas, Matt McKeon, Frank van Ham and Jesse Kris, as well as Martin Wattenberg, the creator of the Visual Communications Lab.

Today, I’m highlighting Martin in particular, because he’s the common thread behind other visualization technologies on alphaWorks, including History Flow — a tool launched several years ago for “visualizing dynamic, evolving documents and the interactions of multiple collaborating authors.”

Martin is also responsible for co-developing, with his wife Laura, the Baby Name Wizard, a very cool tool that lets you track the historical popularity of names. ‘Cynthia,’ for example, was pretty popular in the 40s, but not so much now. ‘Cynthya’, as my parents spelled it, has never been used! I even checked the Baby Name Wizard before my son Ellis was born to find something that’s not widely used anymore. Try it out on your own name.

I’m really looking forward to the next visualization techs to come from Martin and the rest of the team.