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

Yellow Tail and the Australian wine industry

I discovered Yellow Tail Shiraz several years ago at Trader Joe’s here in Southern California for less than $5 a bottle. I know almost nothing about wine, but I instantly took to Yellow Tail. And you couldn’t beat the price.

An interesting article in Slate describers how the economic crisis has affected the wine industry in Australia, and how labels such as Yellow Tail may be responsible for tarnishing the Australian brand by propagating the expectation that Australia only produces cut-rate, discount wines. The prestigious names have suffered, with wine makers clamoring to rectify the situation and preserve their brands. But Yellow Tail still continues to be popular. It is good discount juice!

A simple word cloud generator

Here’s a simple and fun new tool from IBM alphaWorks: Word Cloud Generator. Building on the Wordle technology, also created by Jonathan Feinberg, an engineer at the IBM Research Collaborative User Experience lab in Cambridge, MA, this tool lets you generate interesting (and pretty) word clouds based on a set of words. The lab is also responsible for previous visualization technologies on alphaWorks including Many Eyes and History Flow Visualization Application.

Does the economy need Ayn Rand?

I discovered Ayn Rand in an unexpected way on my first day of university in Toronto. Prominently painted on one of the arts buildings was the question “Who is John Galt?” It seemed like a challenge — one probably taken up by many, including myself. While I wouldn’t have called myself an Objectivist, I found the philosophy interesting and read everything Rand ever wrote.

If you’ve got an opinion, one way or the other, about Rand, you can join the debate right now on BusinessWeek, arguing whether The Economy Needs Any Rand. And even if you don’t buy into Objectivism, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are still books worth tackling at some point in your life.

The Blue Sweater may change you…

I just read a new book called The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz. For weeks I’d seen reviews of this woman’s account of her journey to fight poverty in Africa, including one review that began, “Be careful, this book will change you…”

Novogratz herself begins the book with Nelson Mandela’s words: “There is no passion to be found playing small in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

This book does a great job of combining a personal narrative of finding one’s true calling with concrete examples of what any of us could do to help fight global poverty. It tells Novogratz’s story from her childhood to working in the banking industry evaluating foreign investments to starting her own fund to invest in entrepreneurs in poverty-stricken countries. The journey that her old blue sweater takes from her hometown to a child in Rwanda is a great story in and of itself about how we are all interconnected.

Novogratz delves into practical steps each of us can take, including some that are written about really well in another book called The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer. Singer’s book asks you to take a look not so much at what you are doing — and whether that makes you a good person — but at what you are not doing. This is more philosophy than biography, if that’s your preference.

I make no claims of being a great humanitarian. I try to do my part each year by donating to UNICEF and volunteer now and again for organizations serving my local community, but these books really did inspire me. And truth be told, made me feel guilty about how little effort it would take on my part to make a bigger difference.

Even if you don’t have time to read the whole book (which I rarely seem to do anymore), next time you’re at Barnes & Noble, flip through a few chapters of The Blue Sweater. It’s well worth it.

100 meters of existence

This is very cool … my friend Marc told me about this photo by Simon Hogsberg called “We’re all gonna die … 100 meters of existence.” At 100 meters long, it’s a compilation of shots taken over the course of 20 days from the same spot on a bridge in Berlin. Based in Copenhagen, Hogsberg takes a lot of other great photos too.

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.

I want Bourdain’s job

Anthony Bourdain has one of the best jobs out there, anywhere.

I’ve long been a fan of his show, No Reservations, but his recent visit to Sri Lanka got my attention, and I tuned in eagerly to watch his experience of the place where I was born. For those who know Bourdain’s style, he doesn’t mince words and he doesn’t sugar coat things … a quality I appreciate. So, to have him not completely tear into a country, its people and its food is a small victory in itself. You either love or hate Bourdain for his brutal honesty. Sri Lanka made out fairly well considering, and though I might have done a few things differently, I enjoyed his romp through Colombo and neighboring towns testing out the hospitality and cuisine.

Romania on the other hand, which Bourdain also visited recently, didn’t fare so well. In his blog post, Romania: What the hell happened?, he recounts his experience (and his somewhat brutal review) but makes no apologies:

“To describe Romania as particularly friendly? Not really. I’ve been all over the world. Over 50 countries. On the friendly scale? Romania not exactly in the top 40. The food — on camera, off camera? Didn’t matter. It was mostly pretty primitive. Soups may taste good — but they don’t make interesting television. I could lie. But I ain’t gonna.”

That blog post alone received over 2000 comments from fans and outraged Romanians alike.

Considering the tact and diplomacy that most of us need to maintain in our day jobs, Bourdain’s got a pretty good gig. Travel and good food — yes, but most travel show hosts have that. License to be brutally honest and make no apologies for it? That’s rare in a job description.

Drink, Play, F@#k

Here’s a new book that’s got my attention — Drink, Play, F@#k: One Man’s Search for Anything Across Ireland, Las Vegas, and Thailand. Not that I have a particular interest in stories of people finding themselves (or getting lost in foreign places for that matter), but my absolute lack of interest in the book that inspired this one — Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, has piqued my curiosity in this semi-parodic, male take on things.

Many of my friends enjoyed Gilbert’s story of exploration and discovery, but I couldn’t make it past a third of the book. Andrew Gottlieb’s story on the other hand, is about a jilted husband who sets out to explore the world and fulfil fantasies that include beer, soccer and Asian prostitutes. It’s a fictional journey told by a comedic writer, but it might be just as revealing and insightful as Eat, Pray, Love was to many. I’ll give it at least a few chapters.