Innovation Predictions 2008

Get ready for … anything. As companies, governments—indeed, entire countries—confront an array of dilemmas, the only constant will be change

by Bruce Nussbaum, BusinessWeek

Innovation & Design

Building the next-generation enterprise—and maybe even the next-generation nation—will preoccupy most of us in 2008. The demand for innovation is soaring in the business community and is just beginning to gain traction in the political sphere. Most of the leading Presidential candidates have thoughtful positions on innovation (BusinessWeek.com, 11/15/07). And nearly all CEOs and top managers who have learned the language of innovation are now seeking the means to make it happen. It took the Quality Movement a generation to change business culture. The Innovation Movement is still in its infancy, but it's growing fast.

You can see that in the vast changes taking place within the field. Companies are demanding new tools and methods to execute that change within their existing organizations, as well as for the kind of design thinking that transforms cultures. To take advantage of the opportunities, chief innovation officers in big corporations such as Procter & Gamble (PG) and Harley Davidson (HOG) are leaving to join consultancies or set up shop for themselves. Consolidation is quickening apace as small innovation consultancies try to combine big-picture thought leadership with specific, on-demand Web applications that manage networks, talent, customers, suppliers, and employees around the world. In 2007, consultancy Monitor bought into innovation strategy specialists Doblin, led by Larry Keeley, while another large consultancy, BSG Alliance acquired research firm New Paradigm, led by Wikinomics co-author Dan Tapscott.

What's up for 2008? Keep an eye on the business schools. Companies are demanding that their managers be more creative and less obsessed with cost and efficiency. The last revolution within executive education was the introduction of Management Science in the 1950s. Will we see the spread of IM—Innovation Management—in "exec ed"?

Privacy, Mobility, and the Next Big Idea

And expect the whole realm of social networking to change in 2008. Just when you "got it" and thought it was all about open, personal, and casual online relationships, social media will morph into another ecosystem—one with lots of gates. Who your friends are is becoming far more important than how many friends you have. We can probably thank our advertising friends for this. The drive to monetize Facebook and MySpace (NWS) by using members' personal information is alienating many people, driving them to more private networks. Stay tuned, and watch Europe and Brazil for future trends. Social networks are beginning to feel a lot like hot nightclubs—with velvet rope barriers.

As for hot products in 2008, prepare for yet more surprises. The triumph of opening up the cell phone will create an array of new applications we can only dream of right now. GPS may seem old hat by next summer. The mobile Facebook is bound to be fascinating. And the e-book may be just an iteration away from taking off. Want to reduce your personal carbon footprint easily? Read books, magazines, and newspapers on an e-book.

And the Big Idea for 2008? Stop competing against your competitors. Your traditional rivals aren't your biggest worry. Disruptive innovation is hitting corporations from outside their business. Verizon (VZ) was forced to open its cell-phone service because Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) smacked it hard. Verizon's new business model will probably generate 10 times the demand for service. You just never know. That's life, in beta.

For more on 2008 innovation predictions, see BusinessWeek's slide show.

Nussbaum is an assistant managing editor in charge of BusinessWeek's innovation and design coverage. In 2005, he was named one of the 40 most powerful people in design by I.D. Magazine .

Google tests Wikipedia-like knowledge pages on Web

Fri Dec 14, 2007 4:28pm EST

NEW YORK, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) is testing an Internet site for sharing knowledge about any subject under the sun, one that could eventually compete with the popular user-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Google's "knol" project started earlier this week and is working with a group of writers by invitation only, Google vice president of engineering Udi Manber wrote in a company blog post.

"There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it," Manber said in the post.

"The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information ... to how-to-fix-it instructions."

The word "knol" is used to refer to the project and to an entry on the shared Web site. Google's site will identify the authors posting the information. It will not serve as an editor of the information or endorse what is written on the site.

Example from Google Blog

The site will eventually be opened to the general public and allow users to submit comments, questions or edits, as well as rate posts. Knol writers will be able to include ads in their posts, sharing the revenue with Google.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is working on a community- developed Web search service that would compete with search engines such as Google and Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research).

(Reporting by Michele Gershberg; Editing by Andre Grenon)

Related Article:

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Wikipedia becomes a class assignment
Beta Google Toolbar 5 available for download

Bill Gates: The skills you need to succeed

One of the most important changes of the last 30 years is that digital technology has transformed almost everyone into an information worker.

BBC News

By Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft

In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organisation to operate more effectively.

That's true for everyone from the retail store worker who uses a handheld scanner to track inventory to the chief executive who uses business intelligence software to analyse critical market trends.

So if you look at how progress is made and where competitive advantage is created, there's no doubt that the ability to use software tools effectively is critical to succeeding in today's global knowledge economy.

A solid working knowledge of productivity software and other IT tools has become a basic foundation for success in virtually any career.

Beyond that, however, I don't think you can overemphasise the importance of having a good background in maths and science.

If you look at the most interesting things that have emerged in the last decade - whether it is cool things like portable music devices and video games or more practical things like smart phones and medical technology - they all come from the realm of science and engineering.

The power of software

Today and in the future, many of the jobs with the greatest impact will be related to software, whether it is developing software working for a company like Microsoft or helping other organisations use information technology tools to be successful.

Communication skills and the ability to work well with different types of people are very important too.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

This isn't true at all.

Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.

I also place a high value on having a passion for ongoing learning. When I was pretty young, I picked up the habit of reading lots of books.

It's great to read widely about a broad range of subjects. Of course today, it's far easier to go online and find information about any topic that interests you.

Having that kind of curiosity about the world helps anyone succeed, no matter what kind of work they decide to pursue.

Bill Gates is chairman, chief software architect and one of the founders of Microsoft, the world's largest software company. From July 2008 he will end his day-to-day involvement in the company and focus on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its global health and education work.

Related Article:

Computer knowledge 'undervalued'

Management Leaders Turn Attention to Followers

Bamboo PC is eco-friendly and looks nice too

By Philipp Gollner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Bck in 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the Apple I, an early personal computer that consisted of a circuit board in a simple wooden box.

Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and other computer makers went on to make advanced PCs in metal and plastic casings, but now Taiwan's Asustek Computer Inc (2357.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) is finding potential beauty -- and sales -- in an eco-friendly notebook PC encased in another natural material: bamboo.

The Asus Eco Book, as it's dubbed, has a case made of laminated bamboo strips available in different shades.

Harvesting bamboo, an abundant, flexible, durable and fast-growing grass, is unlikely to harm the environment as processing wood from trees might, Asustek said, although glues and laminates for shaping and fortifying the material sometimes contain toxins.

The product is still in the prototype stage and engineers are checking to see if bamboo is suitable for laptops, which have to endure extreme conditions while allowing heat from microprocessors and monitors to escape.

The Eco book is a new tack for a company that caters to executives and other high-end users with its calf leather-bound notebooks and faux alligator-skin models.

"Originally we came out with a leather model style-book," said Cher Chronis, director of marketing communication for Asus Computer International, the Taipei-based company's U.S. unit.

"It was very popular," she said. "After that, it was kind of natural for us to experiment with other types of materials, so we decided to go green."

Asustek says its leather notebooks have not been criticized by animal-rights activists and that the Eco book is not meant to assuage critics.

Read More ....

Shock at $85k mobile phone bill

BBC News

A Canadian man has been shocked to receive a mobile phone bill for nearly $85,000 (£41,000).

Piotr Staniaszek thought he could use his new phone as a modem for his computer under his $10 unlimited mobile browser plan from Bell Mobility.

He downloaded high-definition movies and other large files unaware that this incurred massive extra charges.

Bell Mobility has since lowered the bill to $3,243, but Mr Staniaszek says he intends to fight the charges anyway.

'Nobody told me'

The 22-year-old oil-field worker from Calgary said he thought a first bill for $65,000 in November was a mistake.

When he spoke to Bell Mobility he was informed the bill had climbed to nearly $85,000 after more downloading.

He said he normally paid about $150 a month for his phone and used to be notified of high charges.

"The thing is, they've cut my phone off for being like $100 over," he told CBC News.

"Here, I'm $85,000 over and nobody bothered to give me a call and tell me what was going on."

Bell Mobility said they would lower the bill to $3,243 in a "goodwill gesture" to match the best data plan available for using mobile phones as a modem, the Globe and Mail reported.

The trouble stems from the new phone he received when he renewed his mobile phone contract.

The new model allows him to connect with his computer and download data.

"I told them I wasn't aware I would be charged for hooking up my phone to the computer. I'm going to try and fight it, because I didn't know about the extra charges."

Canadians complain that their mobile phone charges are much higher for comparable service in the United States.

Microsoft posts Vista SP1 RC for download

But users must reboot three times before the upgrade shows on Windows Update

December 12, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Microsoft Corp. today opened the preview of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to the general public, but it required users to go through an elaborate process that involves multiple reboots before they are allowed to download it from the company's update service.

The long-anticipated Vista SP1 Release Candidate (RC) has been added to Windows Update, where any user running a valid copy of Vista can grab it, the company said today. Microsoft first seeded preliminary copies of the service pack to thousands of by-invitation-only testers in September.

"Today we made the SP1 RC available to the public on Microsoft's Download Center," a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail. "Because Windows Vista SP1 will be available to hundreds of millions of customers, we want to make sure we get a breadth and depth of customer feedback. By increasing the test base of SP1, this helps customers ensure [there] will be a thoroughly tested product at RTM [release to manufacturing]."

To get the release candidate, however, users must jump through the hoops detailed in a document posted to Microsoft's support Web site. "Systems running on Windows Vista RTM require as many as three updates before SP1 can be installed," the document warns. "Windows Update will detect your system configuration and offer the prerequisite packages that are applicable to your system."

Read More ....

Related Article:

Microsoft Delivers Office 2007 Service Pack 1

To begin the process of updating a Vista-powered PC to SP1 RC,
users should follow these instructions.

(This Vista SP1 update worked well with me - approx. one hour after 70+ MB download and solved most of the driver & network issues. The Office 2007 SP1 was installed one day earlier included in a massive 180+ MB download)

Internet keeps news agencies alive

Alfian, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

News agencies, having adapted to the hunger for new types of media, are thriving amid information globalization instead of competing with the Internet, a media expert said here Monday.

Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barret of Bowling Green State University, Ohio, in the United States, said the Internet was initially considered a threat rather than opportunity for news agencies. "It reduced the costs of market-entry for news gathering and distribution," said Olivier.

However, the assumption has proven wrong. All major news agencies that operate news Websites now benefit from the Internet.

"The Internet has greatly expanded the number of potential clients for agency services, increased agency flexibility in generating novel information, and reduced the costs of distribution so that a greater proportion of expenditure could be dedicated to content and service quality," Oliver told a colloquium dubbed "The Future of News Agencies in Media Convergence Era".

The seminar was part of the 13th general assembly of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies and was attended by 39 agencies from 32 countries. The assembly takes place in Jakarta from December 9 to 14.

At the seminar, Prof. Alwi Dahlan, a communication expert from University of Indonesia and a former Indonesian information minister, discussed the role of the Internet in ushering in the "media convergence era".

He explained that printed, audio and visual features converged in the new medium of the Internet.

He said the Internet provided an opportunity for personal media to become a source of information for the public. He gave the example of now-famous tsunami footage captured by Cut Putri, a woman from Aceh, which was relayed by many TV stations.

The question in the convergence era, Alwi said, is who are the real (news) players? "Will the news agencies lose their power as information brokers?"

Oliver said that while the emergence of web-logs (`blogs') had considerable influence on news agencies, it didn't threaten their existence.

Few news sites or blogs had the resources to compete with major agencies and most depended heavily -- directly or indirectly -- on news agencies," he said, adding that research strongly suggested that established news agencies continue to have a strong presence on the web.

News agencies in general experienced a better period this year, Oliver said; however Western agencies were dominant.

Indeed, Reuters has been acquired by Thompson Corporation from Canada. Thus, the four biggest news agencies, Reuters, AP, Bloomberg, and Dow Jones, are controlled by businesses based in North America," said Oliver.

He added, however, that the most profound challenges facing news agencies were related to the news itself. Describing the work of news providers as a "public service", he said "greater transparency and sharper articulation" in selecting and presenting the news were in order, in view of "the severity of multiple crises around the world."

Corporations form group to create blogging best practices

Companies like Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo say their needs are different from individuals, small business

December 07, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Executives from 12 large companies, including The Coca-Cola Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Kaiser Permanente, General Motors Corp. and Dell Inc., have jointly formed a blog council aimed at promoting corporate blogging best practices -- a plan that has already elicited skepticism from many in the blogosphere.

The founders described The Blog Council, which launched this week, as a forum for executives to meet in private to share tactics and develop standards for corporate blogging.

Major corporations don't use blogs in the same way that individuals and small businesses do, but they must abide by the same rules and etiquette, noted Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the council. "Individual and small-business bloggers don't face the same issues [as large companies]," he said in a statement. "For example, we still need to deliver a responsible and effective corporate message, but we need to do it in the complicated environment of the blogosphere. We have to speak for a corporation, but never sound 'corporate.' And we have to learn to do it live, in real time."

The council plans to discuss various issues, including the role of the corporate blog in a media landscape increasingly geared toward consumer-generated content; the correct way to engage and respond to bloggers who write about a company; and how to manage blogs in more than one language.

Other founding members of the council include AccuQuote, Cisco Systems Inc., Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc., Nokia Corp. and SAP AG. The first meeting of the council will be on Jan. 22.

Technology bloggers greeted the announcement of the council mostly with skeptical posts. Robert Scoble, for example, noted that many companies today just don't get Web 2.0 technology and don't use it to tap into the voice of their customers. Scoble noted, for example, that some online retail sites don't engage customers and provide online avenues for them to contribute content.

"Industry has a long way to go before it understands the real value that seemingly unimportant conversations have," he noted in the blog post. "Every company I've spoken to, from L'Oréal to Target to Boeing, gets that you need to pay attention to the New York Times. I don't know of a single corporation who won't return a journalist's phone call from the New York Times. But how many companies respond to a kid in Australia who only has three readers? How many companies respond to comments made on people's Facebook walls? How many companies meet regularly with bloggers?"

Mashable blogger Mark Hopkins said that big corporations "are just starting to realize how obsolete they are becoming in the new social space that is the Internet. They're starting to realize that the millions of dollars they spend on massive international video and print branding campaigns are just as effective as Google's decision to create a solid service and a colorful logo instead of marketing themselves in the traditional sense.

"Instead of creating a committee, these companies should instead try to recruit companies to the council that have already created engaging blogs that aren't constantly mired in PR and legal clearance," he noted.

News agencies urged to adapt to media convergence era

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - News agencies must quickly adapt to the era of media convergence so they can continue to play their role as sources of news, a journalistic expert said.

Speaking at a scientific discussion on the occasion of the 13th General Assembly of the Organization of Asia Pacific News Agencies (OANA) here on Monday, Prof Oliver Boyd-Barrett from the Browling Green State University, Ohio, said in the era of media convergence, news agencies must adapt their products to the market need.

From the point of view of defining business models and business viability, news agencies in 2007 had rarely and collectively experienced a better period, he said.

They had found a role, after all, in the age of the Internet, and had learnt to dominate the Internet as news providers, he said.

"They have done so at a time when, in the Western World, retail news media suffer circulation and advertising losses and continue to cut back in their reporting strength," he said.

As a result, their need for news agencies` services increased, while in many parts of the developing world, there had been a profusion of new newspapers and broadcasters and new advertising income, and all of this increased the demand for news agencies` services, he said.

"Despite these differences between `developed` and `developing` worlds, in many ways we may say that news agencies around the world are converging towards the business model pioneered in the developed world, the market-driven model of news, a model that is open to multiple revenue streams, some related to content, others to cognate service areas," he said.

Meanwhile, OANA President Datuk Azman Ujang saw the urgency in reforming news agencies` roles in the face of media convergence era.

"In the face of imbalanced information flows between developed and developing nations, OANA must take concrete actions and improve the quality of their information services," Datuk Azman Ujang said.

"OANA must encourage close cooperation among its members," he said.

ANTARA President Director Ahmad Muchlis Yusuf said the news agency had no other choice but to look at the market potentials and demand for its products to withstand competition in the era of media convergence.

So far, there has been tendency to develop a combination of print, audio and visual media. "This requires news agencies to be more proactive and to adapt to latest developments in information technology," he said.

Muhammad Alwi Dahlan, communications professor of the University of Indonesia (UI), said a better knowledge of the rapidly growing information technology is a prerequisite to pave the way for the agenda of news agencies` reforms.

The 13th OANA General Assembly which will last from Dec 9 to 14 is themed "News Agencies in the Media Convergence Era: Strengthening and Promoting Asia Pacific Voices".

Web Hosting Providers Let Security Sag

Web hosting providers that can't keep DNS servers clean are exposing low-budget government Web sites to malware.

eWeek.com, by Lisa Vaas, December 4, 2007

Riddle: What do the city of Plainville, Kan., and the Transportation Authority of Marin County, Calif., have in common?

Answer: a Web hosting provider that can't seem to keep its DNS servers clean.

Both .gov domains in the past few months have seen their sites seeded with redirects to malicious servers in other countries that have pushed pornography, malware, Viagra ads and the like to site visitors.

TAM and Plainville are, in fact, two examples of what security researchers are calling an epidemic of sites being compromised through their hosting providers and injected with malicious Web attacker paths that lead to tool kits such as Icepack, Neosploit and Web Attacker. These malcode tool kits serve up anywhere from five to a dozen or more exploits that latch on to site visitors' machines through their browsers to infest the systems with malware.

Plainville and TAM have more than their victim status in common. On the face of it the two had separate hosting providers—StartLogic and IPowerWeb, respectively—but those two are in fact all but the same company, both headquartered at the same Phoenix address and both sharing the same customer contact listing.

IPowerWeb/StartLogic hadn't provided input by the time this story posted. Their track records paint a colorful portrait, however: The Better Business Bureau has processed 191 complaints about IPowerWeb in the last three years. StartLogic is not only rated as an "unsatisfactory" business at BBB but also has its own hate site, StartLogicSucks.com, which ranks third in a Google search on "StartLogic."

Not all site poisonings can be blamed on ISPs. Security problems arising from collaborative software such as wikis are the customer's fault, as are those associated with poorly written ASP code, sloppy PHP work and SQL hacks.

So it's not always the ISP's fault when a site gets seeded with garbage. Then too, there are plenty of ISPs that respond promptly when customers' security staffers report that their sites have been hijacked.

Judging by Morgan Bailey's experience, IPowerWeb is not one of those.

On Nov. 19, Bailey, an information security analyst for the Enterprise Security Office for the state of Kansas, noticed a number of discrepancies in the DNS registrar information for some sites pertaining to the city of Plainville, Kan. If he queried the DNS server to find out what company was hosting the Plainville.ks.gov domain name, it delivered one set of information. If he tweaked the host name to query about Plainville-kansas-gov, he received the correct DNS information. If he queried 7.t.city-of-plainville.ks.gov, he got servers located in Moldavia, or Serbia, or Estonia. The sites were redirecting to pages hosting malware

This was not the customer's fault. In fact, the city of Plainville didn't even have a site. The city had registered a domain name, but it had never gone live with a site and didn't have an IP address for its domain name. Everything that was being served on the pages was residing within IPowerWeb's servers, which had been infiltrated by attackers.

Because IPowerWeb's servers were vulnerable, criminals were able to register false DNS information, including different site names under the city of Plainville's domain name. Bailey's research turned up other sites with the same problem, also being hosted at IPowerWeb, including at least two other government sites: csm.ca.gov and Bridger-mt.gov.

Obviously, IPowerWeb had a problem. Getting it fixed would be an uphill battle, however, given the lack of human contact available.

Bailey found he had to send repeated e-mails to IPowerWeb's abuse e-mail contact—a frustrating exercise, given that the contact information was hidden and could only be retrieved via Google searches for cached information that had been removed from the site. When the ISP finally responded, it initially tried to brush him off by laying the blame back at the customer's feet.

"I sent them several e-mails," Bailey told eWEEK. "They returned [my e-mail] once saying it wasn't their fault, when it clearly was. I could trace everything back to their DNS servers."

Imagine the frustration of squeezing an ISP's site in an effort to find a responsive human to deal with a site that's been seeded with malware, with more and more innocent citizens potentially suffering drive-by malcode downloads as the clock ticks. Imagine that same frustration if the news has gotten out to security researchers, been blogged about, featured in news headlines, and resulted in the GSA pulling the plug on an entire state's domain, as happened in the case of California with TAM in October.

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