Mobile Innovations in India

Innovation isn’t thinking about bright new ideas but using ideas from one section and applying it to another. Several innovations that I came across in India truly fits the description. Let’s look at two such  mobile innovations and how they impact our society.

Nano Ganesh:

To operate the irrigation pumps, villages and rural locations in India are often marred by fluctuations in power supply, difficult terrain, fear of animals on the way to pumps, hazardous locations of the pumps along the river or water storage beds, shock hazards, rains etc. Nano Ganesh is a GSM Mobile based remote control system exclusively for the use with water pump sets in agriculture areas.



The need of Nano Ganesh aroused from the routine problems faced by the farmers in operating the pumps. A farmer has to simply dial a number dedicated for a Nano Ganesh set and then punch his on or off code for the control of the pump set. It can be connected to any existing electrical starter and motor pumps. Hence, there is no necessity of replacing the pumping set. With bulk of our GDP coming from agriculture, I think products like Nano Ganesh are super-important to keep the sector blooming.

On the deployment of the system, a pre-set code is given to the farmer to switch on/off the pumpset. In order to switch on the set a farmer has to call up the number of the mobile phone attached in the starter panel. One can confirm the availability of the power in the pumpset by a long beep sound, which will be signaled from the receiving end during the call Followed by the confirmation of availability of the power, the caller has to dial a preset code provided for the user to switch on the pump set.

Once the code is dialed the user has to confirm his function by a feedback tone and then cut the call. For switching off the pumpset, the same process has to be repeated and a different preset code is entered to switch off the pumpset.

To make the phones easily accessible to the farmer community basic phones like Nokia 1100 have been deployed. The modem is also available with a theft proof inbuilt device called ‘Nano Ganesh Hanuman’, whereby its installation will also ensure alert in case of theft attempt near the pump area related to pumpset cable, panel or pump itself.

Priced between Rs.560 and Rs.1700, more than 5,000 farmers are using the application.

GreenPhone

An ecofriendly software application, developed by New Delhi-based Mobimonster 2.0, GreenPhone allows one to save on the phone’s battery and charger life.

Greenphone alerts you to several power consumption modules of your phone so that you can remove the charger or shut down the unwanted services to preserve power and in turn help saving the environment.

Greenphone has advanced algorithms that help the software quickly get call back from the device when the battery is “optimally” charged, Bluetooth, WLAN are active and there is no data transfer and when the backlight is not in use, Greenphone shuts it down.  Greenphone aims to alert the user by means of SMS so that you know when the phone is using resources which are not required.

The firm allows users to download the application free for trial, but charges $15 for constant use.

6 reasons Why Google Wave will Change PLM Collaboration

"It’s impossible to speak about collaboration these days, in my opinion, without touching Google Wave. I analyzed multiple presentations, demos, videos, analyzes and would like to present my take on the 6 top reasons as to why Wave will change today’s PLM collaboration world."

Read more at 6 reasons Why Google Wave will Change PLM Collaboration « Daily PLM Think Tank Blog:

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Entrepreneurship's 10 Commandments

The following is a summary of Guy Kawasaki's "Ten Commandments":

1. Make meaning, not money. "As venture capitalists," Kawasaki said, "we deal with many companies, and often they come in saying what they think we want to hear: that they want to make money. It's been my observation that most companies founded on this concept of making money pretty much fail. They attract the wrong kind of co-founders and early employees."

Rather, he says, entrepreneurs should focus on making their product or service mean something beyond the sum of its components--and the money may very well follow. He noted how Nike made its aerobic sneakers for women into more than just "two pieces of cotton, leather and rubber, manufactured under somewhat suspect conditions in the Far East." With smart advertising about how women traditionally have been measured and judged, Nike "turned $2.50 of raw materials into something that stands for efficacy and power and liberation. They are making meaning with shoes. Great companies make meaning." Certainly, Apple has done that with the Mac, iPhone and other devices.

2. Make a mantra, not a mission statement. Bland, generic company mission statements--about "delivering superior-quality products and services for our customers and communities through leadership innovation and partnerships"--serve no one but the consultant brought in to develop them, Kawasaki said.

Instead, keep it short and define yourself by what you want to mean to consumers. Nike stands for "authentic athletic performance." FedEx is about "peace of mind." To get everyone internally and externally on the same page, explain why your organization exists and how it meets customers' needs and desires.

3. Jump curves. Innovating is harder than just staying a little bit ahead of competitors on the same curve. "If you're a daisy-wheel printer company, the goal is not to introduce Helvetica in another point size. The goal is to jump to laser printer," he said. That's easier in some businesses than others. Kawasaki noted how in the days before refrigeration, the ice industry consisted of ice harvesters in cold climates using horses, sleighs and saws to collect ice outdoors during winter months. Ten million pounds of ice were shipped in 1900 that way, he said. Then came "Ice 2.0"--factories that could freeze ice anywhere and an ice man who would deliver it to establishments and homes. Finally came "Ice 3.0": home refrigerators.

Of course, none of the ice harvesters got into the ice factory business, and none of the factories got into the refrigerator business. That's because "most organizations define themselves in terms of what they do," he said, "instead of thinking 'what benefit do we provide the customer?' True innovation comes when you jump curves, not when you duke it out for 10% or 15% better."

4. In product design, "roll the DICEE".That's an acronym. "D" is for deep, which to Kawasaki means thinking about features that go beyond the norm. One of his favorite "deep" ideas: Fanning Reef sandals, which have a bottle opener built into the sole. "I" is for intelligence, as seen in the design of Panasonic's BF-104 flashlight, which uses batteries of three different sizes to accommodate the random mix of extra batteries many people have around the house. "C" is for complete--or being not just a product, but including support and service. The first "E" is for elegance: Beauty matters, according to Kawasaki. "Companies should have CTOs--chief taste officers," he said. The second "E" is for emotive. "Great products generate strong emotions: Think Harley Davidson, Macintosh."

5. Don't worry, be "crappy". This doesn't mean ship a bad product, but "your innovation can have elements of crappiness to it," Kawasaki said. Twitter has a litany of flaws, but it is changing people's habits. The first Mac had plenty of room for improvement, but it made a statement about the future of personal computing, and it did not need to wait.

6. Polarize people. Try to be all things to all people and you often ship mediocrity, Kawasaki said. The boxy Toyota Scion xB looks ugly to some people but very cool to its devotees. TiVo became popular while maddening the advertising industry.

7. Let 100 flowers blossom. Borrowing from Chairman Mao, Kawasaki said you never know where the flowers will emerge, so let them grow. Innovations may attract unexpected and unintended customers. Think of Avon Products' Skin-so-Soft cream, which became popular as a mosquito repellent. Rule one, he said, is "take the money. Rule two: Learn who's buying your product, ask them why and give them more reasons. That's a lot easier than asking people who aren't interested 'why not,' and trying to change their minds."

8. Churn, baby, churn. Always improve. Listen to customers for ideas. That's difficult, Kawasaki said, because an innovator or entrepreneur must often ignore the advice of naysayers and "bozos" who say it can't be done. Once it is done, and the product reaches the hands of customers, it's time to start listening to their feedback. "Once you ship, then you flip," Kawasaki said.

9. Niche yourself. Find your place, Kawasaki urged. He showed a simple X-Y graph, with the usual four quadrants mapping the variables "Uniqueness" and "Value." A product or service does not need to be unique if it delivers value. That, he said, is how Dell won market share selling computers. In the lower left quadrant of his X-Y graph he placed many of the "me too" dot-com companies of the late 1990s that were low value and uninspired. But in the upper-right quadrant were high value, unique products and services. They included the online movie-ticketing service Fandango and the Clear card that can speed passage through airport security. "The upper-right-hand corner is the holy grail of marketing," he said. "It's where meaning is made, it's where money is made, it's where history is made."

10. Follow the 10-20-30 rule when pitching to venture capitalists. That means no more than 10 PowerPoint slides, a limit of 20 minutes for the pitch and using a 30-point font size in the presentation (to keep it simple). The goal of such pitches isn't to walk home with a check, he said, it's to "not be eliminated" from consideration.

Kawasaki added one bonus point for innovators--and a mea culpa. "Don't let the bozos get you down," he said, trotting out some well-worn statements from technology naysayers, such as IBM chairman Thomas Watson's assertion in 1943 that the total worldwide market for computers was "maybe five" (computer historians question the authenticity of the unsubstantiated quote), and Western Union's inability to see a use for the telephone.

These companies were trapped by thinking about what they already did, rather than what could be done next. Ignore them, Kawasaki said. Nevertheless, he admitted he was a "bozo" himself once. In the mid-1990s, he was offered a chance to interview for the CEO position at Yahoo. He declined. He saw the Web as just another thing to do with a computer modem, and a Web index as having limited value. "By my calculation, this decision cost me $2 billion."

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Google Wave: Redefiniing Communication

In May, at the Google I/O developer's conference, Google announced its new project: Wave.

Created by many of the same team members that developed the highly successful Google Maps, the preview of the service itself on Thursday was quite compelling, resulting in a rare standing ovation at a tech conference.

Its egalitarian and federation-friendly design is intended to create an entire open ecosystem for communication and collaboration that Google is not-so-modestly touting as the reinvention of digital interaction circa 2009.

Basically the idea is rather than using electronic tools to emulate analog communication methods, we should use the strengths we already have and do things you simply can't do in the analog world. Create a "wave," add people to it, and edit and collaborate. View all the collaboration in close to real time, and then view the history and evolution in "playback" mode.

Google has launched many communication services since its inception including Gmail, Gtalk, Google Docs to name just three, yet none of these have had such obvious business utility or attempted to reinvent the collaborative process from the ground-up.

"A Wave is a single shared space where two or more users can exchange real time dialogue, photos, videos, maps and documents in what we call a Wave. Everyone can reply to a Wave, people can come and go and you can drag and drop information from all over the web."

In Google's own words, Wave will "try out some new ideas" such as concurrent rich text editing – you'll be able to see on your screen almost instantly, letter-by-letter, what your fellow collaborators are typing into a message or document in a wave, unlike in instant messaging where you need to wait to see what someone is typing. (If you don't like this, there is a draft mode.)

Google is planning to open source Google Wave in the coming months while any developer can build extensions to Google Wave using open APIs.

"The way we think about Wave is that it's a communication system, a productivity tool as well where you can produce content but there's a very rich set of APIs that come with the tool and that of course is why we're releasing it to developers first," explains Lars Rasmussen, Software Engineering Manager.








Google Wave is rather confusingly a product, a platform, and a protocol. Meaning that you can use Google Wave by itself or write your own application that incorporates or extends Google Wave, and make tools that use Google Wave interoperable. The project is only open to developers right now, but you can sign up to be notified when they open the project to users.

Google Wave: Implications for the enterprise

Last week Google announced their forthcoming service known as Wave to widespread coverage in both the press and blogosphere.

Created by many of the same team members that developed the highly successful Google Maps, the preview of the service itself on Thursday was quite compelling, resulting in a rare standing ovation at a tech conference.

Its egalitarian and federation-friendly design is intended to create an entire open ecosystem for communication and collaboration that Google is not-so-modestly touting as the reinvention of digital interaction circa 2009.

Wave’s relevance to the enterprise might seem premature with so many of the early and current Web 2.0 applications (blogs, wikis, social networks, Twitter-style social messaging, mashups, etc.) still — often arduously — making their way into the workplace years after their inception. Though we seem to finally be hitting a tipping point with 2.0 tools at work, Wave itself seems credible enough to get on our watchlists, at least to understand the implications.

The real question is whether there are really such significant gaps in the current state of Web-based communication that we need something new like Wave.

Wave: A communication and collaboration mashup

Google Wave itself consists of a dynamic mix of conversation models and highly interactive document creation via the browser. Using simple, open Web technologies (Google makes much of the fact that most of Google Wave is a open set of formats and architectures that is jointly developed with the Web community) Wave combines many of the key features of e-mail, instant messaging, media sharing, and social networking into a seamless experience and data set that are eponymously known as waves. All of this is opened up to developers via the Google Wave API.

While waves are relatively self-contained and use their own types of servers and data formats, they are easy to embed elsewhere or to build extensions for, enabling virtually infinite options for distribution over the Web or within the firewall, as well as rapid integration with existing applications and data. In fact, a wave is almost a form of social glue between people and the information they care about. And as we’ll see, this has implications for the enterprise world, not only with SOA but also with social communication in general as well as Enterprise 2.0 specifically.

Wave in action

What Google has done with the Wave protocol is essentially create a new kind of social media format that is distinctively different from blogs, wikis, activity streams, RSS, or most familiar online communication models except possibly IM. Both blogs and wikis were created in the era of page-oriented Web applications and haven’t changed much since. In contrast, Google Wave is designed for real-time participation and editing of shared conversations and documents and is more akin to the simultaneous multiuser experience of Google Docs than with traditional blogs and wiki editing. Though Google is sometimes criticized for missing the social aspect of the Web, that is patently not the case with waves, which are fundamentally social in nature. Participants can be added in real-time, new conversations forked off (via private replies), social media sharing is assumed to be the norm, and connection with a user’s contextual server-side data is also a core feature including location, search, and more.

The result is stored in a persistent document known as a wave, access to which can be embedded anywhere that HTML can be embedded, whether that’s a Web page or an enterprise portal. Users can then discover and interact with the wave, joining the conversation, adding more information, etc. Google has also leveraged its investments in Google Gadgets and OpenSocial, two key technologies for spreading online services beyond the original boundaries of the sites they came from. All in all, Google Wave is a smart and well-constructed bundle of collaborative capabilities with many of the modern sensibilities we’ve come to expect in the Web 2.0 era including an acutely social nature, rapid interaction, and community-based technology.

Google Wave: An enterprise perspective

The hodge podge of 1990s era (and often older, in the case of e-mail) Internet communication methods were created in another time. Blogs, wikis, IM, and so on are all useful modes of communication but there are better ways and new requirements in today’s high social, interactive, and highly integrated times. That’s not to say that many companies haven’t tried to do this already, but virtually none of them have the ability to drive the modern development community or use their existing online market share to foster adoption in the end-user marketplace like Google does. In the end, barring a major misstep from Google, chances are good that organizations will have to deal with business data in the Wave Protocol format in the future.

Let’s take a closer look at what enterprises need to know about Google Wave:

• Google Wave largely complements and doesn’t replace existing communication and collaborative applications. Google Wave creates a healthy synthesis of existing application types by providing integration across existing channels. The early demos in fact showed how Twitter and existing social networks can play very well with Google Wave, enhancing the experience and allow broader participation. Google Wave won’t replace existing apps like e-mail, IM, blogs, or wikis, and will actually make the latter two stronger through embedding. Groupware and other simultaneously collaborative apps, however, are more at risk of displacement.
  
  
• Enterprise 2.0 is well supported by Google Wave. The general capabilities of FLATNESSES, my mnemonic for all the things that a capable Enterprise 2.0 platform should do, is well embodied in Google Wave. While blogs and wikis are the fundamental Enterprise 2.0 platforms, the basic capabilities of social interaction, emergence, and freeformedness are all there, though a wave presupposes a bit more structure and situated use than the more tabula rasa blog or wiki.
  
  
• New protocols, servers, data formats, and client applications are required to use wave. Unfortunately, Google Wave brings a lot of baggage with it, though it’s mostly straightforward. You will require new software, though not on the client since that all runs in a zero-footprint browser client. This means more integration code, management, and monitoring. The best news is that everything is well-documented, open, and any organization can participate in directing the wave community, so lock-in, while always possible, seems largely avoidable and Google takes great pains to draw us to that conclusion. Google is also pushing hard for alternative implementations of the client and server components, including on-premise implementations, with the former on display at their announcement.
  
  
• Waves are a natural integration point for many enterprise services including ECM, SOA, mashups, and more. By defining a strong protocol for continuous server-side processing of live conversations, Google has enabled an entire world where our IT systems are connected to the work we do every day. Literally while participants are busy typing and collaborating, a wave can be receiving support from back-end systems such as HRM, CRM, ERP, and so on to provide data, context, and other just-in-time support. Many businesses could benefit enormously from seamless business data integration such as customers, orders, and so on, never mind the deeper possibilities of contextual business processes leveraged directly in the collaborative activities of workers. I’ve written many times about the convergence of our IT systems and Web 2.0, and this seams one of the more natural environments for it that I’ve seen in a while.
  
  
• Embedding and extensions will enable widespread distribution and consumption of waves. Google brings ease-of-development for creating server-side extension as well as simple models for user-distribution of waves. While the first will enable easy integration with local data sources and will create a large aftermarket for useful extensions such as the aforementioned language translation capabilities, the second will virtually ensure that enterprises will have interaction with waves one way or another. Since the premise of the product is also one of the dominant activities in the business world (enabling teamwork) and combined with the increasing consumerization of the workplace, it’s highly likely that organizations will encounter waves in their work with external entities, especially with partners and clients. At the very least, organizations will need to understand how waves will make their organizations even more porous on the Internet, and have policies about participating in them, just like SaaS services, social networks, and other external applications. Security will also be an issue with waves though things like integration of Web 2.0 tools and ECM will actually be easier than ever before since a corporate archive robot could ensure every wave conversation is backed up in the formal ECM system.

Google has launched many communication services since its inception including Gmail, Gtalk, Blogger to name just three, yet none of these have had such obvious business utility or attempted to reinvent the collaborative process from the ground-up. While it’s always possible that Google Wave will never broadly take off (see Mary Jo Foley’s analysis of Wave here), I’m betting that it’s likely to be one of the most interesting offerings to businesses that the company has created yet. With the open positioning, early outreach to the world, and the clarity of purpose and design, Google Wave has a good shot at helping take Enterprise 2.0 to the next level in many organizations.

It's much too soon to really decide anything about Google Wave yet, but are you putting it on your watch list? Please put your comments in the comment box below. Thank you.

Can India Innovate Its Way Out of the Crisis?

The economic crisis spans the entirety of the globe, but its effects differ from country to country. In India, this crisis provides an opportunity for the country to re-examine its economic strategy. To date, India has been driven by inherited prosperity and has focused its efforts on its low cost of labor. The boom the country has experienced in IT and BPO (business process outsourcing) is driven by this low-cost labor, commonly called labor arbitrage--not by a concerted effort by Indian industry to innovate or to grow strengths like manufacturing capabilities. The growth in the software sector is not driven by innovation; rather it is the availability of cheap technical human resources.

But here's the rub: Low-cost labor does not provide sustainable competitive advantage to the nation as it is always in a precarious position and in danger of being overtaken by another low-cost provider of human capital. In the long run, it is the innovative capacity and capability that will create sustainable competitive advantage.

Today India faces a choice: it can learn and start the growth process or stunt it with its denial. India needs to understand what its real competitiveness is today, whether it is sustainable and in the long run and how would it create conditions for creating sustainable wealth and prosperity for its citizens. The concept of competitiveness serves as a useful guide for the country here.

Looking at the concept of competitiveness we fundamentally know that it is about productivity-- the returns we get per dollar invested. Looking at the concept of competitiveness, we see that successful economic development is a process of successive upgrading, in which the nation's business environment evolves to support firms' increasingly sophisticated and productive ways of competing. Nations evolve through various stages of competitive development.

Innovation in all likelihood increases trade, helps maintain market share, improves processes and creates high-quality products. India is clearly lagging behind in producing products efficiently. Only by taking a long-term orientation and outlook will India see a true opportunity to change its path -- not by continuing the current policy initiatives that are incomplete and in bursts.

Recession or not, India will have to move ahead, wake up and take action if it is to continue the momentum it has earned in the last 10 years. In the future, it will have to focus more on manufacturing and innovation. These are the sectors that would provide employment and appropriate usage of the talent and educated labor pool already available in the country.

By Dr. Amit Kapoor

Honorary Chairman of Institute for Competitiveness, India & Professor of Strategy & Industrial Economics at Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India

Mashups redefining business processes

Every non-IT executive would have at some point felt frustrated at not being able to access certain information and having to depend on the IT helpdesk. Business mashups aims to tackle such situations by being able to automate business processes. And that best part is that even a sales person will now be able to define the sales process be it a sales proposal generation and automate it.

It's (mashups) about RAD (Rapid Application Deployment) solutions, its about helping IT departments to be more agile and helping business to be more self sufficient and these are usual business processes simple business solutions. So with business mash ups you can easily automate processes. It helps IT to deliver applications faster and more efficiently.

The fundamental business benefit is that the user is taking a manual process which is error prone and time consuming and you are doing that without having to spend a lot of money on writing code on building solution, which is what IT departments generally do. So, ROI would definitely vary based on the kinds of business processes you are automating. Fundamentally the RoI lies in the fact that without having to write code and spend money on developing a solution you are rapidly automating a process where it used to be manual and you are saving lots of time and money.

Mashup On demand

While mashups by itself is not a new concept, going by the demand for on demand apps, we will shortly launch our mashup server – on demand, which can be accessed through the Internet. With this customers can download design software, design an application and load it back onto our mashup server.

Mashups help business analysts in IT to mashup applications, because end of the day, the business user doesn't care where the data lives. They just have a problem, they have a business problem, which is manual, error-prone and they like to automate it, streamline it and improve it and so that's exactly what we target. We help business users to use it so that they do not have to depend on IT and developers. So the sales ops person can create this application and put it on the on-premise server or we have this mash up server on the cloud and the customer can download the design software from the mashup server.

You could call it a mashup delivered as SaaS. We have a mashup server, which we serve on the cloud and this mashup composer, which is a client application which you can download something like iTunes.

The business user can now use this environment to define his business process. So when the user is ready to deploy it he can run that process they have to push it up to a server so that people can actually interact and like iTunes connects to Apple's server the mashup composer connects to our mashup on-demand server after registration based on a 'pay per month per user' model.

The end users of that process can use a standard browser and interact in the process connecting to our servers. Mashups can be used to design a number of processes and can be used across the enterprise be it sales people submitting a request for a discount, or the helpdesk for IT help or even a HR process. The user can start a process or interact with the process if its in their inbox to approve or review through a browser connecting to our servers.

However, not all are comfortable with SaaS and so we also support the on premise version. We will launched our new mashup server on-demand because we feel that is going to broaden our reach. Basically, it is two different deployment models and lot of companies are looking to SaaS as an alternative way because they can get up and running very quickly.

It may be a long time before companies completely run on SaaS, but its growing.

Emerging Drug Discovery Technologies - A Summary

Introduction

The drug discovery process has changed significantly since the 1950s when drugs were discovered by rather a chance or random process: known compounds were screened or any molecules to hand were randomly tested, to a large part in in vivo models. Now, with the advent of molecular biology, coupled with advances in screening and synthetic chemistry technologies, a combination of both random screening and knowledge around the receptor is used for drug discovery.

An important consequence of today’s approach to drug discovery is that more lead molecules are being discovered for diverse targets, giving the medicinal chemist more scope to find a candidate molecule. However, the probability of success of launching a candidate molecule onto the market remains largely unchanged at around 8%, and the perception is that the time to market has not reduced as might have been expected with greater automation.

Numerous problem areas remain: current methodologies for compound synthesis, storage, and retrieval are inefficient and inadequate; better information is required to improve target selection and validation; more predictive screens are essential; greater emphasis must be placed on acquiring good ADMET data earlier in the discovery process; and novel screening methodologies are needed to dramatically increase throughputs and reduce reagent consumption.

Innovative technologies that generate high-value information in a condensed time frame, minimize the guesswork involved in target, lead and drug candidate selection, and minimize the effects or compromises inherent in drug discovery will lead to significant improvements in productivity across the spectrum of drug discovery operations. Three technologies that are predicted to do this are: lab-on-achip/microfluidics, nanotechnology and RNA interference (RNAi).

• Lab-on-a-chip/microfluidics

A lab-on-a-chip (LOC) device is a microscale laboratory on a credit card sized glass or plastic chip with a network of microchannels, electrodes, sensors and electronic circuits. These LOCs can duplicate the specialized functions as performed by their room-sized counterparts, such as clinical diagnoses, PCR and electrophoretic separation.

Generally, a LOC device must perform a number of microfluidic functions: pumping, mixing, thermal cycling/incubating, dispensing, and separating. Precise manipulation of these microfluidic processes is the key to the operation and performance of LOCs.

The advantages of LOCs include significant reduction in the amounts of samples and reagents, very short reaction and analysis time, high throughput, portability and reproducibility.

Recent developments in LOCs have enabled the technology to move from the laboratory into the commercial world. Some of the major factors driving the growth and expansion of the LOC device market include: high throughput screening, increased automation, reduction in sample requirement, reduced exposure to hazardous materials, and the increased rate at which potential drug targets are screened.

In 2004, the world LOC/microfluidics markets generated an estimated $215.3m. The market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) 2004 - 2012, of 27.8%, reaching $1530.4m in 2012. The market predominantly comprises of start-up companies, a few of which have managed to go public. The top five vendors (Caliper, Cepheid, Agilent, Combimatrix and Nanogen) accounted for approximately 48% of the market in 2004.

• Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is an enabling technology that deals with nanometer (10-9 meter) sized objects. Nanotechnology can enhance the drug discovery process, through miniaturization, automation, speed and reliability of assays.

Five nanotechnologies that will make a serious contribution to drug discovery are: atomic force microscopy, nano-mass spectroscopy, dip-pen nanolithography, nanoarray and nanoparticles.

Although, at an embryonic stage of development, nano-enabled drugs are already bringing clinical benefits to thousands of patients. Two such drugs are Abraxane for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer, and RenaZorb, which provides phosphate control in kidney dialysis patients.

There are a number of challenges that the industry must overcome in order for nanotechnology to reach its full commercial potential. These include addressing the issues of scalability, standardization, nanomaterial long-term stability, and the accuracy.

Some of the major factors driving the expansion of nano-enabled drug discovery include: identification of novel chemical structures, ability to manipulate and track cells on the nanoscale due to advances in microscopy, increased government funds earmarked for nanotechnology, significant and growing interest from the venture capital community and rapid proliferation of nanotechnology start-up companies.

The total world market for nanotechnology in drug discovery was estimated at $121.9m in 2004. The market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) 2004-2012, of 29.3%, reaching $955m in 2012. The market predominantly comprises of start-ups. The top six vendors (QuantumDot Corp., Nanosphere, Nanoplex, C Sixty, BioForce NanoSciences and Fluidigm Corp.) accounted for approximately 57% of the market in 2004.

• RNA interference

The landscape for gene silencing technologies has been significantly boosted by an emerging new technology called RNA interference (RNAi). RNAi has enormous potential in both target validation and therapeutics. RNAi technology involves targeting and interfering with messenger RNA (mRNA), a blueprint for building the protein being expressed. In this manner, if a protein is involved in the progression of a disease, RNAi can be used to stop it being expressed.

RNAi has great potential in that it provides a novel approach to drug discovery, validation and delivery. Industry and academic research work in this sector has been accelerated, as is evident from the number of scientific papers published on RNAi. Science named RNAi the technology of the year for 2002, and Fortune dubbed it biotech’s “next billion dollar breakthrough” in 2003.

The market for RNAi is relatively new and emerging. The technology has only been applicable to human systems since 2001. Rapid early growth has been seen in the market, which is being driven by the demand for novel drug discovery targets, an accelerated drug discovery process, and the robustness and effectiveness shown by RNAi in gene silencing.

In 2004, the total market revenue for RNAi technology was estimated at $1.1bn. The market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) 2004 - 2012, of 16.1%, to reach revenues of $3.7bn in 2012. Dharmacon is the largest provider of synthetic siRNA, accounting for 35% of the total RNAi market. Quiagen had a 16% RNAi market share in 2004, while Ambion accounted for approximately 9% of RNAi revenues. More companies are emerging in the RNAi market and companies such as Eurogenetics, MWG Biotech Inc., Imgenes Corp., Proligo, Intradigm Corp., Mirus Corp., Novagen and Imgenex Corp. together represent approximately 35% of the global RNAi market.

28 Indian Innovations

28 India Innovations - From Cell Phone PSAs to Sari Couture (CLUSTER)

(TREND HUNTER) India doesn’t always get the same credit for influencing pop culture as other global powerhouses like France, Italy, the UK, Canada, and the US. Innovators in India have embraced technology and channeled… [More]

Gaming and the Future Workplace

It has been my long-held belief that the "gaming idiom" will increasingly find its way into workplace social computing applications. I suspect that this is reasonably closely related to what Stowe Boyd terms flow as it relates to Enterprise 2.0 dynamics and the applications that will be used to work "in flow".

With a substantial $3 million in funding, University of California, Irvine plans to study "how emerging forms of communication, including multiplayer computer games and online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life can help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in the global marketplace."

Although virtual worlds technology may have initially been created for games, they have far exceeded that use. virtual worlds seem to be the next communications medium that will transform how we do business and live our lives. Consider that virtual worlds allow us to be "present" with each other in the same "place" unlike any technology yet developed. It creates immersive shared experiences spontaneously, and without travel.

Virtual world environments and other technology-enabled forms of communication are gaining popularity as organizations worldwide are decentralizing. To grow and promote efficiency, companies need to develop long-distance, collaborative communication methods. The researchers plan to help in that arena, using innovations such as large-scale multiplayer online games, social networking, and file and media sharing.

To gain real-world perspective, UCI researchers are collaborating with five organizations from aerospace, telecommunications, transportation and electronics industries as well as the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana. The companies already are experimenting with the technologies in group planning, decision-making and training.

Virtual worlds are better because they create immersive experiences for people to share as if they were together in person. Nothing else achieves the feeling of togetherness that virtual worlds do. Teleconference, although an improvement over the telephone, is not immersive. Nor does it deliver a unique and memorable experience. Telepresence is much better, but it is largely immobile and very expensive. Virtual worlds can be accessed from a desktop, inexpensively. They are highly flexible and allow for redesign and redevelopment. Tomorrow your virtual conference room could be a medieval castle, if you so desire. Interactions within virtual worlds feel real, are highly memorable, and transform relationships. Additionally, other media such as video and audio can be fed into virtual worlds to enhance the experience.

It is easy for companies to enact policies prohibiting the use of these technologies. But then they would be "throwing out the baby with the bathwater." Virtual worlds and other Web 2.0 technologies, like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, can be tremendously powerful and effective business tools.

Little Wonder: A Rs 500 Laptop

Tata Motors may have no definite timetable for the launch of the Nano, the world's cheapest car at around Rs 100,000 ($2,000), but a Rs 500 laptop could soon be a reality in India. The Indian Government is all set to display the Rs 500 laptop on 3 February 2009 in Tirupati, at the launch of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology.

To take knowledge to every household and help students get feed on every subject while sitting home, the government is set to make available low-cost computers at $10. Students can get the e-content feed and load them in their computers and take advantage of the materials. The government will provide these computers to educational institutions at a subsidised price. The Government's ultimate target is to have a Virtual Technological University.

The Rs 500 laptop has been developed by students of Vellore Institute of Technology, scientists at Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, IIT Madras and Semiconductor Complex, a public sector undertaking. It would be equipped with 2 GB of memory, WiFi, fixed Ethernet, expandable memory, and consume just 2 watts of power, say media reports.

At this stage, the price of the laptop is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down, reports The Economic Times.

In November 2005, at the World Summit on the Information Society held in Tunis, Massachussets Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Nicholas Negroponte, unveiled a $100 laptop computer, The Children's Machine, designed for students in the developing world. The project is part of a broader programme by One Laptop Per Child, a non-profit organisation started by Negroponte and other Media Lab faculty, to extend Internet access in developing countries.

Many companies were working hard to break the sub-$100 notebook price point since its launch. But, ultimately India is ready to showcase a notebook that costs only $10, which is so far the cheapest computing device in India.

State of Innovation 2009 : Big Change to the Risk vs. Reward Equation

The fundamental issue in India is the risk/reward equation. It is simply too easy for a young developer in India to get paid a lot by an outsourcing firm; then enjoy being headhunted every year for more money. Those of us old enough to see a cycle or two, can see the parallels between Silicon Valley 1999 and Bangalore 2007, when just being able to spell the words of a popular programming language on a resume meant fame and fortune. It is possible that when this comes back to some reality, the motivation to innovate will come to young Indian developers (yes, young; breakthrough technical innovation tends to come from people under 30).

Three kids working together, living at home, with free food and bandwidth, can change the world.

This has changed, thanks to the global financial crisis. The big outsourcing firms have hiring freezes, and some firms are laying off. "Big" no longer means "safe." Parents in India will need a while to accept this new reality. In America, many parents would advise their kids to go for start-ups when they are young and can afford to take a risk. In India, all the parents have to do is say "Yes" when their bright kid, who is no longer working for a big outsourcing firm, asks to live at home for a year with free food and bandwidth.

This is a big change. But it is a below-the-radar change. We cannot see the impact yet. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of young developers will do this in India now. Most will not create a great start-up but will just keep their skills fresh and add to their CV. But one or two will do something totally awesome. The class of 2008/2009 maybe the best ever. Let's see.

The innovation we are already seeing in the market today has been despite these and all the other hurdles faced by entrepreneurs everywhere.

Obama's Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators

Barack Obama is one of the most radical management innovators in the world today. Obama's team built something truly world-changing: a new kind of political organization for the 21st century. It differs from yesterday's political organizations as much as Google and Threadless differ from yesterday's corporations: all are a tiny handful of truly new, 21st century institutions in the world today.

Obama presidential bid succeeded, through the power of new DNA : new rules for new kinds of institutions.

So let's discuss the new DNA Obama brought to the table, by outlining seven rules for tomorrow's radical innovators.

1. Have a self-organization design. What was really different about Obama's organization? We're used to thinking about organizations in 20th century terms: do we design them to be tall, or flat?

But tall and flat are concepts built for an industrial era. They force us to think - spatially and literally - in two dimensions: tall organizations command unresponsively, and flat organizations respond uncontrollably.

Obama's organization blew past these orthodoxies: it was able to combine the virtues of both tall and flat organizations. How? By tapping the game-changing power of self-organization. Obama's organization was less tall or flat than spherical - a tightly controlled core, surrounded by self-organizing cells of volunteers, donors, contributors, and other participants at the fuzzy edges. The result? Obama's organization was able to reverse tremendous asymmetries in finance, marketing, and distribution - while McCain's organization was left trapped by a stifling command-and-control paradigm.

2. Seek elasticity of resilience. Obama's 21st century organization was built for a 21st century goal - not to maximize outputs, or minimize inputs, but to, as Gary Hamel has discussed, remain resilient to turbulence. What happened when McCain attacked Obama with negative ads in September? Such attacks would have depleted the coffers of a 20th century organization, who would have been forced to retaliate quickly and decisively in kind. Yet, Obama's organization responded furiously in exactly the opposite way: with record-breaking fundraising. That's resilience: reflexively bouncing back to an existential threat by growing, augmenting, or strengthening resources.

3. Minimize strategy. Obama's campaign dispensed almost entirely with strategy in its most naïve sense: strategy as gamesmanship or positioning. They didn't waste resources trying to dominate the news cycle, game the system, strong-arm the party, or out-triangulate competitors' positions. Rather, Obama's campaign took a scalpel to strategy - because they realized that strategy, too often, kills a deeply-lived sense of purpose, destroys credibility, and corrupts meaning.

4. Maximize purpose. Change the game? That's 20th century thinking at its finest - and narrowest. The 21st century is about changing the world. What does "yes we can" really mean? Obama's goal wasn't simply to win an election, garner votes, or run a great campaign. It was larger and more urgent: to change the world.

Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things.

And to do that, you must strive to change the world radically for the better - and always believe that yes, you can. You must maximize, stretch, and utterly explode your sense of purpose.

5. Broaden unity. What do marketers traditionally do? Segment and target, slice and dice. We've become great at dividing markets into tinier and tinier bits. But we're terrible at unifying them. Yet Obama succeeded not through division, but through unification: we are, he contended, "not a collection of Red States and Blue States -- We are the United States of America".

Obama intuitively understands a larger truth of next-generation economics. Unified markets are what a world driven to collapse by hyperconsumption is desperately going to need. We're going to need not a hundred different kinds of razors - and their spiralling costs of complexity and waste - but a single razor that everybody, from the slums of Rio to the lofts of Tribeca, is overjoyed to use.

6. Thicken power. The power many corporations wield is thin power: the power to instill fear and inculcate greed. True power is what Obama has learned wield: the power to inspire, lead, and engender belief. You can beat people into subjugation - but you can never command their loyalty, creativity, or passion. Thick power is true power: it's radically more durable, less costly, and more intense.

7. Remember that there is nothing more asymmetrical than an ideal. Obama ended his last speech before the election by saying: "let's go change the world." Why are those words important? Because the world needs changing. A world riven by economic meltdown, religious conflict, resource scarcity, and intractable poverty and violence - such a world demands fresh ideals. We must mold and shape a better world - or we will surely all suffer together. As Obama said: "we rise or fall ... as one people."

In such a world, forget about a short-lived, often meaningless "competitive advantage". It's a concept built for the 20th century. In the 21st century, there is nothing more asymmetrical - more disruptive, more revolutionary, or more innovative -- than the world-changing power of an ideal.

Where are the ideals in your organization? What ideals are missing - absent, bankrupt, stolen - from your economy, industry, or market? What ideals will you fight and struggle for - and live? Because the ultimate problem with industrial-era business was, as Wall Street has so convincingly demonstrated, this: there weren't any.

That seventh lesson is the starting point for tomorrow's radical innovators - because it's the thread that knits the others together. And it's where you should start if you want to use these seven rules to start building 21st century institutions - whether businesses, non-profits, social enterprises, or political campaigns.

I couldn't be more deeply or powerfully inspired by the "defining moment" of an Obama presidency. Yet, the seeds of a new challenge have been planted by that victory: for us to harness the lessons of his quiet revolution - our quiet revolution - to seed many, many more.

While Detroit Slept

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

As I think about our bailing out Detroit, I can’t help but reflect on what, in my view, is the most important rule of business in today’s integrated and digitized global market, where knowledge and innovation tools are so widely distributed. It’s this: Whatever can be done, will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you. Just don’t think it won’t be done. If you have an idea in Detroit or Tennessee, promise me that you’ll pursue it, because someone in Denmark or Tel Aviv will do so a second later.

Why do I bring this up? Because someone in the mobility business in Denmark and Tel Aviv is already developing a real-world alternative to Detroit’s business model. I don’t know if this alternative to gasoline-powered cars will work, but I do know that it can be done — and Detroit isn’t doing it. And therefore it will be done, and eventually, I bet, it will be done profitably.

And when it is, our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet.

What business model am I talking about? It is Shai Agassi’s electric car network company, called Better Place. Just last week, the company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., announced a partnership with the state of Hawaii to road test its business plan there after already inking similar deals with Israel, Australia, the San Francisco Bay area and, yes, Denmark.

The Better Place electric car charging system involves generating electrons from as much renewable energy — such as wind and solar — as possible and then feeding those clean electrons into a national electric car charging infrastructure. This consists of electricity charging spots with plug-in outlets — the first pilots were opened in Israel this week — plus battery-exchange stations all over the respective country. The whole system is then coordinated by a service control center that integrates and does the billing.

Under the Better Place model, consumers can either buy or lease an electric car from the French automaker Renault or Japanese companies like Nissan (General Motors snubbed Agassi) and then buy miles on their electric car batteries from Better Place the way you now buy an Apple cellphone and the minutes from AT&T. That way Better Place, or any car company that partners with it, benefits from each mile you drive. G.M. sells cars. Better Place is selling mobility miles.

The first Renault and Nissan electric cars are scheduled to hit Denmark and Israel in 2011, when the whole system should be up and running. On Tuesday, Japan’s Ministry of Environment invited Better Place to join the first government-led electric car project along with Honda, Mitsubishi and Subaru. Better Place was the only foreign company invited to participate, working with Japan’s leading auto companies, to build a battery swap station for electric cars in Yokohama, the Detroit of Japan.

What I find exciting about Better Place is that it is building a car company off the new industrial platform of the 21st century, not the one from the 20th — the exact same way that Steve Jobs did to overturn the music business. What did Apple understand first? One, that today’s technology platform would allow anyone with a computer to record music. Two, that the Internet and MP3 players would allow anyone to transfer music in digital form to anyone else. You wouldn’t need CDs or record companies anymore. Apple simply took all those innovations and integrated them into a single music-generating, purchasing and listening system that completely disrupted the music business.

What Agassi, the founder of Better Place, is saying is that there is a new way to generate mobility, not just music, using the same platform. It just takes the right kind of auto battery — the iPod in this story — and the right kind of national plug-in network — the iTunes store — to make the business model work for electric cars at six cents a mile. The average American is paying today around 12 cents a mile for gasoline transportation, which also adds to global warming and strengthens petro-dictators.

Do not expect this innovation to come out of Detroit. Remember, in 1908, the Ford Model-T got better mileage — 25 miles per gallon — than many Ford, G.M. and Chrysler models made in 2008. But don’t be surprised when it comes out of somewhere else. It can be done. It will be done. If we miss the chance to win the race for Car 2.0 because we keep mindlessly bailing out Car 1.0, there will be no one to blame more than Detroit’s new shareholders: we the taxpayers.