Unlimited free and clean energy to all... could it be feasible?

I'm not a scientist, so I cannot judge on the scientific credibility of the ideas in this video -nor on whether a large-scale rollout of this technology is feasible at all... but then, given the beauty of what these guys ultimately work at - free, unlimited and clean energy for all- I can only hope for these guys' dream come true. As you'll see from the video, this would have far-reaching, beneficial consequences...

amazing stuff...

Season's greetings from i4fi !

The feasibility and cost of 'vertical farming'

I've been reporting on vertical farming in a previous blog already, but for those interested in the subject the video beneath just goes one step further in explaining the scientific feasibility of the idea, as explained by the guy who virtually imagined the whole concept of vertical farming: Dickson Despommier...

The only bottleneck remains the cost of such buildings, but sooner or later we'd need to weigh this financial cost against the cost (human, climatic AND financial) of feeding ever bigger urban cities. The result might show that vertical farming is actually very cheap...

Why genetic engineering will inevitably be part of our future...

If you're from my generation -and older- chances are that you are at least skeptical about intervening in human genetic material in order to enhance or correct certain parts of it ('genetic engineering'). The idea might sound arrogant (are we playing god?) or dangerous (where will this end?) if not ethically insane (are we still humans when we modify our genes?).

In the latest Futurist magazine, professor Jeffrey Coker goes at great length explaining how genetic engineering could contribute to a better world, or why at least it's not as bad as it seems. He does make some points:

• as it turns out, our genes are already being modified constantly by viruses and bacteria... much of our DNA is already not 'human' by nature;
• genetically modified crops would require less pesticides and chemicals, hence turning into a solution to pollution of all kind;
• by making it feasible to grow -for instance- rice in salt water (sea), or make it more resistant to drought or long periods of flood (both consequences of global warming) we might solve famine in some areas of the world;
• genetic engineering holds promises of more efficient treatments of diseases like cancer and HIV, in a more 'natural' way since it wouldn't need chemicals to do so;
• in an extreme world, we might 'grow' meat instead of depending on -polluting and voracious- animals for it, and even enhance many of our human functions (anyone want to be able to see in the dark?).

According to Jeffrey, these all belong to the scientific realities, and because of that they will get adopted. This is not demagogy: if one country starts to use genetic engineering to its advantages, governments in other countries will need to follow due to its competitive pressure, regardless of the reserves they might have towards this science.

So, all is not bad with genetic engineering, but all is not rosy neither... The biggest negative aspect about it is the fact that this science -and its applications- can quickly become the monopoly of a few big corporations. This is scary, of course, since it can easily lead to vast mismanagement, price agreements, locking poor farmers to one suppliers, etc. This could be overcome, argues Jeffrey, if governments get a looser approach to genetic engineering, so that it becomes easier for smaller players to obtain patents and offer genetic engineering solutions. The competitive forces will then ensure a fair market (not at all a convincing argument as this deregulation is what happened to the financial markets last couple of decades, with all the consequences we now endure).

Sure, genetic engineering will not be the solution for all of the challenges we face in the future, it will still need to be combined with more sustainable practices. Jeffrey convinced me of that, at least, but I'd rather have some form of control over it rather than leave it to the 'market dynamism' to develop in the future...

But then, I'm so GenX... ;-)

(the video beneath is a nice short introduction to the field of genetic engineering:)

Afraid of nanotechnology for medical purposes? think again...

(From the World Economic Forum:) Get sick every time you fly? Sonia Trigueros is developing nanoparticles to kill drug-resistant bacteria. Such nanoparticles to be developed in the laboratory can be incorporated onto surfaces in hospitals and air-conditioning units on airplanes where the spread of contagious diseases has become almost inevitable. But for such technology to fulfil its potential, education must remove fear and ensure that society understands the remarkable potential of nanotechnology.

5 tech innovations that will revolutionize our life in the next 5 years -according to IBM

Always interesting to see what IBM is working on... the video beneath shows the 'big bets' of IBM in terms of technology innovation in the next five years.

I'd immediately buy into the first two:
(1) generating power by any human movement and
(2) making passwords obsolete.

Two others freak me out however:
(3) mind reading by machines? Not having to type my books or blogs anymore -the machine would just transcript my thoughts? hm... would need to learn to concentrate on one topic at the time then...
(5) 'junk mail will become priority mail' with which IBM means to say that systems will know, select and submit the info that is relevant for us... not an appealing thought for someone who's always looking for surprising, 'out of the box' thinking...

#4 sounds a bit idealistic, but there's nothing wrong with that:
(4) 'The digital divide will cease to exist', mostly thanks to mobile internet... I don't doubt that internet access for everyone might have tremendous positive effects in making a more equal world, but I do doubt that mobile internet -however cheep it may be- will be accessible to everyone in the future... it's still a steep investment for plenty of poor people.

Can humans live till they're 200? If so, what would be the consequences?

The answer to the first question, apparently, is yes. It's not even so far off...

The answer to the second one is a little tougher (will people stretch their phases of life, or will there be more phases added) and raises a couple of unexpected ethical questions (rich people 'buying more years'... in a way they currently do already).

"Sarah Harper is Oxford University Professor and world-expert on ageing. In this talk she asks whether we want to enter a world where we live for 200 years. Maybe we do, maybe we don't, but it is certainly something we should be discussing, because it is looking like being scientifically possible within a couple of generations."

The state of social media at the end of 2011

Always good to take a pause and assess the status of social media nowadays -developing at incredible pace as shown in the video beneath... makes one think about where this type of figures will take us end of 2012 but, as Peter Hinssen argued in the last TEDx in Brussels, things don't 'naturally' move exponentially, but rather in 'S' curves. So will we see a stagnation in these figures somewhere in the next year(s)?

Food for thought...

The link between consumerization of IT and the virtual company

In its latest Internet Security Report 2011, Cisco goes into great length explaining how new trends are threatening (or better: challenging) corporate IT. The report covers a wide range of topics, but the two that caught my attention most were the consumerization of IT and the virtualization of corporations.

About consumerization of IT: Cisco states some key facts about GenY's expectations on their working environment. Conclusion? It is unavoidable to let people use their personal devices and social media for professional purposes, and companies and (young) employees need to find a balance in order to secure company data while letting young employees be more efficient through their personal resources.

According to the report; the anytime, anywhere young worker:

• believes he should be allowed to access social media and personal websites from company-issued devices;
• checks Facebook pages at least once a day;
• doesn't believe he needs to be in the office on a regular basis;
• believes IT is ultimately responsible for security, not him;
• will violate policies if it's necessary to get the job done.

On corporate virtualization, I was struck by Cisco's chart showing the different stages in this trend, and the role both consumerization of IT and 'anything as a service' play in it. The drive towards virtualization looks inevitable if you look at it that way...:

Click here to access the full report.

Some examples of how biomimicry could help us built a more sustainable world...

Humans have developed science in order to explain and control nature. We would have been smarter if instead we would have let nature inspire our scientific exploration... well, it's never too late... in fact, it's currently happening, and a completely new scientific domain is being built around it: biomimicry. Given the examples beneath, biomimicry applications could help us a long way in building a more sustainable world!

Let yourself be inspired:

Do-it-Yourself applications in Health Care, some examples

While I was building the 40 megatrend fact sheets I use as brainstorming technique at my workshops, I experienced some difficulties in stating exactly what the 'Do-it-yourself' (DIY) trend in business is about.

We all know Ikea, of course, and my previous experience with building a website on my own could also be seen as an example of this trend. But it's still difficult to really grasp the real extend of this trend -and whether or not this constitutes a new opportunity for specific companies (could we imagine DIY banking, for instance, or DIY retail?).

Maybe it helps to know that there's something like DIY Health provisioning already. Looking at the examples in the video, you might conclude that these are all just gadgets. But taken together, they signify a completely new way we handle our health altogether -namely by ourselves:

Some unsuspected consequences of the aging society

I’ve been reading the work of George Magnus, 'The age of aging' over the weekend. The book certainly offers a thorough study of the consequences of the aging society on our society, although it contain a few gaps as well. Some of the points I noted:

• George Magnus’ central point is that there will be an insufficient growth (and even a decline) of the number of persons at working age to take care of the inactive persons (since the portion of elderly people will swell due to longer life expectancy), the so-called dependency ratio will rise dramatically. Magnus seems to believe there is a very strong correlation between the number of persons at working age and economic growth –with less persons at working age one cannot produce as much as previously, unless dramatic productivity increases can be found –which Magnus seems to doubt.
  
  All fair and logical points, but it would have been truly complete if Magnus’ would have integrated the impact of automation on economic growth (and unemployment) in his equation. The devil is in the detail… The next 10-20 years we’ll see a massive retirement of baby-boomers from the active workforce, with not enough people to replace them. OK, but there’s an army of unemployed youngsters ready to take their place:
  
  (youth unemployment %, copied from the BBC)
  
  
  But even then, it’s not sure all the retired people’s jobs will need replacement –due to automation-, and it’s not sure that the current unemployed youngsters will be able to take these jobs over –this is an educational issue.
• One thing I didn’t fully grasp before reading this book is the impact of the aging society on our ‘wealth’. The increase of elderly people will certainly put a strain on public finance. It is likely that pension levels will go down in the next decades. As a result elderly people will save less (also because their health care expenditures will increase). This, in combination with the fact that there will be less people at the age where savings are highest (40-60) will result in an overall decline in savings. These savings are usually used for investments, so a decline in savings will also result in a decline of investment capital, and hence of economic growth.
  
  I won’t make this too long, but the overall conclusion is that bigger parts of the population could be much less well off than today. A troubling thought.

• One of the logical solutions to the aging society is to boost the supply of people at working age. You could increase the participation rate, but according to Magnus’ calculation in a country like France for instance retirement age would need to increase by 7 years to make up for the increased amount of retired people. A second solution is to increase immigration, but that is not a solution on the longer term (immigrants get old as well and likely didn’t contribute as much as locals to the social security system, so this worsens the problem). Furthermore, this would require a growth of immigration of more than 20% in the advanced economies in order to keep the same dependency ratio.

There’s plenty more thoughts in this book. And, while Magnus takes care not to fall into dramatization of the subject, the conclusion is that there no structural solution to this challenge, we’ll just have to make them up while we move ahead.

Check out my previous book reviews:

• "Different - how to escape the competitive herd" Youngme Moon
• "The shift" Lynda Gratton
• "The future of work" Thomas Malone
• "Making globalization work" Joseph Stiglitz
• "2030 -Technologies that will change the world" Van Santen, Khoe, Vermeer
• "What Technology wants" David Kelly
• "Crowdsourcing" Jeff Howe
• "The next big thing" William Higham
• "Future Files" Richard Watson
• "Future savvy" Adam Gordon
• "Futurewise" Patrick Dixon
• "Ecological intelligence" Daniel Goleman

Why 'cause marketing' gets onto most company's agenda

I stumbled upon this great video while doing some research on CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) and Shared Value. Okay, it turns out to be a commercial, but since it's ultimately for a good cause I don't mind putting it up here. Furthermore it contains some great insights into why 'cause marketing' is slowly getting on most corporations' agenda, like:

• 88% of consumers would switch from one brand to another if the brand was associated with a good cause (all other things being equal);
• 85% of people have a more positive image of a company when it supports a cause they care about;
• 79% of people would prefer to work for a socially responsible company.

Before I forget: cause marketing is much more than writing a fat check to a good cause and telling everyone about it ;-)

40 megatrend fact sheets, an ideal input for planning or innovation sessions

are you...

• looking for insights to generate new innovation ideas?
• looking for fresh ideas to base your strategic planning on?

Get the most out of your planning or innovation sessions by using megatrend fact sheets. 

These fact sheets can be used as a briefing document prior to your innovation or planning meeting, or at the meeting itself as eye-openers. I've even seen planning sessions where these fact sheets were hung on the walls all around the room for people to discuss!

But the crucial thing for this to be successful is to keep the fact sheets light and digestible... after all they're meant to stimulate ideas, not to be academic papers. As an example, here is what I usually include in my fact sheets:

These megatrend fact-sheets should be designed to:

ü prepare your team for long-term planning session;

ü help you understand the long-term challenges of your business;

ü discover new opportunities for your business;

ü generate innovative ideas to ensure your long-term success!

Creating these fact sheets is not rocket science, but it can be quite time-consuming to check the most relevant sources and graphics, and summarize the most thought-provoking questions to ask your team.

In case you like the idea but you don't have time to spend on this, you might consider using the ones the Institute for Future Insights has designed. They all follow the fact sheet design above, and cover 40 specific megatrends:

This is over 80 hours of research condensed in 40 fact sheets, available to you for just 299,- euro !

See how this looks like with a sample of 3 demographic megatrends:

Megatrends fact sheets sample

View more presentations from Frederic De Meyer.

You can order the Powerpoint slide pack '40 Megatrend Fact Sheets' designed by the Institute for Future Insights here:

Shipping options

send by e-mail $299,00 USD postal on CD-ROM $399,00 USD

Please mention the e-mail delivery address when ordering your copy!
If you choose the 'e-mail' delivery the PPT will be sent to you within 3 business days.
If you choose the 'Postal on CD-ROM' option the PPT will be sent by e-mail within 3 business days, the CD-ROM will be sent by post within 3 business days, delivery date depends on destination country.
This document is for internal use only by the acquiring company!

Probably the most massive example of collaboration... to a useful end

Well, how smart can one get in using the wisdom (and time) of the crowd? This guy is probably reaching the highest level anyone can get in efficient crowdsourcing... in fact, in my eyes, his projects are combining a multitude of megatrends I cover:

• crowdsourcing -but than at a scale rarely experienced...
• disintermediation... -if I was a translation bureau I'd get very worried...
• microtasking
• social entrepreneurship -well, the 'microtasking' part could turn into this...
• gamification -in a way people would be contributing to business goals by having fun (or by learning in the meantime)

What's up for the next decade? Some interesting thoughts

Well, it's (almost) that time of the year again... time for predictions, projections and future guessing... The World Future Society is the first one to come up with predictions for the next decade. The 10 trends mentioned in the video are not the only one they cover (you'd need to buy the latest magazine for that), but they're certainly the ones with the highest probability to emerge in next decade...

My personal top 3:

• gaming in education
• robotic earthworms to clean up our garbage
• buildings that respond to weather conditions ('protocell cladding'

What's yours?

'The end of e-mails' getting one step closer

'The end of e-mail'? It's been announced a few times already, and certainly at my previous company we were developing alternatives to it, social network type of applications for internal use...

But Atos France goes just one step further: it wants to eradicate internal e-mails all together in 18 months from now and, according to the SAI chart beneath, with good reason to do so.

(From Business Insider)

"In case big email providers like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo hadn't already been scared stiff by recent online communication trends, this news should wake them up.

A huge French company has just banned the use of email within the company. Instead, having concluded that the vast majority of email is just time-wasting noise, it is switching all employees to a Facebook-like interface and instant messaging.

The company is Atos. CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam. That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.
Caroline Crouch, a spokeswoman for the company, told ABC News the goal is focused on internal emails rather than external emails with clients and partners. Atos has already reduced the number of internal emails by 20 percent in six months.
When asked how employees have responded to the policy, Crouch told ABC News the overall response “has been positive with strong take up of alternative tools.” Breton, Atos's CEO, says he hasn't sent an email in three years. (And he's obviously managed to keep his job.)

This trend at the corporate level mirrors email trends among young people--the future workforce. As the chart below shows, the use of web-based email by the younger crowd is plummeting, as these folks communicate via Facebook, IM, and texting instead.

Email is still an extremely convenient way to communicate, so it's not likely to go anywhere. But there's no question that email is losing share of digital communications, including in the workplace. And that's not good for companies that depend on it for their livelihoods."

 

KLM enables people to chose their flight neighbor through social networks

The Dutch airline company KLM is developing a booking feature that allows passengers to choose their flight neighbors based on their social media profile... It's not official yet, well, half, but they have confirmed it to a Belgian newspaper (see link below, sorry it's in Dutch).

The 'social seating' feature could potentially lead to some good networking opportunities, for business people or other... I just wonder how the hell they are going to resolve some issues (what if one would like to sit next to someone, but that person desperately wants to avoid this? what if everyone want to sit next to one specific person - will there be auctions to determine which one will have that chance?)

Anyhow, it's an interesting experiment. The bigger question however, is in which overall trends does this fit?

• my good friend Jonas who pointed me to the article seems to think this shows that even airplanes are 'part' of social networking nowadays;
• I'd rather reverse this logic by saying this proves that ultimately social media is only relevant as an enabler of 'real' human interaction;
• others will probably say this only proves social media helps us to be more efficient (though in this case this still needs to be checked)

what's your take?

KLM laat passagiers buurman kiezen via sociale media - Magazine - De Morgen

Another example of social entrepreneurship: Acumen Fund

Another fine example of social entrepreneurship... Acumen Fund is not a 'micro-lending'-type of fund like Grameen Bank, but a true investment fund offering advice and management skills to the projects they choose to fund. But, contrary to the classical investment funds, Acumen chooses sustainable, long-term projects in the poorer parts of the world, and doesn't necessarily need (or want) to maximize profits...

Perhaps such a model could work in the 'developed' world as well....

Why companies should adopt gamification...

According to a survey from Saatchi, businesses should take a close look at gamification, both for internal purposes as for their consumers. The results are a bit unexpected I must say. Using Games in a professional environment would please plenty of employees and consumers:

• Among respondents who are employed, 55% of Americans said they were interested in working for a company that uses gamification to increase productivity
• Among respondents who are employed , about half of online Americans are already playing social games during a typical day
• 58% said it is important for brands to be fun and playful
• When asked how they would like to hear about a new product, 37% would choose some kind of online game experience
• 27% of those interested in social challenges said they would be very likely to opt in to a social challenge sponsored by a large corporate brand

Saatchi S Gamification Study

View more presentations from Saatchi & Saatchi S

How to grow your business in an ever fragmenting world

It's an intriguing question... consumers and markets are fragmenting as never before, each of them determined by an ever increasing set of diverse communities. This is a new paradigm for businesses. Not so long a go they could adapt products or services to well-defined segments. Not anymore...

So what do companies need to do to to ensure sustained growth? According to a recent report from Accenture, they need to develop aggregation skills. And for that, they'll need to rely on four technologies in the next three to five years:

"First, they’ll use sophisticated analytics to gather the massive amounts of data required to identify and
serve new customers worldwide. Second, cloud computing will help them to combine services by providing users access to remote computing power and software on a pay-per-use basis. As a result, all companies will be able to access the advanced computing power they need to identify global customer segments at the click of a mouse, without large upfront capital investments.

Meanwhile, two other technologies—mobile connectivity and online social media—will allow these companies to connect with customers wherever they are located and spot themes shared among individuals worldwide, respectively. "

Thanks to these technological shifts market segments don't need to be determined by geographical boundaries, but by common needs and attitudes at a global level. One of the driving forces behind this is the rising middle class in emerging markets, that make specific segments based on common needs and attitudes much bigger -and profitable to serve...

A worthwhile read (click here for the full report)