The Nordic excepTioNal TreNdshop – NexT No. 6

check your bliNd aNgles.

celebraTe The excepTioNal.

refuel your fuTure.

geT losT aNd geT goiNg.

coNfereNce15-20 mindblowing international profiles will share their secrets, passions, ideas, and insights in an informal and interactive conference setting during the days of April 2nd and 3rd. This is a unique chance to get close to some of today’s greatest minds.

The speaker list and programme will be updated continually on www.ilab.dk/next.

feel The sTreeT!richard stomp (Nl)Serial entrepreneur and author Richard Stomp is the inventor of streetcombing. Forget about brainstorms and focus groups. Fetch your camera and head for the streets to pick up faint signals from future blockbusters. Mixing analytical skills and front end technology, stre-etcombing is spreading like wildfire as a way to sense market movements. Richard Stomp is also head of Dutch innovation masters WOW-IDEAS.

hack The World!paul “pablos the hacker” holman (us)Pablos is an incredible hacker with a world famous ability to construct, and deconstruct, technologies. Often, as you’ll see, live from stage! Pablos helped build the world’s smal-lest PC, hacker robots and even space ships. Today, Pablos’ genius is with high end tech consultancy Komposite. The democratization of technology has led to a hacker mindset that will dominate online behavior. Here, Pablos rules.

geT losTSuccess, prosperity, and market shares are usually the result of unpredictable paths, favorable but unconditioned circumstances, pioneering individuals and the taming of wild and disruptive technologies.

So how do we find the right way in an ever-changing world? By wandering off the main road, chartering the unexpected. By going where no GPS has gone before, where territories and known worlds end. By getting lost.

NEXT – Nordic Exceptional Trendshop – is a vessel bound for the new, the odd angled and the unpredictable. A home ground for exceptional minds and their inventions. NEXT no. 6 is an invitation to go beyond the horizon, to throw away the compass, leave the known for the next and gain perspectives in the loss of direction.

Come, get lost

bloW your MiNd!Matt Webb (uk)Matt Webb is head of design at design consultancy Schulze & Webb. His work in-clude prototypes for Nokia and Web strategy for the BBC and has a special focus on the so-cial life of stuff. Matt is co-author of acclaimed book ‘Mind Hacks’ on cognitive psychology for a general audience, and if you were to sum up his design interests in one word, it would be ”politeness.” He can be found at Intercon-nected.com and in London.

socialiZe TechNology!Jimmy loizeau (uk)Jimmy Loizeau explores the role of technology in society; how it affects our behaviour, our relationships and the quality of life. Museum of Modern Art and London Science Museum both exhibit his pieces that include an audio tooth implant, a space helmet and work on robots in the home. Daily work is with both MIT Media Lab and Royal College of Art. Arts and Sciences have rarely been more rewardingly combined.

geT iNVisible!ulf leonhardt (uk)We’ve all dreamt about it, authors from Tolkien to H G Wells wrote about it and Harry Potter has tried it. Ulf Leonhardt, University of St An-drews and member of the Royal Society, has turned his insights in quantum mechanics into a leading expert role in the field of invisibility. Ulf is working on several invisibility devices and knows just about how you can achieve in-visibility. We hope to see him at NEXT.

play To learN!chris rogers (us) & lars Nyengaard (dk)As technology advances, complexity increa-ses and information levels soar, the old ways of learning are put to the test. And fail. MIT Media Lab graduate and Professor in Child Development at Tufts University, Marina Bers and LEGO director Lars Nyengaard share a profound insight into new ways of learning, into how we can we adapt and absorb. An insight they don’t mind sharing.

Make your oWN!peter semmelhack (us)Bug Labs founder and CEO Peter Semmel-hack’s invention, BUG, is basically hardware LEGO – a way to build your own gear from open source building blocks that includes screens, GPS, camera etc. A community for each component makes the improvements ever evolving. The first BUG is now ready for the world – and so is Peter’s idea of a time where it is ridiculous that our choices are nar-rowed by pre-packaged products.

do like NaTure!Julian Vincent (uk)The future of technology is, ultimately, nature. Dr Julian Vincent, director of the Centre for Bio-mimetics at University of Bath, has devised a ”biological patents” database enabling engine-ers to directly tap into nature’s ingenuity. Hum-mingbird fuel efficiency, cuttlefish camouflage and firefly light emission. The answer to many technological challenges is right on our door-step. Or just outside.

laser coMMaNder!yoel fink (il)In 1995 at age 29 professor Yoel Fink, a for-mer commander in the Israeli army, invented minimally invasive laser surgery from military equipment. A discovery that earned Yoel a hot spot amongst MIT Technology Review top 100 innovators. Today, Yoel Fink holds a profes-sorship at MIT’s dept for Material Sciences and continues to produce world class inventions for his company OmniGuide.

r&d iNfusioN!daan roosegaarde (Nl)Daan Roosegaarde is an explorer. Half tech, half art, wholly experiment, Daan commits his artful R&D projects so they can both be exhi-bited at Tate Modern, used in real life and form the basis for a host of new products. His Studio Roosegaarde became famous for constructing a sustainable dance floor, where the energy of a dancing crowd generated electricity, and now solves R&D assignments all over the globe.

1. Directions didn’t help. The credit crunch charge was led by the focused and well ori-ented who knew exactly what they were doing and where they were going. Until they fell over the edge. It’s sometimes better to focus on dif-ficult departures than falling in love with quick-‘n’-easy destinations.

2. All major achievements are coincidental. In 1991, Viagra failed as a heart drug but persi-sted in an uncalculated side effect. The com-puter was a sparetime project by the group working on the nuclear bomb, and laser wasn’t really intended for anything specific. The idea of clear goal + straight path = success couldn’t be more wrong.

3. The greatest values are off the map. One year ago, the building industry was a record breaking investment climate, geared invest-ments all the rage, and Iceland the best coun-try to live in. Things aren’t always what they seem. The Tunesian stock market went up 13% in 2008, the Peruvian GDP growth soared 10%.

4. Blue oceans are unchartered. It seems that most have taken a stance on their own organi-zational uniqueness. But true-blue oceans are not just “different from the rest”. They pose a specific and detailed alternative to everything else. Napster as well as Google was born in the best ever year of the recording industry.

exhibiTioNThe NEXT exhibition is a tech Tivoli of around 100 of the most extraordinary tech-nology applications from world class R&D environments. NEXT exhibition guests include MIT, Stanford, Fraunhofer, Max Planck, Cambridge and Carnegie Mellon. The NEXT exhibition is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see, feel and try out some of the most exceptional and mind boggling new tech demos, early products and prototypes while you get the inside from the makers themselves. Dreams are the stuff that this is made of.

5. If you know where it is and how to get the-re, it’s probably not worth going. The only true thing about the future is that it is not completely calculable. It has to be invented. That’s what media dinosaurs News Corp and NBC did when they held hands and launched Hulu.com, probably the most successful internet launch in 2008, despite all predictions. Not that they knew what they were doing.

6. Where’s the fun? The prospects of mono-manically following a trodden path attracts the insecure, the demanding, and the least ener-getic. Should the need to change arise, this is not the type of employees to implement it and management are left as morbid bystanders to the relentless onslaught of their own clearview schemes. Should we mention the recording industry again?

7. Everything starts as a wilderness. And if you’re good, you keep a little of the chaotic element onboard. It helps to be more “change driven” than “change management” prepared, which basically means “scared shitless”. Take an occasional walk on the wild side, or you’ll be waltzing the zimmerframe of steady decline rather than romancing the new market shares.

Why geT losT? Well, here’s 10 reasoNs…

coMMuNiTy – NexTNeTNEXTnet is an opportunity to continue the experience and get intimate with presenters, exhibitors and other guests alike. NEXTnet will feature a daily updated blog, conferen-ce material, presentations, video reruns of talks, access to forums, groups and gossip. A natural habitat for the rest-less minds and curious inquisitors.

A ticket to NEXT will include password to the NEXTnet community that runs through a whole year.

Top TakeaWays• Two days of laid back first hand talks with some of

todays greatest thinkers

• Four days of full hands-on, minds-in exhibition access

• Full one-year access to NEXTnet, the NEXT community

• An explosion of new angles, new directions, new beginnings

• Unique, international networking environment

pracTicaliTiesWheNThursday April 2, 2009: 09.30 – 17:00 (15:00 - browsing in the exhibition)Friday April 3, 2009: 10:00 – 16:00

Exhibition is open Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday (2+3+4+5 April) more info on www.ilab.dk/next

coNfereNce VeNue Turbinehallen Kalkværksvej 12, Filmbyen 12 DK-8000 Aarhus CDenmark

regisTraTioNGo to www.ilab.dk/next or send an e-mail to Merete on merete@ilab.dk2-days of conference + 4 days of exhibition + community: Nextnet 6.670 DKK - All prices are exclusive of VAT (MOMS). Remember, members of Innovation Lab get a 15% discount! free MeMbershipContact Grethe on grethe@ilab.dk or register at www.ilab.dk/testmedlem

iNNoVaTioN labFinlandsgade 20 DK-8200 Aarhus N Tel. +45 7027 7227 / info@ilab.dkwww.inovationlab.dk

spoNsors

Why geT losT? Well, here’s 10 reasoNs…

8. All comes from nothing, and sometimes fast. You can survive the slump but you can’t survive missing the next train. The locomotives of the next boom are already here, they’re just not visible to most (that don’t come to NEXT). It wasn’t missing investments that killed off global satellite telephony as a household product, it was GSM roaming. What good is focus if direc-tions change? Keep an eye in all directions…

9. Keep curious! Lasting success is usually the result of equal parts experiment, timing, and sheer audacity to look beyond the known fra-mework. It’s not a wise strategy to just take the exact opposite direction, e.g from risky turbo expansion to panicky cost reduction. That’s what rubber balls do. And they don’t do much else.

10. A habitat is the sum of habits. We are the sum of experience and walk backwards into the future, defining not what we see but what we have seen before. Turn around! Literally. Look up from the map and see for yourself that there are still so many new ways to go, things to do. Exit habit, or habit exits you. A disclaimer: Remember that if everyone abi-des by the above and gets successfully lost, make sure you’re the one who finds the way.