Innovation Watch Newsletter - Issue 13.10 - May 17, 2014 ISSN: 1712-9834

David Forrest is a Canadian writer and strategy consultant. His Integral Strategy™ process has been widely used to increase collaboration in communities, build social capital, deepen commitment to action, and develop creative strategies to deal with complex challenges.

David advises organizations on emerging trends. He uses the term Enterprise Ecology™ to describe how ecological principles can be applied to competition, innovation, and strategy in business.

Highlights from the last two weeks...

scientists create a new alphabet for life... new DNA tool allows people to identify their geographic homeland... roads could be replaced with gigantic solar panels... computer-simulated humans could be used to create personalized health plans... the story of Alibaba's founder... Tesla will soon break ground on its first gigafactory sites... the future of education as a service... European court gives people the right to be forgotten on the web... China's growing cities are becoming the biggest urban municipalities on Earth... small countries fear Russia's and China's territorial ambitions... climate change will destroy your country's credit rating... President Obama is expected to take new action to tackle climate change... US Navy funds morality lessons for robots... China contemplates build a high-speed railway to the United States under the Bering Strait...

More resources ...

a new book by Karan Girotra and Serguei Netessine, The Risk-Driven Business Model: Four Questions That Will Define Your Company... a link to the Socks Studio website... a BCC podcast on future cities... a blog post by Jon Evans on the future of capitalism...

David is the founder and president of Global Vision Consulting Ltd., a strategy advisory firm. He is a member of the Professional Writers Association of Canada, the World Future Society, and the Advisory Committee of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa.

David ForrestInnovation Watch

SCIENCE TRENDS

Top Stories:

Synthetic DNA Replicated by Living Organism for First Time in U.S. Study (CBC) - Scientists have taken the first steps toward writing the blueprint of life in an alphabet unknown to nature, they reported online in the journal Nature this week. Until now, biologists synthesizing DNA in the lab have used the same molecules -- called bases -- that are found in nature. But Floyd Romesberg of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and colleagues not only created two new bases, but also inserted them into a single-cell organism and found that the invented bases replicate like natural DNA, though more slowly and only if the building blocks are supplied.

Find Your Geographical Origins With 'DNA Satnav' (Wired UK) - Biologists and mathematicians at the University of Sheffield and the University of Southern California have developed a DNA satnav tool that will allow people to discover their "geographic homeland" -- the place their DNA was formed 1,000 years ago. Similar tools have previously only allowed people to trace where their DNA was formed within 700km, but the new Geographic Population Structure (GPS) tool can help people discover their point of origin with astonishing accuracy.

More science trends...

TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

Top Stories:

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Here's a Way of Turning America's Roads into Gigantic Solar Panels (Business Insider) - There are about 31,251 square miles of roads, parking lots, driveways, playgrounds, bike paths, and sidewalks in the lower 48 states. If Julie and Scott Brusaw have their way, they will all someday be replaced with solar panels. For the better part of a decade, the Idaho couple has been working on prototyping an industrial-strength panel that could withstand the weight of even the largest trucks. They now appear to have cracked the formula, developing a specially textured glass coating for the panels that can not only bear tremendous loads but also support standard tire traction. By their reckoning, at peak installation their panelized roads could produce more than three times the electricity consumed in the U.S.

Virtual Humans Will Help NHS Predict Your Treatment (Wired UK) - A UK team has announced it is well on its way to building a fully computer-simulated human physiology for personalised healthcare. The Insigneo Institute at the University of Sheffield was launched in 2013 with the aim of collating data from across labs, hospitals and studies carried out across the globe, to engineer a simulation of the human body so true to life, any data could potentially be input to create a personalised health plan and predictions for any future patient.

More technology trends...

BUSINESS TRENDS

Top Stories:

An Insider's Look into Alibaba and Its Quirky Founder (Marketplace) - In 1995, Alibaba founder Jack Ma was an English teacher. He was visiting Seattle when a friend introduced him to the internet. Ma quickly typed "China" into the search engine. The result? "No data found" appeared on the screen. Weeks later, Ma was in Beijing, on a Quixotic quest to convince China's government to create the country's first internet site.

Tesla Says It Will Break Ground on First "Gigafactory" Sites in June (Fast Company) - Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company will break ground on the first of at least two "gigafactory" sites this June. The $5 billion gigafactory project, announced in February, will help the vehicle manufacturer mass-produce electric batteries that cars like the Model S require to zip along quietly. If all proceeds according to plan, the gigafactory could start production in 2017, with each factory creating 6,500 jobs for the local economy.

More business trends...

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SOCIAL TRENDS

Top Stories:

Education-as-a-Service: 5 Ways Higher Ed Must Adapt to a Changing Market (Venture Beat) - Current university degree offerings are big-ticket items -- they're bulky and require several years to complete. Students/customers pay for the whole thing regardless of what they really need. It is the failure to shift toward a la carte pricing, and a more flexible delivery model, that motivates the "Peter Gregory" on HBO's new series "Silicon Valley" -- a barely fictional version of the real life Peter Thiel -- to offer $100k to aspiring entrepreneurs willing to drop out or bypass college altogether. But as with enterprise software companies, customer preferences will eventually force colleges and universities to transition from selling bloated, expensive degree programs to "Education-as-a-Service" (EaaS).

Google is Already Receiving Take-Down Requests After European Court Ruling (Business Insider) - Google Inc is already getting requests to remove objectionable personal information from its search engine after Europe's top court ruled that subjects have the "right to be forgotten," a source familiar with the matter said. The world's No. 1 Internet search company has yet to figure out how to handle an expected flood of requests, said the source, who is not authorized to speak on the record about the issue.

More social trends...

GLOBAL TRENDS

Top Stories:

China's Mega-Cities are Combining Into Mega-Regions, and They’re Doing It All Wrong (Quartz) - The city center of Chongqing boasts a mere 9 million people, but dozens of satellite districts such as Fuling (population 1 million) and Wanzhou (1.6 million) are each major cities in their own right. In total, Chongqing covers an area the size of Austria, and it's about to become part of a mega-region that is even larger, part of move in China to create the biggest urban municipalities on Earth.

Near and Far, Small Countries are Worrying Over Russia's and China's Territorial Grabs (Quartz) - By appearances, this tiny island nation has little to worry about -- it is an economic and military powerhouse in which one in six citizens is a millionaire.

Situated near the equator, it has even been sheltered from the extreme-weather events to which most other nations have been subjected because of climate change. But leading Singaporeans are raising a substantial fear -- of attack by one of their larger, less-affluent, and sometimes-angry neighbors. The concern is a potential contagion from events thousands of miles away in the South China Sea and Europe, where China and Russia are forcing their will and swallowing the territory of their own smaller neighbors.

More global trends...

ENVIRONMENTAL TRENDS

Top Stories:

How Climate Change Will Destroy Your Country's Credit Rating (Atlantic) - We all know that climate change threatens to devastate coastal cities, disrupt food production, and trigger a refugee crisis of untold proportions. It's also bad for a nation's credit rating, according to a report released by Standard & Poor's. That would be seem to be the least of the worries of, say, Vietnam, which S&P ranked dead last of 116 countries' vulnerability to climate change-related credit risk. (Investors, on the other hand, might want to bet on Luxembourg, which was deemed least vulnerable to climate catastrophe.)

Obama's Move on Solar is Equivalent to a Year Without 80 Million Cars (Climate Progress) - President Obama is expected to announce a series of executive actions and agreements on Friday morning that will advance solar power and energy efficiency in the United States, part of his pledge to tackle climate change without having to go through a gridlocked Congress. According to a statement from the White House, the initiatives will represent an 850-megawatt increase in solar power deployed, or enough to power 130,000 homes. They will also lead to more $2 billion in energy efficiency investments in Federal buildings, $26 billion in savings for businesses on energy bills, and a 380 million metric ton decrease in carbon pollution -- the equivalent of taking about 80 million cars off the road for a year, the statement said.

More environmental trends...

FUTURE TRENDS

Top Stories:

US Navy Funds Morality Lessons for Robots (Wired UK) - As

we all learned from the 1986 film War Games, machines have the upperhand in warfare when it comes to making logical decisions (such as, the only winning move in nuclear war is not to play). But now it seems the US Navy is not content with that party trick, as it is working on teaching artificial intelligence how to make moral and ethical decisions, too. A multidisciplinary team at Tufts and Brown Universities, along with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been funded by the Office of Naval Research to explore the challenges of providing autonomous robots with a sense of right and wrong -- and the consequences of their actions

Chinese Experts 'in Discussions' Over Building High-Speed Beijing-US Railway (Guardian) - China is considering plans to build a high-speed railway line to the US, the country’s official media reported. The proposed line would begin in north-east China and run up through Siberia, pass through a tunnel underneath the Pacific Ocean then cut through Alaska and Canada to reach the continental US, according to a report in the state-run Beijing Times newspaper. Crossing the Bering Strait in between Russia and Alaska would require about 200km (125 miles) of undersea tunnel, the paper said, citing Wang Mengshu, a railway expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

More future trends...

From the publisher...

The Risk-Driven Business Model: Four Questions That Will Define Your CompanyBy Karan Girotra and Serguei Netessine

Read more...

A Web Resource... Socks Studio - A non-linear journey through distant territories of human imagination.

Multimedia...Future Cities (BBC Forum) - What will cities of the future look like? There is no shortage of exciting new designs for eco and smart cities around the world, but how realistic are they? Joining Bridget Kendall is South African urban planning professor Vanessa Watson, who says current 'fantasy' plans to transform sub-Saharan African cities into gleaming Dubai-style hubs, could increase existing inequalities; Delhi resident and writer Rana Dasgupta brings his own experience of living in a city which has been utterly transformed in the last 20 years; while futurologist Josef Hargrave offers a vision of an urban super-building in the year 2050. (41m)

The Blogosphere... After Technology Destroys Capitalism (Tech Crunch)- Jon Evans – "Consider all the furious attention paid to economic inequality of late, courtesy of Thomas Piketty and Capital in the 21st Century. He argues that increasing inequality is an inevitable

outcome of laissez-faire capitalism, and proposes we fix this with a global wealth tax. I humbly suggest that he’s thinking much too small, and that the 21st century will be far too transformative to be contained within the worn and shabby walls of capitalism."

Email: future@innovationwatch.com