Fly Me To The Moon...Or Wherever

Those with an eye for innovation will have noted the recent launch of the Indian mission to Mars.  While they haven't got there yet, at time of writing all seems to be progressing nicely.

Quite apart from the desire to be the first Asian country to reach Mars, what is it that motivates a society like India to take up these challenges?  By extension, what innovation processes are necessary to achieve such a goal?

The Psychology Wiki defines innovation as referring "to both radical or incremental changes to products, processes or services. The often unspoken goal of innovation is to solve a problem."

Some may argue that there is no problem to be solved by sending a spaceship hurtling towards Mars, and the real problem remains at home with the grinding poverty of many of India's citizenry.

But such innovation more often than not adds value to society in the broader global context.  In addition, those countries and enterprises that do not innovate run a real danger of being surpassed or destroyed by those that do.

There are two basic types of innovation; sustaining and disruptive. For companies, the former means continuing to approach their core markets in a similar fashion while the latter "significantly changes a market or product category".

By now most people recognise that innovation and a good dose of creativity are essential to an organisation's survival. Globalization, increased competition and the increasingly rapid changes in technology, mean that those enterprises that do not change and adapt simply wither on the vine and die.

Paul Simpson, writing about the psychology of innovation, says:

"Homo sapiens have, since the 10 commandments, had a bit of a soft spot for concise lists which tell us what to do. They imply that if we follow their advice we will be suitably rewarded. 

But the bad news about innovation is that suggestion-boxes, brainstorming sessions, away days, consultants and 183 techniques to encourage creativity (as listed on Wikipedia) won’t, by themselves, transform your business into the kind of free-thinking, ground-breaking, market-leading corporate utopia you might be hoping for".

It is really all about company culture and not fancy creativity suites.  It also takes dedicated time and budget.

Ranjeet Laungani, Nielsen's VP for Innovation Practice, examined how India innovates in a recent study. Five of his key findings were:

1. It takes 50% of Indian companies one to two years to bring an innovation from concept to launch.
2. In the year that they launch their innovation they spend as much as 34% of their budget on advertising and another 30% on trade and consumer promotion.
3. 75% of organisations measure the level of innovation success by their growth in market share. This followed by brand awareness and health measures and the Return On Investment (ROI) that the innovation has delivered.
4. Nine out of 10 organizations surveyed identified that sharp consumer insight led to innovations in their organisations.
5. 20% of industry professionals across sectors relayed that more than 25% of their ideas made it to the shelves

Ranjeet also reminds us that 90% of newly introduced products fail in the year they launch, so innovation is not in itself a guarantee of success.  There are also several factors that can impede the progress of innovation within an enterprise. These include:

• Too lengthy a period from idea to market
• Long-term strategic planning being hijacked by short-term priorities
• Insufficient budget to fund innovation
• Internal teams with conflicting priorities
• An unwillingness to accept that failure is very much part of the innovation process

So while the success of a mission to Mars cannot be guaranteed it does prove the point that any innovation is based on risk taking.  As the old adage says "nothing ventured, nothing gained". 

Amartya Sen, the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics, hypothesises that development is the key to freedom.  Perhaps ultimately it is this motivation that drives mankind to innovate.

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If It Itches Don't Scratch It - Your TV's Watching

Best to resist the temptation to scratch that itchy place as you watch your favourite show on the box. What you get up to in front of your Smart TV may not be as private as you think.

According to a UK blogger, his LG Smart TV has a nasty habit of sending back unencrypted data and in the clear, to LG every time he changes channel.

Not that switching off "Collection of watching info" (it's set ON by default) in his settings did much good as his viewing data was still being sent back to LG's servers in a highly insecure fashion.

Source: DoctorBeet's Blog 

Go to the company web site and they boast "LG Smart AD provides the express way for advertisers to engage with targeted audiences through multi device screens in global scale and in the most effective and innovative fashion." i.e. targeted advertising.

On the face of it it would seem that LG are in breach of the UK's strict UK Data Protection Act?  One wonders how other countries are faring and if they are even aware of the nature of this risky data flow from their personal appliances.

According to a BBC report the blogger, Mr Huntley, "suggested that even if LG had never inspected the data, it could still pose a security risk as hackers could take advantage of the practice".

Buying a new television doesn't mean by default that you have agreed to be spied upon and neither it should.

With the Internet of Things upon us perhaps the best advice to give is 'better watch what you say to your toaster'!

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Bieber or the 'Beeb'?

Ever despaired at emulating the follower feats of Justin Bieber and his ilk?  Perhaps you should not worry too much that your Twitter follower count is considerably lower than his.

As the chart above demonstrates, even the US President isn't immune from the curse of  fake follower.  A quick review of these most popular twitter accounts shows that only a small percentage of followers could be termed 'real' and actively engaged.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Bieber's recent vocal offering  to his besotted fans is titled "All Bad"?.  His real twitter followers number 9.36 million instead of the often promoted 46.8m.

It doesn't get much better for the current leader on the twitter charts, Katy Perry.  Her real and engaged twitter fan base is only 3.33 million.  Poor old Barack Obama suffers a similar percentage fate which may or may not be a reflection on the incumbent.  He has a mere 2.6 million followers hanging on his every tweeted word.

But what of a major corporations, instead of the usual raft of personalities and politicians?  

The  BBC is one media organisation that has truly embraced social media in all its forms.  While the following of their various account varies, some like BBC Sport are doing rather well.  At time of writing they have 3378, 428 engaged followers.  The most preferred hour for their followers to visit is between 4 and 5 pm in the late afternoon, UK time and 60% of them are male with only 6% definitely identified as female.

So when it comes to veracity of your followers all that glitters is not necessarily gold.  Why not check your own following using this tool?

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Vast, Vibrant & Growing - China's Internet

This video from The China Digital Conference neatly explains the depth and breadth of China's vibrant Internet.  More controlled it may be than its Western counterpart, but the sheer volume of online activity is very impressive.

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This Week's Cartoon

Courtesy: Rob Cottingham

No Wonder There Are More Than One Million Victims Of Cyber Crime Daily

The worry about crime used to be if you had had your wallet stolen; or did you just leave it in a 'safe place' and have forgotten where that 'safe place' was?

You put your valuables in a safe with the local bank, or if you could afford it and wanted to take the risk, within the home.  In many ways this approach has changed over time and in others it has not.

We are still very trusting when it comes to matters financial but if the recent report from Norton is to be believed, perhaps we shouldn't be so blasé.  They surveyed more than 13,000 online adults aged between 18 and 64, from 24 countries.

The results showed that Baby Boomers were less susceptible to cyber-crime than the later Millennials and the highest number of cyber-crime victims were to be found in Russia (85%), China (77%) and South Africa (73%).

Cyber crime victims were more likely to be male (64%) than female(58%) which is probably a reflection of testosterone-fuelled impulses!

Source: 2013 Norton Report

With an estimated $US113 billion of cyber crime taking place over a year, the situation is likely to get worse with an increasing move away from desktops to mobile devices.  The survey revealed that almost half of respondents leave security concerns behind when they hit the street. They don't use basic precautions such as password protection, security software of any kind, or backup their important files.

Here's another sobering revelation; 57% aren't even aware that security solutions for mobile devices even exist!

No wonder then that there are more than one million victims of cyber crime daily. With the lines blurring between home personal life and work there are increased security concerns for business as well. One in five respondents admitted sharing work information with friends and family.  

36% reported that their company had no policy in place when it came to the use of mobile device for work and 27% of all adults admitted they had lost their mobile phones or had them stolen.  So considering these results, how secure is your business data?

Other points of interest to those concerned with online security include:

• 41% of online adults surveyed have been victims of hacking, malware, scams, viruses, fraud and theft in the past year
• Half (50%) have been victims of either cyber crime and/or 'negative situations' over the same period.  This includes being bullied or stalked online, or receiving nude images from perfect strangers.

When it comes to social media people appear to be just as lax, if not more so. 39% didn't bother to log out after a social media session and a quarter actually share their social media log-in details and passwords with others. Somewhat surprisingly then considering the slack attitude portrayed, only 12% of the sample admitted that someone else had hacked into their social media account and pretended to be them.

We've grown very attached to our mobile devices but have largely forgotten the Internet security risks and the security protocols that we rigorously applied to our desk top systems.  

Given all of the above, perhaps it is now time to think far more seriously about how we can personally fight cyber crime by being more diligent; especially if we are wedded to our smartphone or tablet.

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Wearing Thin - Copy Watches, Cops and Cop-Outs

At one stage in my life I had a draw full of watches, albeit a small drawer and a few of the watches were euphemistically titled "copy watches".  One only had to visit most Asian cities a decade or two ago to be propositioned by furtive street vendors who offered you a 'Rolex" for a couple for dollars.

Not only were they bad fakes but their guarantee lasted only as long as its battery life.  After moving up the corporate ladder a real dress watch may be added but that was really the limit of my interest in timepieces as fashion accessories.

So the recent release of the over-hyped iWatches offers no appeal to me at all.  In fact I would go so far as to say that thus far, the whole iWatch movement (pun intended) is a bit of a cop-out.  These are not wearables that dazzle with innovation and I really can't see the point of having an adjunct to my smartphone strapped to my wrist?

While I made an earlier prediction in 2011 that wearables would be a significant megatrend, iWatches were not what I had in mind.  To me these 'wristlets' are examples of the dangers of moving away from innovation to commercialisation; the latest iPhone being another example.

Another example of where technology innovation doesn't quite fit the gadget is the taking of photographs with an iPad.  To see a horde of avid photographers holding their iPad's aloft always reminds me of Charlton Heston holding up the tablets of stone in the Ten Commandments.  The results though are far from similar.

Some wearable tech is moving in the right direction. The BioMan shirt keeps track of your body vitals through a weave of embedded steel threads which transmit data via Bluetooth to another device such as a smartphone.  Great for fitness fanatics but with a more serious capability of alerting your health professional in the event of your 'ticker' playing up.

According to an article looking at the intersection of the fashion industry and technology there were some 14 million such items on the market by the end of 2012 and the prediction is that this number will rise to 171 million by 2016. Another guesstimate from Juniper Research is that there will be 15 million wearable smart devices sold worldwide in 2013, rising to 70 million in sales by 2017.

So to put it succinctly, what is my expectation of the 'wearables' of the future?

I see such devices as being embedded into the Internet of Things and not operating as a standalone body add-on.  For example, my hat turning into a weather station and transmitting data, my clothing adjusting to the climatic conditions during the tropical hear or Arctic cold, better still priming my washing machine form afar to say that grimy work clothes were coming its way.

Wearables that monitor the smells that surround us, eliminating the less desirable. My personal tastegraph influencing such decisions.

Some wearables are  designed in a slightly less serious vein. The Cocktail Making Robot Dress in this video is enough to drive one to drink; quite literally.


Let us also not forget the commercial value of wearables and how they can potentially drive traffic for retailers.  Econsultancy, in collaboration with YouGov, looked at the impact of Google Glass as an example of wearable in-store.

Their key findings were:

• 38% of customers said they would use Google Glass to create a shopping route
• 27% would use Glass to check stock availability
• 22% saw Glass as an opportunity to unlock additional offers and promotions. 
• 70% of women however felt they would be embarrassed wearing such a device and the figure for men who felt similarly disinclined was 54%.

This UK reticence when it comes to wearing Google Glass ties in with other research conducted by Omnibus in May.  In that poll, less than a quarter of those surveyed (24%) said they would consider buying and wearing a pair of Google Glass-es.

It could well be that wearables will have a greater future with enterprises than consumers and Forrester sees this as a more likely trend.  If you doubt their findings look no further than  Motorola's Connected Law Enforcement Officer Of The Future.

Source: Motorola

Which reminds me, I need to get a new battery for my watch.

I Share Therefore I Am

This video presents a hypothesis that I don't entirely agree with, but does touch on the sociological implications of social media at the expense of "real" relationships.

There is little doubt that there are those who hide behind online persona rather than facing the trials and tribulations of the 'real world'. But equally there are others who use social media to advantage; expanding their already formed networks and staying in touch with old friends.

Credit: Keisuke Jinushi

Some sad cases who have very few friends have to pretend that they do, to keep up with the small circle that they actually have.  

Not that I am recommending taking this course of action to the extremes of the Japanese photographer (right), who faked a romantic attachment by using Instagram, a smartphone and dollop of nail polish!

A sad lad maybe but I guess he was really just making a point.  See his full account here and turn on Google's translation if you can't read Japanese.

Apparently overuse of Facebook can be totally depressing.  A study by  the University of Michigan over a two week period resulted in Facebook participants  experiencing a darkening of mood the more they browsed the social medium.  The sample of 82 college-aged volunteers was large enough to get a reasonable result.  As media has reported, this is the core demographic among Facebook's nearly 700 million active daily users.

University of Michigan social psychologist Ethan Kross said: “Loneliness predicted Facebook use, and loneliness also predicted how bad people felt. But the effect of Facebook on how people felt was independent of loneliness.”

So what may you well ask is causing this sinking feeling after excessive exposure to Facebook? 

According to The Economist the University of Michigan study didn't really address the differences between socialising on Facebook and socialising in person.  The paper  suggests the answer to social media depression is  one of green-eyed envy.

"An earlier investigation, conducted by social scientists at Humboldt University and Darmstadt’s Technical University, both in Germany, may have found the root cause. These researchers found that the most common emotion aroused by using Facebook is envy. Endlessly comparing themselves with peers who have doctored their photographs, amplified their achievements and plagiarised their bons mots can leave Facebook’s users more than a little green-eyed. Real-life encounters, by contrast, are more WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get)".

One wonders if reading blogs on a regular basis has the same effect?  I suspect not, but to play it safe I will think twice about promoting this post on Facebook - it might be too depressing to contemplate!

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Percussion Obsessions - The Sound Of Distant Drums

Advertising should be a multi-sensory experience rather than a one dimensional prod.  Those of us who have watched the costume drama based on the life of Harry Selfridge in London will have acknowledged the reality that the greatest advertisers are those who are prepared to innovate.

It was Harry who opened London's first department store in the then unfashionable western end of Oxford Street and invented (although not many people know it) the oft-used catch cry ""Only ___ Shopping Days Until Christmas"..

Had he still been alive, Selfridge would have been proud to have been associated with another more recent British revolution in advertising. An English company, Novalia, have come up with a drum-kit poster that you play with the tips of your fingers.


The poster is produced on interactive paper with conductive inks, rendering a variety of drum sounds - from cymbals to snare, with the odd tom tom beat thrown in for good measure. As an ex-rock drummer myself I am delighted with this development although others who value their peace and quiet might be less than ecstatic.

The inventor of the process, former sheep herder and physicist Kate Stone, has a PhD in electronics from Cambridge University and is described by TED as a "Shepherd of electrons".

"I love paper, and I love technology," says Kate, who's spent the past decade working to unite the two. Her experiments combine regular paper with conductive inks and tiny circuit boards to offer a unique, magical experience. To date, applications include a newspaper embedded with audio and video, posters that display energy usage in real time, and the extremely nifty paper drumkit and set of DJ decks she demonstrates onstage." TED Talk video below.


So the 'sound of distant drums' emanating from a subway, bus shelter or shopping mall near you is about to become a reality.  It could well be the 'next big thing' in advertising, with perhaps a set of suitably branded earplugs thrown in for good measure.

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Bathroom Attack of the 'Apless Apps

We live in a time where NSA and PRISM, the Internet of Things and Mobile Apps dominate online and off-line chatter.

Sometimes convergence of these technologies can come together in the most unexpected of ways leaving the user wondering why more robust user testing wasn't in place before release.  And in the context of this article I use the term "release" advisedly!

Those of you who have ever stayed in a Japanese hotel will know that the toilets are high tech with a series of buttons designed for an internal car wash, post purge.

The Satis Smart Design boasts the most sophisticated of toilet innovation according to its manufacturers Laxil, one of Japan's biggest toilet companies.  It's mouth-like lid opens automatically to greet you as you draw nigh and when you step away the toilet flushes automatically.

There is now even a free Android app with a hard-wired Bluetooth code available which means you can operate the Satis remotely, all of which sounds fine in theory.  There is however one fatal flaw that the manufacturers have failed to realise in their rush for innovation - their high tech toilet can be hacked.

IT security firm Trustwave has issued a Bluetooth security vulnerability warning that the app could be hacked. Trustwave issued an advisory that a pin for the Bluetooth app is set at '0000' and can therefore be used by anyone - even remotely. In short, anyone with the 'My Satis' app can control any Satis toilet.

Trustwave advisory

While it remains to be see if bidet hacking will become as popular as gangam style dancing, the temptation for pranksters is obvious. Facing a cyber attack in the bathroom from an out of control two-nozzle bidet spray could have dire consequences.

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Chew Controlled Gaming Is In Your Face

When I gave up smoking some thirty plus years ago I resorted to the less than edifying habit of chewing gum to satisfy my oral craving.  The thing about chewing gum is that the first couple minutes provide a sugar hit and a mouthful of flavour.  After that the sensation is one of masticating on old tennis balls.

Manufacturers of the stuff would now have you believe that health hygiene for the mouth is improved by chewing their product;  not that this cuts much ice in Singapore where the stuff is thankfully banned.

What might you well ask has all of this got to do with anything digital?

Well the short answer is that there now a game called Gumulon which encourage you to chew the future. I kid you not.


Using facial recognition technology you participate in this action game simply by chewing at various speeds which changes the character moves. They even claim that if you record your chewing and then play it backwards, you will discover the identity of your future tag-team partner. i.e. chew more gum to win.

Chew controlled gaming is an innovative piece of marketing from Mondelēz International's Stride Gum, who are using social media to promote their product to the age demographic that uses it most; and that is not ex-smokers.

Thomas Adams of New York received his first chewing gum machine patent in 1871 and in 1899 joined with others to form American Chicle Company which at that time controlled 85% of the chewing gum business in the USA. The sap of the large, tropical, American sapodilla tree was called a chicle and it is this that was used to create the gum base.

Though a series of amalgamations and takeovers the company eventually ended up as part of the Cadbury stable and it was they who introduced Stride Gum in 2006, before being swallowed up themselves three years ago by Kraft Foods Inc.  Mondelēz International (a.k.a. Kraft), is an interesting food conglomerate in its own right and owns many other brands that were established over a century ago, such as Pascalls and Nabisco.

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Beauty and The Beast - When Flying Becomes Really Interesting

Flight Trails

The joy of flying and visualisation combine in Contrailz, an interesting project from Russian software engineer Alexey Papulovskiy and his collaborator Nikolay Guryanov.

There are those of us who find beauty in these transport patterns and no doubt others who see them as evidence of the beastly spread of CO2 emissions.

For lovers of abstract art these visualisations have a certain ring of familiarity as the Singapore/Malaysia map (above) and Stockholm (below) demonstrates.

Flight Trails

Alexy began by  collecting tracking data for civil plane routes from Planefinder.net. The data set of 1 billion “dots” was for the month of October,2012.

Flight Levels are colour coded, with the red signifying lower altitudes and blue, higher altitudes. The project mapping demonstrates that commercial aircraft have specific routes that they follow and these routes regularly intersect.

All of which goes to show why you can see so many aircraft at different holding altitudes as you are preparing to land at a busy airport such as Changi or Heathrow (below).

And while you suddenly realise how much you are in the hands of your pilot and rush to check your travel insurance, take a good look at  the data source, PlaneFinder.  It picks up "ADS-B plane feeds used by commercial and private planes to transmit their name, position, callsign, status and lots more."

The crowded skies of the USA - PlaneFinder

Happy Travels!

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The New Conversation Prism

Get the large version here.

Will Google Glass actually harm our perception of the world rather than aid it?

I am as keen on tech gadgets as the next person but I can't help but wonder if the advent of virtual technology actually takes something away from our perception of the world, rather than adding to it.

There is a marked difference between 'looking' and ''seeing.  As a person who started my professional career as an art teacher I know that the secret to visual creativity is to train the mind to actually take in and process the visual stimuli that bombard us every day.

To do this one needs to focus on the subject at hand and exclude the other 'visual gunk' that surrounds it.  Only then can the creative juices start flowing and creative interpretation follow.  Let's face it, the world needs creative people who can dream.

So in our brave new world where a pair of high tech 'specs' provides us you a constant stream of third party data, are we muddying the creative process rather than aiding it.  Imagine how little Leonardo would have achieved if he had been constantly bombarded with virtual reality data? Very little I suspect.

Put bluntly, is too much virtual data for tech-delivered sources scrambling our cranial database?

Robert E. Franken in his book Human Motivation suggests that to be creative, one needs to be able to "view things in new ways or from a different perspective".  But I don't believe he had in mind a quite literal 'different perspective' delivered through technology. The 'uniqueness of alternatives' cannot be considered and interpreted creatively if they are constantly being prompted by pre-programmed data.

According to Hungarian psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end, and a rooted sense of reality at the other.

I would suggest that the problem with tech gadgets such as Google Glass is that they only allow an individual focus on the latter.

While I wouldn't go as far as Brian Merchant in suggesting that "products like Glass may turn daily life into a neurotic consumerist hellscape", I wonder if people have fully thought through how the purchase of a virtual technology device might effect them?

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