New Ways for Computers to Interact with People and Physcial Objects

This video podcast really opened my eyes to the possibilities for new ways to interact with computers. Pranav Mistry demonstrates many amazing technologies he’s developed to help us interact with the objects around us in more natural ways. Check out the video to see demonstrations of:

• Wearable computers which project the user interface onto walls, blank sheets of paper, or even skin
• The ability to place real, physical objects on computer screens and the computer interprets the object as a request for information. For example, placing an airline boarding pass on the screen would retrieve directions on how to walk to the departure gate.
• Facial recognition software that retrieves information about the person and/or their expertise and then projects information about the person onto their shirt
• The ability to use your fingers to grab text and/or images in printed material and drop it into a document you are editing by touching a touch screen.

See the video on the TED.com site or download it from iTunes.

Poor Malawian Farmer Becomes an Inventor and Brings Hope to Africa

This is a truly inspiring story of how a poor Malawian teenager, a "poor farmer in a nation of poor famers" took inspiration at age 14 from science books and used parts he got in a scrap yard to change his life.  The following is a quote from his biography:

William Kamkwamba, from Malawi, is a born inventor. When he was 14, he built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap, working from rough plans he found in a library book called Using Energy and modifying them to fit his needs. The windmill he built powers four lights and two radios in his family home.

After reading about Kamkwamba on Mike McKay's blog Hactivate (which picked up the story from a local Malawi newspaper), TEDGlobal Conference Director Emeka Okafor spent several weeks tracking him down at his home in Masitala Village, Wimbe, and invited him to attend TEDGlobal on a fellowship. Onstage, Kamkwamba talked about his invention and shared his dreams: to build a larger windmill to help with irrigation for his entire village, and to go back to school.

Following Kamkwamba's moving talk, there was an outpouring of support for him and his promising work. Members of the TED community got together to help him improve his power system (by incorporating solar energy), and further his education through school and mentorships. Subsequent projects have included clean water, malaria prevention, solar power and lighting for the six homes in his family compound; a deep-water well with a solar-powered pump for clean water; and a drip irrigation system. Kamkwamba himself returned to school, and is now attending the African Leadership Academy, a new pan-African prep school outside Johannesburg, South Africa.

He shows there is hope for poor developing countries.  You really must check out these two video podcasts from TED:

•  "William Kamkwamba on building a windmill" (the original TEDTalk at age 19)
  
•  a more recent TEDTalk "William Kamkwamba: How I harnessed the wind" (also on iTunes)

 Here's a link to William's book:

 If you enjoy this or any of my other recommendations, please leave a comment!

13 Mistakes and 13 Brilliant Strokes

 There are two reasons I like this podcast.

1. I got to hear lessons learned from the successes and failures of someone who has both worked in major companies and successfully stared companies.
2. I learned why DNA sequencing could revolutionize healthcare.
   

"Hugh Martin, Chairman and CEO of Pacific Biosciences, looks back on the evolution of his career - from building computers to creating the future of medicine. Martin charts the lessons he learned working for large technology firms, as a leader in several successful start-ups, and while being courted by the VC community to launch a new wave in bioscience."

Audio Podcast:  13 Mistakes and 13 Brilliant Strokes ( also on iTunes)

How to Be an Innovator for Life

I found this great talk by Tom Kelly at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program lecture series.  I found his ideas on how to be creative and innovative very encouraging. 

"Tom Kelley, general manager at the world-renowned design firm, IDEO, presents five core practices that enhance creativity. Through entertaining stories and examples, he describes how these techniques help us all become more innovative in every aspect of our lives and lead to more success."

 Here's some interesting quotes:

• "Every child is an artist.  The problem is to remain an artist when you grow up" - Picaso
• Be childlike as often as possible but not childish.
  
• Deep expertise is extremely valuable to the organization... but they start filtering things out as distractions
• Take an anthropology course
• If you figure out you are the most productive and creative from 8-10 am whatever you do, do not look at email or attend anything resembling a status meeting during that time.
• Find out what your muse is.
• The supreme achievement in life is to blur the line between work and play.
  

Major themes for staying innovative:

• Think like a traveler all the time (as if visiting for the fist time).  See with new eyes. 
  
• Treat life as an experiment.  You must actually be willing to fail.  "Fail forward."
  
• Have an attitude of wisdom.  A balance between trusting what you know and distrusting what you know to be true just enough to keep you from "resting on your laurels."
• Use your whole brain (left and right brain)
  
• Use your "tortoise mind".  (Work on an idea "in the background" or using your subconscious mind.)  You have to take time to daydream.
  
• Follow your passion. 
  

This talk is definately worth listening to!  Check out Young at Heart: How to Be an Innovator for Life or also on iTunes,   Here's a link to Tom Kelly's book on innovation.

Leading Clever People and Herding Cats

Anyone in a leadership position who has an interest in innovation could benefit from listening to the Harvard Business IdeaCast on "Leading Clever People."  (click here for the iTunes link).  Gareth Jones, coauthor of Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People provides some interesting insight both into how much today's organizations need clever people and how much disdain those clever people have for hierarchy, titles, and office politics.

He defines someone who is "clever" as someone who adds disproportionate amounts of value to the organization.  They're capable of innovation and breakthru ideas.  However, they are not compliant employees.  They can be difficult to lead.  They think a good manager is one that "does not get in the way too much."

Inside the Mind of a Reluctant Entrepreneur

The Stanford Technology Ventures Program has a podcast series called the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series.  I realy enjoyed listening to "Inside the Mind of a Reluctant Entrepreneur" (also on iTunes) with Jeff Hawkins as the speaker.  Jeff Hawkins is perhaps best known for founding Palm Computing, creating the Palm Pilot, and then later founding Handspring. However, in this podcast he describes how he never really set out to start corporations and how he objected to the long hours typical of startup companies.

Jeff shares an interesting story about his long-time passion for studying the brain and figuring out how the brain works as a way to create a new way of computing.  Along the way, he also developed an early passion for mobile computing before computer, display, and battery technology really made it possible. 

Jeff finally realized his dream of studying how the brain works full time when he founded a non-profit, the Redwood Neuroscience Institute.  He later merged that institute into the University of California at Berkley and then founded a fourth organization called Numenta which is "creating a new type of computing technology modeled on the structure and operation of the neocortex."

Jeff authored a book about his work on how the brain works called  On Intelligence.

Getting to Plan "B"

The title really doesn't mean what you think.  In a BusinessWeek - Innovation of the Week podcat  ( also on iTunes), Randy Komisar discusses the premise of his book Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model in which he says that the first business plan ("plan A") envisioned by the vast majority of startup companies doesn't work out.  He advocates that entrepreneurs accept that they try their plan "A" and be prepraed to quickly accept it didn't work out as planned and be ready to quickly move on to "plan B".  He says he uses "plan B" only that it is something else (something smarter) based on what was learned from plan A.  Plan B doesn't necessarily imply a less attractive alternative, just another alternative which is probably better.  He gives several examples of companies which failed to be profitable on their plan A and had to adapt quickly. 

Here's a link to Randy's book:

The Art of Teaching Entrepreneurship and Innovation

The podcast "The Art of Teaching Entrepreneurship and Innovation" from the Stanford University Technology Ventures Program was a really excellent podcast.  It made me wish I was a student again and working on an MBA at Stanford.  Tina Seelig, author of the entrepreneurship book What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World, presents some really amazing ideas that students have come up with when challenged to make money from next to nothing.

Examples include one class that was divided into groups and each group was given $5 and two hours to raise as much money as possible and then make a 3 minute presentation to the class.  The exercise was designed to help the students learn to challenge assumptions.  The team that made the most money was the team that realized that the most valuable thing they had was not the $5 or the two hours but the 3 minutes of class time.  They sold their 3 minute presentation time  to a company interested in recruiting Stanford MBA students.

This really is worth checking out if you like to think of yourself as a creative, out-of-the-box thinker. Check out the podcast on iTunes.

Here's Tina's book.

Email Bankruptcy and Other Symptoms of Information Overload

Anyone who has given up on reading all the emails that arrive while on vacation, given up on reading all the blogs that other people recommend, and given up on keeping up with every new technology that comes out appreciates the concept of “information overload”.   Coping with the overload is the subject of the podcast “Managing Information Overload”, a Harvard Businss Ideacast interview with Paul Hemp.  Paul is the author of the Harvard Business Review article "Death by Information Overload”.   

It was during this interview that I learned of some of the techniques companies are experiementing with to control email overload such as disabling the "Reply to All" button and prioritizing the contents of email inbaskets according to a user rating point system which prevents users from arbitrarily declaring all their emails as "urgent".  I also heard the phrase "email bankruptcy" for the first time to describe people who simply give up on catching up on email and simply delete all email and start over.

Check out the podcast interview. Its episode 159 at Harvard Business IdeaCast or also on iTunes.

Crossing the Chasm

If you business has anything to do with high technology, you have probably heard the expression "crossing the chasm" which is used to describe the problem of moving a new technology from the early adopters to broader adoption.  That phrase was coined by Geoffrey Moore in his classic business book Crossing the Chasm which first came out in 1991.  Phil McKinney, the CTO of Hewlett Packard's Personal Systems Group, interviewed Geoffrey Moore on his Killer Innovations podcast.  There is some good conversation about how the situation has changed and what it takes to cross the chasm now. The interview is in two parts.  Check out part one and part two.  See also part one on iTunes and part two on iTunes.  The full show notes and partial transcript is posted over at thenextbench.com.