Human Wearable Network

In this video, the concept of the Human Wearable Network and its uses will be explained.

Considerations in Innovations - Case Study With Stem Cells

Research and innovation within the field of medicine can be very complex for both the science and technology involved and the regulations and procedures which must be upheld due to public safety, personnel safety, and ethics related to working with humans or human materials. Different countries may have different laws or regulations related to the activities which are or are not permissible when it comes to biological research and a change in these laws or regulations can have immediate and measurable impacts on the ability of researchers to complete their work. One area in which researchers in the United States and other countries face a dynamic environment when it comes to laws and regulations is stem cell research.

Due to the politics surrounding stem cells, the ability for researchers to leverage these materials for research related to genetic treatments for issues such as Type 1 diabetes, human development, and areas can be uncertain. In one example, research funding in California was left to a ballot measure which puts progress at the discretion of personal politics (Hurlbut, Robert, 2012). While the public should have input into how its tax dollars are spent, research funding is a much more controversial topic than repairing a highway. To that end, some researchers or biological research businesses have taken their operations to locations where the ability to continue research is not at the whim of public opinion to the same degree at it is in the U.S. While there may be legitimate ethical concerns regarding what research is being conducted, how the research materials are collected, or the goals of the research, it may limit the ability for positive outcomes such as curing Type-1 diabetes from progressing.

As we look to our own innovations, we must consider if there are any legal regulations which would prevent us from pursuing the research or making available to the public the output from that innovation be it a product or idea. We must also consider if there would be public outcry due to topic or nature of our innovation that we must prepare ourselves to process and understand the perception of. We may need to educate the public on the benefits, impacts, and rationale for the innovation and also be willing to receive feedback or criticisms of it.

 

References

 

 Hurlbut, J. B., & Robert, J. S. (2012). Stem Cells, Science, and Public Reasoning. Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, 31(3), 707–714. https://doi-org.coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/pam.21611

Paths to Innovation

 Innovation can result from many different activities and circumstances. There are many times in which innovation or invention is not the desired outcome of a set of activities but through the process it is found that an output or result is viable in its own right and warrants further exploration. Many of these types of innovation arise from serendipity, errors, or exaptation.

Innovation by serendipity can be thought of as a fortunate stroke of luck which is shown in the Tasmania-based Houston’s Farms which started bagging their grown salads out of necessity and the consumer demand caught them completely off guard and resulted in their business becoming wildly successful (Bonney et. al., 2007). With serendipity it is important to keep perspectives and opinions open as when these circumstances arrive, the individual or team needs to acknowledge that a potential innovation is at hand and must foster its development into a finalized item.

Innovation by error is different from serendipity in that intentional efforts were being made to develop or progress something but mistakes, accidents, or other unintended events generated an “ah-ha” moment such as with the failure of Ford’s Edsel in 1957 prompting them to reevaluate their markets and release the very successful Thunderbird as a result (Swaim, 2021). One key aspect of errors is to learn and grow from them. If nothing is learned from errors, the same error will continue to happen. Being able to perform root cause analysis and understand exactly what happened that should not have occurred helps to spark the realization of how to advance forward. It is also important to be aware of the mistakes others are making within the same space so as to avoid repeating them.

Innovation through exaptation is evaluating something not for what it currently is but instead for what it could turn into which additive manufacturing processes like 3D-printing have allowed for the creation of parts and components which were not physically possible to construct before this technology was available (Beltagui et. al., 2020). Understanding how to leverage inventions or innovations in new or unique ways requires an understanding of how the innovation works and how some or all of its subcomponents can be modified in order to allow it to have a new form or function. Exaptation may require the most wide and deep set of knowledge to be successful of any of the three approaches discussed.

References

Beltagui, A., Rosli, A., & Candi, M. (2020). Exaptation in a digital innovation ecosystem: The disruptive impacts of 3D printing. Research Policy, 49(1), 103833. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2019.103833

 

Bonney, L., Clark, R., Collins, R., & Fearne, A. (2007). From serendipity to sustainable competitive advantage: Insights from Houston's farm and their journey of co-innovation. Supply Chain Management, 12(6), 395-399. http://dx.doi.org.coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/10.1108/13598540710826326

 

Swaim, R. (2021, April 23). Failure and the seven sources of innovation. Process Excellence Network. https://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/innovation/columns/failure-and-the-seven-sources-of-innovation

An opportunity missed, Microsoft and smart phones

In 2007, the cellular phone space was a very different market than in 2022. It was twenty-four years past the first commercial release of the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X and personal cellular phones were now capable of much more than simply taking or making phone call with widespread marketing to average consumers taking place in 1995 with the Motorola Flare (Edwards, 2018). In January of 2007 Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone which would go on sale in June of that year in two different models priced at $499 and $599 with a two year contact from the mobile service provider. While other phones at the time had similar features, functions, and some even exceeding the technical specifications of the iPhone, it was Apple’s ability to cohesively bring the hardware and user experience together which aided in its appeal to the broader public. At the time, many of the more expensive phones were owned and utilized by individuals in business roles who wanted access to email, documents, and other items when not in front of a computer or while not at the office.

It is through the lens of a business professional that Steve Ballmer and other executives at Microsoft analyzed the smart phone market and gave criticism when seeing the phone Apple was about to launch. Upon its’ release, Ballmer was quoted as saying “Five hundred dollars!?! … most expensive phone in the world … (and) … it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard” (Katt, 2007). Statements like these demonstrate that Microsoft was continuing to think about smart phones from the perspective of what business professionals want. They believed and aligned their business strategy towards mobile devices that took the use cases of a typical working computer and shrunk the screen and keyboard to a size which allowed them to fit into pockets and bags. In this regard, Microsoft was performing a classical forecasting; taking the current market conditions, identifying potential needs of their market segment, and creating a roadmap which they believed aligned the products being developed with the features and functions business professionals would want. The forecasts made my Microsoft turned out to be inaccurate as by early 2010 the iPhone was ten percent ahead of Microsoft Windows Phones in the smartphone market. Apple’s approach to understanding what the public would want and be receptive to was much more closely aligned to reality than Microsoft originally believed it to be.

If Microsoft had attempted to perform scenario planning instead of simply forecasting the needs of business professionals, perhaps they would have obtained a new or more comprehensive understanding of the smart phone market in the late 2000’s. Scenario planning allows for the creation of multiple possible outcomes for a given current state which are driven by emphasizing, including, or limiting specific factors or variables which can alter the outcomes (Schwarze, Taylor, 2017). The rapid development of technology, specifically related to mobile telephones, and their associated networks coupled with the potentially larger market demands for mobile devices should have prompted Microsoft to transition away from traditional forecasting to a much more comprehensive approach of scenario planning. If a simple two by two grid of scenarios was constructed with demand being a variable between business professionals and the general public, Figure 1 displays the constricted scenario plan.

Figure 1

Scenario planning for smart phones

With the additional potential future states listed, Microsoft may have performed more research into understanding what would need to be true for these outcomes to occur. As it happened, demand for smartphones increased at an unanticipated rate across all demographics. Had Microsoft understood that the market of the future would include non-professionals, teenagers, and everyone else who wanted to have a means of connecting to the Internet and other digital resources, their strategies on product development, marketing, and potentially even partnerships may have changed to enable them to meet these demands. The amount of iPhone products in use by Microsoft employees was an indication that they had missed the opportunity to become a major competitor within the smart phone market (Cox, 2010). Developers, managers, and even members of the executive team were picking the iPhone as their personal smart phone in spite of the perks afforded to them if they had chosen to utilize a Windows phone instead (Wingfield, 2010). Ultimately, Microsoft exited the smart phone market completely and now focuses on developing their office suite of software for Andriod and iOS platforms. In this regard Microsoft is still focused on business professionals and their need for conducting business while not in front of a laptop or personal computer. In this regard it is uncertain if Microsoft has actually learned any lessons from its failure in predicting the wants and desires of the marketspace.

Innovating planning requires that the team or individual performing the planning make an accurate assessment of many different possibilities which may present themselves in the future. Because it is impossible to pick the exact possibility which will play out based on factors which arise between the present and the future, scenario planning is the only viable option to obtain actionable conclusions. While the example shown in Figure 1 represents a very simple approach with two questions resulting in four possible outcomes, more advanced scenario planning techniques can have multiple variables resulting in matrices or n-dimensional constructs being created. It is important to keep the number of factors or questions to a reasonable amount or the number of outcomes will cause specific factors to be diluted and conversations related to each outcome will be difficult to explore in detail due to the amount of overlap which may arise between scenario planning exercises which have too many options. The example with Microsoft demonstrates the importance of taking into consideration the social and cultural impacts future outcomes may bring about. Without evaluating how the public demand or perception of a good or service may change based on outside factors results in a poor process of analysis. As it relates to technical advances, understanding how price or other barriers to entry dropping result in changes the outcomes is crucial. The advent of technology also changes the way in which individuals and organizations may operate. If Microsoft had looked into how businesses would change if everyone had a smart phone or analyzed how the quality of life for individuals would be impacted if they had information and resources more readily available to them, perhaps they would have understood the transformative nature of smart phones and had invested more in their products to allow them to appeal to a broader demographic than just business personnel.

When considering the social impact of change it is important to acknowledge that both positive and negative impacts can occur and must be addressed with the same thought and rigor. While smart phones enable individuals to be more connected and able to communicate with each other in a variety of video, voice, and text based platforms and approaches it is not all positive. Issues such as cyber-bullying, self-esteem, and mental health can all be impacted by the always-on, always-connected, and the feeling of always needing to view the curated images and lifestyle others are portraying on social media platforms. When evaluating how innovation may drive the creation of new products, services, or entire industries scenario planning or other types of predictive techniques must examine all aspects of how the technologies may be utilized and try to identify the negative and positive impacts then can have to individuals, demographics, or entire societies. To simply assume everyone will act in good faith when a technology is available is naïve and responsible invention, innovation, and future-casting should be honest about the nature of both the individual and the crowd and accept that their ideas or technologies will be misused. If the benefits to society are deemed to outweigh the negative impacts, it should be moved ahead, but if the benefits do not tip the scales in a positive nature, serious thought should be given to understanding why and how to mitigate these issues as much as possible.

References

Cox, J. (2010). Microsoft's mobile shakeup: Will it unleash Windows phone?: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announces major changes in the company's entertainment and mobile device businesses. Network World (Online), https://coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/trade-journals/microsofts-mobile-shakeup-will-unleash-windows/docview/347803690/se-2?accountid=144789

Edwards, B. (2018, April 12). The golden age of Motorola cell phones. PCMAG. https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-golden-age-of-motorola-cell-phones

Katt, S. F. (2007). Ballmer won’t iPhone home. EWeek, 24(4), 47.

Montgomery, A., & Mingis, K. (2021, September 23). The evolution of Apple's iPhone. Computerworld. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2604020/the-evolution-of-apples-iphone.html

Schwarze, M. L., & Taylor, L. J. (2017). Managing uncertainty — harnessing the power of scenario planning. The New England Journal of Medicine, 377(3), 206-208. http://dx.doi.org.coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/10.1056/NEJMp1704149

Wingfield, N. (2010, Mar 12). Forbidden fruit: Microsoft workers hide their iPhones; Steve Ballmer sours on Apple product; work for Ford, drive a Ford: [1]. Wall Street Journal (Online) https://coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/forbidden-fruit-microsoft-workers-hide-their/docview/237971436/se-2?accountid=144789

Reflections on One Laptop Per Child and C19-based education

Hayashi and Baranauskas (2013) discuss the merits and implications of including technical artifacts in the formal education of students which in turn drove informal and non-formal learning. The One Laptop Per Child (OPLC) research project sought to understand how students and faculty would respond to and incorporate technology into their learning processes. Overall, the program had a very positive impact directly on the students learning and also indirect positive impacts on the student’s esteem, family member education, and pride in their schooling. Some of the effectiveness of technology was dependent on the teacher’s ability to incorporate the features and benefits of the laptop into lesson programs such as leveraging the camera, conducting research in-classroom, or being able to have more audio and visual content included into the lessons (Hayashi, Baranauskas, 2013). There was reluctance amongst some staff to incorporate the technology into the educational process and as a result there may have been missed opportunities for enhanced learning, better retention, or the ability for the teacher to have more direct feedback on how the lesson materials were received and absorbed by the students.

While the OLPC project highlighted many of the possible benefits of incorporating technology into learning, it is important to note that this was the only technology these students had access to. All students had the same technology with the same type of Internet access available to them. When this set of factors is compared to the digital learning platforms leveraged by schools in the US during COVID, the concept of the digital divide and the impact it can have on students may highlight the potential negatives to digital learning. When students do not have reliable Internet access to conduct research or submit assignments or lack dedicated computing resources to complete their course work or lack even the base necessities to utilize a computer, the benefits of a digital learning platform become a negative when compared to a more traditional classroom-based approach in which the instructor, materials, and resources are provided without interruption. It is important that educators and learning institutions construct digital learning platforms that are inclusive and enable students from all socioeconomic backgrounds to equitably participate in the learning experiences and platforms or they will continue to be left behind by those with more technical resources available to them.

References

Hayashi, E. C. S., & Baranauskas, M. C. (2013). Affectibility in educational technologies: A socio-technical perspective for design. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 16(1), 57-8.

Forecasting the Future

Edward Bellamy
source: en.wikipedia.org

Forecasting is a method which allows individuals or organizations to make a prediction on the future state, status, or condition of the topic or subject of the analysis. A business could forecast public demand in a product, profitability of a department or the company, or the impact of geopolitical issues on supply chains. Business can utilize forecasting not only for potential success but also to determine if a current business will fail (Li, Sun, 2010). By collecting information about the factors, variables, interdependencies  and other variables related to the topic, the analysts will determine how each impacts the future state and will make a best guess as to which influences will prevail and ultimately make a forecast. Forecasting in an innovative capacity follows a similar process. New technologies, public behaviors, and other factors will help the analysts determine how the future will be shaped based on advancements.

One prediction that was almost one hundred years in the making was by Edward Bellamy. In his 1887 book “Looking Backward”, Bellamy was the first person to coin the term “credit card” (Watson, 2017). Although his use of the card differs form today, the concept of a card tied to an individual for the use of purchasing came into popular use in the 1980’s. Fantasy novels and specifically utopian or dystopian works tend to predict futures based on taking current trends to a logical conclusion or a projection of their own hopes or ideas onto a society at large. Bellamy was very interested in looking at how the lives of people would change in the future and considered the aspects of how they would live, work, leisure, and even eat (Watson, 2017). The turn of the century, 1800’s to 1900’s, was the impetus for many writers to consider how the turn of the next century would change the way people and societies were constructed. The ability to view the current societal issues and identify a potential solution to address them at a national scale and demonstrate that through writing about the lives of people in the year 2000 resulted in a very interesting story. Many of the aspects of Bellamy’s work did not pan out as predicted but the work was an inspiration to architects, urban planners, and others over the course of the next century (Watson, 2017).

 

References

Li, & Sun. (2010). Forecasting business failure in China using case-based reasoning with hybrid case respresentation. Journal of Forecasting, 29(5), 486–501. https://doi-org.coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/for.1149

 

Watson, J. M. (2017). Topographies of the future: urban and suburban visions in Edward Bellamy’s utopian fiction. Planning Perspectives, 32(4), 639–649. https://doi-org.coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/02665433.2017.1350874

 

Scenario Planning vs Forecasting

Scenario planning is a method in which multiple future narratives are constructed from a set of variables, conditions, or factors all of which are related to the challenge or problem under focus (Bowman, 2016). By constructing a matrix or table in which the different values are assigned to the variables, the researchers can begin to develop and understanding of how a specific future may come to fruition and gain insight into which of the variables would be the strongest factor in it occurring. The validity of the generated scenarios is dependent on the researchers understanding of the variables, the relationships between them and their accuracy in predicting the likelihood of specific events or circumstances occurring which means it can be a rather subjective exercise Frum, 2013).

Forecasting is different from scenario planning in that the intent is to arrive at one accurate future narrative through careful research and analysis of all factors. There are multiple methods of forecasting including qualitative, time series analysis, and casual models (Chambers et. al., 1971). The method utilized will change based on the amount of hard facts (numbers, quantitative data) available, examples or history which can be cross-referenced, or how deep of an understanding is available on the factors on conditions which can impact the outcome. Compared to other castings such as backcasting or nowcasting, forecasting can be effective with less variables or factors under consideration (Kim, Swanson, 2018). To construct the forecast, researchers will look at multiple factors and weigh them on their perceived impact on altering the future state and when all of the factors have been analyzed with regards to their impact, a conclusion can be drawn. As an example, if manufacturer of products which relies on aluminum begins to see the factors related to supply issues beginning to appear, they may forecast an impending shortage and pre-emptively order more supply to get ahead of their perceived future.

Scenario planning is an excellent exercise when an organization wants to explore multiple possibilities and consider how they would react or adapt to those potential futures. The time horizon for these exercises may be slightly further out than the timeframes forecasting is typically utilized in. Forecasting is better suited for trying to identify how a business needs to respond today to the most likely future state and the analysis of current data and environmental factors is essential to an accurate prediction.

References

Bowman, G. (2016). The Practice of Scenario Planning: An Analysis of Inter- and Intra-organizational Strategizing. British Journal of Management, 27(1), 77–96. https://doi-org.coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12098

Chambers, J. C., Mullick, S. K., & Smith, D. D. (1971). How to choose the right forecasting technique. Harvard Business Review, 49(4), 45–70.

Kim, H. H., & Swanson, N. R. (2018). Methods for backcasting, nowcasting and forecasting using factor‐MIDAS: With an application to Korean GDP. Journal of Forecasting, 37(3), 281–302. https://doi-org.coloradotech.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/for.2499

Frum, R. (2013, August 6). World association of newspapers scenario planning. Personal Expert System. https://personalexpertsystem.blogspot.com/2013/08/world-association-of-newspapers.html