Technology Trends

This week, the cover story of BusinessWeek, “The Power Of Us,” reminds us that “mass collaboration on the Internet is shaking up business.” The long article covers all the new Internet technologies we are using today, from free phone calls using Skype to file-sharing, blogs, wikis and social networking services. As says Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs, a mix of different technologies such as the Web, mobile devices, and the feedback system on eBay “may make some new economic system possible.” In other words, these new Net technologies are creating a new world, where “the economic role of social behavior is increasing.” The whole BusinessWeek article is worth reading, but I want to focus here on InnoCentive, a web-based community matching 80,000 independent scientists (the “solvers”) to relevant R&D challenges facing leading companies (the “seekers”) from around the globe. Read more…

First, here is how some traditional companies are adopting these new tools to face this world of changes.

Traditional companies, from Procter & Gamble Co. to Dow Chemical Co., are beginning to flock to the virtual commons, too. The potential benefits are enormous. If companies can open themselves up to contributions from enthusiastic customers and partners, that should help them create products and services faster, with fewer duds — and at far lower cost, with far less risk. LEGO Group uses the Net to identify and rally its most enthusiastic customers to help it design and market more effectively. Eli Lilly & Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., and others are running “prediction markets” that extract collective wisdom from online crowds, which help gauge whether the government will approve a drug or how well a product will sell.

And here is Rheingold’s vision of this phenomenon.

Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, sees a common thread in such disparate innovations as the Internet, mobile devices, and the feedback system on eBay, where buyers and sellers rate each other on each transaction. He thinks they’re the underpinnings of a new economic order. “These are like the stock companies and liability insurance that made capitalism possible,” suggests Rheingold, who’s also helping lead the Cooperation Project, a network of academics and businesses trying to map the new landscape. “They may make some new economic system possible.”

Now, let’s focus on InnoCentive.

Back in 2001, the management of Eli Lilly decided to see if thousands of researchers around the world, and available via the Web, could help its own scientists to find new ideas. And it decided to invest a few million dollars in a young startup company, InnoCentive, short for “Innovation Incentive.” Eli Lilly was soon followed by PG, Dow, DuPont, Boeing and more than 30 other large companies.

Here is how this collaborative technology works. Imagine that you are a company needing to find an answer to a problem that your own teams have not solved. You, as a “seeker,” contact InnoCentive which will post your challenge on the Web, with all the guarantees of anonymity of course. And Innocentive will post the challenge on the Net. Its network of 80,000 independent self-selected “solvers” living in more than 170 countries, will then try to solve this problem.

After a solution is evaluated and accepted, the “solver” will receive an award ranging from $10,000 to $100,000.

If you’re a chemist, here is the list of current chemistry challenges you can solve. For example, if you find “a method to sequester menthol in a flexible sheet” before September 20, 2005, and if your solution is approved, you will earn $50,000.

And if you’re a biologist, you can look at the biology challenges. Imagine you have a good idea to find new “approaches for non-surfactant based laundry detergents.” Submit your proposal before June 24, 2005, and you might have a chance to get $20,000.

Here is a pointer to a list of recent winning solvers.

BusinessWeek confirms that this system is really successful.

More than a third of the two dozen requests P&G has submitted to InnoCentive’s network have yielded solutions, for which the company paid upwards of $5,000 apiece. By using InnoCentive and other ways of reaching independent talent, P&G has boosted the number of new products derived from outside to 35%, from 20% three years ago. As a result, sales per R&D person are ahead some 40%.

So, if you’re an expert in biotechnology or petrochemicals, you might want to join the InnoCentive network. And if you win an award, please drop me a note…

Sources: Robert D. Hof, BusinessWeek Magazine, June 20, 2005 Issue; and various websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Biotechnology
  
  
• Chemistry
  
  
• Innovation
  
  
• P2P
  
  
• Smart Mobs
  
  
• Social Networks
  

I’ve been a strong advocate of the social bookmarking service named del.icio.us since it started (check here for an example). And almost every single day, a new tool appears and enhances the use of this service. This new one, DURL, written by Robin Millette, lets you type an URL and see if some other people already “delicious’ed it.” And this is very efficient because it leads you to people who not only bookmarked the URL, but also assigned to it some pertinent keywords or tags, giving you new and fresh ideas. Services like Bloglines or Technorati among others certainly can return hundreds of links, so they are good for ‘popularity contests.’ But for building social communities and introducing you to sources you wouldn’t have thought of, they don’t compare to del.icio.us. Read more for lots of examples…

As I’m not sure if I convinced you, let’s start with a real blog, Smart Mobs.

If I feed the URL http://www.smartmobs.com/ to Bloglines by submitting the search string “http://www.bloglines.com/citations?url=http://www.smartmobs.com/&submit=Search,” I receive 3358 unsorted results.

If I do the same with Technorati, I find 1,614 links from 1,234 sources, sorted by date.

In both cases, this produces a number of references which is hard to browse. Why a particular site has quoted Smart Mobs? It’s not obvious to find an answer.

So, it’s time to use DURL, which returns a more manageable number of 45 results from del.icio.us.

Let’s check for example the tag “Social Software.”

In a summary, with only two clicks, I found a gold mine. Do you know another service which is that efficient?

Now, let’s return to the previous page and check the link to the “community” tag.

The more I use del.icio.us, the more I like it. This doesn’t mean I’m not using Bloglines or Technorati, but I’m using them for ‘exhaustivity,’ not for ‘discovery.’

[And here is an additional note for Robin Millette, the author of DURL. In fact, you can do the same search on del.icio.us by adding the string "http://del.icio.us/url?url=" (without the quotes) before the URL you want to see if it has been delicioused. But it might be too geeky for some of you.]

Source: Robin Millette, December 20, 2004; and various websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Internet
  
  
• Smart Mobs
  
  
• Social Networks
  
  
• Software
  
  
• Web Services
  
  
• Web Sites
  

It’s the weekend, so it’s time to relax and check if a new technology can improve the lives of those searching for love. Now, video phones are adding vision to online dating and it will be much more difficult for you to pretend to look like, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Britney Spears. Your potential date will see you in real time on her or his phone. And BBC News reports that a U.K. 3G networking company, simply named 3, has launched a contest to find the best videos done on phones. You can submit a video of yourself, for only 50 p. (about US$0.92), and online voters will decide if you’re among the top 100 contestants. On November 30, 2004, these most popular contestants will gather at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. And of course, they’ll be hosted in separate rooms and only ‘meet’ by video phones. Read more…

Hundreds have submitted a mobile video profile to win a place at the world’s first video mobile dating event. The top 100 meet their match on 30 November at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA).

The event, organised by the the 3G network, 3, could catch on as the trend for unusual dating events, like speed dating, continues.

The 100 most popular contestants voted by the public will gather at the ICA in separate rooms and “meet” by phone.

After the event, will 3G dating replace blind dating or speed dating?

Dating services and other more adult match-making services are proving to be a strong stream of revenue worth millions for mobile companies. Whether it does actually provide an interesting match for video phone technologies remains to be seen.

Flic Everett, journalist and dating expert for Company magazine and the Daily Express, thinks technology has been liberating for some nervous soul-mate seekers.

“It could really take off because you do get the whole package. With a static e-mail picture, you don’t know who the person is behind it is.”

“With a video meeting, you really have the barrier of the phone so if you don’t like them you don’t have to suffer the embarrassment.”

If you’re on the dating market, what do you think? Will mobile video dating replace or complement other online dating methods? And do you think it will eliminate cheaters? Please post your comments below.

Sources: Jo Twist, BBC News, November 11, 2004; and 3 (Hutchison 3G UK) website

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Smart Mobs
  


• Social Networks
  


• Wireless