This from PC Magazine today - what a week for Google!

Google confirmed Friday that it will bid on wireless spectrum, the first step toward the establishment of the company’s long-rumored wireless network.

Google will file a bid with the FCC on Monday for a portion of the 700-MHz band, which the FCC is auctioning off. The bid does not include any partners, Google said.

According to the bidding rules – assisted by Google and public interest groups earlier this year –

the winner of the auction must allow any consumer to download any software they wish onto the mobile phone, and to use and device they can on the wireless network. The rules go into effect if the reserve price of $4.6 billion is met.

Analysts have said previously that actually building the network could cost an additional $17 billion.

“We believe it’s important to put our money where our principles are,” said Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive of Google, in a statement. “Consumers deserve more competition and innovation than they have in today’s wireless world. No matter which bidder ultimately prevails, the real winners of this auction are American consumers who likely will see more choices than ever before in how they access the Internet.”

Engadget says “Wake the kids, phone the neighbors, it’s going to get ugly fast.”

See the article here.

Image credit: Engadget

Google announced this morning that they will be pouring potentially hundreds of millions of dollars into achieving their newest goal:

Google has already spent significant resources in reducing their negative footprint at their own facilities and data centers, as we’ve seen with projects like their infamous “solar trees” (see below). But now it is time for Google to take that knowledge and innovation and apply it outside the company. They will be hiring loads of scientists, engineers, and technologists to develop ways in which to “produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal.” says Larry Page, Google Co-founder and President of Products. That’s enough to power a city the size of San Francisco.

Alex Steffen of WorldChanging.com interviewed Karl Schroeder in September. Karl managed to describe the need for this type of investment in one of the best ways I have ever heard when discussing what he would do with a billion dollars:

“[I would invest in] projects that can’t get funding because they have a low probability of success, but massive payoff if they do work. –Which is precisely where our investment should be flowing right now, because we don’t have time for incremental development to solve the climate crisis. We need miracles, and those don’t come from slow, safe R&D projects…”

From what I’ve read so far, some people aren’t so sure what the heck Google is doing in the energy business. My take: Who better to do this?! We’re talking about a corporation with the big, hairy, audacious goal (BHAG - thanks Jim Collins) of “organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.” The scariest part is they’ve estimated how long it will take them to complete; 300 years. Maybe this includes organizing the world’s information in regards to technologies, ideas, and innovations that will make energy cheaper and cleaner for everyone.

So, why not let Google go at it? They’ve got the culture, attitude, outreach, brains, and money.

See the press release here.

Hans Rosling, professor, doctor, and founder of Gapminder, presents his statistics analyzing software, completely bringing data to life and giving his audience a visualization of changes that have occurred in human development. According to Wikipedia, “In March 2007 Google acquired the Trendalyzer software with the intention to scale it up and make it freely available for public statistics”, however I have had a little trouble getting my hands on it.

“Hans co-founded Gapminder, whose remarkable interactive graphs help deliver profound insights about global trends and dispel myths about the “developing world”. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, he debunks a few of those myths in this presentation delivered at the 2006 Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference.

To live in “extreme poverty” - with less than 1 dollar a day - means you wake up hungry, you go to bed hungry and you have to use all your resources just to acquire food.

How has the Global Economy effected the income of people across the world? Although the percentage of poverty has gone down, the number of poor people is still very high. Still, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has gone down from around 40 percent 30 years ago to todays number of around 20 percent.

The good news is that the eradication of poverty is within human range.”

Check out the incredibly cool Gapminder here.

Hans Rosling’s full-length TED Presentation here.

This from a Shell ad (I know…Shell) I fell in love with from the November 26th issue of TIME:

Say No to No

Isn’t it high time someone got negative about negativity?
Yes it is.
Look around. The world is full of things that, according to nay-sayers, should have never happened.
“Impossible.”
“Impractical.”
“No.”
And yet “yes.”
Yes, continents have been found.
Yes, men have played golf on the moon.
Yes, straw is being turned into biofuel to power cars.
Yes, yes, yes.
What does it take to turn no into yes?
Curiosity. An open mind. A willingness to take risks.
And, when the problem seems most insoluble, when the
challenge is hardest, when everyone else is shaking
their heads, to say: let’s go.

Another Ted Talk - this time with Ken Robinson who argues that “it is creativity which is at the heart of our greatest achievements not academic ability.”

“Robinson points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize — much less cultivate — the talents of many brilliant people. ‘We are educating people out of their creativity,’ Robinson says.”

His main points:

• Creativity is now as important in education as is literacy.

• Kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they’ll have a go. They are not frightened of being wrong.

• If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original. As you become adults, you become afraid of being wrong.

• We are educating people out of their born capacities.

• We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence, and that new view cannot be based on academic success.

• Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we have strip-mined the earth for a particular commodity.

• We need to see our creative capacities for the richness they are.

See the full 20min talk here.

This is incredible.

A TED Talk where William McDonough speaks about flaws in our usage of designs, and goes on to introduce his new design for cities and communities in China - unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

Just prior in this clip, McDonough uses his incredible way with words to emphasize just how much we can learn from the ‘design’ of trees, especially with respect to architecture and civil planning:

“Imagine this design project:

Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, provides habitat for hundred of species, accrues solar energy as fuel, makes complex sugars and food, creates microclimates, changes colors with the seasons, and self replicates.

Yeah…Why don’t we knock that down and write on it…”

Check out the entire Ted Talk here.

Marc Stamos, who I introduced in a previous entry about Startups and Fear, has been doing great things with his new organization REBEARTH. A series of talks scheduled for Waterloo, Montreal, and Toronto is just about complete. The Toronto event will take place next Tuesday, November 27th at 7pm in the Bahen Centre for Information Technology at the University of Toronto. All are invited - check out the link HERE.

To give you an idea of exactly how compelling Marc’s talks are (not to mention REBEARTH itself), check out this article which was featured on WorldChanging.com today!!

Fund, Design and Build: The project of (y)our dreams?

Jon Booren
November 21, 2007 2:44 PM

As Jason Diceman pointed out last month, Worldchanging has covered quite a few social networking sites, all trying to bring people together in slightly different ways. Here is one more project that is worth reading about.

Marc Stamos, an entrepreneur from Montreal, has a vision. He wants to help grow a world that 6.6 billion people would want to live in.

While articling as a law school student, Marc had an opportunity to see David Suzuki speak at the University of Toronto. Coming away from that experience, he felt so inspired to effect change that he decided to finish his position, stop and regroup. He took the next number of years to educate himself, network and find a place where he might be able to help. His conversations, work and effort have all culminated with this: REBEARTH.COM

On Tuesday evening, Marc spoke to an audience at McGill University in Montreal and laid out a world that would contain the following appetizing characteristics:

• Businesses that increase employee morale, regenerate the environment and are profitable.
• Children’s toys that are fun, engaging, profitable and release nutrients when chewed.
• Desirable transportation that is silent, clean and profitable.
• Human impact is a positive, prosperous and regenerative force.

Okay, so that sounds simple enough. Where do we start?

What Marc and his collaborators want to do is create an internet hub that links ideas, with finances and skills; wiki-style networking, with a bank account and muscle power.

REBEARTH’s immediate goal is to begin with one project, a house.

Have you ever thought about what your dream house would look like? What characteristics would it have? Would you be willing to contribute your thoughts to help this house take shape? REBEARTH’s hope is you would.

How about your skills as a project coordinator, designer or architect? No skills, just cash? Fine. They’ll take that too. Getting the prototype off the ground will help work out the system they hope to form. A system that can then be applied to anything we want.

Perhaps you’re not interested in building a new house; you want a new shoe, fabric, community heating plant, or bicycle tire. Suggest it, collaborate, design, fund and build.

REBEARTH wants to take collaboratively formed ideas and make them marketable. Taking any generated innovations and share, systemize, franchise and/or license them out to other companies for use, but there is a catch. There goal is not to just make money from the commons, REBEARTH was started to help grow a world that 6.6 billion people would want to live in. Companies who want to use the innovations in traditional application, without the social or environmental contribution will have a bit of a tougher time.

And the money that comes in, goes around. Not only to those who put up the financial backing, but to all those who have been involved in the project.

Interested in finding out more? Marc will be making presentation #2 in Toronto this coming Tuesday, November 27th, at 7:00 PM in the Bahen Centre for Information Technology at the University of Toronto. For more details you can check out this internet invitation.

Those of you unable to make it to Toronto, please visit their website and email them, they would love to hear from you. Because after all, it’s going to take people just like you to make this thing work.

http://www.worldchanging.com/local/canada/archives/007605.html

From Fast Company Expert Blogs
Posted by Richard Watson at November 21, 2007 4:58 PM

The New Rules of Innovation

Rule # 1 - None of us are as smart as all of us.
The image of a lone genius slaving away in a dimly lit basement or garage is the traditional image of the inventor. However, according to Andrew Hargadon (Assistant Professor of Technology Management at the University of California) this is largely a myth. Moreover, when it comes to innovation, a collective effort is more usually the norm. Andrew Hargadon’s book (How Breakthroughs Happen) says that innovation is largely a result of networks. These are formal and informal collections of people and projects ranging from employees and suppliers to customers and even competitors. These networks are highly social in nature, which means that cultivating relationships is important. Another key observation is the thought that ideas are rarely new. New ideas are usually a recombination of old ideas and thus diversity in terms of people, ideas and experience is key for innovation. Having said all this, the best way to kill a good idea is to involve a committee, so ensure that there’s someone in charge to bang heads together and, if necessary, dislodge the gridlock.

Rule # 2 - Pioneers get scalped.
The theory of first mover advantage is bunk according to Nicolas Carr (author of ‘Does IT Matter’), who says that when a disruptive technology arrives the real growth opportunities lie in fixing the disruption. In other words the pioneers often get scalped. His argument is that the future arrives in “fits and starts” and many of the most profitable innovations are inherently conservative. Ditto companies (look at Toyota or Wal-Mart). Innovators (especially technology innovators) often get too far ahead of customers who are fundamentally change adverse. A good example is the Internet. Many of the early dom.com firms failed, not because they had a bad idea, but because they had an idea too soon and lacked the patience, managerial or marketing smarts to hang around. Another example is Netflix. The company is a wild success because it doesn’t fight current technological restraints. You could set up a movie rental company that delivers films via huge downloads but it’s currently a much better idea to let people order over the Internet and let the US postal service deliver the goods.

Rule # 3 - The more you try, the luckier you get.
As Linus Pauling said: “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” Innovation is partly a numbers game. Fail often and fail fast and learn from your mistakes. Apple didn’t give up after the Lisa or the Newton. Moreover, don’t punish people when they make mistakes. Punish them when they don’t make enough mistakes or when they repeatedly make the same mistake. Some companies don’t get this. They are on an eternal quest for the perfect solution and spend so long researching and developing single ideas that by the time they’re launched it’s already too late. This conflicts, to some extent, with rule #2, but not much. Timing is everything and generally it’s better to be approximately right and slightly early than perfectly right and very late. Furthermore, the old model of create, edit, publish is rapidly being pushed aside in favour of a new and faster, model which is create, publish, edit (i.e. let the customer co-create the final product). This particularly true where speed to market is important and links into ideas like ‘thin slicing.’

Rule # 4 – Don’t confuse ideas with innovation.
Organizations think they can be great at ideas and innovation, when generally speaking they’re either good at one or the other. Small organizations and start-ups tend to be good with ideas, but can be weak on implementation and scale. With big organizations it’s often the other way around. The trick is to know what you’re good at and then go outside for help with what’s missing. A related thought is
that when it comes to long-term success it’s very often the companies that avoid radical innovation that win in the longer term. Innovators who come up with disruptive ideas often go bankrupt or fail to grow beyond a niche position in the market. Thus being a fast follower (using innovation transfer or even M&A) is a perfectly good (if less glamorous) innovation strategy.

Rule # 5 - If you love something, give it away.
Got a good idea? Then give it away. In my experience too many people (especially lone inventors) hide their idea from the world in the belief that someone will steal it. Someone might. But at least if you talk to people it gives you the opportunity to polish the idea by rubbing it between your brain and theirs (see rule #1).

Rule # 6 – Innovation is about breaking rules, so ignore any or all of the above.

Read the article here.

-100% electric
-0-60 mph in under 4 seconds
-135 mpg equivalent
-245 miles per charge
-costs less than $.02/mile to drive

This is not a hybrid. From the Tesla website:

“Note the term hybrid as applied to cars currently on the road is a misnomer. They are really just gasoline powered cars with a little battery assistance and, unless you are one of the handful who have an aftermarket hack, the little battery has to be charged from the gasoline engine. Therefore, they can be considered simply as slightly more efficient gasoline powered cars. If the EPA certified mileage is 55 mpg, then it is indistinguishable from a non-hybrid that achieves 55 mpg. As a friend of mine says, a world 100% full of Prius drivers is still 100% addicted to oil.“

The natural argument to fully electric cars is that carbon emissions are simply transferred from the tailpipe to the powerplant. But, Elon Musk, chairman of the company, says this:

“I should mention that Tesla Motors will be co-marketing sustainable energy products from other companies along with the car. For example, among other choices, we will be offering a modestly sized and priced solar panel from SolarCity, a photovoltaics company (where I am also the principal financier). This system can be installed on your roof in an out of the way location, because of its small size, or set up as a carport and will generate about 50 miles per day of electricity.

If you travel less than 350 miles per week, you will therefore be “energy positive” with respect to your personal transportation. This is a step beyond conserving or even nullifying your use of energy for transport – you will actually be putting more energy back into the system than you consume in transportation!

The master plan is:

1. Build sports car
2. Use that money to build an affordable car
3. Use that money to build an even more affordable car
4. While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options“

http://www.teslamotors.com

A beauty of a marketing campaign, and an even better message. It’s true: Big business has got to have a heart these days. In an era where purchasing a product is more about what a customer stands for than the utility they will receive from it, businesses, small and large, have to be aware of the message their products/organization puts out there. The triple bottom line has never been more important.

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And another:

Read more at www.thekevblog.com