iMedia

Paul Saffo: U.S. entering "creator economy"

In the latest BusinessWeek innovation podcast, futurist Paul Saffo describes the emerging creator economy and traces its origins to the crushing success of the consumer economy. It's brief, so have a listen.

"Permission-based" innovation

Seth Godin famously came up with the phrase "permission-based marketing" to capture how the business dialog had become a two-way street. Businesses and organizations could no longer simply flood individuals with information and expect a significant return in an attention-challenged word.

Similarly, having successfully captured a significant share of the browser market from Microsoft, the open source organization Mozilla has an idea about how to make innovation a participatory process. In a "best of" McKinsey quarterly interview (free registration required) Mozilla Foundation chairman and former CEO Mitchell Baker had this to say about innovation:

The Quarterly: How do you think about your role in enabling innovation in the communities?

Mitchell Baker: Sometimes, just giving people permission does wonders. Consider our quality control process. We have a public process for finding, tracking, and correcting bugs in the code we’re developing, and thousands of people are involved. When several people within the community began to take leadership in that effort, someone who worked with me said, 'All we need to do is tell these people it’s OK.' So that’s what we did. We said to the leader, 'You’re awesome; keep doing what you’re doing.' And after that, he became our release driver. There are more people like that than you would expect.

Baker also describes how up to 40 percent of the code that makes its way into the browser comes from volunteer community.

Wayne

Conference: Opportunities in consumer healthcare integration

At the Dealmaking in Healthcare Forum in New York City, Jeffrey Margolis, Chairman and CEO of Trizetto Group, stated that market opportunities in the next 10 years will flourish for those technology-based companies that can integrate constituent care - providing transparency, aligning behaviors with incentives and enabling choices.  

Reported by Matt McGarvey, VP, KSTC

High tech, high growth

One of the things heard last week at the Visioning Kentucky's Future conference is the connection between high tech and high growth. It certainly makes this stat relevant. Our southern neighbor North Carolina has just recorded the highest fiver year rate of growth in biotech jobs in the nation.

Google's Eric Schmidt on Innovative Public Policy: Pay for Performance

Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently appeared at the New America Foundation, and according to the foundation, talked about "technology, economic growth and open government." Intangible Economy points out that one of his proposals would incent Detroit's automakers.

Build more fuel efficient cars, get cash. I immediately thought of the auto bailout hearing that just ended and wondered if that proposal was legislatively doable. Schmidt also talked about cash incentives "to get people to study math and science," according to a Twittercast of the event. I can think of one very innovative program in Kentucky that proposes to do just that. 

Computerworld: National technology-related innovation in decline

Is the U.S. in "a decade long decline" in technology-related competitiveness?" Computerworld:

By most measures, the U.S. has been in a decade-long decline in global technological competitiveness. The reasons are many and complex, but central among them is the country's retreat from long-term basic research in science and technology, coupled with a surge in R&D in countries such as China.

R&D has two components, of course, and published figures showing a rise in "research and development" hide a troubling trend. Companies still spend billions annually on development, typically aimed at the next product cycle or two. But the kind of pure research that led to the invention of the transistor and the Internet is declining as companies bow to the pressure to improve quarterly and annual financial results.

Running in Place

The Lane Report's recent article, Pep Rally for Boldness, goes to the heart of why creativity and innovation matter to Kentucky. The commonwealth simply can't afford to accept the status quo and hope to keep pace.

This figure is staggering:

At the current incremental rate of growth, the state will catch up to the national average household income in 157 years. Small improvements will only allow us to keep running in place. 

Competition: Rx for a broken health care system?

As recently mentioned, the X-Prize Foundation is in the midst of developing a prize - that is, the structure, guidelines and judging criteria that such a prize would have - to address the serious shortcomings of the health care system in the United States. We can all agree that health care technology, research and acute care is the best in the world. Similarly, most would agree that gross inefficiencies, an absence of cost transparency, poor incentives and communication and the lack of a minimal level of health care security for families and individuals characterize the system as well.

For its part, Wellpoint, which is sponsoring the prize, has committed to trying out the selected finalists' entries in state health insurance marketplace.

The X-Prize is soliciting input from a variety of people and videos from interested (and well known) individuals are now available online. But a number of others have left comments on the X-Prize Health Care blog as well. Check out all the input.

New national science policy?

What do the presidential election results mean for national science and technology policy? NewScientist has more.

X-Prize for health care reform?

The X Prize Foundation, the outfit currently offering a prize for revolutionary breakthroughs in auto fuel economy and commercial space exploration, is considering offering a prize for health care reform as well.