Citizens agenda on Science and Innovation

EU wants to prioritize focus areas for Science and Innovation and how do they do it -they invite citizens to vote !!!
May be we can make a beginning by listening to invited experts to government meetings.
Source: http://www.reto2030.eu/

Raising early stage financing for a Silicon Valley startup

Secret History of Silicon Valley

Vijay Govindarajan: How GE is Disrupting Itself

IP Radio

IP radio, web casting service exclusively devoted to Intellectual Property is initiative of Brain league. There is news, debates, interviews etc and I liked listening to them.
URL:http://sinapse.intellectureindia.com/radio/

External Regenearaive Braking

New Energy Technologies, USA came with this regenerative system, where kinetic energy of vehicles wasted when slowing down, at stops etc is reused . Read at:
http://www.newenergytechnologiesinc.com/motion_power

This sounds familiar- several innovators came with this idea in different versions, few supported under TePP/NIF. All face challenge of engineering, customer identification/acceptance and scale-up. Will this be one of the ideas that `failed' in India but engineered to success in US?

Celebrating women innovators

No nation can progress if it ignores contributions and potential of half of their population. Journalist Susan Casey wondered why women innovators were not talked about in US and wrote a book on `Women Invent' which was an eye opener. (http://www.susancaseybooks.com/)

Now Famina has taken the initiative to write a series of articles on 'Women and Innovation' wherein they feature young women who have come up with interesting innovations. It includes a profile of the inventor/innovator and a detailed description of the product and its working.

Here is the opportunity to nominate your favorite women innovator. Send details to:

Anindita Ghosh, Features Editor,Femina,9818186174,
Anindita Ghosh <aninditaghosh75@gmail.com>

The reversal of the Chicago River

While cruising on Chicago river, the guide makes an interesting reference to a great innovation in public works- that is reversal of river flow. There was a time Chicago river was flowing into the great Michigan lake and carrying with it all city's sewage. At one time 12% of Chicago citizens were affected with water borne diseases and how did they solve it? They did do so by constructing canals to make the Chicago River flow backwards, away from the lake. The system of three canals was built from 1892 to 1922, The Sanitary and Ship Canal reversed the flow in the Chicago River toward the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, diverting sewage away from the Lake Michigan water supply.
source: Top ten public works

Fazlur Rahman Khan

Visited Sears tower ( now called Willis tower), the world's tallest building for many years. There was a citation about one great structural engineer `Fazlur Rahman Khan. Name sounds familiar, I dig and learn he was from Bangladesh. Read more about the great innovator engineer called Einstein of Structural Engineering.
source: wikipedia

Acara Challenge 2010

Attended B plan competition at IIT, Chicago. And this was the first time I sat to judge US students. How do I rate them? The plans are not qualitatively different. But considering they are design under graduate students preparing plans for first time and developing solutions for a problem they are remotely connected, it was admirable work by the teams. What is the outcome of such elaborate exercise? The innovations , technical and service models , may not be pursued as like Indian students these US students would look for a career. The learning, on affordable innovations and cross country collaborations would be real.

LED technology

Gridlogics Technology has made public, their report on IP clustering of LED Technologies. LED technology represents a classic case of disruptive innovation. Now that market demand is clear, many Indian firms and start-ups want to enter this field. What is right strategy : to develop IP or to buy IP?
Source: http://www.patentinsightpro.com/

CK Prahalad's India 75 vision

World has come to know of Indian Innovations due to Prof CK Prahalad's pioneering work on Innovations for BOP Market. See his papers under `6 big opportunities for India'. We all miss him.

Exploring Silicon Valley wizards: Kumar Malavalli

Kumar Malavalli is widely considered to be the visionary behind Fiber Channel storage fabrics, a technology that enabled the development of production-class SANs.Kumar holds several patents in fibre channel including zoning for SANs.He served as chair of the ANSI T11 Technical Committee, which established universal standards for Fibre Channel. He has also served on the Boards of Directors of the Storage Networking Industry Association and the Fibre Channel Industry Association.

In 2003, Malavalli was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame for his contributions to technology. He also received the Gene Milligan Award for Effective Committee Management from the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) for chairing an INCITS committee that developed 17 standards in the area of Storage Area Networks. He had made a gift of $1 million to the University of California, Santa Cruz, to establish the Kumar Malavalli Endowed Chair in Storage Systems Research at UCSC's Baskin School of Engineering. This major gift provides valuable support for the engineering school's Storage Systems Research Center.

Malavalli earned degrees in electrical engineering and physics at the National Institute of Engineering in Mysore, India. Malavalli currently invests in and mentors numerous storage networking startups in both Silicon Valley and in India. He also contributes substantially towards his own global vision, which encompasses telemedicine and education.

VC Seth Neiman is reported to have discovered Kumar, the engineer and with his support lunched Brocade Communication. The rest, as they say is History.

simplified negative pressure wound therapy

Read this interesting innovation from MIT. It is facilitated by Centre for integration of medicine & innovative technology set with the mission improve patient care by facilitating collaboration among scientists, engineers and clinicians to catalyze the discovery, development and implementation of innovative technologies, emphasizing minimally invasive approaches.

Sustainable Development Technology Canada

SD Tech Fund provides grants to commercial firms in Canada at pre-commercial stage. Another fund `Next Gen Biofuels fund' is targeted to bridge the Capital Expenditure gap. Rational for goverenment intervention is given at http://www.sdtc.ca/en/about/innovation_chain.htm
We planned similar initiatives in India- where is the difference?
1. First difference is in scale- Canadian Budget is $500 million in each case, DSIR's PATSER/ TDDP spends about Rs 5 crore annually.
2. The conviction of public good in providing public funds for private R&D was not shared widely with the result when the decision has to be taken on failed R&D projects, the departments DIT, TIFAC , CSIR, DSIR chose to close the programs or slow down. The government needs amendment to General Finance Rules to account for failed R&D projects.
3. DSIR started `Waste to wealth program' to bridge the CAPEX gap but had to be abandoned due to limited acceptance of the modality.
We declared current decade as Innovation Decade- is it not time to start a large fund to support Indian firms at pre-commercial stage?

RPX Defensive Patent Aggregation service

Patent litigation in the United States is a significant business cost. While 85% of patent litigation is between competing operating companies, the remaining 15% is between operating companies and NPEs – companies that have no products or services and exist purely to license and assert patents. It is estimated that investments in NPEs has grown to between $6 billion and $8 billion between 2000 and 2008, providing a large pool.

Concerned about threat from NPEs like Intellectual Ventures? Counter to NPEs is RPX’s Defensive Patent Aggregation.RPX provides a service that identifies and purchases patents that could be used offensively against the operating firm. They purchase these key patents into their Defensive Patent Aggregation, which is then licensed in its entirety to their members for an annual subscription fee.

Studylite rechargeable desk lamp

India’s eco-friendly rechargeable study lamp, BPL Studylite has won the coveted 2010 international red dot award for product design . It was chosen from 4,252 entries across a field of around 1,635 companies from 57 countries. The awards will be presented in Essen, Germany on July 5, 2010.

Design support provided by Abhijit Bansod of Studio ABD and product co-created with advise from Sankara Nethralaya doctors and students. It was designed to be child-safe, operating at 12 volts, with no heat radiation, flicker free and no harmful ultra-violet and infra-red emission. It is priced at Rs 1690/-

Women Innovator Emily Cummins

Innovator Dr A Jagadeesh sent me profile of award winning innovator Emily Cummins and her innovation- solar pwered fridge. The fridge is made using two cylinders, one inside the other. The inner cylinder is made of metal while the outer cylinder can be made from any solid material with holes drilled in the side, enabling communities to recycle and use local, sustainable resources. The space between the cylinders is packed with sand, wool or soil, and then water is added. As the sun warms the mixture the water evaporates cooling the inner cylinder. Fresh water is added to the mixture as needed. Read more from gizmag

As Dr Jagadeesh writes the technique is known and there have been several traditional and newer designs ( see Mitticcol above left) yet this innovation is remarkable for its elegance. I agree with him as I had seen several similar concepts in competitions like Techfest.

What was more interesting to me was her childhood experience. "When I was four, my Grandad gave me a hammer and began to teach me how to make toys from scraps of materials found in his garden shed. I loved the fact that we could make something out of seemingly random bits, and my interest in sustainable design was born".

How do we unleash creativity of our children?

The Next50 Global Innovation Challenge

The Next50 Global Innovation Challenge is an IIT Kanpur Golden Jubilee initiative to discover 50 early stage innovators in Agriculture, Cleantech, Financial Inclusion, Education and Technology who can change the way we work and live. 25th May is the last date for submission. Details: One Billion Minds

Malaysian PM Blogs on Innovation

Ever heard of a Prime Minister blogging and that too on innovation and creativity? See blog post of Malaysian PM Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak. Multimdia Super Corridor started in 1996 , now in the final phase (upto 2020) is one illustration of their determination to walk the talk. In the first 2 phases more than 6500 SMEs have been impacted ( e-enabled) and at the end of 9th plan over 10,000 SMEs are set to benefit from this initiative. MSC Malaysia’s Creative Multimedia Cluster (CMC)’s 190 companies recorded US$1.22 billion in revenues and US$56.90 million in exports last year. Collectively, they provided 7,028 jobs, spent US$38.23 million on R&D, and filed or protected 390 IPs [intellectual properties] filed in the same period. Other clusters like SSO [shared services outsourcing] and InfoTech contributed US$6.36 billion in revenues and US$2.11 billion in exports last year.