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What will the dominant design of next-generation cars be? Renault probably is the most daring automaker, with its decision to bypass hybrids and go straight to full-electric. The business model is changing, and they are partnering with Project Better Place so that people will use batteries on a pay-per-use base.

Daimler and Renault signed a strategic alliance sharing competencies and technologies. The alliance is about creating platform projects for components of the new cars. Each company has its components to realize. With this alliance Daimler is changing its traditional business model: the company decided to swicht to the production of small car, where Renault has its core busines competencies. This partnership can also bring the German company in contact with the field of the new electric cars, in which Reanult is well advanced. 

The article reports on Project Better place's vision of the "car of the future", i.e. full electric cars being sold to end users with a "battery swapping" scheme. Will this be the "dominant design" of the cars we will drive 10-15 years from now?

A must-read website showing the breadth of the challenges that are connected to the radical innovations attached to the "future of mobility". At the center is the "megacity" urban vehicle, that exhibits an interesting approach to modularity.

Interesting take the the news that space tourism is about to take off. The author's position is that the real business model by private companies will not (only) be to take wealthy people in orbit. Rather, it will be to take up the routinary and menial task of shuttling men and equipment to and from orbiting space stations in a more efficient way than governmental space agencies, with efficiency coming from competition. This will free up government agencies to pursue projects that are clearly beyond what private firms can do, i.e. going to the moon and Mars.

India is the only place in the world where you can find huge amounts of engineering graduate recruits. Companies from all over the world are flocking there not only for offshoring menial engineering work, but also for innovation and R&D centers working on important projects "end-to-end". This is not only because labor is available and relatively cheap, but also because this is the way to come up with the products needed by developing countries... which are the only ones where sales growth is likely to occur over the next years

Design thinking is a crucial business asset-one that can, indeed, move a company forward and improve the bottom line. To optimize this impact, Ryan Jacoby and Diego Rodriguez advise thoughtfully structuring the innovation process. They stress working on projects that improve people's lives, and they present a "ways to grow" model that helps managers direct and assess innovation efforts.

A report on BMW's megacity project, investigating the "car of the future", trying to revisit product architecture as well as underlying technology... which leads to a "real" concept of radical innovation

A few months ago, The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA), started running a project on how to increase growth through innovation. Harvard Business School will send their MBA students to Sweden to learn and study the "Swedish miracle". How did they do it and what can we learn from the Swedish model about the importance of innovation for creating increased growth and competitiveness.

The digital generation loves social networking, but still there is no way to ensure that social networks are easy to use together. Especially because there are too many. Microsoft is playing the card "Kin", formerly known as Project Pink. Kin's been developed in collaboration with some important partners like Vodafone, Sharp, in order to be more competitive and to create a new smartphone platform., and also with Verizon, to guarantee a huge distribution for the product, in contrast with Google's strategy. The aim of the first pair of mobile Kin (in the future Microsoft could add other devices to this first generation platform) is not to simplify but to amplify the social users life and has got the difficult task of attracting the young, future consumers, within the Microsoft ecosystem, rather than in those created by Google and Apple.

The so-called BlackPad RIM tablet is being pushed out to early next year. The move marks the third time in two weeks that a would-be tablet maker has shelved product preparations aimed at challenging the Apple iPad. Last week, Hewlett-Packard pulled the plug on its Slate tablet and Microsoft reportedly withdrew plans for the Courier device.

Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic on Monday moved towards investigating Google following the internet group's disclosure that it had recorded communications sent over unsecured wireless networks in people's homes. Peter Schaar, the German commissioner for data protection, called for a "detailed probe" by independent authorities into the practice by Google. He said the group's explanation of the collection of data as an accident was "highly unusual". "One of the largest companies in the world, the market leader on the internet, simply disobeyed normal rules in the development and usage of software," he said. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission was expected to launch an inquiry as well, according to people who spoke to agency officials. Privacy advocates said an inquiry could look at whether the collection of data breached rules on unauthorised access to computers and private communications. "This may be one of the most massive surveillance incidents by a private corporation that has ever occurred", said Marc Rotenberg, leader of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Centre in Washington. "It is unprecedented vacuuming of WiFi data by a private company. Can you imagine what would happen if a German corporation was sending cars through Washington sucking up all this information?" Google reiterated its statements from late Friday in Europe, when it reversed earlier denials that it had collected personal activity. It said it had been using a fleet of camera-equipped Street View vehicles, which take pictures for the group's imaging services, and had been at the same time using the cars to assemble a database of electronic WiFi addresses intended to improve the functioning of its maps and other location services. Google said the project leaders ignored that the vehicles were also taking in snippets of activity on the WiFi networks. "We didn't want to collect this data in the first place and we would like to dest

Hi teacher. I would like to share this article about Nanotechnology, about a device developed by The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) named Nano Hummingbird. Is the related to the past lesson when we discussed about the differences of US and UE in terms of Innovation, and by chance i come across with a "military example".