Group items tagged

provide greater user value

For numerous reasons the services provided by the commercial companies do not adequately meet the creative, social, political, and financial needs of the 99%

allows self-selected individuals to coalesce into powerful workgroups, forums, and movements.

With the PeerPoint approach, each user will own her own inexpensive internet appliance and all the data and content she creates

If a FreedomBox were used as a starting platform, the PeerPoint application package would be added on top of the FreedomBox security stack.

The common requirements for each PeerPoint app are: world class, best-of-breed open source p2p architecture consistent, granular, user-customizable security management and identity protection integrated with other apps in the suite via a common distributed database and/or “data bus” architecture. consistent, user-customizable large, medium, and small-screen (mobile device) user interfaces ability to interface with its corresponding major-market-share service (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) GPS enabled

First tier applications: distributed database social networking  (comparison of distributed social network applications) trust/reputation metrics crowdsourcing: content collaboration & management  (wiki, Google Docs, or better) project management/workflow data visualization (data sets, projects, networks, etc.) user-customizable complementary currency and barter exchange (Community Forge or better) crowd funding (http://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-open-source-crowdfunding-platform) voting (LiquidFeedback or better) universal search across all PeerPoint data/content and world wide web content

the bell curve described the wealth and income distribution of American society

As the technology boom of the 1990s increased productivity, many assumed that the rising water level of the economy was raising all those middle class boats. But a different phenomenon has also occurred. The wealthy have gained substantially over the past two decades while the middle class has remained stagnant in real income, and the poor are simply poorer.

America is turning into a power-curve society: one where there are a relative few at the top and a gradually declining curve with a long tail of relatively poorer people.

For the first time since the end of World War II, the middle class is apparently doing worse, not better, than previous generations.

an alarming trend

What is the role of technology in these developments?

a sweeping look at the relationship between innovation and productivity

New Economy of Personal Information

Power-Curve Society

the future of jobs

the report covers the social, policy and leadership implications of the “Power-Curve Society,”

World Wide Web

as businesses struggle to come to terms with this revolution, a new set of structural innovations is washing over businesses, organizations and government, forcing near-constant adaptation and change. It is no exaggeration to say that the explosion of innovative technologies and their dense interconnections is inventing a new kind of economy.

the new technologies are clearly driving economic growth and higher productivity, the distribution of these benefits is skewed in worrisome ways.

the networked economy seems to be producing a “power-curve” distribution, sometimes known as a “winner-take-all” economy

Economic and social insecurity is widespread.

major component of this new economy, Big Data, and the coming personal data revolution fomenting beneath it that seeks to put individuals, and not companies or governments, at the forefront. Companies in the power-curve economy rely heavily on big databases of personal information to improve their marketing, product design, and corporate strategies. The unanswered question is whether the multiplying reservoirs of personal data will be used to benefit individuals as consumers and citizens, or whether large Internet companies will control and monetize Big Data for their private gain.

Why are winner-take-all dynamics so powerful?

appear to be eroding the economic security of the middle class

A special concern is whether information and communications technologies are actually eliminating more jobs than they are creating—and in what countries and occupations.

How is the power-curve economy opening up opportunities or shutting them down?

Is it polarizing income and wealth distributions? How is it changing the nature of work and traditional organizations and altering family and personal life?

many observers fear a wave of social and political disruption if a society’s basic commitments to fairness, individual opportunity and democratic values cannot be honored

what role government should play in balancing these sometimes-conflicting priorities. How might educational policies, research and development, and immigration policies need to be altered?

The Innovation Economy

Conventional economics says that progress comes from new infusions of capital, whether financial, physical or human. But those are not necessarily the things that drive innovation

What drives innovation are new tools and then the use of those new tools in new ways.”

at least 50 percent of the acceleration of productivity over these years has been due to ICT

economists have developed a number of proxy metrics for innovation, such as research and development expenditures.

Atkinson believes that economists both underestimate and overestimate the scale and scope of innovation.

Calculating the magnitude of innovation is also difficult because many innovations now require less capital than they did previously.

Others scholars

see innovation as going in cycles, not steady trajectories.

A conventional approach is to see innovation as a linear, exponential phenomenon

leads to gross errors

Atkinson

believes that technological innovation follows the path of an “S-curve,” with a gradual increase accelerating to a rapid, steep increase, before it levels out at a higher level. One implication of this pattern, he said, is that “you maximize the ability to improve technology as it becomes more diffused.” This helps explain why it can take several decades to unlock the full productive potential of an innovation.

innovation keeps getting harder. It was pretty easy to invent stuff in your garage back in 1895. But the technical and scientific challenges today are huge.”

costs of innovation have plummeted, making it far easier and cheaper for more people to launch their own startup businesses and pursue their unconventional ideas

innovation costs are plummeting

Atkinson conceded such cost-efficiencies, but wonders if “the real question is that problems are getting more complicated more quickly than the solutions that might enable them.

we may need to parse the different stages of innovation: “The cost of innovation generally hasn’t dropped,” he argued. “What has become less expensive is the replication and diffusion of innovation.”

what is meant by “innovation,”

“invention plus implementation.”

A lot of barriers to innovation can be found in the lack of financing, organizational support systems, regulation and public policies.

90 percent of innovation costs involve organizational capital,”

there is a serious mismatch between the pace of innovation unleashed by Moore’s Law and our institutional and social capacity to adapt.

This raises the question of whether old institutions can adapt—or whether innovation will therefore arise through other channels entirely. “Existing institutions are often run by followers of conventional wisdom,”

The best way to identify new sources of innovation, as Arizona State University President Michael Crow has advised, is to “go to the edge and ignore the center.”

Paradoxically, one of the most potent barriers to innovation is the accelerating pace of innovation itself.

Institutions and social practice cannot keep up with the constant waves of new technologies

“We are moving into an era of constant instability,”

“and the half-life of a skill today is about five years.”

Part of the problem, he continued, is that our economy is based on “push-based models” in which we try to build systems for scalable efficiencies, which in turn demands predictability.

The real challenge is how to achieve radical institutional innovations that prepare us to live in periods of constant two- or three-year cycles of change. We have to be able to pick up new ideas all the time.”

pace of innovation is a major story in our economy today.

The App Economy consists of a core company that creates and maintains a platform (such as Blackberry, Facebook or the iPhone), which in turn spawns an ecosystem of big and small companies that produce apps and/or mobile devices for that platform

tied this success back to the open, innovative infrastructure and competition in the U.S. for mobile devices

standard

The App Economy illustrates the rapid, fluid speed of innovation in a networked environment

crowdsourcing model

winning submissions are

globally distributed in an absolute sense

problem-solving is a global, Long Tail phenomenon

As a technical matter, then, many of the legacy barriers to innovation are falling.

small businesses are becoming more comfortable using such systems to improve their marketing and lower their costs; and, vast new pools of personal data are becoming extremely useful in sharpening business strategies and marketing.

Another great boost to innovation in some business sectors is the ability to forge ahead without advance permission or regulation,

“In bio-fabs, for example, it’s not the cost of innovation that is high, it’s the cost of regulation,”

This notion of “permissionless innovation” is crucial,

“In Europe and China, the law holds that unless something is explicitly permitted, it is prohibited. But in the U.S., where common law rather than Continental law prevails, it’s the opposite

Canadians have reached top tier global performance in reading, mathematics, problem solving and science, and Canada has rising numbers of graduates with doctoral degrees in science and engineering.

This valuable resource of highly qualified and skilled individuals needs to be better leveraged.

The ease and ability of the academic community to collaborate, including through research networks, is also well-recognized.

to develop technologies, products and services that add value and create high-paying jobs.

Canada has an impressive record when it comes to research and the quality of its knowledge base.

Still, the innovative performance of Canada's firms and the productivity growth continue to lag behind competing nations.

The government is also committed to moving forward with a new approach to promoting business innovation—one that emphasizes active business-led initiatives and focuses resources on better fostering the growth of innovative firms.

Achieving this requires the concerted effort of all players in the innovation system—to ensure each does what one does best and to leverage one another's strengths.

the government has invested more to support science, technology and innovative companies than ever before

Canada must become more innovative

providing a new framework to guide federal ST&I investments and priorities. That is why the Government of Canada stated its intention to release an updated ST&I Strategy in the October 2013 Speech from the Throne.

seeking the views of stakeholders from all sectors of the ST&I system—including universities, colleges and polytechnics, the business community, and Canadians

written submissions from all Canadians on the policy issues and questions presented in this paper.

The government remains focused on creating jobs, growth and long-term prosperity for Canadians

encouraging partnerships with industry, attracting highly skilled researchers, continuing investments in discovery-driven research, strengthening Canada's knowledge base, supporting research infrastructure and providing incentives to private sector innovation.

has transformed the National Research Council, doubled its investment

supported research collaborations through the federal granting councils

created the new Venture Capital Action Plan

helping to promote greater commercialization of research and development

Our country continues to lead the G7 in spending on R&D

Canada has a world-class post-secondary education system that embraces and successfully leverages collaboration with the private sector, particularly through research networks

destination for some of the world's brightest minds

global race

businesses that embrace innovation-based strategies

post-secondary and research institutions that attract and nurture highly qualified and skilled talent

researchers who push the frontiers of knowledge

governments that provide the support

low taxes, strong support for new businesses, a soundly regulated banking system, and ready availability of financial services

reducing red tape

expanding training partnerships and improving access to venture capital.

Collaboration is key to mobilizing innovation

invest in partnerships between businesses and colleges and universities

Economic Action Plans (EAP) 2012 and 2013

provide incentive for innovative activity in firms, improved access to venture capital, augmented and more coordinated direct support to firms, and deeper partnerships and connections between the public and private sectors.

Yet by 2007 the product was such a failure that Michelin had to abandon it.

The company hadn’t confronted the entire ecosystem the tire would rely on

conversion costs

expensive new equipment

legal challenges

Mastery of the ecosystem is the great strength that made Apple the supreme success story of our time,

The iPod

a beginning ecosystem that Jobs enlarged by introducing the iTunes Music Store.

the ecosystem further by opening up the Mac-only device to PC users.

In a world where mobile phone makers sold their devices to operators to sell to consumers, Jobs had such a powerful ecosystem that he could get operators to compete to partner with him: “And here was Apple, offering not just exclusive access to the most talked-about phone in history, but also exclusive access to Apple consumers—the most desirable customer segment imaginable

How do you take the measure of the ecosystem that your innovation will need to be part of and rely on? How do you not miss the blind spots that can lurk almost anywhere?

three main steps to take.

There are terrible pitfalls in the usual progression from prototype to pilot to rollout. It relies perilously on getting everything right from the very start. Often a far wiser and safer approach can be what Adner calls a “minimum viable footprint (MVF) rollout followed by a staged expansion.” In other words, start with a complete ecosystem, but a limited one.