Twitter Updates for 2009-12-24
December 24th, 2009
Archive
Archive for December, 2009
When charities benefit from innovation economies
December 23rd, 2009
When Rainier client CopperGate was acquired by Sigma Designs a couple months ago, plenty of people made some nice sums of money. What I didn’t know at the time was that Tmura, the Israeli Public Service Venture Fund would convert options granted by CopperGate six years ago into $100,000!
Founded in 2002 to increase the involvement of the high-tech community in non-profit activity in Israel, Tmura receives donations of equity from (mainly private) Israeli and Israel-related high-tech companies and uses the proceeds from successful “exits” such as a public offering or acquisition to fund education- and youth-related initiatives in Israel. “Tmura” is the Hebrew word for “change” or “metamorphosis” and also means “value for money”; it is also a play on the word “truma”, which means “donation”.
CopperGate was Tmura’s 21st such exit event – exits to date have generated more than $2,600,000 for charity, which has benefited more than 20 different non-profit organizations in Israel.
Tmura grantees are mainly youth oriented. For example, Kadima youth centers have received Tmura money to help operate a network of youth clubs in poor neighborhoods. In another example, Tmura has also helped an Israeli humanitarian aid organization called Latet (Hebrew for “to give”). Latet aims to mobilize Israeli society to greater involvement in the humanitarian field, through heightened social awareness and the fostering of values such as mutual responsibility and giving.
I love the basic concept behind Tmura – everyone wins in an exit event. Especially the kids.
Twitter Updates for 2009-12-23
December 23rd, 2009
- "No one knows what to do with new technology" @jason_pontin @techreview http://bit.ly/7MXG3c #
No one knows what to do with new technology
December 22nd, 2009
Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief and publisher of (MIT’s) Technology Review, has written an important essay titled “On the Evolution of Technology.”
The second sentence in the essay articulates the very reason I founded Rainier back in 1993: “When a technology first appears in the world, it is not understood: no one knows what to do with it.”
Pontin discusses Brian Arthur‘s book The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, and Arthur’s explanation of why truly new technologies are so slow to be adopted. New technology domains, he says, betray “missing pieces” that technologists must develop before useful applications can be successfully commercialized. One of these missing pieces, I believe, is the ability to clearly communicate new technologies to the market.
Pontin says the real economic value of new technologies is almost always imperfectly understood because the technologies’ markets do not yet exist. It’s been interesting for me to note over the years how true this is for so many of the technologies we are involved with bringing to market – especially those which are truly disruptive, or don’t quite fit into existing market categories.
Brian Arthur’s question, “What [does the new technology]allow people to do that could not be done before?” is one we ask our clients all the time.
The answer(s) are so crucial to successfully marketing a product, that we won’t even agree to launch a new technology until we’re satisfied the disruption, and all its necessary ecosystem components of success (what Arthur calls the “missing pieces” technologists must develop before useful applications can be successfully commercialized), has been thoroughly and defensibly defined.
Twitter Updates for 2009-12-22
December 22nd, 2009
- Check out Prague from the TV Tower – 18 Gigapixel Panoramic Photo by @360cities http://bit.ly/8QgZTb #
- Reading "The Year in Materials" @techreview http://bit.ly/7mSN4t #
Twitter Updates for 2009-12-18
December 18th, 2009
- Reading "Bridge inspection by unmanned, hovering robots" as reported in @masshightech about @helengreiner http://bit.ly/6Y4SJZ #
Bridge inspection by unmanned, hovering robots
December 17th, 2009
Rodney Brown writes in Mass High Tech that iRobot founder Helen Greiner‘s new company CyPhy works has landed a $2.4 million research award from NIST to figure out how to improve inspection and monitoring of civil infrastructure — highways, bridges and dams — using unmanned aerial vehicles.
As Greiner puts it, “There are 600,000 bridge in the United States, and there is a mandate for inspection of each of them every two years.” The mandate, by the way, comes from the National Bridge Inspection Standards (NBIS) from the U.S. Dept of Transportation.
Teamed up with the Georgia Institute of Technology Research Corp., CyPhy will work on a remote inspection system based on small, unmanned, hovering robots fitted with video cameras and other sensors. The planned hovering UAV would slowly move around bridges and similar structures to gather close-up, HD images.
Such systems have long been pursued as the holy grail of bridge inspection, due to cost, safety and accuracy. A Bridge Inspection Robotic Development Interface (BIRDI) constortium was launched in Korea, for example, with the primary goal to develop advanced robot systems for automated bridge inspection and monitoring while reducing human risks and improving efficiency and data reliability.