The Faculty Blog @ IIT Institute of Design

Godrej's Magazine Change publishes Anijo Mathew's article "Are you ready for the information economy?"

Godrej's internal magazine Change publishes my article - "Are you ready for the information economy?". Read it here: http://issuu.com/godrej/docs/jan_2012/11.

Steve Jobs explains how Apple 'got to its glory' in 1996 interview

via www.bgr.com

What caught my attention is Jobs' observation: "The problem was that Apple stood still. Even though it invested cumulatively billions in R&D, the output has not been there."

This is the problem with most big companies - the R&D is there. Money is being spent! BUT ON WHAT? Maybe its time companies took a leaf from Apple - they invest in R&D but they NEVER STAND STILL!

The Next iPhone May Be Kind Of Boring Suggests Forbes But...

 via www.forbes.com

Okay - so I am not usually interested in iPhone rumours and predictions. Everyone has one and they are usually baseless . But here is one from Forbes: The next iPhone may actually not be that exciting - only a dual core processor, curved glass, NFC functionality (yawn!). BUT here is the interesting tidbit: it could work on ANY wireless carrier OR NONE AT ALL. Imagine walking into an Apple store, walking out with an iPhone5 and using it on any wireless carrier (since the phone has both CDMA and GSM radios). Or maybe you prefer to use it only through VoIP services. Now that is different.

Of course Apple is going to suggest that this is all new and innovative BUT don't forget that Google tried to bypass the wireless carriers with their NexusOne. The problem was that their initial offering worked only on TMobile and people don't really care for spending $500 bucks on a phone if you can't hold it in your hand.

Everything said and done, if this does indeed happen, it will be really exciting and game changing. Maybe not so much for the techies (yes! yes! the quad core iPhone should come out sometime in 2013) but for anyone who is interested in mobile strategy and business models.

Who is Apple's new CEO?

via www.engadget.com

Tim Cook takes over Apple from Steve Jobs. A BIG SHOE to fill but I am sure Steve Jobs has left enough legacy in the place for at least a decade of innovation. What happens after that will determine what happens to Apple.

But who is Tim Cook? - hit the link to read more... 

US Government offers up $103 million for rural broadband expansion

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Announces Projects to Provide Broadband to Rural Communities

via www.engadget.com

This is big news! I have talked about Government initiatives for broadband for years! Adrian Forty talks about when electricity was still young - it was such initiatives from the Government that opened up electricity as the ubiquitous technology we now think of.

Rob Fabricant asks if Apple is Really Committed to the iPad?

via www.fastcompany.com

An interesting article by Rob Fabricant of Frog who questions Apple's moves with the current release of the iPad. His basic position is based on the claim that hardware is easy, its software that is difficult to make - and Apple has not made any significant advances with the iPad software.

I tend to disagree with this position - sure Apple sees this as one device among a host of new devices...but there are two really interesting aspects to the iPad:
1) its blazing fast - anyone who has played with the iPad will testify to how fast it is; sometimes even faster than my tablet PC - this is significant as Apple sees the iPad as a pure information appliance.
2) its form factor is conducive to interpersonal communication. Of course this means nothing until 3rd party apps publish useful apps that exploit this - but my guess is we will see a lot more interesting things come out of this.

Time will tell if Fabricant is right - but for now, its an interesting position. Read on and comment...

Factories of the future

Institute for the Future's Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writes for DigitAll Magazine,

The outsourcing movement, and more recent attention to product design, have eclipsed a quiet transformation of the factory from a vast machine into a more knowledge-intensive, even creative, space. In surprising ways, the factory is now following a path blazed by the design studio and modern office: it’s becoming more knowledge-intensive and flexible, even as it grows more tightly connected to markets and suppliers.

Some other meat-quotes:

• "Georgia Tech dean William Rouse argues that industrial engineers will design supply chains and entire enterprises, not just factories. "
• "Rapid prototyping is now morphing into rapid manufacturing.... Experts predict that machines that fabricate electronics and displays along mechanical structures will be available by decade’s end."
• "Rapid manufacturing will let companies produce new goods more rapidly, and ethnography will bring them fresher and more detailed knowledge of what consumers want; but translating that knowledge into products is still a challenge.... Problem-solving tools such as TRIZ offer ways to balance conflicting needs, by analyzing problems in ways that reveal hidden continuities between them."
• "[D]esigners and scientists across a range of fields are discovering that biomimicry—reverse-engineering natural materials and processes—has a lot to offer. Nature’s designs constantly balance competing demands."
• "The combined effects of cascades of information and pressure for constant innovation will turn the factory floor from a space populated only by machine-tenders, into a space in which production and innovation happen simultaneously. The factory will follow a transformation similar to the recording studio.... As Brian Eno put it, the studio became an instrument, a space for creation and experimentation as well as production."
• "But where will these workers come from? The unexpected but most likely answer is [massively multiplayer] online games.... a generation of kids is becoming intimately familiar with design and manufacturing-skills that can move straight from the living room to the factory floor."
• "Countries that compete on the basis of labor costs and nonexistent regulations may find that the game has changed. In a world in which factories print or grow their products and pollute far less, and need workers who are imaginative enough to redesign products on the fly, cheap wages and lax environmental regulations won’t be attractive. They won’t even be incentives. Countries with more expensive but better-educated workforces, with well-developed consumer and gaming cultures, will be much more attractive."

Sounds like someone's talking about Korea....

A unified field theory of creativity

Daniel Pink writes for the current issue of Wired about University of Chicago economist David Galenson's excellent work on the nature of creative genius:

[Genius] comes in two very different forms, embodied by two very different types of people. “Conceptual innovators,” as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. Then there’s a second character type, someone who’s just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group “experimental innovators.” Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. Galenson maintains that this duality – conceptualists are from Mars, experimentalists are from Venus – is the core of the creative process. And it applies to virtually every field of intellectual endeavor, from painters and poets to economists.

Daniel Pink writes for the current issue of Wired about University of Chicago economist David Galenson's excellent work on the nature of creative genius:

[Genius] comes in two very different forms, embodied by two very different types of people. “Conceptual innovators,” as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. Then there’s a second character type, someone who’s just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group “experimental innovators.” Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. Galenson maintains that this duality – conceptualists are from Mars, experimentalists are from Venus – is the core of the creative process. And it applies to virtually every field of intellectual endeavor, from painters and poets to economists.