Image via CrunchBase

IN December, Johnny Chung Lee, then a Ph.D. candidate, posted a five-minute video on YouTube that became an Internet sensation.

The video showed how, in a few easy steps, the Nintendo Wii remote controller — or “Wiimote” — could transform a normal video screen into a virtual reality display, with graphics that seemed to pop through the screen and into the living room. So far, the video has been seen more than six million times.

That video, together with others that Mr. Lee, now 28, posted on YouTube, have drawn people to the innovator as well as his innovations. Video game companies have contacted him and, in September, M.I.T.’s Technology Review named him as one of its top innovators under 35.

When he completed his degree this year at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute of Carnegie Mellon, he received “lots of offers from all the big places,” according to Paul Dietz, who convinced Mr. Lee to join him in the applied sciences group of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division. “When we told Bill Gates we were trying to recruit Johnny, he already knew about his work and was anxious to bring him to Microsoft,” adds Mr. Dietz, a research and development program manager.

Contrast this with what might have followed from other options Mr. Lee considered for communicating his ideas. He might have published a paper that only a few dozen specialists would have read. A talk at a conference would have brought a slightly larger audience. In either case, it would have taken months for his ideas to reach others.

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INNOVATION has become a popular subject on the business bookshelf over the past few years. But few of the new titles have offered much in the way of vision, insight or practical guidance. Two recent works—Charles Leadbeater’s “We-Think” (Profile Books) and “The New Age of Innovation”, by C.K Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan (McGraw-Hill)—are an exception to that rule. That each of them manages to say something potentially useful makes them worthy of special attention.

“We-Think” is the more radical of the pair. After a spell in journalism, Mr Leadbeater, a Briton, reinvented himself as a management thinker and as an adviser to governments via Demos, the New Labourite think-tank. There is a predictable whiff of third-wayism around his book’s central point: that internet-based, mass collaboration is mounting a serious challenge to the traditional, hierarchical company—and thus to the very organisation of capital in society.

“We-Think” innovation supposedly unites amateur and expert volunteers in such a way as to enable them produce goods and services that are not only free but often superior to those provided by corporations. Moreover, its acolytes seem happier than the wage-slaves who belong to the typical firm: “Well-being will come to depend less on what we own and consume and more on what we can share with others and create together,” says Mr Leadbeater, adding that this approach is “as effective a base for productive activity as private ownership”.

Such utopianism can provoke cynicism. Wikipedia is cited as a successful example of such new-fangled collaboration, and supposedly it outperforms traditional encyclopedias not only in its raw volume but also in accuracy. Really? And even if it is true that the “We-Think” approach is, as this book argues, spreading rapidly in business, politics, education, health care and more, unsuccessful collaborations abound, interspersed between the gems of the open-source software movement Mr Leadbeater so admires. No small number of Wikipedia entries testify to this sad fact, however useful the whole thing may be.

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A couple of very different perspectives . . . well worth reading - IT

Rails

Symfony

Matt

The app we built is a simple tool that allows you to post to multiple Twitter accounts. We learned a ton during the experience so I’d like to share some of those lessons with you.

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Some great tips for the next startup gathering . . . - IT

The success of Word Press in attracting a large blogging community has led to some new attention from hackers. There is currently a vulnerability that allows hackers to insert links into the code that affects Ad Sense. It manifests by the usual “adult” ads showing up on our home page.

We have been removing this code on almost a daily basis but until a new release is out fixing this vulnerability we will continue to have some of these ads show up.

So, we would like to apologize to you for anything inappropriate that may show up. We are working to fix things and I know that the Word Press folks are working hard to fix this.

A question for the hackers . . . wouldn’t it be more interesting for you to take that great talent for tweaking things and put it to more positive use? There are a huge number of charities and not-for-profit organizations that could really use your help and talent. Try volunteering just once, see the results in the faces in those you are helping and I really think you’ll get hooked. Just a thought . . .

In the meantime, please enjoy the site. We try to bring some of the most interesting innovation stories available together here to keep you both up to speed and excited about future possibilities.

Enjoy.

FEW people, other than scholars, will be familiar with the story of the Cambridge don whose study of China’s scientific history helped to change the West’s appraisal of a civilisation once thought hopelessly backward. By the time Joseph Needham died in 1995, he had published 17 volumes of his “Science and Civilisation in China” series, including several that he wrote entirely on his own.

The Chinese began printing 600 years before Johannes Gutenberg introduced the technique in Germany. They built the first chain drive 700 years before the Europeans. And they made use of a magnetic compass at least a century before the first reference to it appeared elsewhere. So why, in the middle of the 15th century, did this advanced civilisation suddenly cease its spectacular progress?

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photo credit: hira3

SAN FRANCISCO — Housing prices in Silicon Valley remain defiantly high. New BMWs and Saabs cruise Highway 101. But for the first time there are signs that the current economic downturn is taking its toll on the country’s cradle of technology and innovation.

Job growth has slowed, start-up companies are hiring and spending more cautiously, and early-stage investors who nurture the start-ups with money and expertise are growing more frugal.

Most of the investors, entrepreneurs and innovators who build companies in the Valley do so with the hope of taking them public or selling them — the rainmaking opportunities that people here call exits. But with gloom pervading the financial markets and the business climate, the exits are hard to find.

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photo credit: syawal.lokman

ONE of the oldest barriers to innovation is “Not Invented Here,” a persistent bias of even the most creative people toward their own creations and against those of people who work for other companies. And the problem of N.I.H. isn’t limited to business; it can also infect the military and government research agencies.

To help counteract N.I.H., large corporations have promoted technology alliances with rivals, as well as the concept of “open innovation,” to draw on a wider circle of big brains — not on their payroll — to work on core technical problems. These efforts arise from the recognition that no single innovator or team, no matter how loyal to an employer or successful in the market, has a monopoly on wisdom.

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photo credit: aion-elewyn

Need an easy way to add biometrics to an online project? Psylock has an answer. It’s a Flash-based interface that compares your typing style against a list of known styles and logs you in based on your individual typing fingerprint.

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Search engines could be the answer

OVER the past decade, innovation has emerged from the shadows to become a new industrial religion, worshiped by public figures, investors and businessmen alike. Around the world, the rhetoric of innovation unites politicians on the left and right, having replaced the post-war language of welfare economics.

Board members see it as the key to increasing profits and market share. Governments hurl money at it when trying to fix failing economies. But despite being responsible for something like half of all economic growth, and the topic of countless government studies, innovation remains essentially a black art.

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Let it be known that IW (Innovation Wednesdays) are hereby adjourned until further notice.

We all got a little tired chipping icicles off of one another

We will resume again when the temperatures return to saner conditions and our heating system joins us in the 21st century.

This has been a blast up to this point - a very interesting experiment that will be resumed bent into a slightly different shape  shortly:)

Stay tuned and thanks again for your enthusiasm and just showing up!

ron

photo credit: ericrobinson