Innovation Toronto

WHAT do reality TV shows like “Survivor” and “America’s Next Top Model” have in common with an insurgent method of stimulating useful innovations around the world?

Commuter Cars

The Tango, an entry in the automotive X Prize contest for vehicles that can get 100 miles a gallon.
It may be hard to believe that watching [...]

BOULDER CITY, Nev. — At first, as he adjusted pumps and checked temperatures, Aaron Boucher looked like any technician in the control room of an electrical plant. Then he rushed to the window and scanned the sky, to check his fuel supply.
Mr. Boucher was battling clouds, timing the operations of his power plant to get [...]

KUANTAN, Malaysia — Rising prices for cooking oil are forcing residents of Asia’s largest slum, in Mumbai, India, to ration every drop. Bakeries in the United States are fretting over higher shortening costs. And here in Malaysia, brand-new factories built to convert vegetable oil into diesel sit idle, their owners unable to afford the raw [...]

MARKUS FRIND, a 29-year-old Web entrepreneur, has not read the best seller “The 4-Hour Workweek” — in fact, he had not heard of it when asked last week — but his face could go on the book’s cover. He developed software for his online dating site, Plenty of Fish, that operates almost completely on autopilot, [...]

Photo by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Jerry Brous of Sequim, Wash., participated in a study to determine whether giving people more information about their electricity use and costs will prompt them to save energy.
Giving people the means to closely monitor and adjust their electricity use lowers their monthly bills and could significantly [...]