What if a time-travelling, pre-Apple Jobs & Wozniak applied to Y Combinator without a startup idea?
What kind of problem would YC have suggested for these prospective startup founders to work on?
The iij Top Ten Upcoming Mobile Innovation Books
Surprisingly, we had the opposite problem to our usual one with this category: this time we were not quite as inundated with contenders
Yeah, like, there’s this professor that GROWS electrical kit
Apart from biology, our physical world is mostly either dumb, rock hard, or both. We use that hard, dumb stuff to make durable things like tools, vehicles and buildings. Biology, although soft, squishy and smart, somehow also manages to grow incredibly hard things, like shells and teeth. Maybe biology can teach us better ways to make hard stuff too
Is the whole lean startup thing really nothing more than UX?
If you’re thinking: “Aha! at last, a lean startup skeptic! I always suspected all that MVP and pivot stuff was really just snake oil!” then this video is for you. But buckle up, you’re in for a bumpy user experience
Investment banking students morph into urban mushroom farming phenomenon
Even if you find the average recycling innovation story boringly predictable, this one, as it gathers momentum with one ludicrously lucky sustainability discovery after another, will have you cheering along with the audience
A whole new take on NSFW
No, it’s not Dave McClure’s customary firehose of expletives that make this video Not Safe For Work. It’s you. You’re Not Safe For Work in a startup, as far as he’s concerned
Banking: what’s coming next?
Where in the world are the next systemic bubbles? Can we conceive of interventions which might genuinely mitigate the risks? Are the biggest challenges to banking innovation technological, cultural, governance related, or socio-geographic?
Rethinking space on earth: NASA and sustainable buildings
The Mars Rovers, Opportunity and Spirit’s mission planning software contributed to the technologies which were developed for this mind-bogglingly ambitious building project, producing what may be the most sophisticated environmental control system on the planet.
Cleantech startups: early exit strategies and beyond
What does cleantech look like from a strictly ‘risks and returns’ perspective? What new investment approaches will make the most promising government funded emerging technologies a realistic prospect for scalability and growth?
Heading for collision: scholarship traditions and Anything 2.0
Innovation and academia might seem inseparable, but ‘novelties’ such as collaborative research and digital deliverables are often still seen by academic authorities as being an unacceptable encroachment upon the sovereignty of the paper-bound work of the solitary scholar
Startup death spiral? Surely not!
Maybe it’s just something that nobody wanted to talk about. Large organisations had, over the years, paid countless professors to study the shortcomings of large organisations, leaving the trials and tribulations of the startup unstudied, waiting for Steve Blank to one day notice something shockingly consistent about the way most startups spin out of control
Thousands of lean startup devotees bravely endure shaky YouTube video
Yes, it’s Eric Ries classic ‘Minimum Viable Product’ presentation. It’s so absorbing that you soon stop noticing the jitters. Oh, and no, you can’t even cheat by just listening to it. There are slides. And if you saw it in 2009 but you did nothing about it, shame on you, it’s time to watch it again.
Marketers target our invisible connective tissue, offline and online
We’re leaving trails behind us, both offline and online, inside and outside social media, that we don’t notice, but marketers do, and they’re using them to spot our closest friends, betting that they’ll share our tastes and would probably buy what we bought if they were approached.
Where does user generated content end and video journalism begin?
You don’t need to be a journalist to record reality well. But if you can regularly produce credible content, what do you want to be? How should ‘video news gathering’ fit into that question?
Customer Development. Trendy Phrase. Gimmick?
It doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia article yet (as at 2nd of February 2011). It came from someone called Steve Blank and a book from 2005, and yet it’s the hottest thing at all the top business schools. This video interview explains why
Angels teach Venture Capitalists how to accelerate startups
The new breed of angels: as much ‘startup coentrepreneurs’ as they are investors. Executive control, once obligatory, now seen as a liability, is being replaced with new brands of investor offerings which minimise dilution and instead creatively collaborate to facilitate leanness and opportunistic market agility. VCs are keenly studying this new wizardry
Sound bites are just not enough: what is Jeff Immelt really like?
This video of about an hour gives us a long look at the man and tells you quite a lot about what he thinks about leadership and innovation. Does it give us enough to help us predict how he’ll do in his new position as leader of the new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness?
The iij Top Ten Startup Books for the start of 2011
Shame on us for not managing to get a top ten startup book list out at the end of last year, but most of these titles are barely a month old. Some are obvious choices, but others are quite specialised and deserve more attention than they’ve received
Where are the droids we’re looking for?
Are we on the threshold of Asimov’s robot dreams? We can’t make humanoids useful enough. We can’t make them cheap enough. Why not?
The Americas
What’s it like when government and business publicly sit around the same table?
We’re making no claims about whether it’s a good or bad idea, whether it works or fails. But the meeting in this video is real and the people in it are from the very top on both sides. The ‘fly on the wall’ perspective has a unique and unprecedented feel
Choosing Tech Careers: Biotech vs. Consumer Tech
Most of the consumer technologies of 20 years ago seem ludicrously primitive today, whereas, for many diseases, current biotech leaves us almost as powerless to prevent the suffering and death of millions today as we were generations ago. However, it still offers the tantalising prospect of unlocking nature’s technology, and potentially rendering all our diseases and current consumer tech obsolete
Humble colossus of computer science: Don Knuth’s saga
Quiet and unassuming, but with a wickedly dry sense of humour: the iconic ambassador of the algorithm has a life story which deserves a wider audience than just computer scientists, who are as likely to have read his Art of Computer Programming as to have listened to Dark Side of the Moon
Clash of innovation news titans
An epic transatlantic on-air wrangle over Google’s future. Veteran BBC innovation investigator Peter Day vs. US prediction guru Mark Anderson. They each put up a characteristically robust performance. But who won? Whatever, it was riveting radio.
Criticism of the iij? Too many solutions, not enough new unsolved problems
Far too often, we only present problems when someone wants to talk about their solutions. So here’s a seriously problem-rich, solution-craving topic: The Economic Impact of Biodiversity
Sustainability: the IT nightmare that never was?
Everyone can see how Big IT could feel threatened by accusations of becoming one of society’s most voracious consumers of energy. And yet, it turns out that IT and sustainability are probably inseparable
Lean investing: what is it?
Dave McClure is not exactly a shy or timid voice in the startup investment community. He offers the unique perspective of someone who describes themselves as a geek who became a startup founder who moved on to become an investor in many startups.
An unexpectedly fresh perspective on nanotech
So this set of conference videos was supposed to be about regulatory issues. Shockingly perhaps, it turned out to be neither alarmist scaremongering nor shameless cheerleading.
Ron Conway, archangel, on video, on how it all began
He’s been investing in a new company every six days for fifteen years. What’s that like? He secured Google’s first Venture Capital when Google had six people. What was that like?
Disrupting Silicon Valley
If Silicon Valley investors began diverting more of their energies towards increasing entrepreneurial diversity and inclusion, could this put their impressive track record of success at risk?
Emotion: the new weapon of choice for experience designers?
Could it be true that we’ve finally mastered the art of controlling users’ emotions? This talk by a design consultant claims that this is what their research has made possible
A replicator you’d give your right arm for
This video includes the most memorable anecdotes I’ve ever heard. “What’s that doing in there?” his freaked-out girlfriend asked. “Well, I just wanted to see if the artificial leg I just made was dishwasher safe”
The rebirth of the rebirth of distance
It’s been quite a while since the last big fuss about ‘peak oil’: hardly surprising, once oil fell from its pre-crash peak. A guy who made a lot of that fuss is back giving his post-crash perspective in a video. He believes the ‘local vs. global’ balance could be about to change
At last! A new video introduction to nanotech
We know, we’ve kept you waiting. The last video intro to nanotech that iij posted was from a lecture given in 2008. This much more up to date talk was given just a few months ago: it was worth the wait
What’s the impact of crowdsourcing on the media?
What does crowdsourcing mean to an editor? Asking the audience. Doesn’t sound so radical, does it? But within mainstream media, the very term is plagued by controversy. This revealing video gives the view from some leading pioneers, both in the back room and on the front line.
We’re universities and we’re being globalized
The developing world has an insatiable hunger for everything our best universities have to offer. Are those universities doing enough to address this?
Financiers pay the ultimate price in socially-funded horror
This impressive panel investigates radical funding ideas for new projects. Included is the possibility that it might be possible to dispense with ‘investors’ altogether, in some cases with amusingly ‘horrific’ alternatives
Do you know the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry?
Remember ‘the 12 principles of green engineering’ that we covered? The same researcher was involved in putting these different sets of principles together
Who IS this guy?
Never heard of Oliver Kreylos? You will. He’s just transformed the Kinect from a hands-free game controller into a holographic camera. The demo blew many minds, quickly getting a million YouTube hits. He didn’t think it was that impressive: check out what he’s working on now
Where does nanochemistry belong in the world of nanotech?
To get some insight into this new discipline, you might find this video describing the background to a researcher’s eureka moment well worth watching. It’s a talk by Geoffrey Ozin, widely regarded as the father of nanochemistry
Next year’s innovation books
A carefully selected (but woefully incomplete) list of some fascinating titles that you can’t buy yet
The next big thing in innovation : Recursive Resource Reduction
If you want to innovate more effectively, you need to iterate faster. Scoble cites Oracle’s Larry Ellison as having a recipe for increasing efficiency in an unproductive team (by successively reducing headcount) and offers this as a way to keep a team small enough to iterate rapidly.
Creating capability: finding the founders of the future
I’m building a theory on how Y Combinator gets such amazing results. I’ve concluded that it has nothing to do with the usual suspects
Unlikely tale of a bike created by twiddling three buttons
One of the great music biz anecdote clips, Jim Steinman’s surprising gifts as a gonzo raconteur prove worthy of the acknowledged master of that art, Peter Ustinov
Major study shows that most research is wrong
Question. Where would you expect to find an article with the title: “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”? Answer. On a US government website that publishes research findings.
Calculations which affect just about everything sped up a billion times
The issues are enormous, the implications profound. What we’re being told is incredibly exciting. But some really important questions seem to have been left unaanswered
Tomorrow’s digital licensing: what are the issues?
If you bought into all the hubris about the ‘inevitable’ demise of charging for content, you might imagine that debating the future of licensing was pointless. Or just dull. Watching this might change your mind
Disruption contained: preventing self-inflicted innovation wounds
You’ve got a revolutionary product and a choice of innovation strategies: trying to do everything you do ‘in the spirit of innovation’ or to run an otherwise traditional business, limiting additional risk: are both options misguided?
The restaurant at the beginning of the universe
Welcome to the birthplace of investment in the online world. It’s the relaxed watering hole where the big stuff happens in Silicon Valley. The regulars constitute a “who’s who” of movers and shakers behind what’s going on right now.
Who is Mr Prediction in Tech?
This year was expected to be so full of unprecedented upheavals that getting it right would be tougher than ever.
Priceless video: father and son grappling with the past, present and future of design
Alex Bogusky, legendary poster boy for the ad business, rashly decides to interview his dad online. The outcome reveals what looks like a stormy relationship between a ‘designer parent’ and a ‘designer child’
Why does ‘formal transparency’ often still seem so opaque?
Many public organisations have been ‘formally transparent’ for centuries, yet the more detail they publish about their proceedings, the less we seem to understand about what they do. Are there new ways to fix this broken process?
Either crack the Dilbert paradox, or get innovation you can’t believe in
As much as organisations tell us they want to attract fresh, innovative talent, their culture often just says no. John Hagel thinks that there’s a move coming from social networks toward ‘joint creation’ that’ll address this
Education, prepare to meet thy maker
If you’d kept an eye on this man over the years, you’d have had an inside track on many things, long before they became important. Now he’s turning his mind to the future of education
Innovation cocktail recipe: insurance plus poverty
It’s got a market of four billion people: other ingredients include creativity, technology and an appetite for change: it’s called microinsurance
Turning university science breakthroughs into businesses
A superb panel video from Princeton covers just about everything: Angels, Venture Capital, Intellectual Property as well as the academic, engineering and technology licensing perspectives
What is “pull” education and why does it matter?
Compulsory curriculum teaching (“push”) only works for those who don’t need to be pushed very hard: for the remaining billions on the planet, it’s often just too expensive to push
So you think you’re innovative enough: meet the new boss
Same as the old boss: I don’t think so; if you can’t demonstrate to her that you can truly innovate, don’t even bother applying for the job
Everything we thought we knew about privacy needs rethinking
Could health authorities force us to publish every detail of our daily activities by insisting we all carry smartphones with monitoring apps revealing not just how long we slept, but where?
Watch influencers offer predictions on major tech acquisitions
The second half of 2010 is looking better than last year, a surge is expected, heralding a very hectic end of year M&A traffic jam
Dell’s datacenter vanishing trick: all is revealed
Watch them explain how they take something that consumes the same amount of electrical power as over 8,000 staff and just make it disappear
Rocket scientist, games patriarch, same guy
Carmack never ceases to amaze, but the infamous pony tail is probably gone forever
Someone please tell me I’m not the only one!
This video about replacing yourself with a robot seriously creeps me out. But I still want to try it.
The valley’s angel scene is going crazy
It’s unrecognisable from just a few years ago: lots more angels, much bigger sums, many more investments
Secretive leading biotech dealmakers caught talking unguardedly on video
MIT somehow managed to make this happen in New York recently (warning: contains disturbingly graphic images of a ‘banker guy’ talking candidly about pharma deals)
What’s wrong with the way we think about education?
The old educational model of ‘compulsory knowledge consumption’ is still here, but becoming shockingly irrelevant
Urgent briefing requirement: Stem cells and regenerative medicine
These issues are constantly in the news: the media never gives you enough background, but this video does that job and a great deal more
Who is todays greatest innovation visionary?
In the 60s and 70s, the title ‘Oracle of the electric age’ was given to one man
What is this thing called Transmedia?
And what really happened at 8pm on the 17th of November 1978?
Haunted by the price of commercial success: using up the planet’s resources
Who you gonna call? These guys aren’t Ghostbusters, but they do believe they’ve discovered how to banish the spectre of industrial wastefulness
High hopes for high-rise horticulture
Vertical farmers offer their vision of the future in a video
iij secrets on display?
Ok, we confess: we wish we could say that TED videos were made by us
What on earth is an Anthropreneur?
Need to attack poverty, environmental and language issues simultaneously? Then maybe you need one of these: as far as inspiring videos go, I haven’t seen anything much better than this
Underwhelmed by interfaces? Want to see what’s coming next?
Spielberg’s ‘Minority Report Interface’ guru tells us all what he’s been working on
New health data ideas suddenly go viral in government
Have political types trying to look cool unleashed a medical monster?
Carbon negative products – what are they?
Are they as positive as they sound?