The new normal – The McKinsey Quarterly – The new normal – Strategy – Strategic Thinking

Through it all, technological innovation will continue, and the value of increasing human knowledge will remain undiminished. For talented contrarians and technologists, the next few years may prove especially fruitful as investors looking for high-risk, high-reward opportunities shift their attention from financial engineering to genetic engineering, software, and clean energy.

This is quite remarkable. Controlling the behavoir of living things by sending impluses to their brains. I wouln’t want to be at the receiving end of those eletrical pulses, but the concept is radical and disruptive.

MIT Technology Review: Biological Machines

A giant flower beetle flies about, veering up and down, left and right. But the insect isn’t a pest, and it isn’t steering its own path. An implanted receiver, microcontroller, microbattery, and six carefully placed electrodes–a payload smaller than a dime and weighing less than a stick of gum–allow an engineer to control the bug wirelessly. By remotely delivering jolts of electricity to its brain and wing muscles, the engineer can make the cyborg beetle take off, turn, or stop midflight.

URL: http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=tr10&id=22111

Search is the gateway to the Internet for most people; for many of us, it has become second nature to distill a task into a set of keywords that will lead to the required tools and information. But Adam Cheyer, cofounder of Silicon Valley startup Siri, envisions a new way for people to interact with the services available on the Internet: a “do engine” rather than a search engine. Siri is working on virtual personal-assistant software, which would help users complete tasks rather than just collect information.

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=tr10&id=22117

From the founder of TED: http://www.192021.org/

Karach is on the list.

-Adnan

On the subject of radical innovation, this is quite bloody remarkable. Usability is the next frontier!

Where is the internet when we need it ? « blog maverick

The best way to sum up how I feel about the excitement and opportunities on the net compared to the many other personal and corporate technology options out there is to use a Yogi Berra quote.

“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded”

When everyone is looking for gold in the same river, the best opportunities are somewhere else.

Mark Cuban, of Broadcast.com fame, has this to say about the internet. Under the cover of his typically sensationalist title, what he appears to be saying is that the next wave of game-changing, productivity boosting innovation will not come from the internet. What does that mean though?

The internet is a platform, and yes, I agree with Mark that its now a stable platform. A utility more dependable than water and electricity supply in many parts of the world. But why is it dead and boring? Yes, Companies providing internet access (ISPs) are boring utility provider, but the youtubes, facebooks and googles of the world are fundamentally changing how the world interacts. How is that boring?

Agreed, the stability of the internet has made application development a bit too easy. Granted that the barrier to entry is too low for durable competitive advantage, but that applies more to the sea of stupid “killer apps” (e.g. social network for dogs), than to real busienss which solve real problems, utilizing the internet as a fundemantal channel.

This K@W article represents the mainstream view about the GCC economy. Read the second paragraph though, I think it provides the glimmer of hope not otherwise found in most Western publications writing about the region these days.

A ‘Downward Spiral’: Gulf Region Real Estate in the Era of Cheap Oil – Knowledge@Wharton

In January 2008, the projects planned or underway totaled $1.6 trillion. This had increased to $2.54 trillion by January of 2009, with Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E making up 70% of the projects, mostly in the real estate, leisure and infrastructure sectors.

However, as the global credit crunch froze the international financial markets, the hot money evaporated. The drastic $100 slide in crude oil prices eroded investor confidence in the region. The tourist arrivals slowed to a trickle during the peak winter season as a recession engulfed major economies. In a spectacular swing, abundance of liquidity in the beginning of 2008 had vanished before the year end.

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Still, some investors are cautiously optimistic. “Dubai is a model for the region; as Dubai goes, so goes the perception of commerce and trust in commerce in the region,” says Verma. “Dubai is built on entrepreneurship and innovation. These may sound like buzzwords, but it’s actually true. They just had the world — and investors — build them a first-class city and infrastructure. So they will use this as a base to recreate themselves.”