Internet of things: the next platform for global innovation

The internet of things is likely to be a key technology driving innovation over the next few years. It’s a theme that’s grown over the last couple of years, and now in January 2013 we saw the launch of the ‘Internet of Things Consortium’, formed at International CES in Las Vegas, and after that, Wall Street Journal tech columnist and key influencer Walt Mossberg also highlighting the internet of things (IoT) as the ‘next big thing’ at a talk in North Carolina, USA.

The ‘IoT’ refers to devices of any kind connected with mobile or wireless to networks, enabling machine-to-machine communications (M2M).  Mobile SIM cards or radio modules with Wi-Fi/GPRS can be embedded in almost anything, ranging from entertainment, safety and security, to business services. Put another way, the IoT or M2M communications is the networking of intelligent, communications-enabled remote assets, allowing key information to be exchanged automatically without human intervention via a back-end IT infrastructure. The remote assets, which can be fixed or mobile, include cars and truck fleets, utility meters, copiers and printers, ventilation and air-conditioning sensors, home medical devices, fitness monitors and CCTV cameras.

The conditions they monitor can include temperature, location, consumption, heart rate, stress levels, light, movement, altitude and speed – or anything else. This can be used to gain immediate feedback on how a particular remote asset is being used, which features are most popular and what problems typically arise.

Typical examples already common are in energy management and health and well-being: for example, smart energy meters remotely transmitting usage data or controlled by utility companies, or patient monitoring systems where key patient data can be transmitted automatically to a carer or care centre.

In patient monitoring, research from analyst firm Berg Insight suggests around 2.8 million patients worldwide were using a dedicated home monitoring service based on equipment with integrated connectivity at the end of 2012 (figure excludes patients using their personal mobile phone, tablet or PC for remote monitoring). The analyst forecasts the number of home monitoring systems with integrated communication capabilities will grow to reach 9.4 million connections worldwide by 2017.

It is possible to connect any type of remote machine or device to critical information systems and collect real-time field intelligence to improve efficiency, reduce costs, introduce new services and gain competitive advantage. The ultimate aim is to enable anytime, anywhere access to real-time intelligence from remote machines.

‘Everything will be connected to everything else’

According to the ‘Internet of Things Consortium’, formed at International CES in Las Vegas, “In the future, everything will be connected to everything else.”  The consortium is a non-profit organization with the mission of facilitating cooperation between hardware, software, and service providers. It is primarily focused on Internet enabled devices and related software services that directly touch consumers in the form of home automation, entertainment, and productivity.

One of the goals of the consortium is to see billions of connected devices that benefit from communication with other devices and services.

According to Machina Research, global M2M connections will increase from two billion at the end of 2011 to 18 billion at the end of 2022. Even Ericsson has been forecasting for a couple of years that there will be 50 billion connections by the year 2020. Connections will be dominated by two sectors: consumer electronics (including cameras, music players and TVs) and intelligent buildings (for example security and HVAC systems). Between them they will account for almost 70% of the total.

By 2022, Europe and developing Asia-Pacific will be tied as the biggest region for M2M, each accounting for 27 percent of connections. The biggest single markets will be the China and the US with 20 percent and 19 percent respectively. In terms of revenue, M2M will grow from US$200 billion in 2011 to US$1.2 trillion in 2022Two-thirds of the revenue opportunity is accounted for by devices and installation, and one-third by M2M services.

Matt Hatton, director of Machina Research, says, “M2M, in all its diversity, is little short of a second industrial revolution. The growth in connected devices over the next few years will fundamentally change the way we live and work. The potential to save money, generate new revenue streams and create sustainable cities will drive businesses, governments and individuals to embrace M2M. The potential impact is huge.”

It’s not the technology that’s important – it’s the data and how you read it

They key thing about M2M is that the technology is transparent or hidden to the application – the user doesn’t necessarily need to know it exists (think of Apple and its gadgets). What’s more important is the data that is produced, and how it is interpreted.  The challenge with having billions of connected devices generating many data points in this new era of connectedness is how to read and interpret the data. This is where the role of business intelligence systems analytics comes in.

Take for example the cold chain logistics supply chain of the pharmaceuticals and food industries. Dutch company Dyzle monitors the temperature and other key parameters of medicines, pharmaceuticals ingredients and food ingredients in storage, transport and distribution.  Tags with connectivity travel with the medicines or food or while they are in transport or cold storage, to monitor the temperature and other key parameters to ensure that they do not deviate outside a specified temperature range stipulated by a company’s quality requirements as well as regulatory requirements – and patient/consumer safety expectations.

But it’s not the technology that’s important – sensors and hardware can be integrated from any solution. What’s important is how that data is gathered and reported.  In this case, regulatory requirements mandate that the entire history of temperature during storage and distribution must to be documented to provide proof of product quality, which means many data points are being generated continuously. So Dyzle collects the data in the cloud, provides automatic reporting and analysis of that data via personal dashboards, and makes it available securely via any internet-enabled device to quality managers and company managers.

‘Big data’ needs business intelligence

These reports and data link into to company-wide business intelligence and ERP systems. Business intelligence is increasingly becoming an area that many organisations are exploring, in order to deal with the massive amount of data that is collected. Hence the emergence of service providers offering platforms that allow you to do things with the data, often in the cloud as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that eliminates the need to install any systems, and requiring no additional resources for data warehousing; they also provide analytics engines, report building and visualisation tools amongst others.

One such business intelligence provider is datazuum – CEO Samir Sharma comments, “Business intelligence and advanced analytical tools should be embedded into the culture of all organisations (where enough data exists).  These types of systems don’t need to be expensive or technically dependent on the IT department; you also don’t need to buy a lot of hardware and software to support these activities.  It’s the business people that know their business and their data, not someone sitting in an ultra-technical department.”

Business intelligence in the cloud provides companies with fast, inexpensive deployment, no hardware and setup expenditure, no capital expenditure (lowers entry barriers), software upgrades and maintenance, pre-built connectors and dashboards for many systems. It also provides improved data sharing capabilities to access data anytime and anywhere.

It’s up to the imagination and business model for innovation with IoT

Coming back to Walt Mossberg’s comment that IoT will be the next big thing, it could indeed be the basis of the next industrial revolution, especially since it is totally up to the imagination and creativity of business model. Businesses and individuals have the ability to connect anything using a wireless connection to talk to other devices and report back on social or business parameters.

This ‘Internet of things’ will have a huge impact on how businesses look at their business operations, efficiency and productivity – in the next few years it could actually help restore confidence after the global economic crisis, providing a leap forward in global productivity. Combine this with the need to interpret the huge number of data points that will be generated – the so-called ‘big-data – and automated business intelligence and reporting systems also become increasingly important. The next wave of innovation will therefore come around the internet of things, big data and business intelligence.

Global innovation agenda will grow stronger in 2013

As we begin a new year, we’d like to wish all our followers a happy and innovative new year in 2013.  The past year, 2012, involved some major activities in the evolution of The Next Silicon Valley, and our visibility seems to have aligned with an equally growing interest in the innovation agenda globally. Many countries have been involved in some way in innovation-related conferences, events or activities – whether they have been governmental, not-for-profit, or for-profit organizations.

We worked very closely with some of these, including the Global Innovation Summit in San Jose and innovaBRICS in London.  We also worked with the International Association of Science Parks annual conference IASP 2012 in Tallinn, Estonia.

The Global Innovation Summit, drew around 400 delegates and participants from 49 countries to Silicon Valley, not to gawk at reality TV crews or to rub elbows with the next Mark Zuckerberg, but in search of answers to what has become one of the world’s – if not the Valley’s – most urgent questions: “How do other countries, regions and cities cultivate ‘innovation ecosystems’ and what is the secret to building the next Silicon Valley?”  The summit made serious work out of decoding the Silicon Valley genome for attendees and delegates, while probing timely topics in distant places where entrepreneurship is a budding phenomenon and the prospect of home-grown technology-driven economic development represents perhaps the best and brightest hope for nations, places and people nearly left behind in past decades by the economic and technological advances of the major industrialized nations of the world.

For more about the issues raised by the summit, you can read our reports ‘A Tale of Two (Silicon) Valleys’, Silicon Valley Summit ponders: Can government and big firms hinder innovation?, and Trust is Key to Collaboration.

At the IASP2012 conference, there was a good look at look at the role of science parks in innovation ecosystems – around 500 delegates from over 50 countries attended, and considered themes around how science and technology parks can better support the innovation community, and discuss how the parks are changing structurally to become increasingly complex structures for professional innovation support. The next annual conference will take place in Recife, Brazil in October 2013, with the theme this year being ‘science parks shaping new cities’.

What has become clear is that innovation is at the top of the agenda for everyone and will continue to be even more so in 2013 – whether it is about creating innovation ecosystems to encourage regional growth, technology or product innovation, or innovative ideas and thinking related to governments or businesses. For example, at a regional level, Scott Anthony writes in the Harvard Business Review about Asia’s potential emergence as the innovation powerhouse of the world if it overcomes some of its cultural hurdles. Meanwhile, Forbes talks about how 2013 is going to be the year of the innovator.

And of course there has been no shortage of product and technology innovation in the last 20 or so years, which has formed the basis of innovative new ways of doing business and running governments, and this will continue to move at rapid pace in 2013. All the major technology companies strive to innovate to create new customer experiences, and not necessarily from just Apple and Samsung – for example, a Russian company, Yota Devices, is introducing an innovative new smartphone with two screens on either side of the handset – one side with a standard LCD screen, and the other side based on e-paper technology.

Results-driven innovation

As innovation comes on to the agenda of more organizations and governments, it’s quite likely that they will also be looking to measure the return on their investment in enabling innovation. After all, with many governments around the world on austerity drives, they will want to understand if their money is being well spent.

This could be a reason why there’s a book due out from Seth Kahan in March 2013 on ‘getting innovation right’. It says that innovation is not just a creative approach or new idea, but innovation is about success. To count as successful innovation, your new ideas have to generate measurable gains in the marketplace, for both your customers and your organization’s bottom line. The book has distilled this into seven key activities that produce results-driven innovation. Those seven activities make the difference between leaders who are haphazardly shooting in the dark with good ideas and those who consistently and systematically uncover potential, capitalize on opportunity, and generate traction that drives success in the marketplace.

It looks like innovation will be big business in 2013, beyond just innovation in technology and products or business processes. Innovation will drive the agenda at many levels – whether it is regions or locations trying to create their own version of ‘Silicon Valley’ or businesses looking at innovating their business models, processes and technologies. We look forward to an exciting 2013 and working with even more partners to evolve the global agenda in this evolving subject area.

New York’s Silicon Alley vs London’s Tech City: which is better?

In the USA, New York’s ‘Silicon Alley’ often gets compared to Silicon Valley in California, so it was interesting to see a different comparison being made as part of a panel debate held in London and New York simultaneously this month (December 2012). The discussion between panellists from New York and London, through video conference in a Google hangout, attempted to tease out from government officials, VCs and company founders with experience of both cities what they thought were similarities and differences between these two tech clusters: ‘Silicon Alley’ (New York) vs ‘Tech City’ (London).

Through the course of the debate, some key themes emerged:

-        Negative effect of poor immigration policy in both countries

-        Advantage of proximity of talent capital and ideas, especially in New York

-        Ability to celebrate success being a key factor in the USA

-        Poor perception of failure in the UK (partly due to bankruptcy laws and the stigma of failure)

-        Flexibility of at-will employment law being helpful to startups in the USA

-        Customers attitude to awarding contracts to startups being better in the USA

Most of these themes will come as no surprise to anyone who’s studied Silicon Valley in California and why it is so successful at creating innovation-based economic wealth.

In this debate, it turned out that the New York advantages over London are similar to those that Silicon Valley has, and hence this gives the Silicon Alley significant advantage over Tech City just because of the cultural gap between the US and the UK. So New York wins by default because of the fact that it shares cultural and attitudinal behaviour with Silicon Valley.

Both the Tech City area and Silicon Alley share some factors in common – such as the closeness of people, ideas and money, and that they are major global metro cities (making it easier to attract talent), and that both have real issues because of poor immigration policies.  One area we have argued and many others have commented about the success of Silicon Valley in California is the proximity of people, ideas and money (and customers) – see my article, ‘Learning from Silicon Valley’.

Immigration was the hot issue of contention on both sides of the ‘pond’ – with the panellists in New York and London saying this was a key challenge that both shared and that government policy and rhetoric didn’t help in getting the right talent. Thatcher Bell of DFJ Gotham Ventures quoted the New York Mayor’s infamous quote about the US committing national suicide as a result of not being able to hire skilled immigrants.  Azeem Azhar, founder and CEO of PeerIndex, echoed this view about the UK’s immigration system, saying, “A transparent labour market is needed.”

Ben Southworth of the Tech City Investment Organization said the key issue in the UK is around attitude and the inability in the British culture to celebrate success. He added that transparency and openness was needed, and an element of honesty and trust; class mentality in the UK didn’t help the entrepreneur either.

New York on the other hand has a lack of sufficient engineering talent, according to Euan Robertson of the NYC Economic Development Corporation.  He commented, “Entrepreneurs and VCs can’t hire engineering talent fast enough.” Partly to address this, the city’s university, NYU, has established a Center for Urban Science and Progress, which Robertson said would double the number of full time engineering graduates.

This shortage of talent combined with the USA’s appreciation of engineering talent raise the engineers salary significantly – one panellist commented that an engineer with seven years Ruby experience in New York could earn US$200k – significantly more than in London.

Faster pace of business in New York

The pace of business was suggested as being a key factor that favoured New York over London. Azhar said that although London is a great place at this moment in time, with more talent and capital than ever before, the pace of business can be incredibly slow in London compared to New York. “It can take one week to do a deal in New York – and in London it can take three and a half months just to get into someone’s diary!”  Neal Capel, founder of Saithru in New York added, “It’s easy in New York to get connected into people’s networks,” comparing it to London.

Access to capital was also quoted as being easier in New York than London – Nic Brisbourne of DFJ Esprit said that New York’s proximity to Silicon Valley and its money helps New York’s startups accelerate faster than in London.

Getting the right talent can also be a key factor in a startup’s success, and if you make a ‘poor hire’ then you need the flexibility to make changes. Capel said the at-will employment law in New York gives startups that flexibility – in contrast to London, where it would be difficult to change your mind easily if you found someone wasn’t right for your business.

The other key discussion point was about large companies’ attitudes to awarding contracts to young startups. Azhar said that in London, customers don’t have the right appetite or language to work with early stage firms, whereas ‘that’s deeply baked in to the system in the USA’.

The debate was organized by VentureOutNY, a non-profit supporting the technology community in New York. Contributing to the debate were government agency representatives Ben Southworth, (Tech City) and Euan Robertson (New York’s economic development corporation) and venture capitalists Nic Brisbourne (DFJ Esprit) and Thatcher Bell (DFJ Gotham Ventures), as well as Azeem Azhar (PeerIndex), Neil Capel (Saithru), and David Hochman (representing the business incubator association from New York State).

The main area that both the New York and London panellists found in common was that the key industry sectors driving the economy of both cities: the banking and finance sector, advertising and marketing

It’s not really about New York vs London: it was more like USA vs UK

What is clear from the issues raised by the panellists is that while the intention was to debate New York versus London, the issues were broader and really focused on attitudes in the USA versus the UK and how the UK isn’t helped by its deeply ingrained cultural attitudes to startups and entrepreneurs – especially in the high-growth digital technology sectors that New York and London represent. But what was also clear from the debate is that London is changing, and it is a good time to be a startup in London, or for that matter in the UK.

From a global perspective, the focus by governments on creating and nurturing their start-up ecosystems is becoming common – especially as many governments see technology-based innovation as the way to create greater economic wealth in otherwise troubled economies.

Circling back to the debate on New York versus London, one can’t escape from the fact that American entrepreneurs tend to have greater ambition for their startups and therefore have a slight edge in their startup ecosystems compared to the UK. But one thing is for sure: there are now more opportunities for London to plug into New York’s opportunities in terms of both investors and customers who are more favourable to startups than in their own home market. The ability to collaborate across borders using cloud based tools also makes this much easier for London.

Crowd-sourced online learning: is this the innovation that education now needs?

The further education sector is going through significant change. In the UK, the universities’ applications system UCAS has just reported an eight percent drop in university applications for 2013 entry, and in the USA we’ve seen the success of online courses offered through a collaboration between MIT and Harvard to stream ‘massive open online courses’ or MOOCs over the web.  So is online education the innovation that this sector needs?

Professor Anant Agarwal of edX

Judging by the example of the USA, it appears so.  According to the MIT Technology Review, ‘free advanced education is a step forward for civilization’, and that free online education is the most important education technology in 200 years. Professor Anant Agarwal, whom I met early this year at TiECon in Santa Clara, USA, says that education is about to change dramatically, due to the power of the web and the ability to stream video classes with sophisticated interactivity. He heads up edX, a not-for-profit enterprise of its founding partners Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that features learning designed specifically for interactive study via the web, and he hopes that the organization will teach a billion students online.

The UK education story

British students were this year faced with a three-fold increase in university fees as part of British government policy to make education an ‘open market’.  It has also been trying to implement a program over the years of widening access participation in higher education. Unfortunately, trebling fees doesn’t help the widening access agenda, which is why MOOCs could soon see their way into UK and the rest of Europe.

At least that is what one such company, mylearningworx, hopes when it launches its web site at the Google Campus in London this month (December 2012).  The managing director, Martin Belton, says “There has, for some time, been a chasm between the ways that learners can acquire new skills online. On the one hand we have the learning management systems and formal e-learning, founded on the demands and feedback of corporations, but not the learners themselves.”

He adds, “On the other, we have zettabytes of knowledge on the Internet, but we can’t make sense, or validate it using simple social media tools designed for chatting and recreation. mylearningworx is about freeing up learning for the Average Joe, with content that previously would not have been accessible to either an individual or a small or medium sized enterprise. Our focus is enabling authors to leverage their knowledge and skills. We’re embracing new content creation tools like Mozilla’s Popcorn and working to develop communities of authors around different subject areas. Then taking the wisdom of those different communities (or crowds) and sharing it with the world.”

The press release from mylearningworx says it will be the first major investor led crowd-sourced learning project in the UK. Similar projects have been the flavour of 2012 in the US with around $70 million committed by venture capitalists to just nine start-up projects, aimed at varying social and business sectors and crowds.

The company is focused on the UK, bringing together groups of individuals and organisations to generate content for communities in the UK with a strong understanding of the learners and their context.

mylearningworx aims to ‘democratise UK learning’ by offering course created by the crowd, for the crowd – that is any Internet user. Learners and authors alike are encouraged to share knowledge by creating content, then offering it for free or for a fee that they set. Ratings and feedback help learners choose the right content for them based on their development requirements. Content will cover anything and everything from IT skills to baking. And successful authors can earn good money.

Universities are not part of their strategy yet, though Kate Graham, the communications director, says, “We have a number of Higher and Further Education representatives already involved in beta testing.”

Martin Belton adds, “A dedicated crowd sourced learning hub, like mylearningworx, takes the wisdom of the crowd, organises it, fills in the gaps, validates it and then shares it with the world.”

He continues, “Authors in the US are already earning thousands of dollars in income for their courses. Harnessing and sharing knowledge in the form of courses represents an accessible and flexible new industry at a time of continuing redundancies and so called ‘underemployment’. This is a unique opportunity for UK plc to profit from our existing knowledge by developing the skills of others.”

In the USA, the big brand name companies offering online courses are Coursera and Khan Academy. Khan Academy is a not-for profit organization which claims to have delivered over 200 million courses, and Coursera just recently added the University of London international section to its range of free courses. According to data from Coursera, of its first million users reported in August, 62 percent were from outside the USA, with the largest section being from Brazil, followed in this order by India, China, Canada and the UK.

MOOCs are definitely going to change the shape of education, and the UK education system will no doubt be looking at how it will manage the new landscape. No doubt the high profile launch of mylearningworx at Google campus is going to make more of the established education system sit up and take note of this evolution – or revolution as MIT might like to put it – in education.

The future of mobile innovation – this is just the beginning

If you talk to anybody who looks at trends and the future of technology, almost everyone talks about three key sectors that will see further innovation and widespread adoption: mobile computing, cloud computing and big data. We saw how all these technologies were effectively utilized in the 2012 US election which took place this month.  And we also saw some of these technologies used to good effect in the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

Even the law firm DLA Piper’s fifth Technology Leaders Forecast survey, which was developed in conjunction with the firm’s 2012 Global Technology Leaders Summit, talks about these three areas as the most promising technologies for investors and entrepreneurs.

So how is mobile, cloud and big data innovation driving today’s and tomorrow’s economy? And how was it used in the US elections? And what is the future?

The mobile innovation drive

Mobile communications and devices are already driving a new era in the business and social world. We’ve already seen the influence and important of digital networks and social media at the recent London 2012 Olympics. And we are seeing the emergence of mobile as being a platform for enabling new business models in all areas around the world – in government services delivery, in healthcare, in education, and of course in the enterprise. We already referenced this in our paper on the future vision of telecoms, internet, media and edutainment in the article here.

In fact Gartner, the market research firm, says that as many as 821 million smart devices (smartphones and tablets) will be purchased worldwide in 2012 and this figure will exceed one billion in 2013. It also predicts that in 2016, over 2.7 billion mobile devices are expected to be purchased globally, and two-thirds of the mobile workforce will own a smartphone, with 40 percent of the workforce being mobile.  Tablet devices will be a key accelerator to mobility – Gartner estimates that in 2012 purchases of tablets by businesses will reach 13 million units and will more than triple by 2016, to reach 53 million units.

The availability of this channel to customers and employees presents a need for organizations to design their business around mobile, to improve application delivery, employee productivity and process work flows.

It is thought that in less than two years, 20 percent of sales organizations will use iPads as the primary mobile platform for their field sales force. By 2018, 70 percent of mobile workers will use a tablet or a hybrid device that has tablet characteristics.

Many in the industry seem to think that much of the innovation in mobile technologies will come from Asia.  According to one investor based in California, countries with large populations such as India and Indonesia, where most people using the Internet do so with their mobile devices, are becoming catalysts for mobile innovation. An example of true innovation (rather than being a rehash of existing technology) is a SIM-based mobile payment system which only requires the phone network and no internet access – this is provided by Malaysian company Tootpay.

Asia might even drive mobile innovation in the USA, if you look at the headline in the Washington Post, about Japanese company Softbank’s recent announcement that it would be acquiring Sprint Nextel for $20 billion. The article argues that Softbank is Japan’s equivalent of Apple, and rather than focus on devices, the Japanese company hopes to innovate at the point of delivery – ie: in the fastest 4G networks and the services offered to customers.

US elections – a good example of social, mobile, cloud and big data usage

The US 2012 election campaign was the ultimate user of current technologies available in all of these areas. This was both for managing the campaign among campaign staff, and to target voters.

According to Greg Chase writing in the SAP business innovation blog, cloud computing was used effectively to link many field offices to state and national offices. Since political campaigns are only temporarily active for just a few months, and also geographically spread widely, renting cloud-based infrastructure seemed to be the ideal way of deploying the applications needed to manage the whole campaign. No hardware purchase was necessary, and voter and volunteer data could easily be transferred to low cost data storage devices or services.

The cloud was used to store searchable campaign intelligence, and tacked and documented all the details about the candidates, their speeches, videos.  ‘Big data’ profiles of voters were created to better target and motivate voters. A number of mobile apps were available from both candidates as well as the news organizations.

And finally social media was used to influence votes and drive donations. In particular, Chase references startup company Votizen , with its web service that allows you to discover how your friends on social networks are registered to vote, and campaign with them (or influence them) to elect candidates that share your values.  It claims to have a 200 million strong voter database which is social media ready. Voters can connect to their own records to see their voting registration and history, as well as use it to prove their power to those that hold and seek office. Voters can then scan their social networks and reveal the voters they can work with to campaign for candidates they believe in, whether it’s nationwide for a presidential election, or in a local city council race.

This is just the beginning

Industry commentators think we are only just at the beginning of a new innovation cycle in mobile. As highlighted by the recent GigaOm Mobilize 2012 event, there are several areas that point to the future of mobile innovation. Examples cited include the ability to have a ‘point of sale’ everywhere, as demonstrated by Square’s comment that 35 million unique Americans who have already made payments using its mobile card reader which enables anyone to accept credit cards anywhere; and the rapid growth of video over mobile – the article cites Google’s YouTube claiming that 25 percent of its content is now delivered to mobile, while in Korea this figure is closer to 50 percent.

The technology team at PriceWaterhousCoopers says that we are at the beginning of the mobile ecosystem disruption. According to Kayvan Shahabi, PwC’s US technology advisory leader, writing in RCR Wireless, “Mobile computing will continue to drive dramatic changes in how we conduct business, communicate with each other, access and share content, pursue knowledge and educate our children. Even with the tremendous breakthroughs to date, in the future, wireless devices and their supporting services will likely run applications faster, store more data, create better pictures and display information in brighter and more compelling images. This path of innovation, combined with the right business models, should ultimately lead to disruptive products that further transform the ecosystem and many industries in ways we never imagined.”

Indeed we are moving into a mobile world which is could be driven in the future by innovation in Asia and parts of Africa, and likely to also emerge in South America.  We have seen some great usage in the US elections and the London Olympics, but this is only just the beginning.

Bright ideas driving public sector innovation in austere times

The focus of many western governments is very single-minded: to reduce public expenditure in order to reduce financial deficits, resulting in sever cuts in public services. They should therefore take note of the latest ‘Bright Ideas’ from Harvard University, which actually shows how governments can deliver more from less.

“Government innovation does not require endless resources and generous budgets,” said Stephen Goldsmith, director of the Innovations in Government Program at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. “As exemplified by this year’s Bright Ideas, some of our country’s smartest innovations can in fact reduce government’s size while serving our citizens more efficiently and effectively.”

This is a far cry from the ability to spend by the governments of the emerging economies and BRIC countries, where they appear to be spending more to kick-start their innovation ecosystems. This is definitely the case in India for example, where Sam Pitroda recently opened a two-day national innovation conference. Speaking at the conference, he also spoke of the telecoms infrastructure investments to boost innovation in the country. “No government across the world has such a huge fund dedicated to facilitate public infrastructure,” Pitroda said. The Indian government is said to have earmarked around US$ 3.5 billion to the national optic fiber network (NOFN) project which envisages connecting 250,000 villages (more information at this link).

And in Brazil, the government recently announced a US$250 million program to boost its software and information technology sectors, plus tax incentives to enhance technology innovation.

Bright Ideas – 111 innovative government initiatives in the USA

The Ash Center at Harvard recognized 111 innovative government initiatives as Bright Ideas. Now in its third year, the Bright Ideas program recognizes and promotes creative government initiatives to encourage innovative ideas to be proposed. This year, a range of solutions address issues such as urban and rural degradation, environmental problems, and the academic achievement of students.

There are many innovations as outlined here on the Harvard Kennedy School web site, with a full list of the 2012 Bright Ideas here.  One example of one of these ideas is from Sacramento County – its Department of Human Assistance developed an automated system that matches the welfare system against data sources from local, state, and federal entities to help detect and prevent welfare assistance fraud and overpayments. This system has saved millions of dollars annually by preventing and reducing welfare assistance overpayments.

Another example is from the city of South Bend, IN, USA, where it installed real-time monitoring and control using “smart valves” technology to meet federal environmental mandates on combined storm and sanitary sewer overflows.  Through the use of distributed sensing and control logic which optimizes performance of infrastructure already in place, the city can save an estimated US$114 million over a conventional approach.

Another of the showcased 111 initiatives is a health and human services video interviewing scheme launched in San Diego County, CA. In conjunction with community partners to improve customer service, it enhances access to public assistance, and increases the efficiency of service delivery for clients who face transportation challenges or other barriers. Targeted populations include pregnant women, migrant farm workers, homeless clients, residents of battered women’s shelters and transitional housing, and both tribal and rural clients.

Innovation and entrepreneurship happening across America

The Harvard Bright Idea is indicative of the innovation going on across America to boost local economies and jobs.  This was illustrated by Rebekah Iliff in an article earlier this year entitled, “Silicon America: 5 start-up economies keeping it real and bringing it back”.  She argues that it’s not just major tech markets like New York, San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles that are the centers of innovation and entrepreneurship, but almost every region across America is now growing their ecosystems and economies – from Austin to Detroit to Minneapolis to Columbus to Chicago. She quotes Scott Case of the Startup America Partnership who said, “There are amazing startups in every single state in the US focused on solving big problems and growing their companies. Whether it’s Denver, Des Moines or Dallas, founders are building their businesses in their hometowns, establishing vibrant local startup economies and creating jobs.”

EU 2020 initiative to stay globally competitive

The European Commission has taken a more collaborative approach on the global stage to enhance Europe’s position as a global destination for research and innovation. Climate change, food security and fighting diseases are the issues which increasingly require a concerted international research effort. Europe can contribute to it with its science base and innovative industries by being open to international co-operation.

The EU strategy proposes to further focus co-operation on EU strategic priorities while maintaining the tradition of openness to third country participation in EU research. This includes addressing global challenges, but also making Europe more attractive as a location for research and innovation, and boosting industrial competitiveness.

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, said: “Going it alone is not an option in research and innovation. It is critical that Europe reaches out to international partners to access new sources of knowledge and address global challenges.” To this effect, Horizon 2020 is the EU’s programme for research and innovation aimed at securing Europe’s global competitiveness. It will be open to participation from across the globe. Running from 2014 to 2020 with an €80 billion budget, this program for research and innovation is part of the drive to create new growth and jobs in Europe.

Summary – innovation from different perspectives around the world

We are seeing different stances from different governments around the world. In some countries in Europe, there is a hard-line government rhetoric on cuts and more cuts, without much policy to enhance innovation and creation of jobs – it is almost pushing itself on a downward spiral out of which there is no way to emerge with any growth. True there are EU-wide programs like Horizon 2020, but that seems focused on blue-sky research which doesn’t yield immediate returns on jobs or economic growth. On the other hand we are seeing innovation across America being showcased by Harvard University, and we are seeing how state governments are proving that technology and innovation can deliver more, save money and create new jobs.

We are also seeing that emerging economies and BRICs are able to invest and potentially create many new jobs for their aspiring youth and populations. It will only be a question of time before the investments start producing results and these economies start becoming the hotbeds of innovation and jobs for the rest of the world.

Is there more to India’s poor global innovation ranking?

Over the last few months, The Next Silicon Valley has worked closely with various innovation and science park conferences around the world, and noticed the distinct absence of India from much of this – yet Latin America, Africa, Russia and China were well represented. This could be interpreted as meaning India is on top of innovation and doesn’t need the world to tell it how to do innovation and hence they do not need to meet their global peers.

In addition, recent reports on India as a potential ‘fallen BRIC angel’ in a Standard & Poor’s report, as well as its low ranking way below all the other BRIC countries in the global innovation index released by the business school INSEAD, seem to suggest India is losing its charm on the international stage.

But on the other hand, we keep hearing about India’s relative success in creating ‘frugal innovation’ where innovative solutions are developed at low cost or with limited resource, or by trimming all the ‘bells and whistles’ from a product or service to address a specific need at lower cost than might have been previously possible with a more complex product or solution (an example is the Chotukool fridge, a top-loading, compact and portable cooling solution weighing only 7.8kg with no compressor, but running instead on a cooling chip along with a fan similar to those used to cool computers).

And in The Next Silicon Valley,  a paper has just been published outlining a vision of innovation in telecoms, internet, media and edutainment, with examples of how some of this is already being implemented in India (for example offering a PC in the form of software as a service and wellness apps technology – see below).

In addition Sam Pitroda, adviser to the Indian Prime Minister for public information infrastructure & innovations, made a rousing speech to the Indian diaspora at TiECON 2012 in Santa Clara, CA, USA back in May of this year, calling on all the Indian technology entrepreneurs in the audience to go back to India and help in whatever way possible to ‘come back to India’ and impart their knowledge to Indian entrepreneurs and creators of the innovation ecosystem back in India. His message was that India needs all the help it could get.

And only in the last few weeks, India’s Prime Minister said that he is dedicating something like US$880 million a year towards making India an ‘innovation hub’. The Indian PM wants innovation to address the issues of poverty, health and environment rather than focusing on the needs of the rich. “Innovation can be a game changer to move from incremental change to radical change,” he said.  The government has set up a National Innovation Council headed by Sam Pitroda to draw up a national innovation road map. The government has also agreed to set aside fund of US$88 million for the India Inclusive Innovation Fund to help entrepreneurs start business based on their innovations.

The changing landscape of technology innovation and its advance in India

In a paper published in The Next Silicon Valley, Delhi-based technologist, innovator and entrepreneur Anuraj Gambhir looks at the changing global landscape of the converging world between communications, consumer and technology, and how we are going to see even more innovation in technology that will continue to change many aspects of modern life – and especially in healthcare, wellness and education. In particular he highlights some key examples of innovation in these areas taking place in his home country, India.

In the cloud computing space, in terms of context and relevance to the mass consumer, he highlights one interesting example of a highly innovative IIT-Madras spinout company called Novatium Solutions, offering computing for the next billion via PCaaS (PC-as-a-service). As a dynamic thick-thin client and using a smart combination of grid/cloud and utility computing, it is a paradigm shift transforming a computer into an appliance – it switches on in a few seconds, faster than several LCD TVs.

This new age cloud computing is highly scalable with flexible services that are easily consumable over the Internet through a low-touch, as-needed, pay-per-use business model. Shared and optimal use of scarce resources is fundamental to scaling the offering. As a family/shared computer, it is beginning a revolution in internet computing for a substantial number of segments and a large addressable population.

A simple widget approach with one click to dedicated apps makes it highly compelling and brings the ease of use necessary for mass adaption. Broadband penetration will have a much greater impact in emerging markets with solutions deployed in the cloud space that are very simple to use.  Cloud has a multi-dimensional approach to computing that takes advantage of the scale of the Internet to connect people to each other, to information, and to do computing in new ways.

Wellness is another area in which India (and other parts of the world) is seeing convergence with technology and the mobile world. With rising stress levels, the desire for harmonious living and a balanced well-being is increasingly important. Hence there is likely to be disruptive innovation in the making where mobile devices will utilize all five senses and go beyond that with the integration potential from the healthcare/fitness-sports domain and also involving subtler spiritual aspects.

Gambhir says this is being led well in India – the home of Ayurveda, spirituality, yoga, meditation, Art of Living, naturopathy, aromatherapy and more. Lives could be transformed with a ‘spa’ in people’s hands that will greatly enrich their well-being. Wirelessly enabled sensors of various types will take on the form to create whole new products and experiences. In this case networked heart rate, pulse, glucometer, mind sensors will assist with measuring stress and other health variables so that we can proactively manage well-being. There is a potential to use camera phones (via optical detection) to check blood pressure and heart health (e.g. pulse, respiration, blood-oxygen levels) that has been proven by the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program.

A glimpse of the above is already visible via the multitude of apps available mostly for iOS and Android platforms e.g. Yogalite, Medicine Buddha, iRelax, Fitness Trainer, iZen. With the worlds of augmented reality, 3D, holography coming together along with embedded sensors, very interesting mashups of apps and content are likely to come into play.

Education and healthcare are also becoming more critical as global emerging economies grow along with other industry verticals such as government and transportation playing important roles in the infrastructure development. An initiative (rather showcase) in India called Gramjyoti (meaning ‘light of the village’) put Ericsson at the forefront of demonstrating a meaningful application of 3G/HSPA mobile technology for the masses and rural (generally underserved) parts of the population. Tele-medicine (in partnership with Apollo hospital), tele-education, e-governance were exhibited with direct benefits for the rural communities in 18 towns and villages in Tamil Nadu (southern India).

Gambhir also talks about the content industry undergoing major transformations, as the key players attempt to address the most compelling needs in the market. In India for example, we are evolving from the ‘astrology, Bollywood, cricket and devotional’ content genres to a much wider selection of locally and contextually relevant vernacular content.

Multimedia in all its forms is having profound implications – such as video which itself is predicted to account for 66% of global mobile data traffic by 2014; some organizations such as Huawei predict much higher figures. A picture tells a thousand words, but moving images or video a million. It transcends the language barrier and a lot can be told by just body language and motion.

Video conferencing is making a comeback with increased significance and value for rural folks migrating to peri-urban/metros, to keep in touch with their families. A pilot in India called ‘Aamne-Saamne’ (meaning in front of each other) with a 3G operator is already revealing promising results. Video brings a mass emotional connect for communities – to see and talk with families who feel never away from home. Video is also a universal media as it can play a vital role in education specially in reaching out to the illiterate.

India’s place in global innovation

So if we are seeing all this activity, why does India rank so low in the innovation index? According to Gopichand Katragadda, managing director of General Electric’s John F. Welch Technology Center in Bangalore, “The results of the study [the global innovation index] point to the fact that, in India, the innovation ecosystem (input) is poor while the knowledge/creative output under the constraints is good. One interpretation of this is that we need better government measures on regulations, education and infrastructure to tap the demonstrated potential of talented people.”

According to Katragadda, if India does not get its act together on the innovation front, the country could lose the opportunity ‘to make this a century of Indian innovation, tapping into the brilliant technical minds of the region.’

In the past I have written about India being great at producing talent that can follow a process and follow instructions either in software or hardware or research and development – but not necessarily in creating totally new innovation. But we have seen glimpses of innovation in areas as highlighted above in cloud computing, communications, health and education. In the past, technology ministers in Indian government have openly declared that India has been good at ‘screwdriver technology’ – in other words assembling or disassembling technology, products or solutions from other parts of the world. The indicators today from studies like that created by INSEAD (the global innovation index) seem to suggest that India still has some way to go to really impact the global stage with its innovation.

Nitin Dahad, The Next Silicon Valley