Yes, new jetliner that could fly many more times as fast as the Concorde, burn only hydrogen and get you from Brussels to Sydney in four hours is on the drawing boards for the future. The plane is Reaction Engine’s A2 concept, a Mach 5 (3,400 mph) aircraft for 300 passengers. It is being funded by the European Union’s Long Term Advanced Propulsion Concepts and technologies project. If they build it the plane will produce virtually no carbon emissions. In examining the record and performance of the Concorde the engineers today say that it could not fly far enough to do trans-Pacific routes and its engines were efficient at only Mach 0.9. The gas mileage was also horrible and the passenger capacity was small as well.

The new engine, named the A2, operates on two modes—a combination of turbojet and ramjet propulsion systems. Once the plane takes off and reaches Mach 2.5 the second mode takes over and it can reach cruising speed over the Pacific of Mach 5. Joseph Schetz, a hypersonic propulsion expert at Virginia Tech when interviewed said, “there’s nothing fundamentally unsound about the A2’s plans. Whether it’s doable or not is a whole other conversation”.

The engineers will face crucial design obstacles including building heat exchangers that are reliable enough for hypersonic flights. Another huge challenge will be manufacturing hydrogen fuel on a large scale without emitting carbon in the process. Another potential problem is that the engineers had to design the craft without windows for the 300 passengers. The type they would have to use that are standard on the space shuttle would be too heavy for it and would cause construction and fuel excesses, as well. But in our foreseeable future we could very well see the A2 as the new long flight airliner of choice.

U.S. researchers at five universities have identified 1,116 unique proteins found in human saliva glands. The U. of Rochester, Scripps Research Institute, U. of Southern California, U of California San Francisco U. of California Los Angeles have all been searching for ways to diagnose disease potential in human saliva. A recent discovery they said could usher in a wave of convenient, spit-based diagnostic tests that could be done without the need for a single drop of blood being drawn. As many as 20 percent of the proteins that are found in saliva are also found in blood, according to Fred Hagen, a researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York who worked on the study. This is potentially a large field that has many clinical implications in the area of disease diagnostics.

The researchers have hopes that saliva-based tests could be used to diagnose cancer, heart disease, diabetes and a number of other conditions. Early analysis has already turned up a number of proteins with known roles in Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases; breast, colorectal and pancreatic cancer and diabetes. They collected saliva from 23 healthy men and women of several races and tested saliva samples using some form of mass spectrometry, which determines the identity of proteins based on measurements of their mass and charge. Like a genome, which lists all of the genes in an organism, a proteome is a complete map of proteins. While genes provide the instruction manual, proteins carry out the instructions by regulating cellular processes. Already there are saliva-based antibody tests to detect human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, and hepatitis infections. This protein map will provide new targets.

The researchers envision in the future that spitting in a tube and looking for a marker like a breast cancer marker could potentially be done at home and maybe eliminate some mammograms. This information has been made publicly available, and it’s expected that a number of research groups will be picking their favorite targets and developing their own tests. That is the intent — to create a wealth of data to stimulate more research and increase the chances of producing better diagnostic tests.

Many great companies of today and in the past have remained in their top respective industry segments because of INNOVATION within. There are large ones like GE and McDonalds and very small ones, maybe just like your own. There are many definitions OF INNOVATION you can choose from: “the act of introducing something new”, “the successful exploitation of new ideas”, the Peter Drucker one—“change that creates a new dimension of performance. Whichever one you choose, they will all mean the same. In economics, business and government policy,- something new - must be substantially different, not an insignificant change. In economics the change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. Innovations are intended to make someone better off, and the succession of many innovations grows the whole economy. The term innovation may refer to both radical and incremental changes to products, processes or services. The often unspoken goal of innovation is to solve a problem. An important distinction is normally made between invention and innovation. Invention is the first occurrence of an idea for a new product or process, while innovation is the first attempt to carry it out into practice. An innovation is not an innovation until someone successfully implements and makes money on an idea. Extracting the essential concept of innovation from these other closely linked notions is no easy thing.
There are a number of types of innovation that have been identified by business school teachers: Business model innovation, Marketing innovation, Organizational innnovation, Process, Product, Service, Supply chain, Substantial, Financial, Incremental Breakthrough or radical, New technological systems, Social. Eric von Hippel has identified end-user innovation as by far the most important and critical in his classic book on the subject, Sources of Innovation. Innovation by businesses is achieved in many ways, with much attention now given to formal research and development for “breakthrough innovations.” But innovations may be developed by less formal on-the-job modifications of practice, through exchange and combination of professional experience and by many other routes. Stefan Thomke of Harvard Business School has written a definitive book on the importance of experimentation. Experimentation Matters argues that every company’s ability to innovate depends on a series of experiments [successful or not], that help create new products and services or improve old ones. Once innovation occurs, innovations may be spread from the innovator to other individuals and groups. This process has been studied extensively in the scholarly literature from a variety of viewpoints, most notably in Everett Rogers’ classic book, The Diffusion of Innovations.
One driver for innovation programs in corporations is to achieve growth objectives. Companies cannot grow through cost reduction and re-engineering alone. Innovation is the key element in providing aggressive top-line growth, and for increasing bottom-line results. Systematic programs of organizational innovation are most frequently driven by: Improved quality, Creation of new markets, Extension of the product range, Reduced labour costs, Improved production processes, Reduced materials, Reduced environmental damage, Replacement of products/services, Reduced energy consumption, Conformance to regulations. There is often failure in organized company programs too before success is achieved. Some research quotes failure rates of fifty percent while other research quotes as high as ninety percent of innovation has no impact on organisational goals. So do not be discouraged. The following are common across all organizations at some stage in their life cycle. Here are the five top failure problems: Poor goal definition. Poor alignment of actions to goals, Poor participation in teams, Poor monitoring of results, Poor communication and access to information.

As Camille Ricketts of the Wall Street Journal points out, Silicon Valley is “establishing an outpost in London, bringing its laid-back office culture - including company gyms, relaxed dress and office kitchens full of snacks - with it.” (The eating habits are particularly difficult for the Brits to understand - they can’t seem to figure out why Americans are always stuffing their faces with snacks and soda in the office, yet don’t seem to have any special inclination to hang out at the local pub to have bangers and mash or a proper pint). Anyway, the flow of talent and know-how from Silicon Valley to London has been accelerating over the past 12 months:

“Just last year, about 30 California companies opened offices here, and nearly one of every three U.S. companies in London hails from California, including Apple, Google and MySpace. London also has become an attractive springboard for smaller tech companies from the state that are seeking a European toehold. In fact, if California were a country, it would rank second — after the rest of the U.S. and before Canada — as a place of origin for foreign companies setting up shop in London, according to Think London, a nonprofit consultancy that recruits foreign companies to the city.”

[image: Londonist]

According to a study of global innovation conducted by French business school INSEAD, the U.S. is the world’s most innovative nation by a large margin. Germany was a distant second, while the U.K., Japan and France rounded out the top five. The United Arab Emirates (#14) was the only country in the Top 15 that wasn’t European, Asian or North American.

The World Business/INSEAD Innovation Index 2007, researched by Professor Soumitra Dutta and sponsored by BT, ranks nations according to their innovation performance. The ranking takes into account several categories of evaluation: institutions and policies; infrastructure; human capacity; technological sophistication; and business markets and capital. The study also factors in knowledge, competitiveness and wealth. Data for comprising the ranking was based on information provided by, among others, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.

[image: We’re #1!]

Apparently, the U.S. Defense Department is growing increasingly concerned about Canadian coins embedded with tiny RFID transmitter devices that could be used to conduct double top-secret espionage operations against the U.S. In fact, the government has even sent out warnings to its defense contractors about the sinister Canadian spy coins:

“The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada. Intelligence and technology experts said such transmitters, if they exist, could be used to surreptitiously track the movements of people carrying the spy coins. The U.S. report doesn’t suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn’t describe how the Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them. Further details were secret, according to the U.S. Defense Security Service, which issued the warning to the Pentagon’s classified contractors. The government insists the incidents happened, and the risk was genuine.”

Of course, the U.S. doesn’t actually believe that our respectable neighbors to the North have anything to do with these spy coins. Instead, all clues seem to point to China, Russia or France - experts claim that all of them “actively run espionage operations inside Canada with enough sophistication to produce such technology.” The idea of Canadians spying on Americans: “Unthinkable.” At least, that’s the official word from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

[image: The Spy Who Came In From the Canadian Cold]

In Bangalore, IT industry association Nasscom showcased the best in Indian innovation for 2006, with a focus on those companies that are driving business model and process innovation within the Indian IT industry. The ten companies nominated are eligible to win one of the Nasscom innovation awards that will be presented early next year in Mumbai:

“Ten homegrown companies including Elitecore Technologies, IttiamSystems, MIEL e-security, Monsoon Multimedia, Newgen Software, Pandora Networks, Strand Life sciences, Image analyzer, and MNCs HP Labs and Intel Technology, which are working on Indian market-specific products have been shortlisted for the awards. Around 160 companies took part in the innovation face-off this year of which ten have been chosen.”

More proof, perhaps, that India is turning into an innovation powerhouse that is creating and nurturing the types of companies that are capable of taking on the likes of Intel and Hewlett-Packard.

[image: Kiran Karnik, President of NASSCOM]

Over the Thanksgiving holidays, the latest issue of the David Report (”Communication Through Product”) arrived in my e-mailbox. If you’re into innovation and design from a Swedish perspective, it’s worth a read:

“The new David Report is a pathfinder into the future, a creative hub with a humanistic approach at the intersection of design, innovation and brand communication. In addition to our bulletin we have the David Report blog where some of the sharpest minds from the creative community on a regular basis will share their thoughts…”

For example, in the current issue of the David Report, there’s an interview with the founders of the Swedish fashion brand Acne Jeans, who explain why design, innovation and creativity are “the lifeblood of the whole Acne creative collective.” Acne started in 1996 with four creative individuals who each had a different field of expertise. Over the past ten years, the original company eventually developed four individual divisions: Acne Film, Acne Digital, Acne Creative and, of course, Acne Jeans.

[image: Acne Jeans]

Dr. Dmitry Orlov, member of the RIA Novosti Expert Council, explains that Russia must become more than just an exporter of raw materials - it must become an energy superpower that is able to transform oil and gas resources into innovation. Below, he outlines a vision for building an innovation economy in Russia:

“Some experts describe the Russian economy as “an extended raw materials model”, while others claim Russia is “an energy superpower.” In my opinion, both definitions are true, but one describes the current economic structure, in which energy revenues are mostly accumulated and used, and only partly invested in long-term development. The other is an aspiration… An energy superpower differs from a raw materials supplier in that it turns oil and gas into innovation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin enthusiastically speaks about an innovation economy. In particular, he spoke about it in his spring 2006 state of the nation address. The issue is addressed even more frequently by the economic authorities, notably Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman.

The priority national projects, which Putin initiated a year ago and entrusted to First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, should pave the way to an innovation breakthrough. However, they are so far limited to roughly balanced state programs aimed at increasing allocations to social projects. The time has come to turn national projects into the main tool of the state’s industrial and infrastructure policy, or at least to add several innovation aspects to them.”

With that in mind, Orlov outlines various projects that could jump-start the innovation economy — such as establishing new business incubation and innovation zones, working to solve the “digital divide” in rural Russia, and helping the economy to become more energy-efficient. The goal is nothing less than an innovation revolution:

“When everyone has access to these communications and business zones, it will mean that we have achieved what Alvin Toffler described as a fast-paced economy, where any strategy must be agile and flexible. Mobility will become a fact of life, though young people will no longer want to move from rural areas to big cities. Just like the spread of electricity and roads in the 20th century, technology parks and the Internet can change the Russian landscape in the 21st century.”

[image: “You - have you signed up as a volunteer for the Revolution?”]

As the BBC News points out, Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis is planning to build a new $100 million research center in Shanghai:

“Novartis chief Daniel Vasella said the center was a symbol of the ever growing importance of China and our willingness to trust the government. “The level of scientific expertise in China is rising rapidly,” he said. The 410,000-sq ft center will employ 400 scientists, with construction set to start in mid-2007. The lab will combine modern drug research with traditional Chinese medicine, with an initial focus on the causes of cancer.”

The interesting part of the announcement is the “traditional Chinese medicine” angle. If you’ve ever walked around Chinatown in a city like New York, it’s impossible not to miss the amazing number of stores and kiosks specializing in traditional Chinese medicine. Presumably, we’ll now have representatives from Big Pharma poking around those stores to see if there’s anything interesting they might be able to commercialize on a global basis. Anyway, there’s a great caption to Lunanaut’s photo on Flickr:

“This is a traditional pharmacy– with baskets of dried seahorses in front, packages of preserved mushrooms and ginseng root on the shelves, and glass jars filled with odd-shaped, odd-smelling mystery items. It’s all still a mystery to me, but an integral part of local culture– all these prescriptions being filled will soon be brewed up and slurped down in the pursuit of renewed health. Makes American homeopathy look positively postmodern.”

[images: Daniel Vasella and Filling Prescriptions]