Are You Ready for A Future of Crises? NYU Report Says No

A provocative new report from NYU argues that the vast bulk of US government agencies, non-governmental organizations and businesses are not ready to respond to a growing array and frequency of crises. The study, titled Predicting Organizational Response to Crisis: Perspectives and Practices toward a Pathway to Preparedness (holy alliteration Batman!), reports on a telephone survey of 468 organizational leaders conducted for NYU by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.

Corporate Incubation: Big Pharma's Bold Move

I've been meaning to write about this for a few months now, but the news this week about GlaxoSmithKline's cutbacks in internal R&D (I'll post something about this later in the week) brought me back to a March 2008 piece in Nature Biotechnology about the establishment of corporate biotech incubators at Biogen and Pfizer. (Nature Biotechnology, "Start-ups weigh benefits of corporate incubators", March 2008)

Does Corporate Venture Investing Work?

One of my clients is a large global company trying to beef up its ability to source core innovations that go beyond new combinations and packaging - basic science and technology that will help it deliver new value over a sustained period.

Opening up their innovation process is clearly an important step, and as we have explored many of the potential vehicles for building a more networked R&D model, the idea of a venture investing fund has moved to the forefront of my thinking. If, as open innovation holds, many of the best ideas are outside the company, I can't think of a more aggressive way to scan, secure and inject them into an existing company.

But as the Wall Street Journal reports on Google's efforts in the area, corporate venture funds have a lot of inherent problems and a mixed record.

Will Open Science Make It Even Harder to Build Science Communities in China?

A pair of reports last week suggest that China's science community, while thriving, still has a long way to go before it becomes the kind of knowledge-circulating system needed to support world-class technical innovation.

Labmeeting.com - Distributed Lab Management

Interesting new startup that is building tools for managing lab documents in a distributed fashion via the web. One of their pitches is "manage your lab", that is - sharing protocols and data.

An Arab Proverb About Forecasting

Working my way through Kishore Mahbubani's recent book, "The New Asian Hemisphere", and came upon this great Arab proverb on the topic of forecasting:

He who speaks about the future lies, even when he tells the truth.

At IFTF, there is a broad understanding based on experience, that no one can predict the future. But we rarely say that no one should... perhaps we need to be as aggressive about that as these ancient sages.

The Ephemeral Web

At its heart, Web 2.0 is about data and sociality. Data, because it thrives on content that's machine readable therefore easily re-purposeable (think mashups), and social because human networks and informal categorization systems (tag-based taxonomies or "folksonomies") provide much of the metadata that helps up navigate, filter and organize it.

Telepresence as a Driver for Presence

Last year, I gave a talk at a major design expo on the future of presence. I argued that we need to be keenly aware of the historical relationship between new communications technologies and long-distance travel. Right now, the coincidence of high-definition, immersive videoconferencing and high fuel prices has many people excited about the potential for substituting telepresence for travel.

Preparing India's Workforce for R&D Offshoring

The Kauffman Foundation released a study this week, How The Disciple Became The Guru (summary, full report) that offers an inside look at how Indian firms are preparing their workforce to serve global hub for offshore and outsourced R&D in Bangalore and other cities.

Written from a business perspective, the report is essential reading for anyone interested in economic development. While not every country has the advantages India does, the model that seems to be working there - aggressive recruitment, workforce development, and retention - is certainly portable. You can't make companies do that, but this report offers compelling evidence that massive investment in human capital can be done quickly, and with sustained returns.

McKinsey's Pitch for a More Compact Urban China

The McKinsey Global Institute has just published a major report outlining four potential scenarios for urbanization in China.