Scan Monthly No. 039May 2006 |
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 Download this Scan™ Monthly (PDF) |
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Signals of Change
Media Bits and Pieces
SoC171
Some people call the phenomenon micro media. The term describes a new, short form factor for content that has been showing up in variety of media for a while. Visual media such as videos are the latest to succumb to the vortex of chopping, slicing, and dicing, with very short segments of video material becoming extremely popular on the Web.
Middle-Class Downshift
SoC172
Companies that are building their strategic plans based on the assumption of continued growth in size and purchasing power of the middle class in the United States or Japan might profit from consideration of an additional scenario or two.
Multisensory Landscapes
SoC173
People rarely use any one sense in isolation. On the basis of all our senses, we typically develop a sensory landscape of what we experience. A few innovative companies are now trying to address multiple senses in parallel, essentially creating multisensory landscapes for the user.
Synthetic Life
SoC174
A loose community of life-science researchers is using the open-source code of living organisms to devise living solutions to many of the world's industrial problems and sustainability challenges. Researchers intend not simply to enhance or re-create current life forms but to develop synthetic life forms de novo—that is, to develop organisms completely different from those in nature.
Evolving Corporate Cognition
SoC175
Intense competition and the constant need for innovation are driving companies to implement new modes of organizational thinking. Developing and tapping creativity and new ideas through traditional, hierarchical organizational models is becoming increasingly cumbersome and impractical in today's fast-paced commercial environment.
Fast and Affordable Genetic Profiles
SoC176
A number of start-up companies are now developing a new generation of sequencing-technology platforms that promise to challenge the traditional sequencing method in cost and process efficiency. This new generation of sequencing technologies seeks to provide bench-top sequencing capabilities that can sequence a human genome for $100 000. The technology's advocates hope eventually to drive the cost as low as $1000.
Insights
| Flexible Displays: Just around the Bend | View full summary |
| D06-2528 | Download this Insight |
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Flexible displays have captured the interest of industry and consumers alike, inspiring breathless discussions of roll-up television screens, electronic wallpaper, and "communicating clothing." No devices that incorporate flexible displays are in commercial production at present, but several manufacturers have produced flexible-display prototypes and have schedules to commercialize the technology. This study describes upcoming offerings from Philips Polymer Vision (Eindhoven, Netherlands), Citizen Watch Co. Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan), and Seiko Epson Corporation (Nagano, Japan). All these companies' products use electrophoretic front planes, but the study also describes alternatives such as electrochromic, liquid-crystal, and organic light-emitting–diode front-plane technologies as well as back-plane technologies under development such as inorganic thin-film transistors, organic thin-film transistors, and electromechanical switches. Author: Marifaith Hackett. 13 pages. |
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| Scan™ Meeting Digest: 19 April 2006 Meeting | View full summary |
| D06-2529 | Download this Insight |
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This document is a digest of the Scan™ abstract clusters that participants in the 19 April 2006 Scan meeting identified. The digest includes a description of the Scan process for people who have never attended a Scan meeting, a list of the 23 clusters that meeting participants identified, and a one-page description of each cluster's premise and supporting abstracts. The document has active links that allow the reader to access the supporting abstracts for each cluster in Scan's online abstract database. The document also has links to previously published Scan documents relating to the particular cluster. Clusters of abstracts for this April 2006 meeting include business-model and service innovations, media microchunks, biogenerics, the triumph of place, polarized society, new Chinese initiatives, infrastructures for robots, sensor con-fusion, and multisensory landscapes. Compiler: Martin Schwirn. 34 pages. |
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Calendar
Scan™ Abstract Meetings
Scan abstract meetings (in which SRIC-BI [now SBI] staff participate in a free-form discussion of current Scan abstracts) are open for client observation/participation on:
- 19 July 2006 at 9:00 am
- 20 September 2006 at 9:00 am
- 18 October 2006 at 9:00 am
- 24 January 2007 at 9:00 am
- 21 March 2007 at 9:00 am
- 23 May 2007 at 9:00 am.