Scan Monthly No. 042August 2006 |
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Signals of Change
Space-Based Commerce
SoC189
The commercial race to space is increasingly real, with companies sporting names such as Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and Interorbital Systems addressing a broad range of commercial space opportunities. Rapid and dramatic technology developments in energy, transport, materials, and communications infrastructures are likely to emerge from both commercial and government initiatives.
The Power of Context
SoC190
Careful consideration of the context in which consumers use any product or service has become increasingly important in identifying potential innovations that companies can use to differentiate their products in order to retain customers or win new ones from competitors.
Rethinking the Waste Stream
SoC191
Signs are emerging that mining the human waste stream is becoming an economically viable alternative to mining the earth. Resource and raw-material economics are not only causing companies to reconsider landfills as resources, but are also leading countries and regions to update the ways they deal with waste of all kinds.
The Emergence of "Crowdsourcing"
SoC192
New datapoints indicate that companies are now using "crowdsourcing" to tap massive talent pools and build fluid arrangements between the company and cocreators. Crowdsourcing is the process of outsourcing a task to a large, relatively undifferentiated group of people—a crowd—and selectively harvesting the results.
A Tale of Three Cities
SoC193
In the year 2007, more people will live in cities than in the countryside. Recent Scan™ abstracts suggest three very different scenarios for cities of the future, none of them mutually exclusive. The three scenarios are rosy (the ecopolis), utilitarian (the aerotropolis), and grim (the squatters' domain).
Revisiting Network Effects
SoC194
Metcalfe's law posits that the value of a communications network grows quadratically as new users join the network, creating the vaunted network effects that dot-com companies were always after. Some network experts are saying, "not so fast." They want to factor in negative network effects like spam, viruses, and malware.
Insights
| Online Asia | View full summary |
| D06-2534 | Download this Insight |
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In the past year, Scan™ has seen a significant number of datapoints having to do with the rapid expansion of Internet use in Asia. The expansion covers all aspects of Internet use, including blogging, online gaming, mobile applications, videos, and virtual environments. Internet activity in Asia includes some of the most leading-edge online applications in the world, as well as very rudimentary applications for poor, rural populations. This study reviews Internet developments in Asia in the past year and their implications for companies and governments. Author: Thomas M. McKenna. 7 pages. |
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| Scan™ Meeting Digest: 19 July 2006 Meeting | View full summary |
| D06-2535 | Download this Insight |
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This document is a digest of the Scan™ abstract clusters that participants in the 19 July 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 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 July meeting include humans as complex systems, landfills as the resource of tomorrow, the limits of crowdsourcing, radio days again, cluelessness and the greater complexity, give me that old time rock and roll, consumer electronics for health care, light up with LEDs and OLEDs, sleep anomalies, and the environmental consensus was wrong. Compiler: Martin Schwirn. 39 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:
- 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
- 18 July 2007 at 9:00 am.