Scan Monthly No. 056October 2007 |
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Signals of Change
Mixed Reality's Tipping Point
SoC267
Mixed or augmented realities involve the merging of real-world and digital-world objects to create a new communication or information environment that is neither completely virtual nor entirely in the real world. Recent initiatives to create mixed realities remain fairly primitive, but advances in computer interfaces, software, and hardware are showing synergies that portend an exponential speeding up of the arrival of sophisticated mixed realities.
Flexibility and Risk in Globalized Manufacturing
SoC268
Flexibility is an absolute imperative in today's globalized manufacturing environment. But that required flexibility brings with it new risks and the need for new approaches to risk management.
Decoding Biology
SoC269
Combine the dramatic changes currently emerging in our understanding of biology with the fact that many of humanity's most pressing current problems are biological in nature, and one concludes that we are likely approaching an inflection point in which the new truths that we discover in biology will generate revolutionary new paths to solutions.
The Recipe for Innovation
SoC270
Innovation is rapidly becoming the single most important means of establishing competitive advantage for both companies and countries, which means that even marginal advances in understanding the inscrutable process can provide worthwhile returns.
People Power: Immigration and Economic Health
SoC271
In a world of more than 6.6 billion people, a surprising number of cities, regions, and even countries are searching for more people. Those social entities that find the right people and integrate them effectively are seeing payoffs in economic prosperity and political stability.
Private Enterprise, Public Policy
SoC272
Interesting examples are turning up of corporate initiatives that look and act more like public policy and regulatory initiatives than corporate ones. In the search for competitive advantage, companies are having to extend their return-on-investment calculations (and influence) to parts of the value chain that they once considered uncontrollable externalities.
Insights
| The Business Side of Emotions | View full summary |
| D07-2560 | Download this Insight |
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Emotions remain a mysterious construct in spite of recent advances in neuroscience and psychology. Although everyone has an intuitive ability to deal with emotions, quantifying them and their effects for research purposes continues to present difficulties. Therefore, actionable insights are rare, and a particularly intuitive marketer's hunch remains one of the best ways to develop strategies that build on emotions. During the past decade, however, long-held suppositions have been giving way to new ways of thinking about rationality, emotions, and consumer behavior. Ever since psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 for his insights into prospect theory and behavioral economics, which appear inconsistent with standard theories of consumer economic rationality, the topic has received much attention. Continuing research and novel market approaches highlight emotion's importance for market behavior. This study describes research results and provides examples of how companies are trying to leverage consumers' emotions. Author: Martin Schwirn. 12 pages. |
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| Scan Meeting Digest: 19 September 2007 Meeting | View full summary |
| D07-2561 | Download this Insight |
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This document is a digest of the Scan abstract clusters that participants in the 19 September 2007 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 September meeting include interactive data, secondary innovation, sensory design, being borgified, the privacy-efficiency-security trade-off, mixed reality interfaces, mixed-reality hardware, mixed-reality software, frugal youth, brainware, illusion-delusion technologies, portion control, the ultimate cocreation platform, ubiquitous green tracking, and saving energy on a "small" scale. 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:
- 23 January 2008 at 9:00 am
- 19 March 2008 at 9:00 am
- 21 May 2008 at 9:00 am
- 23 July 2008 at 9:00 am
- 17 September 2008 at 9:00 am
- 22 October 2008 at 9:00 am.