Signals of Change

Internet Ads: A Hindrance or a Help? SoC285

Following Google's success with advertising on the Internet, ads are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Will the new advertising models make ads a help or merely more intrusive?

The Evolving Health-Care Ecosystem SoC286

The increasingly complex interplay of players and forces in the health-care industry constitutes a web of influence that resembles a natural ecosystem more than it does the mass market of a traditional service industry. A new ecosystem of technologies, players, and business models is emerging with potential opportunities for innovation, new business opportunities, and disruptive threats for traditional players.

Alternative Currencies SoC287

Historically, people have used a wide variety of methods for exchanging value—some finding wider acceptance than others. Will computing technology make the exchange of value among currencies other than government-sponsored currencies easier, leading to a proliferation of alternative currencies?

Biometrics as a Product Feature SoC288

Biometrics is on the verge of becoming a more common product feature. Biometrics will always have a place in security applications, but increasingly product developers are implementing the technology in ways that promise benefits other than security, such as ease of use and convenience.

Cleansing Technologies SoC289

Scan™ has identified several innovative technological capabilities that represent the emergence of novel and potentially disruptive "cleansing" solutions that can effectively remove dangerous pathogens across a range of health, environmental, and natural-resource applications. These solutions offer considerable advantages over conventional solutions.

Distributed or Consolidated Computing? SoC290

Google and Microsoft would like to consolidate the world's computing processes onto their massive server farms. But home-entertainment centers and video-game machines now have storage and processing capabilities that people once associated with national research labs and that enable widely distributed computing processes. Which model is right for what products?

Insights

Crucial Factors Influencing RFID Technology's Future D08-2566

This study provides an example, using radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies, of how to analyze the environment for emerging technologies from a technological, business, and market perspective. The market potential for emerging technologies is fairly difficult to gauge because markets haven't solidified, technologies are still advancing and changing rapidly, and business models haven't gelled. Emerging technologies create market opportunities by enabling improved or novel applications. Despite any particular technology's potential benefits, a wide range of factors such as legislative actions, consumer attitudes, and competitive forces can disrupt the development of the market for an emerging technology. Without an appropriate methodology to analyze the market emergence, technology developers can find it next to impossible to develop strategies for targeting potential markets, and users will be unable to develop a plan to implement the emerging technology. This study provides guidance to address implementation issues in an uncertain environment using the example of RFID technology and factors affecting this technology. Author: Martin Schwirn. 19 pages.

Scan™ Meeting Digest: 23 January 2008 Meeting D08-2567

This document is a digest of the Scan™ abstract clusters that participants in the 23 January 2008 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 January meeting include new social-care models, monetization of Web networks, consumer personomics, virtual-world traction, personal databanking-management infrastructure, mind the mind, adaptive science, focused islands of innovation, care automation, biobotics, and surreptitious diagnosis. Compiler: Martin Schwirn. 36 pages.

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 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
• 21 January 2009 at 9:00 am.

Please contact your SRIC-BI (now SBI) marketing representative to schedule participation in any of the Scan Abstract Meetings.