Signals of Change

GPS: The Emerging Business-Model Enabler SoC291

GPS capabilities on cell phones will become a formidable business-model enabler. Location data will be a tag to which sophisticated location-based services will attach a wide range of parameters, associated data, and services.

The Science of Positive Experience SoC292

The relatively new field of positive psychology recognizes that both positive and negative emotions have beneficial roles to play in helping people lead happier and fuller lives. The field seeks to bring some scientific rigor to the study of human happiness, emotional states, and well-being, in the hope that such efforts will enable the management and leveraging of positive experience and behavior for increased health and happiness.

Regional Competition for Talent SoC293

Talent and creativity are the currency of innovation and GDP growth. Competition between countries, regions, and even cities is heating up to attract talent that can generate growth, economic prosperity, and tax dollars. Policy makers and strategic planners are trying to identify what attracts talent and how to develop an environment conducive to growing and maintaining the creative class.

DNA: The Engineering Tool Kit SoC294

Researchers are beginning to look at DNA in a new light. Biological components such as DNA will soon see use as fabrication templates or structural components in the design and creation of synthetic structures, devices, and life forms.

Privacy Trade-Offs SoC295

Privacy-related policies, technologies, and applications always present trade-offs involving a delicate balance. The temptation to tip the balance in favor of short-term returns is always strong, but the long-term cost in consumer confidence can be high.

Accommodating Seniors SoC296

The fact that retiring seniors will bring dramatic change to societies throughout the world is beyond dispute. We are now seeing first signs of some of the problems that will arise and even first signs of potential solutions for those problems.

Insights

Opportunities and Their Success Factors for RFID Technology D08-2568

This study examines 12 opportunity areas for radio-frequency-identification (RFID) technologies and discusses the factors and developments that will help determine whether commercial initiatives succeed or fail. It presents a methodology for identifying and analyzing the various kinds of factors and developments that companies need to consider in the process of developing and taking products to market (technology providers) and in the process of implementing the technologies in business processes (technology users). The author categorizes these influential factors into categories of signposts, milestones, and a mix of the two. Signposts are factors and developments—such as regulations and public opinion—that players outside the RFID industry control. Milestones are the factors and developments—such as technology advances—directly under the control of players in the RFID industry. The interdependent dynamics that occur when the influence of signposts and milestones mix represent external and industry developments that have mutual influence. Author: Martin Schwirn. 12 pages.

Scan™ Meeting Digest: 20 February 2008 Meeting D08-2569

This document is a digest of the Scan™ abstract clusters that participants in the 20 February 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 February meeting include pay-for-performance, implications of second incomes, the evolution of a health-care ecosystem, convergence of media, the death of packaged media, the rise of state capitalism, the rise and fall of social networks, supertechnology for surveillance and detection, and creative counterintuition. Compilers: Martin Schwirn, Carl Telford. 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:

• 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
• 18 March 2009 at 9:00 am.

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