Signals of Change

Economies in Reverse Gear SoC309

Recent rises in fuel prices are sufficient to require dramatic redesign of business models, rethinking of corporate strategies, and restructuring of fundamental business and social infrastructures. Corporations are facing economic conditions and dynamics that are unfamiliar territory and that will require dramatically new management skills and thinking.

The Next Round of Crowdsourcing SoC310

The concept of crowdsourcing is evolving, expanding, and seeing application in a wide range of areas that once appeared for various reasons to be immune to such an open approach.

Clothing for Wellness and Health Care SoC311

Clothing is an attractive platform for delivering wellness and health-care applications. Specialized fabrics are emerging to enable a broad range of applications that include diagnostics, treatment, monitoring, and lifestyle enhancement.

Engineering Affective Consumer Experiences SoC312

In order to differentiate products and build strong connections with users, companies and their product developers are exploring affective or emotional components in products and services that go well beyond the traditional branding appeal to consumer emotions.

Reality Mining and the DataTurbine SoC313

Sensors and computer networks are helping experts mine huge amounts of data from the real world for scientific, business, and social applications. The U.S. National Science Foundation is funding the DataTurbine Initiative to develop tools for collecting, managing, and analyzing such data.

Quickening Communication SoC314

New ways of communicating and sharing information, such as using text messaging and wikis, focus on brevity and speed. Are the new forms more efficient than traditional forms? How companies adopt or adapt to the new forms will shape their corporate cultures.

Insights

Financial Pressures on the Middle Class D08-2574

This study focuses on emerging financial pressures that are influencing large segments of populations, including the middle class in many advanced economies, and having a direct effect on consumption patterns and volumes. These changes in consumption could have a negative impact on companies with business models that depend on continued growth of the middle class. The traditional middle class in many countries is increasingly facing economic headwinds that may shift the distribution of financial resources in a way that favors business models that address two distinct markets (economy and luxury) rather than a mass market. A financial squeeze of the middle class will have a direct and dramatic effect on entire countries' economic activities and thus on the health of companies. This study identifies a number of financial considerations and signals of change that will provide food for thought about a company's existing business models and potential business opportunities to allow and encourage flexibility in corporate strategy and planning processes. Author: Martin Schwirn. 12 pages.

Scan™ Meeting Digest: 21 May 2008 Meeting D08-2575

This document is a digest of the Scan™ abstract clusters that participants in the 21 May 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 May meeting include the advantages of having to opt out, omnipotent cell phones, suburban myth, unfulfilling technologies, remote medicine is coming, sensors everywhere, toys of the trade, popular performance enhancements, dumb and dumber, and it's all in your head. Compiler: Aster Peng. 31 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:

• 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
• 20 May 2009 at 9:00 am.

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