MP3 Paul Zak tells us about oxytocin, a chemical messenger that accounts for why some people are generous, trustworthy, and faithful and others aren’t. His book The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity …
Read the full story »PayPal e-commerce payment business plans to let shoppers pay with its service in more than 2,000 Home Depot stores by March, part of an effort to win away customers from credit-card companies. The company began …
Scientists who created a more deadly strain of bird flu have temporarily stopped their research amid fears it could be used by bioterrorists. In a letter published in Science and Nature, the teams call for …
Canadian scientists are developing a robot that mimics the human face’s expressions and human hand’s tactile processes, which they say will be useful in areas like nursing, nuclear plant maintenance, and explosive device disposal. It …
In the currently hot research area known as ‘epigenetics’, researchers are discovering that offspring inherit much more from their parents than just their genes. Individuals also inherit detailed instructions on how to use the genetic …
Ama Dablam – “Anecdotal reports, both published and from our guides, suggest that snowfall amounts at higher elevations between November and January have decreased significantly over recent years, and that the monsoon season, normally between …
Debabrata (Debu) Talukdar, associate professor of marketing in the University at Buffalo School of Management, and Dinesh K. Gauri, PhD ’07, assistant professor of marketing in Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management, compared survey data …
The General’s Windows of Opportunity Project was inspired by psychological studies that found passengers often feel disconnected from their environment. The goal is to create interactive displays that are, according to GM, “capable of stimulating …
As the global economic crisis enters its fourth excruciating year, just about everybody who can be blamed for the downturn has been blamed. Irresponsible bankers. Greedy corporate executives. Incompetent regulators. Bickering politicians. Underpaid Chinese workers. …
As physicists work toward completing a theory of the universe and biologists unravel the molecular complexity of life, a glaring incompleteness in this scientific vision becomes apparent. The “Theory of Everything” that appears to be …
Robert Safian – “DJ Patil, 37, is an expert in chaos theory who in a very short time has worked for the Defense Department, eBay, LinkedIn, Silicon Valley venture firm Greylock Partners, and a few …
Our economy is slowly but surely heeding the signal that carbon is the new watchword. During the past few years, a steady stream of so-called “biobased” products have been making their way to retail shelves …
China is filling a lending vacuum in Asia as European banks limp home to preserve capital, and is making sure loans have spin-off benefits for Chinese manufacturers and exporters, even at the expense of the …
A shale-driven glut of natural gas has cut electricity prices for the U.S. power industry by 50 percent and reduced investment in costlier sources of energy. With abundant new supplies of gas making it the …
The United States is becoming less economically competitive versus other nations, with political gridlock and a weak primary education system seen as the main drag, according to a survey released on Wednesday. In particular, the …
Bruno Aziza – “I think what we’ve witnessed over the last 10 years is disintermediation. The music industry went from selling physical albums, to selling tracks, to selling subscriptions. The book industry went from …
Scientists in Zurich have created the world’s smallest 3D map – of the world. IBM’s perfectly formed ‘nano-world’, has now been accepted by the Guinness World Record organisation. The map measures a miniscule 22 by …
On the face of things, Barack Obama’s decision to reject the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline is quite a significant shift for a president who for the last year at least has seemed reluctant to …
A team of scientists from Bio Architecture Lab (BAL), has developed breakthrough technology that helps to further enable the wide-scale use of seaweed (macroalgae) as a feedstock for advanced biofuels and renewable chemical production. The …
The first secure quantum computer has been made by combining entanglement, a bizarre property of tiny particles, with the power of apparent randomness. The technique is similar to quantum cryptography, which guarantees the secrecy of …
A new update to Google Maps in the UK lets travelers find the quickest route between railway stations in the UK – offering timetables for 170,000 routes, plus bus connections between them. The update, live …
At Apple’s New York education event, the technology giant has unveiled a new do-it-yourself iBooks Author app which lets anyone create rich, visual books. The books can have galleries of pictures, video, interactive images and …
Biodiversity is declining rapidly throughout the world. The challenges of conserving the world’s species are perhaps even larger than mitigating the negative effects of global climate change. Dealing with the biodiversity crisis requires political will …
President Barack Obama is trying to encourage U.S. companies not to send work overseas . This might not be as hard a job as it seems for some types of IT work. A number of …
A new report by the Department of Energy says that waves off California’s 1,100-mile coastline could generate more than 140 terawatt hours of electricity a year — enough to power 14 million homes — if …
Today’s constantly changing workplace challenges us to continually update our skills, keep abreast of trends on a global scale, and reinvent ourselves to remain successful. Like many other aspects of life, there is a good …
Visitors to the sprawling Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., often grab one of the fold-up maps available at the entrances to the four-story, city-block-size store. Without one, locating a particular genre can be “daunting,” says …
The goal of strategy is to choose the course of action that ensures success and survival. In a world of rapidly accelerating change, today's strategy quickly becomes obsolete. We must be ever more aware of the future we are planning for, since that future will quickly be upon us. Strategic foresight has a serious intent: to improve our understanding of the range of possible futures, and to use that understanding to inform action.
Innovation Watch offers a continuous scan of trends and emerging futures, and explores the question, "What's next?" Results are shared here, and are provided as RSS feeds.
David Forrest helps businesses, governments, and other organizations develop strategies for a radically different future. You can reach him by email here
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