PARC Innovations Update (2010 #1)

This is the archive entry for our e-mail newsletter, PARC Innovations Update. [subscribe]

• The changing model: Moving technologies from research to applications
• Shift Happens (at PARC): The question is, how?
• Energy Innovation Summit
• Trends that resonate: cleantech; networking; context-aware ubiquitous computing/ social web; printed electronics; ethnography
• PARC In the News: 2020 vision; top picks from the summit; startup to save data centers power; sound waves to save power consumption; more

Links are not provided for older items in the archive.

The changing model: Moving technologies from research to applications

What has to change in the lab-to-market model when there is disruptive change in technologies or markets?  While typical lab-to-market models (which use primarily internal resources) can respond well to incremental changes or rapid development cycles, they do NOT handle major disruptions in markets or technologies because too many pieces of the ecosystem have to change simultaneously. We share some lessons learned for addressing the challenges raised by disrupted lab-to-market ecosystems in this presentation delivered at the recent 2010 Flexible Electronics & Displays Conference. The presentation includes recommendations such as creating an early warning system, bringing in outside expertise/ open innovation partners, and positioning oneself flexibly (okay, pun intended) for near- and long-term opportunities. More…

Technology scouting has been happening for many years. Yet the models for how best to find and secure opportunities are still emerging as companies increasingly look outside for options. Scope is a particularly tricky thing: if a scouting team’s mandate is too narrow, they’re likely to miss valuable options; but if it’s too broad, they end up exploring too many options that are never going to fly. How should a company assess its organizational capacity to absorb outside options, define its time horizon for expected impact, and identify the technical needs it is scouting for? More…

Shift Happens (at PARC): The question is, how?

We recently hosted a private visit for TTI/Vanguard’s “Shifts Happen” conference in San Francisco – a “part classroom, part think-tank, part laboratory” forum for senior-level executives that links strategic technology planning to business success. Through a rotating demo-tour, PARC shared technologies that address network security at the content level; hydrodynamic separation for clean water; contextually relevant information delivery; low-cost and flexible form factors for printed electronics; digital x-ray imaging for medical applications; and tools for visualizing and making sense of information. Attendees were predominantly looking for simple answers or replicable formulas to some pretty fundamental challenges: How do we do what we do? How do we do it differently than before? How do we make the right choices? There’s no single formula, but… More…

Energy Innovation Summit

The inaugural ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit (March 1-3 in Washington, D.C.) aimed to bring together key players to spur the networks that will “bring about the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies, in the way the U.S. has led previous revolutions in life sciences and information technology”. Including participants such as VCs, large corporations, scientific researchers, and policymakers/government officials, the conference featured keynotes by DOE Secretary Steven Chu, GE CEO Jeff Immelt, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers’ John Doerr, members of Congress, and others. As an ARPA-E award finalist, PARC shared these technologies at the Transformational Technology Showcase: high-efficiency thermoacoustic cooling; high energy-density fuel cell systems; carbon-neutral liquid fuel; high-speed printing technologies for Si PV wafer processing; coextrusion printing of battery and fuel cell electrodes; fast demand response for power delivery; and hydrodynamic separation for clean water. More…

Trends that resonate

The early part of this year was crowded with forecasts about technology trends. Here, we offer some pointers to resources or scientist viewpoints on the trends that resonate most with PARC work…Cleantech…Networking, security, cloud…Context-awareness, ubiquitous computing, & social web…Printed and flexible electronics…Ethnography

PARC In the News