Jim opened a conference of leading financial, banking and investment professionals, at an event attended by the Governor, Mr. Stuart Jack, CVO, as well as the majority of Cabinet members of the British Territory.
Jim’s talk focused on the rapid pace of change with the provision of professional and financial services, and the innovation challenges that the small island-nation should pursue in the era of rapid consolidation of global wealth into the
Well, for one thing, when light stops, velocity picks up!
A few weeks ago, I keynoted a crowd of 3,000 telecom professionals in Florida. One of the comments I made was this: when it comes to the velocity of change in the “big media universe,” we can only expect that the bandwidth and computing power in our lives will become ever more plentiful, and ever faster, because scientists are figuring out how to slow light to a crawl.
That’s important, because it migrates us from a world of “electronics based computing” to “photonics computing.” The difference in speed, capacity, processing power and everything else will be simply staggering. Think optical-chips based on light, not today’s model-T’s based on electrons.
This trend will make the electronic computers of today look like Cro-Magnon tools compared to the optical computers of tomorrow.
Last week, I caught an article in which the folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) predicted that optical chips will be here within 5 years
A year ago, at another telecom event in Florida, I made the then bold prediction that as scientists learn to stop light, we’ll see bandwidth improvements of a huge degree. Some industry folks in the room were taken aback: it’s kind of interesting to read the article that was printed at the time (found below.)
It’s awful nice to see predictions of the past become mainstream quicker than you might have expected!
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Optical Futures: Another ET Look at Light
24 January 2006
CT’s Pipeline
Among the many intriguing observations and reports shared by the SCTE Conference on Emerging Technologies keynoter Jim Carroll in Tampa two weeks ago was the progress that optical researchers were making on the question of how to slow down light.
In our ET report in last week’s Pipeline, we’d written on how it might have been interesting to have one of the industry’s many optical experts comment on “when, where and how this could happen.” Since then, we’ve heard back from the futurist Carroll and checked in with one of those experts.
“The slowing of light is nothing new,” Carroll wrote, referring to New York Times article from last November that cited Harvard researchers who in 1999 who were able to slow light drastically and two years later were able to bring light to a stop.
Of most interest to Carroll about this science project, which already was well under way six years ago, is its new scale. Whereas the Harvard researchers required a roomful of equipment, according to the Times, IBM scientists now have created a tiny silicon device to slow down light from its usual 186,000 miles per second to 600 miles per second–or to about 0.3 percent of ordinary light speed.
“Heck, I could have a little light-stop-chip in my laptop some time in the future, plug into my optical-wall-plug, and access the yottabit universe,” Carroll wrote.
There’s no quibbling with ability of a wide-ranging, connect-the-dots futurist such as Carroll in getting those (trade journalists included) who may be stuck in a particular niche to drop the blinders and look around, and ahead. His talk certainly was an effective way to jolt ET attendees into a forward- leaning frame of mind.
New optical thinking
For input from one of the industry’s optical experts, we turned to OpVista CTO Dr. Winston Way, who noted up front how thinking about optical networking already is undergoing a shift.
“Before, people only thought that you could manage packets, frames or bytes, but I think right now people have just started to think about the fact that light, or colors, can be managed also,” Way said. One of OpVista’s calling cards is its novel approach to reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs).
As for not simply managing, but arresting lightwaves, Way said: “I think that is really out-of-the-box thinking. It’s interesting. Slow it down so you can see what’s inside, then let it go again.”
Way said this project reminded him of work done at AT&T Bell Labs in the late 1980s and early 1990s on optical signal processing, which sidestepped the physical limitations of the electronics domain. “I’m not sure it’s practical today,” he said.
What Carroll was talking about, of course, was not today but tomorrow, or rather the day or year (or decade?) after. “I don’t make my stuff up,” Carroll wrote. “The future surrounds us, is being developed all around us and all the (technologies) that people work on eventually come into our lives. I just think…that it is going to come into our lives quicker than we might think.”
I spoke in November in Iowa to a group of energy cooperatives, providing some different insight into the future of energy supply in terms of not what’s happening today, but in terms of “what comes later” — say, five, ten or fifteen years out.
Likewise, I’ll be speaking to the Healthcare Industry Distributors Association at the end of the month. Many of the folks in the room will be focused on the short term trends that surround them; they won’t be thinking about the massive transformation that is really going to impact their industry over the longer term.
That’s the problem that people usually have when they try to figure out the future. They tend to focus on the the small, incidental, day-to-day, one-to-two-to-five year trends that they can see around them.
I take my time looking for the “big transformations” – the sweeping, massive, significant types of change that causes everyone to sit back twenty years later and ask, “Wow! Where did that come from?”
And in the world of health care and energy, that involves phrases such “preventative medicine” and “bio-refineries:” that’s where you’ll really find the future.
Consider, for example, the world of health care and life sciences. Certainly everyone is aware that current trends indicate that the challenges are vast and the opportunities are significant. There’s a looming shortage of skilled workers, dramatic rates of discovery of new knowledge, the rapid emergence of new medical methodologies, and other forms of significant change.
And yet, with everyone focused on these issues, most people are missing the big, long range transformation that is underway: we are in the midst of a fundamental and significant shift in healthcare philosophy and medical research that makes every other trend within this industry pale in comparison. We’re rapidly moving from a world in which we “react” to disease and illness after it has happened, to one in which we will be doing far more in advance to “prevent” specific health care problems from occurring in the first place.
That’s one of the trends I’ve covered in my FUTURE MEDICINE Prescriptions for 21st Century Healthcare trends summary.
The driver for this massive change is the emergence of extremely specialized and highly personalized medical treatments based upon your own particular DNA. Preventative medicine has already become a part of the health care system: for example, a simple pap smear test has resulted in a 70% reduction in the date rate from this disease. Yet, it is estimated that clinical diagnostic spending of this type makes up only 1% of global health expenditures.
DNA “sequencing” is set to change that, as it allows researchers to examine an individuals DNA, and determine their risk for developing particular diseases or medical problems. Already, a test has been developed that examines a few hundred strands of DNA, from which a prediction can be made of your risk of developing cystic fibrosis. The test accurately identifies the unique DNA strand in 88% of Caucasian CF and 69% of African Americans. Expect the degree of accuracy to only continue to improve in coming years.
That’s but one example of a “deep transformation change” that gets little attention. Consider another critical industry: energy supplies.
In the last few years, we have certainly seen a lot of price volatility as a result of the unexpected, such as Hurricane Katrina, rapid new demand growth from Asia, and commodity market fluctuations often driven by speculation. One result of volatility has been a renewed interest in bio-fuels, and in particular, the opportunity that exists from the creation of ethanol from corn and other crops. Ethanol has grown quickly to become a rather significant industry; and yet, what we are seeing today involves only baby steps.
The big transformation that is occurring involves a rapid changeover from “first stage” bio-energy companies to “second stage” bio-refinery companies.
The first stage consists primarily of agricultural companies, using their insight into the science of agriculture to develop production systems that convert grain to ethanol. The second group are the big oil companies, who are bringing to the industry their insight into how to build big, production oriented, cracking and distillery methodologies to the world of ethanol. In doing so, they will be transforming a high velocity industry into an faster and more complex industry involving “bio-refineries.”
The transition is both massive and seeping in scope. Royal Dutch Shell Europe, for example is involved with a “2nd generation” project that involves a capital investment of $2,000 per ton to construct, compared to $190 ton for a first generation bio-fuel plant.
The switch to bio-refineries will be significant, with some estimates suggesting that the oil major will be able to grab upwards to 17% of the global biofuel market within a few short years.
It’s by watching for and identifying such massive shifts : a switch from reactive to preventative medicine, or the emergence of a bio-refinery industry, that you can spot real areas for innovation and creativity.
That’s why, when looking at the big picture, you should always step back and look for an even bigger picture.
“Do you want to be focusing on the problems of the past, or do you want to outfit your organization so that everyone has the insight they need to deal with all the challenges that are being thrown at you in the future?”
That’s my opening comment in an article I wrote — the IndustryWeek Manufacturing Challenge — that has appeared online.
The article presents a ficticious company struggling with multiple disparate information networks; they’re wondering if they should bite the bullet and invest in a more sophisticated system, or whether they should struggle to make things work.
I opt for the former; from my perspective, innovative manufacturing companies should focus on these key traits, to deal with the unique challenges of the high velocity economy:
Innovation comes from focusing on the future; if you’ve got a mishmash of information tools that you can’t operate in the high velocity economy at low cost, and not even understand what is happening around you, then you’re like a deer in the headlights.
As I note in the article, “I’ve long been convinced that spending time on trying to rationalize disparate, uncoordinated, inflexible and unconnected systems is quite simply a waste of time, and I’ve seen dozens of organizations who have realized this and have moved on.
The week before last, I taped an appearance with CNBC on an upcoming prime time five part show, “The Business of Innovation,” hosted by Maria Bartiromo.
The show is set to aiir, as I understand it, March 4, at 9PM EST, and again at midnight. It will air in Europe and Asia subsequent to that. I was part of a three person “panel of innovation experts” for the third part of the show. The first segments featured the insight of such folks as Vinod Khosla co-founder of Sun Microsystems; Cathleen Black, President of Hearst Magazines, and Arkadi Kuhlmann, CEO of ING Direct.
After thinking about it for a a while, my thoughts that have resulted from doing the show are this:
There’s sort of a disconnect here, isn’t there?
I told my wife after the taping that I’ll either end up looking like a complete idiot, or a genius, or perhaps an idiotic genius. It will be interesting to watch.
The phrase that formed in my mind, both during and after the show, are that there are too many “innovation elitists” out there. And that’s just quite wrong: I’ve often explained that innovation of any sort is set to fail, as soon as we make it special.
In any event, I’m sure that I’ll be posting more on my thoughts on this closer to air date.
I gave the opening keynote this week, in Orlando, for BICSI, a telecommunications trade group; these are folks primarily involved in the implementation of sophisticated corporate, institutional and backbone infrastructure networks.
There were about 3,000 people in the room — and my message was that within high-velocity sectors of the economy, there are unprecendented new opportunities and careers that are emerging. Not only that, but constant innovation is critical, simply in order to keep up!
The velocity in the world of telecom is stunning. Just last week, I managed to upgrade myself to the new Blackberry Pearl. While everyone is ga-ga over the iPhone, one also has to look at the high velocity change occurring with other information devices. This new one replaced the other Blackberry I just received last April … and there is such a difference in sophistication, I think my old Blackberry is now from the “olden days!”
I quickly decided that I’d get a 2GB card for my new Pearl, so that I could load it up with tunes, and take it along with me instead of my iPod for some trips. (With 2GB, I can take about 500 songs.)
The Pearl also supports video playback. I wondered if I could get my own video on it. After all, sometimes I’m stuck in an airport, and rather than watching the endlessly droning doom of CNN on airport monitors, it might be nice to zone out with my own stuff, without having to drag out my laptop.
Looking at the Web site of my cellular provider, I didn’t find much help, other than a message stating it couldn’t “record video.” However, I have long realized that in the high velocity economy, those who actually sell the product often know less about the product than their customers do. It wasn’t surprising that they had no guidance.
Yet, it took me a matter of moments to find a Web forum where folks had posted all the specifications for encoding video onto a Pearl. Minutes later, I was busy transferring a number of Daily Show with John Stewart episodes from my PC over to the Pearl. (I grab a bunch of TV for the road, on one of my home office PC’s, using BeyondTV; it’s like a TiVO for the PC.)
What’s the key point to all of this? It goes back to a point I raised in this blog earlier: Your Customers are High Velocity: Are You?
In many markets, customers now know more about the product than the supplier does! That’s another reason why innovation is critical: today, for the first time ever, you have to work hard to keep up with the furious pace at which your customers are evolving!
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