Archives: September 2009

Questions for Innovio CEO Dr Joseph Kim

Posted by: Jessie Scanlon on September 30

Last week I posted briefly about Dr. Joseph Kim's EmTech presentation describing the new generation of DNA-based vaccines that his company is developing. Several readers asked for more information, and...

Coca-Cola's Freestyle, Dean Kamen, and More

Posted by: Jessie Scanlon on September 30

Yesterday, Coca-Cola gathered key partners and limited press to AMC Parkway Pointe, a movie theater in Atlanta, Georgia. Officially, the event kicked off the theater’s beta test of the beverage...

Rules stifle innovation, says Microsoft Research's Rick Rashid

Posted by: Helen Walters on September 29

The fallout over the Washington Post's new rules on social media has been insightful on a topic that's vexing many today, the place of tools such as Twitter within the...

How HP Drives Strategy

Posted by: Jessie Scanlon on September 29

I just wrote a piece about how Hewlett-Packard developed its "everything as a service" strategy and then rallied all of its business units behind it. As many companies (especially big...

ClairMail launches mobile banking app for iPhone

Posted by: Michael Arndt on September 29

By Venessa Wong of BusinessWeek’s Innovation+Design team. Last month, I wrote about plans by banking and security products company Diebold to launch mobile banking services in the U.S. Today, Diebold’s...

The iPhone App for the iT Staff

Posted by: Damian Joseph on September 28

It's been coming. iPhone apps started with the average consumer, then spread to small businesses, now they've hit the corporate level. Several apps are now aimed directly at the people...

Design leaders yuck it up in Miami

Posted by: Helen Walters on September 27

I've been in Miami for the past few days, checking out the IDSA conference and, last night, handing out the gold gongs in the International Design Excellence Awards. I also...

For Innosight, disruptive innovation begins at home

Posted by: Helen Walters on September 24

Innovation watchers will be familiar with Scott Anthony, President of Innosight, some time BusinessWeek contributor and author of books such as the recent The Silver Lining. A sharp thinker on...

Innovations for Women: A New Focus for ExxonMobil, Others?

Posted by: Reena Jana on September 24

ExxonMobil is seeking to develop new technologies to help women in developing countries improve their economic lives, the company announced at the Clinton Global Initiative. What this means is ExxonMobil...

Grameen's Yunus on innovation in philanthropy

Posted by: Jay Greene on September 24

I had the chance to sit down with 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus today, who was in New York, as I am, for the Clinton Global Initiative meeting....

Case Study: How Facebook Scaled Up

Posted by: Jessie Scanlon on September 23

OK -- so it was more a chat than a case study, but Jason Pontin, the editor of the Technology Review and previous editor of Red Herring, grilled Mike...

Wow -- a New Approach to Vaccines

Posted by: Jessie Scanlon on September 23

I didn't know half of the words that Joseph Kim, the CEO & Director of Inovio Biomedical, used in his EmTech presentation but I walked away with a new appreciation...

OnLive -- Steve Perlman Demo's His Latests

Posted by: Jessie Scanlon on September 23

Today Steve Perlman, of Quicktime and WebTV fame, gave the EmTech audience a peak at his newest creation: an on-demand videogame service called OnLive. Here's the gist: OnLive offers users...

Health-Care Reform in Action

Posted by: Jessie Scanlon on September 23

Something a speaker said at this morning's EmTech panel session is still wringing in my ears: "For the last four months of his life, I Skyped with that patient every...

EmTech 2009

Posted by: Jessie Scanlon on September 23

I spent the morning at EmTech -- the annual conference put on by MIT Technology Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin and his team. I'll be posting about the innovative ideas and...

Obama, Clinton and CEOs on Innovation

Posted by: Reena Jana on September 22

The Fifth Annual Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting kicked off today in New York, a gathering of heads of state and CEOS such as Wal-Mart's Mike Duke and Coca-Cola's Muhtar...

Obama's Strategy for American Innovation

Posted by: Helen Walters on September 22

"Innovation is more important than ever," declares President Barack Obama in a white paper released yesterday. A Strategy for American Innovation: Driving Towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs doesn't exactly...

I'm a PC, and I'm...Cool?

Posted by: Reena Jana on September 21

In the last week, both Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo announced new PCs that featured eye-catching elements that could possibly make design fans rethink the nerdy PC image exemplified in those ubiquitous...

Tonight's TV: TDI Clean Diesel

Posted by: Damian Joseph on September 18

I'd like to point out what looks to be an interesting show for auto fans or anyone interested in energy issues. On the Science Channel tonight at 9pm est, the...

What's Next for Dell

Posted by: Michael Arndt on September 15

For $125,000, Dell could put a product designer on its payroll for a year, or maybe two given how dreadful the job market is these days. The PC maker is...

What Government Innovations Have Proven to Work?

Posted by: Reena Jana on September 15

The 2009 winners of the Innovations in American Government Awards, given each year since 1986 by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance & Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School...

Hewlett-Packard Taps Fashion for R & D: A long-term innovation strategy?

Posted by: Reena Jana on September 14

This weekend, Hewlett-Packard proved that it is committed to tapping the design world as a rich resource for technical innovation, and not merely aesthetics. On Saturday night in New York,...

Augmented Reality: What Should Businesses Expect From This New Tech?

Posted by: Reena Jana on September 10

The concept of Augmented Reality, or overlaying the real world with text or images seen via a mobile phone’s camera or a Web cam on a PC, has gained a...

And the James Dyson Award goes to... Automist, from RCA London graduates

Posted by: Helen Walters on September 09

This morning, I spoke to Yusuf Muhammed who, along with Paul Thomas, just scooped the £10,000 James Dyson Award, named after and sponsored by the vacuum cleaner innovator. Their winning...

Exploiting Chaos -- and Celebrating Failure

Posted by: Jessie Scanlon on September 08

In the run-up to President Obama's speech to school children, NPR's "Talk of the Nation" hosted a conversation with two high school principals. Both were clearly smart, empathetic, and hardworking....

Radical Hotel Innovation

Posted by: Michael Arndt on September 02

From Venessa Wong, who joined BusinessWeek's Innovation+Design team in June. The future of hotel design: giving travelers an authentic and unfamiliar experience without leaving their rooms. While quality, consistency and...

Help Identify The Most Intriguing New Businesses

Posted by: Ira Sager on September 01

What defines most intriguing? To us, that means new enterprises that make you say, "Wow, that's fascinating." To identify these new businesses, we’re inviting our readers and the public at...

Company Logos Matter: A Study

Posted by: Damian Joseph on September 01

On the heels of the brouhaha over Ikea's font change, comes a study on typography in company logos from some respected universities. The finding: when a company changes its logo,...

A Fresh Face in Architecture: Jeanne Gang

Posted by: Michael Arndt on September 01

As designer/architect James R. Loewenberg began planning the centerpiece of his massive residential project in downtown Chicago—an 822-ft.-tall mixed-use tower near Millennium Park—he looked for help from an outside architect....