A Snapshot of American Innovation Today
May 23, 2016
Who exactly are today’s innovators? The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) performed a survey to find out, and shares a summary of their results in, “The Demographics of Innovation in the United States.” The write-up sets the context before getting into the findings:
“Behind every technological innovation is an individual or a team of individuals responsible for the hard scientific or engineering work. And behind each of them is an education and a set of experiences that impart the requisite knowledge, expertise, and opportunity. These scientists and engineers drive technological progress by creating innovative new products and services that raise incomes and improve quality of life for everyone….
“This study surveys people who are responsible for some of the most important innovations in America. These include people who have won national awards for their inventions, people who have filed for international, triadic patents for their innovative ideas in three technology areas (information technology, life sciences, and materials sciences), and innovators who have filed triadic patents for large advanced-technology companies. In total, 6,418 innovators were contacted for this report, and 923 provided viable responses. This diverse, yet focused sampling approach enables a broad, yet nuanced examination of individuals driving innovation in the United States.”
See the summary for results, including a helpful graphic. Here are some highlights: Unsurprisingly to anyone who has been paying attention, women and U.S.-born minorities are woefully underrepresented. Many of those surveyed are immigrants. The majority of survey-takers have at least one advanced degree (many from MIT), and nearly all majored in STEM subject as undergrads. Large companies contribute more than small businesses do while innovations are clustered in California, the Northeast, and close to sources of public research funding. And take heart, anyone over 30, for despite the popular image of 20-somethings reinventing the world, the median age of those surveyed is 47.
The piece concludes with some recommendations: We should encourage both women and minorities to study STEM subjects from elementary school on, especially in disadvantaged neighborhoods. We should also lend more support to talented immigrants who wish to stay in the U.S. after they attend college here. The researchers conclude that, with targeted action from the government on education, funding, technology transfer, and immigration policy, our nation can tap into a much wider pool of innovation.
Cynthia Murrell, May 23, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Cybercrime as a Service Impacts Hotel Industry and Loyalty Points
February 4, 2016
The marketplaces of the Dark Web provide an interesting case study in innovation. Three types of Dark Web fraud aimed at the hotel industry, for example, was recently published on Cybel Blog. Delving into the types of cybercrime related to the hospitality industry, the article, like many others recently, discusses the preference of cybercriminals in dealing with account login information as opposed to credit cards as detectability is less likely. Travel agencies on the Dark Web are one such way cybercrime as a service exists:
“Dark Web “travel agencies” constitute a third type of fraud affecting hotel chains. These “agencies” offer room reservations at unbeatable prices. The low prices are explained by the fact that the seller is using fraud and hacking. The purchaser contacts the seller, specifying the hotel in which he wants to book a room. The seller deals with making the reservation and charges the service to the purchaser, generally at a price ranging from a quarter to a half of the true price per night of the room. Many sellers boast of making bookings without using stolen payment cards (reputed to be easy for hotels to detect), preferring to use loyalty points from hacked client accounts.”
What will they come up with next? The business to consumer (B2C) sector includes more than hotels and presents a multitude of opportunities for cybertheft. Innovation must occur on the industry side as well in order to circumvent such hacks.
Megan Feil, February 4, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
How Semantic Technology Will Revolutionize Education
November 27, 2015
Will advanced semantic technology return us to an age of Socratic education? In a guest post at Forbes, Declara’s Nelson González suggests that’s exactly where we’re heading; the headline declares, “The Revolution Will Be Semantic: Web3.0 and the Emergence of Collaborative Intelligence.” In today’s world, stuffing a lot of facts into each of our heads is much less important than the ability to find and share information effectively. González writes:
“Most importantly, Web3.0 is opening paths to collaborative intelligence. Isolated individual learning is increasingly irrelevant to organizational health, which is measured largely through group metrics. Today, public and private institutions live or die based on the efficiency, innovation, and impact of corporate efforts.”
The post points to content curators like Flipboard and Pinterest as examples of such collective adaptive capacity, then looks at effects this shift is already beginning to have on education. González gives a couple of examples he’s seen around the world, and discusses ways collaboration software like his company’s can facilitate new ways of learning. See the article for details. He writes:
“Web 3.0 is unleashing a kind of ‘back to the future’ innovation, the digital democratization of what élites have always practiced: deep learning through imitative apprenticeship, humanistic personalization via real-time observation, and mastery through crowdsourced validation. Silicon Valley is thus enabling us all to become the sons and daughters of Socrates.”
Launched in 2012, Declara set out to build better bridges between online sources of knowledge. The company is based in Palo Alto, California.
Cynthia Murrell, November 27, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
RichRelevance Promises Complete Omnichannel Personalization
May 7, 2015
The article on MarketWatch titled RichRelevance Extends Its Partner Ecosystem to Support True Omnichannel Personalization predicts the consequences of San Francisco-based company RichRelevance’s recent announcement that they will be amping up partner support in order to improve the continuity of the customer experience across “web, mobile, call center and store.” The article explains what is meant by omnichannel personalization and why it is so important,
“Personalization has emerged as the most important strategic imperative for global businesses,” said Eduardo Sanchez, CEO of RichRelevance. “Our partner ecosystem provides our customers with a unique resource to support the implementation of different components of the Relevance Cloud in their business, as well as customize personalization according to the highly specific demands of their own businesses and consumer base.” Gartner predicts that 89% of companies plan to compete primarily on the basis of the customer experience by 2016…”
The Relevance Cloud is available for Richrelevance partners and includes such core capabilities as Pre-built personalization apps for recommendations and search, the Open Innovation Platform for Build, and Relevance in Store for the reported 90% of sales that occur in-store. The announcement ensures that the collaboration Richrelevance emphasizes with its partners will really range all areas of customer engagement.
Chelsea Kerwin, May 7, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Microsoft Improves Search, Again, with Delve
April 20, 2015
The article titled Microsoft Beefs Up Office 365’s Delve, Aims To Complete Its Rollout By May on Computerworld discusses the improvements to the enterprise search and discovery app Delve. Delve was built for Office 365’s Office Graph machine learning engine, and helps create and analyze detailed data on users by linking to content through card icons. The article states,
“Based on what it learns about the user’s work, it determines which files, colleagues, documents and data are most relevant and important at any given point, and displays links to them in a graphically rich, card-based dashboard. Delve provides this assistance in real time, so that users can prioritize their work and find the information they need as they participate in whatever work projects and tasks they’re involved in.”
This means that Delve can figure that a user’s upcoming meeting will be about a particular topic with particular colleagues, and then collect information that is relevant in a timely manner for display in the dashboard. Microsoft is currently working to make Delve capable of analyzing email content within Exchange Online attachments. Yammer actions will also be performable in the near future from the Delve interface. It can also, of course, be used more traditionally as a search engine, but Microsoft has big plans for more dynamic and innovative capabilities.
Chelsea Kerwin, April 20, 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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