You have got to see this: The Brazilian Medici Effect Blog has been launched. Sometimes they will translate our stories into Portuguese but we will also see original efeito medici posts. Unfortunately my understanding of Portuguese is limited but it looks great and we love the fact that The Medici Effect is spreading.
/Kristian Ribberström
Earlier we have seen how advanced technology from NASA and several other sources were used to give Speedo’s LZR Racer swimsuit extraordinary qualities. Considering the outstanding performance of the product it is not surprising that this thinking spreads to other sports. Right now, for instance, there is a cool experiment (Swedish) going on with cross-country skis in Sweden. An interesting difference is that while Speedo’s swimsuit was developed at a deliberate intersection where they harnessed the skills of experts from diverse fields this idea is more coincidental. And it did didn’t come from the sport people.
When some technicians who work with the Swedish combat aircraft Gripen heard that Norwegian skiers had successfully used sandpaper instead of ski wax to prepare cross country skis they got an idea. To make the colour attach well to the surface of the airplane they use an advanced technique where they blast it with minuscule plastic balls. That way they achieve pretty much the same effect as with sandpaper but with much more precision. Basically, they realized that they could do the same thing as the Norwegians – only better. Naturally, they didn’t contact them to tell them this – the Norwegians are annoyingly good as it is. Instead they approached their countryman Oskar Svärd who is one of the top long distance skiers in the world.
The precision with which they can use this technique makes it possible to adjust the surface for different temperatures and snow qualities. They have now made several pairs of skis for Svärd. He has tested them and is really pleased with the result. He will use them this winter and if he is successful it might change the sport as well as attitudes to the Gripen project in Sweden. It is ridiculously advanced and expensive and heavily criticized. But if it can help Svärd beat the Norwegians at cross-country skiing...
/Kristian Ribberström
Well, since it is Youtube week here on The Medici Effect Blog I want to share a video with robots inspired by animals.
The possibilities at this intersection of biology and technology seem limitless and I have written several posts based on bionics earlier. I have a strong feeling that the engineers creating these things are having a very good time and that they regard nature as an endless source of challenges.
/Kristian Ribberström
One of the first examples in The Medici Effect of the innovative power of intersectional teams is a ground breaking experiment that was conducted at Brown University in 2002; a team of researchers "eavesdropped” signals in a monkey’s brain so that it could control a cursor on a computer screen with its mind. They succeeded because the researchers behind the project came from a number of different scientific fields and this was the result of a deliberate effort to create an intersection of disciplines.
Now a team of scientists at the University of Pittsburgh has taken this one step further – their monkey eats with a multi-jointed brain-controlled prosthetic limb.
And again the breakthrough is a made at an intersection of disciplines: the researchers that were needed to make this possible represent neurobiology, bioengineering, cognition, regenerative medicine, robotics, physical medicine and rehabilitation. (I feel sorry for the monkey though...)
/Kristian Ribberström
I first read about in a Metro article (Swedish) when he recently presented his electronic jacket at a virtual reality conference in Stockholm. His aim is to explore how computers may be used without the traditional tools – for experimental and artistic purposes. He has used electronic textiles in the jacket (which looks like a perfectly normal jacket) and he controls the computer by waving his arms. With his movements he can navigate through a 3D environment projected on the wall.
"My work combines three disciplines: art direction, software engineering and live performance. This scope of activities enables me to deliver responsive, environmental graphics in real-time, which creates uniquely immersive experiences."
At this intersection he seems to have a lot of fun and apparently barriers don’t exist to this visionary thinker. Considering what he has achieved it is amazing that he has no background in technology but he certainly brings new perspectives into this field since he is educated in art and has been working with live television. Check this crazy video from his first experiments with the jacket where he controls sound with arm movements or this earlier post which also includes electronic textiles.
/Kristian Ribberström
When I saw Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers back in 2002 I was amazed, like everybody else, by the digitally animated creature Gollum. The filmmakers had achieved something extraordinary and I realized there and then that I would never again be surprised the possibilities of motion-capture technique. But I was wrong. The designers at Front make everybody surprised with their innovative design method. They make freehand sketches in the air and record the strokes with motion-capture technology. The information is then digitized into 3D models.
One of the main ideas in The Medici Effect is that if you apply existing concepts in fields where they haven’t been used before it dramatically increases your chances of being innovative. The Front design team is a very good example of that. When they placed themselves at the intersection of 3D animation and furniture design and applied motion-capture where it doesn’t “belong” it gave them originality as well as attention. Arguably, it would take some rather advanced technical breakthrough to revolutionize the way motion-capture is used for 3D animation in films or computer games but all they had to do at Front was to use the technique in a new way.
Naturally, this is not their only design method but all their work is characterized by the same open-mindedness that enables them to break down the associative barriers between fields. When I assumed that I would never again be surprised by the possibilities of motion-capture it was because I didn’t see beyond those barriers.
/Kristian Ribberström
Check out this nano-vent skin of micro-wind turbines by Augustin Otegui. At the intersection of biology and nano-technology it transforms the energy of sun and wind.
/Kristian Ribberström
Like so many other European countries Sweden needs to tackle the realities of demography: The population is ageing and too few people work. Last year every working individual in the country supported 1.44 individuals who were not part of the workforce and that figure will continue to grow.
There is great awareness of this and in a new report from The Ministry of Finance the researchers investigate which groups that could potentially be more strongly represented on the labour market. Their conclusion is that the most important groups are:
My obvious reflection is that if these insights lead to actual changes we will get greater diversity in terms of age, gender, culture and ethnicity and according to The Medici Effect diversity drives innovation. Consequently the shift that is suggested in the report will not only solve the quantitative problems of demography – it will also have a qualitative impact on the economy. A greater mix will generate creativity, innovation, business and welfare and therefore I see this as another opportunity to argue that immigration is beneficial for Sweden (or for any other country).
/Kristian Ribberström
I just want to share another example of benefits of migration: In Nigeria immigrants from Zimbabwe have brought with them new methods and new kinds of cattle that have improved agriculture in the country significantly. It is interesting that these things still happen and that the movement of people makes a difference in such a basic way.
/Kristian Ribberström
Yes, I know, IT can be integrated into anything and the combinations are not automatically intriguing just because they are new and far-fetched. What I do like about Smartus, however, is that it is not just another use of IT for the sake of it. The objective is to explore the pedagogical use of physical play as a method for learning – and IT interactivity happens to be the ideal tool to achieve that.
Smartus collaborates with different providers of content, software, and technology but also with university researchers to study how the IT applications facilitate teaching and learning processes. At this intersection they create playgrounds that are suitable for pre-schools, schools, experience parks, shopping centres and other contexts.
/Kristian Ribberström
Over the last couple of weeks there has been a new wave of articles about the homogeneity of Swedish company boards. The focus this time, luckily, is not only the unfairness of it but also the negative business consequences of lack of diversity.
In one article for instance, Carina Lundberg Markow, head of Corporate Governance at Folksam (one of Sweden’s biggest insurance companies) claims that it is necessary to vitalize the boards. And vitalize means diversify. Her argument is that international competition is hard and sixty year old men are actually not very good at predicting trends in a global world where markets change fast. I'd say that is a very good argument.
Only one in five board members in the country is a woman and for the first time since 2003 the ratio is actually decreasing. It is obvious from the articles that there is a growing awareness of the benefits of diversity – not only as regards gender but aspects like age and ethnicity too. Apparently awareness of business advantages is not enough but I still believe that it is potentially a more effective argument than fairness.
/Kristian Ribberström
You often hear that gender diversity is beneficial in different ways, but the claim is not always complemented by examples that support it. Since I keep an eye out for cases where the female perspective does make a difference the FT article What is it about girls and IT? caught my attention. It is mostly based on Emma McGrattan, senior vice-president of engineering at Ingres, an open source database company and it presents some claims that are more specific than the ones you usually find. Here is a section of the long article:
Take Ms McGrattan at Ingres: if shown pieces of code, she believes she could guess whether it was written by a man or a woman, and be right "at least 80 per cent of the time".
"In general, code written by women is more straightforward and more practical - it's clear what problem the functions are meant to solve and why. Male programmers are more likely to hide clever tricks behind complicated code and incorporate functions for the sake of it," she says.
These differences, she adds, can be complementary if blended correctly. "Where men and women work on technology projects together, you tend to get a far better, more balanced result," she says. This rule, she adds, applies to numerous projects and tasks that go on within the IT industry.
So is the industry missing out on a valuable "talent bank" of skills by failing to attract more women? Analysts at IT market research company Gartner think so. Last year, Gartner analyst Kathy Harris was lead author on a report that set out to explore the issue, drawing on extensive biological, psychological and behavioural research.
“Our review of the summary literature on gender studies revealed that a small subset of general characteristics of men versus women have been demonstrated so often that they have become de facto," she says.
Women, she found, tend to demonstrate better bilateral brain involvement in listening - in combining left-brain thinking (logic, analysis and a concern for accuracy) with right-brain thinking (aesthetics, feeling and creativity) simultaneously. This ability, she says, is highly prized by the IT sector in roles such as business analyst and team leader.
The article then goes on to describe some of the more well-known and obvious differences. It also presents some views on how this may improve the industry and where the field of IT would have been today if these differences had been acknowledged and embraced earlier. Read it – it is interesting.
/Kristian Ribberström
When Mercedez-Benz presented their bionic concept car back in 2005 they showed that they were capable of optimizing aerodynamic form in a very unorthodox way; they used the R&D of nature itself and modelled it after the angular but streamlined boxfish.
Even though this example is not new it shows how expertise and open-mindedness can be combined to explore the possibilities of intersectional innovation. Let the images will speak for themselves or follow the link and read more details.
/Kristian Ribberström
Is the drive for sustainability killing architects´creativity? In this article two architects present two very different analyses on the impact constraints associated with sustainability have on progress in their field. They both have interesting arguments but when I look for examples of intersectional innovation for this blog it is striking that so many brilliant inventions are born from the need to consume less energy.
Limiting yourself is an effective way of stimulating new ideas and I constantly find evidence that the constraints of sustainability catalyses innovation powerfully - not only in architecture but in almost every field. Here are a few examples: Transportation, material, cooking, industrial processes, water supply, architecture and lamps.
/Kristian Ribberström
