As the world devours more and more energy, the hunt for a source of power wich is efficient, reliable and above all clean is like a quest to find the Holy Grail. That Holy Grail, it seems, could be all around us: in the sea. Think for a moment of those huge holiday-poster waves, enticing us ti the spectacular surfing beaches of Hawaii, Australia or California. Now imagine the immense power locked up within just a single one of those wave - and what it could mean if that power were to be harnessed and used in a consistent and reliable way.
The science of capturing wave power is still in its infancy compared with other renewable energy sources such as wind power. But a project funded by the European Union is aiming to turn the massive potential of wave power from dream to reality in the shortest time possible.
If it can be done, wave power offers much greater potential than wind power. Waves are 1,000 times denser than wind. That means far more energy can be produced from waves than from wind, given an equally sized farm. And, as any holidaymaker or sailor knows, waves are far more predictable than wind.
It all adds up to a potentially significant reduction in our dependence on fossil fuels. In the US, the Electric Power Research Institute estimates that 10 years from now wave power could be enough for around 4.3 million American homes. In Europe, it is reckoned that countries near the Atlantic coast, where wave power is most abundant, could use it to meet 10% of their electricity requirements.
At the heart of the € 8.5 million project, which has received € 5 million of EU funding, is a device developed by an Irish company called Wavebob. To the untrained eye, it looks like a slightly large buoy on the surface of the ocean. Beneath the surface, the device technically known as a wave energy converter (WEC) - contains an oscillator. In simple terms, the waves activate the oscillator, and this movement is used to generate electricity.
It might sound simple but it isn't. Coming up with a device that can harvest as much energy as possible from the waves, without absorbing so much that it gets destroyed in the process, is a difficult line to tread.
The device also needs to adapt quickly to what can be dramatically changing wave patterns and conditions.
Faced with such challenges, the design and testing process is expensive, with no guarantee of success at the end.
As a result, no internationally accepted method of harnessing wave power has yet been devised.
Working as part of a consortium called "STANDPOINT", wich includes five other partner companies from Sweden, Germany, Portugal and Spain, Wavebob is convinced that its device is advanced and sophisticated enough to meet this crucial need for an internationally standardised technology - and so open the way for wave power to become a commercially viable proposition.
"The STANDPOINT consortium believes that large-scale commercial wave farms will be developed much sooner if best-practice approaches are adopted internationally," explains Wavebob chief Andrew Parrish. "This project is an exciting step in the development of wave energy technology, and in the development of viable wave farms which will have a major impact on reducing carbon emissions worldwide."
As part of the project, a full-size, gridconnected Wavebob device has been tested for a 12-month period off the coast of Portugal. There is no doubt that the results will be eagerly awaited. If all goes well, wave power could be commercially viable in as little as three to five years time.
As the Wavebob website puts it: "Every hour of every day thousands of dollars worth of ocean energy wash up on our shores. This immense, never-depleting, clean energy source is unlimited and untapped. Imagine the ability to harness that clean, free energy resource and put it to good work."
(Eole Water)
For the nearly 20 percent of the world’s population lives in areas without access to fresh drinking water, getting access is a matter of life or death. Inspired by the mechanics of a dripping air conditioner, French inventor Marc Parent was inspired to create a solution that could bring fresh water to the most remote, driest parts of the world.
Parent created a company, Eole Water, that produces wind turbines that literally pull fresh water out of thin air. His solution, dubbed the WMS1000 uses the electricity generated from a windmill to collect and treat water without tapping into a water source such as a river, lake or well.
Eole Water is testing the invention in France and Abu Dhabi. The invention, if the company can get the economics to work, looks to be a promising solution to the water crisis.
I recently interviewed Thibault Janin, Marketing and Communication Director of Eole Water on the WMS 1000 turbine to find out what’s in store for this new technology.
How was the idea of a wind turbine that produces water developed?
Thibault Janin: The idea came from Marc Parent, founder of Eole Water, when he lived in the Caribbean, and was subjected to water shortages. He began to work on a system that could recover moisture from the air and transform it into water. Soon after, he returned to France. He patented the process and founded Eole Water.Millions of people worldwide live in remote areas without any access to safe drinking water. What is the potential for the Eole system to solve this issue?
Thibault Janin: Each unit can create 1,000 liters of drinking water using only moisture and powered only by wind. Let me highlight this word : CREATE. All existing solutions (wells, desalination, lakes/rivers pumping, etc.) only treat an existing source of water. Thus, what happens when there is no or no more water available? The WMS1000 can create water when there is no existing source available. That makes a difference. Our technology integrates water creation, water collection, water treatment and water local distribution. The WMS1000 can produce and distribute water everywhere.Today, people only use centralized distribution, from a center point to others. With our turbine, we wish to decentralize the water access. As the logistic and the process are easy to install and operate, it will be an answer to various issues like massive population movements that cause swelling of cities, increased diseases and therefore health care costs increasing, a door to agriculture or a local industry beginning. All economic or welfare starts with access to water. And this is what we provide.
Are any of these turbines in place and operational?
Thibault Janin: Wind turbines (first, second, third generation) can be seen at Eole Water Headquarters in Manosque in the South of France. The fourth one is used to make demonstration during shows and exhibitions. The fifth one, the WMS1000, is the real showcase of our actual company knowledge. It has been designed and manufactured between January 2010 and December 2011. Then first tested in France between January 2011 to August 2011, and second in Abu Dhabi (Mussafah) from November 2011 to April 2012. The final location of this turbine will be Dubai by the end of 2012. The location will be opened to public.What’s the cost of production and operation of the turbine?
Thibault Janin: The WMS1000 has a price of $600,000. It has been designed to operate in very remote areas, which implies that the maintenance overheads are strictly reduced to minimum. The WMS1000 wind turbine has lifetime of 20 years minimum.What is the potential for the turbine?
Thibault Janin: Thibault Janin: Do not look only at the 150 million potential customers for this technology. It is much more complex. Water is becoming increasingly scarce. Household needs in the matter should increase by 130 percent by 2030. At the same time, the WMS1000 is only one step in our development. Our range will expand to provide more precise and larger answers to communities with larger turbines featuring higher capacities of water production. We respond to a growing and constant global demand, not subjected to economic classical cycles, since water is essential to life.What hurdles do you see standing in the way of bringing more of these wind turbines online?
The major challenge for Eole Water is to make this technology more competitive in terms of price per water cubic meter. Our technology must reach maturity as quickly as possible, at several levels: production, R&D, legal or business experience.This interview has been edited
Whether you like it or not, competition today is fierce. And it’s only going to get fiercer. Where the old battleground was price and efficiency, the new one will be innovation and time to market. The tech startup world has Eric Ries’s Lean Startup movement, which teaches us how to be fast (and iteratively build a product which consumers love, the fabled "market fit"). But it doesn’t tell us a lot about innovation.
This piece is part of a Collaborative Fund-curated series on creativity and values written by thought leaders in the for-profit, for-good business space.Innovation has been studied for as long as economists have tried to make sense of the modern organization. The quintessential question centers around the weird black box with the ominous label "creativity." Today everybody seems to try to emulate the genius of Steve Jobs, not realizing that he’s the outlier. But there is a different way, a way that has brought us many breakthrough inventions in fields as far reaching as technology, sports, and medicine. That way is open innovation.
Being open fundamentally changes the game. Combine two insights, one from Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems, who stated in 1990 that, "No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else," with an observation from Karim Lakhani, professor at Harvard Business School some 15 years later that, "Most innovation efforts suffer from lack of initial variety and number of approaches." When you bring these insights together it immediately becomes clear that you have to do things differently: You have to create alongside your customers, because you can’t rely on a robust outcome of your in-house innovation process.
You have to create alongside your customers, because you can’t rely on a robust outcome of your in-house innovation process.One of the most obvious examples of open innovation is Mozilla and the Firefox web browser, now used by a quarter of the world’s online population and responsible for dragging the Web out of the innovation gap in the late 2000s. But also consider other feats of open innovation: snowboards, mountain bikes, surgical instruments, and many other technological inventions and breakthroughs which are right at the center of our lives today.
The fundamental idea is simple: Instead of following the "lone inventor in a garage" model, which more often than not doesn’t work because the result is highly accidental, you invite your community into the innovation process. You listen, observe, engage, discuss, and ultimately create together. This helps you overcome the two fundamental challenges. You suddenly have a deep talent pool and you get significantly more initial approaches.
You suddenly have a deep talent pool and you get significantly more initial approaches.This all sounds good. But being open is also a fundamental shift in the way you do business. One that is scary (at best) for the established player and daunting for the incumbent. The following five tips will hopefully make it easier to embrace the wisdom of your consumers in creating a better product.
If your aim is not to create something that is vastly superior, nobody will care. This is true enough for your employees, but it certainly is true for a community. Nobody wants to spend time and energy on something that is incrementally better at best. When Mozilla created Firefox it revolutionized the way we browse the Web--many of these inventions are now common and standard across all browsers (tabs, the search box, pop-up blockers, and many more). People don’t care about me-too products. They deeply care about people and things that change the world.
You have to learn to let go. Allow your community to make decisions on their own. This is not the place for micro-management. This is the space where you create a meritocracy and push most of your decision making out to the edges.
Your communication needs to be inclusive. You can’t expect your community to do anything if they don’t have the full picture. This means that all your communication must be open by default: Use public mailings lists, have your water cooler discussions on chat channels, and generally make sure your communication is reusable. Otherwise you create a system of insiders and outsiders, which doesn’t work.
It must be trivially easy for your community to engage with you and help.It must be trivially easy for your community to engage with you and help. This can take many forms, from links to public forums which are sprinkled across your website to pages which clearly explain how someone can become part of your community and which tasks they can take on. Make sure you offer forms of engagement that fit people with different skills as well as different time commitments.
This is fundamental. You must understand that your community is not a market. It’s not something outside of your walls. People in your community are citizens. Treat them right, invite them in, and you will become so much stronger. You are your community. Your community is you.
I encourage you to try this out. If it sounds too scary, try it with a smaller project. Give people some (a lot) of leeway. And let them (and thus you and your company) flourish. There is no doubt in my mind that--with the exception of a few outliers that you could never count on becoming--the future belongs to those who embrace open.
This is a guest post by Duncan Smith, head of product development at Cambridge Consultants
When we think of how the best consumer technology is developed, the devices that make major breakthroughs in consumer experience, we tend to think of engineers or product designers -- whether it is the Jonathan Ive-designed iPod or James Dyson and his vacuum cleaners.
What we won't think of is a mathematician. However, as we look to the near future of consumer technology, mathematicians are going to be behind the next generation of "must have" devices and services.
As an engineer I grew up using mathematical modelling as a tool for good design. That doesn't sound very exciting, does it? Surely great design is waiting for inspiration and then prototyping thousands of times until it is right? Well, I'm afraid not. When people say: "Oh I never use the maths I learned at school", I'm perplexed -- I used it every day as an engineer, and still do, despite having a dull-sounding management job title. When inspiration strikes, yes I do a sketch, but I also do a sum. Maths has always been part of the design process for innovative consumer products. But in the next generation of products maths will be the hidden hero not only of the design process, but also of the product itself.
Of course user experience and technology are still important to innovation, but they are fast becoming "hygiene factors" -- necessary but not sufficient to thrill consumers. These two elements, design and engineering, will not be able to solve the hard problems facing consumer technology brands looking for the eternal holy grail of the "next big thing".
This is because the next big consumer technology breakthrough will require complex mathematical solutions rather than just inspired design and applied technology expertise.
The key will be algorithms.
The algorithm is king
Algorithms, and the mathematicians who can design and manipulate them, are already playing a central role in all sorts of technology applications -- whether it is Google's search engine or Autonomy's data mining tools for enterprises. But now this type of algorithm-led technology development is filtering down from the macro scale of global databases into consumer devices.Moore's Law is very helpful here, as the processors I can afford to design into a low-cost device become much more capable for fewer dollars. This means the maths that is currently exclusively done on servers somewhere in California, or on some high end smartphones, will soon be possible in a wide variety of products.
New sensor-based consumer products, such as the emerging market for "wellness" monitors, are first to take advantage of this -- putting the more advanced insights enabled by data algorithms directly into consumers' hands for the first time. Using smartphones and tablets as a platform, or a gateway to the internet, these new devices combine new low-cost sensor technology and the near ubiquity of short or long-range wireless connectivity. This enables them to deliver far more immersive user experiences than are possible with the limited range of sensors, such as GPS, that are present today in smartphones and a small minority of other consumer products.
Designers of traditional products, from watches to coffee machines, are also joining the party, and we'll see maths turning up in product categories that traditionally had no electronics at all -- and all because maths will provide new ways to excite us consumers. Don't expect just overt new gadgets either -- maths will be creeping into areas like sports equipment, personal care and home medical products, and even clothing.
However, delivering these new compelling user experiences will not be achieved by throwing more electronics or UI design at devices. Instead, what is needed to make these new devices work is complex algorithm development to overcome the limitations of low-cost sensors.
The consumerisation of "big data"
Of course, having a vast array of new sensors in consumers' hands, collecting data, also means that algorithms have an added importance.In many ways solving the implementation problems of sensor-based devices is just the first course. And while it offers potential for rewards for consumer technology companies, there are even greater riches waiting for those who crack the more interesting challenge: what valuable information can be mined from the vast quantities of data that will be available in the near future?
By this I don't just mean the traditional application of data mining algorithms to feedback insights to marketing departments or healthcare providers. Instead, using this data for the benefit of users and to feedback to the devices in their hands -- opening the door for genuinely intelligent, adaptable devices that can be made more and more tailored to individual preferences dynamically.
Not only this but, by the way, the same mathematicians will also be critical to ensuring your personal data is kept secure as consumer devices and big data converge.
Big brains required
Never before have mathematicians been so valuable to the consumer technology market -- and the growth of sensor-based devices and the demand for smart algorithm development will be a major disruptive shift.As always with market disruption, we are likely to see new major players emerge and some established brands fall by the wayside. The deciding factor on which brands will stay at the top, or which new upstart will claim market share, will be finding the big maths brains that can solve these big technical challenges -- and delighting consumers with the results.
Ideas Bank is a section on Wired.co.uk that houses opinionated guest posts on any "Wired" topic. Check out the guidelines here and send your ideas for guest posts to pitches@wired.co.uk, FAO Olivia Solon
video by Guardian
Star Wars-style hover bike allows riders to float - video US manufacturer Aerofex releases footage of its new device hovering in the desert, performing a series of manoeuvres. The 'hover bike' can be suspended up to 15ft in the air, and can reach speeds of 30mph.
Basic research used to be pretty straightforward. A scientist had an idea, performed the research, and disseminated the results broadly through publications.
That paradigm has shifted. Today, scientists can take their work beyond a publication by patenting and commercializing resulting technologies. The government and universities alike are encouraging researchers to take their work out of the lab and into the commercial sector.
But trading an experimental design for a business plan is not for everyone. The choice requires a careful examination of one’s self and one’s technology. It also requires learning an entirely new language. Resources are available to help scientists make their way; however, it comes down to a personal choice. For those who decide they and their business idea are ready, they have the potential to experience the satisfaction of seeing what they have developed meet a market need by getting it into the hands of the public.
“Working in a large company can feel like being a small gear in a large machine,” says Scott P. Lockledge, chief executive officer and cofounder of Tiptek, a manufacturer of ultrahard and ultrasharp probes for atomic force microscopy applications. “Founding a company gives you the opportunity to create an enterprise, be it large or small, in which you know you are personally making a difference.”
A researcher developing corrosion inhibitors for petroleum production and then polymer stabilizers for vinyl products until 1999, Lockledge explains that he was also motivated to become an entrepreneur by the desire to control his own destiny. “When you work for someone else, your boss’s priorities dictate your work-life and lifestyle,” he explains, adding that “as an entrepreneur, you decide when and where you work.”
The drive to innovate also motivated Lockledge, who holds a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry. “Many of us studied science because building things that were new and better fascinated us,” he says. “Inventing and innovating is fun, and the opportunity to do so in a large company setting is increasingly rare. In contrast, science-based start-up businesses are predicated on radical innovation.”
It’s this ability to develop and understand technology that makes scientists well positioned to drive commercialization efforts.
“Many scientists intrinsically understand that their discoveries might translate into important, highly profitable entrepreneurial enterprises,” says Madeleine Jacobs, executive director and CEO of the American Chemical Society, which published a report last year on chemical entrepreneurs (C&EN, Nov. 7, 2011, page 47). “But making a discovery or patenting an invention is only the beginning of creating a company. Bringing that idea or invention to commercialization and creating a successful company requires a different set of skills and knowledge than carrying out basic research.”
To help scientists get the necessary skills, ACS and other groups are stepping up with training courses and other resources. Before scientists can take advantage of the assistance, however, they need to critically assess both their personal goals and the state of their technology.
“The activity of commercialization is actually separate from doing science,” explains Ph.D. chemist Judith Giordan, partner at ecosVC, a group that develops and funds start-ups. “The science can be very dispassionate—the reaction either worked or not. But how you sell it and position it and handle it, that’s a completely human endeavor.
“Being an entrepreneur requires one to embrace both of these pieces,” Giordan continues. “You can be trained and gain skills and vocabulary to be an entrepreneur, but whether a person can do the range of work required to be an entrepreneur, and feel comfortable doing it, is a different story.”
More frankly, “Is being an entrepreneur something you really want to do?” asks Judith J. Albers, cofounder and facilitator of the Pre-Seed Workshop and managing partner of its umbrella group, Neworks. Based in upstate New York, the workshop is a two-and-a-half day program that teams scientists with experts in business and legal matters to do a first-cut analysis of a technology’s commercial potential.
People trained in science typically have a passion for science, not business, Albers notes. Choosing to become an entrepreneur requires learning new skills and taking risks—effectively starting a new career path.
Because of the commitment needed to gain skills and get a company off the ground, Albers points out, scientists also need to ask themselves if the time is right in their life to take a turn in their career path. For example, an academic researcher who is about to go up for tenure can’t afford to focus on anything else.
Related to timing is the question of how far one wants to go down the entrepreneur path. “Do you personally want to be an entrepreneur,” Giordan asks, “or do you want to franchise and empower” others, such as graduate students and postdocs, to go down that road?
In addition to the personal questions, Albers explains, scientists need to ask a core set of questions about what they want to commercialize: Is there a market need? If so, does the technology provide the solution to that need? Does anyone else have a better solution? And finally, can enough money be made to cover bringing the technology to market and enticing investors to invest?
Lockledge—who, prior to his current start-up, had successfully founded and exited from another start-up company—echoes the need to work through those questions. “At the outset,” he explains, “you make certain assumptions about the severity and extent of the problem your invention resolves.” The key is not to “waste tremendous resources perfecting a process or product for which there is no genuine demand.” Instead, he says, “get a working prototype of your innovation into the hands of a person who can evaluate it as quickly as possible. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of success.”
Beyond these market-need questions, Albers also says scientists need to ask themselves a series of reality-check questions. How close is the technology to going to market? “If you still have a lot of research to do, stay in your lab and don’t form a company just yet,” she says. “If you’re in a university or federal lab, stay there and exploit your grants as long as you can.”
Scientists also need to consider whether they have a credible plan in place to take their technology to market and how much will it cost, Albers says. Addressing these questions is more complicated for therapeutic innovations in the life sciences because of regulatory hurdles that need to be considered such as clearing clinical trials, she notes.
And, perhaps most important, scientists must assess if they have a team in place that has all the expertise needed to take the technology successfully to market. “As a scientist,” Albers points out, “you’re not going anywhere yourself.” Specifically, scientists will need to partner with business and legal professionals to launch a start-up.
“You can always hire experts in these other areas, but you still need to speak their language,” Lockledge notes.
Scientists need basic understanding of balance sheets, cash flow statements, and accounting principles to keep the business orderly, efficient, and compliant with the law, Lockledge says. Scientists also need a basic understanding of the elementary financial structures involved in business. And finally, scientists need a working understanding of legal topics such as business structures, contracts, liability, and intellectual property.
Getting such skills and, more simply, understanding what key terms mean require learning a new culture. “You have to embrace that you are a novice on this new path,” Giordan says. In doing so, however, scientists face an array of challenges.
“Many people who become scientists do it because they love tasks and they love getting data and getting the job done,” Giordan says. “They want to get the data perfect and the job done well. But, as an entrepreneur, there’s not one day that all things are going to be perfect.”
Increased time demands, finding the right people to partner with in the start-up, and giving up absolute control and ownership of the technology and start-up as things advance are other complications facing scientists, Albers notes. The biggest of these, she points out, is time.
FUNDING CONTINUUM
Entrepreneurs look to different sources of capital as their start-ups mature.
Federal R&D grants Money used for technology development.
Self, family, and friends Funds to fill the gap between the time a scientist wants to spin off a company and the time other investment sources can be secured.
Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer grants Federal dollars issued on a competitive basis to support the commercialization of basic R&D.
Angel investors An individual who provides networking help, personal insight, and money to early-stage companies.
Seed funds Start-ups can look to these funds, often supported by state governments, to combine with angel investments.
Early-stage venture capitalists (VCs) Run by a fund manager, this investment source is available to companies that are already generating some revenues.
Expansion-stage VCs Run by a fund manager, this VC stage targets companies looking to grow beyond a small start-up.
Later stage VCs Run by a fund manager, this last VC stage comes when companies have matured.
“Scientists don’t have a lot of time,” Albers says. “They are really busy running full-time research programs, managing postdocs and students, teaching classes, and writing grant proposals.”
To help with time, both Albers and Giordan advocate pulling in graduate students or postdocs who can dedicate themselves more completely to moving the technology forward.
Challenges aside, Giordan notes that scientists are well suited to learning the skills they need to navigate the entrepreneurial pathway because they are intelligent and logical, and they understand how to do research.
A growing number of options can help scientists navigate the entrepreneurial waters, from short workshops—like the Pre-Seed Workshop Albers is part of—to long-term courses to resource initiatives all geared for supporting entrepreneurs.
Academic scientists, who used to have only their institution’s technology transfer office to go to for help, now can take advantage of entrepreneur centers within many business schools, as well as government-sponsored programs like the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (see page 24 ).
Organizations such as ACS have also stepped up to provide help specific to chemical entrepreneurs, Albers and Giordan note. The society has created the ACS Entrepreneurial Initiative, in response to the ACS Presidential Task Force on Innovation in the Chemical Enterprise report “Innovation, Chemistry, and Jobs” (C&EN, July 30, page 57).
One part of the initiative is the Entrepreneurial Training Program (ETP). Here ACS is partnering with the Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship. The partnership allows ACS members to apply through ACS to attend the foundation’s FastTrac courses on entrepreneurship, which are held around the country. To date, 29 ACS members have participated in this program.
The Entrepreneurial Resources Center (ERC) is another big piece of ACS’s initiative. To date, 20 chemical start-ups have been accepted into ERC, which works with new start-ups to strengthen their business plans, draft fund-raising strategies, and make networking connections.
“We see these initiatives as a means to help ACS members create a wave of entrepreneurial activity in the chemical enterprise—one of our nation’s most vital and valuable economic sectors,” ACS’s Jacobs says.
ACS has also developed an open forum for chemical entrepreneurs within the ACS Network. The forum is a free resource for all ACS members with service provider listings, entrepreneurial news, and discussions to encourage collaboration and innovation, explains David Harwell, who is coordinator for the ACS Entrepreneurial Initiative.
“We are very pleased to see ACS members take advantage of these programs and look forward to even greater participation in the coming year,” Harwell says.
These sources of help can go a long way in preparing scientists to take the step out of the lab and into entrepreneurship, but in the end it comes down to a personal choice.
“There are a lot of ways for you to get all of the vocabulary, the information, the knowledge, and the capability to do the work necessary to prepare yourself to make the phone call to potential investors,” Giordan says. “But only you can decide how far you can emotionally find yourself going toward being the entrepreneur and leading the company and gaining funding.”
In the pages that follow, C&EN profiles more than a dozen chemical entrepreneurs, including chemists just starting to explore a start-up, those who have done it multiple times, and one whose whimsical business idea has given her real experience in navigating the entrepreneurial scene. They share their ideas-to-market stories, as well as tips for anyone considering going commercial.
People die trying to look cool. Vanity is the sad reason why people don’t wear bike helmets. So two Swedish women set out to invent “the invisible bicycle helmet”, They’ve succeeded, and the end product isn’t a made of clear plexiglass and there’s no lightbending-stealth technology. In fact it’s not really a helmet at all.
Hövding is a rapidly-inflating airbag that deploys from a collar around your neck when you’re in an accident. Here’s how it works, and a video demonstrating this amazing, but still expensive, invention.
The invisible bicycle helmet uses rechargeable battery-powered accelerometers and gyroscopes that detect the typical motions involved in a bike crash. They trigger a tiny gas inflator which instantly fills a nylon airbag with helium. The bag forms a hood around your head that cushions the impact of the street, a car, or anything else you slam into.
The product and company named Hövding began as the industrial design master’s thesis of two students, Anna Haupt and Terese Alstinat, at Sweden’s Lund University. After five years of research and $10 million in funding, they’re now selling the invisible bike helmet. It’s not cheap, though.
Hövding costs $600 and only works once. There’s also been some complaints about the design and an early version had trouble with the zipper.
But considering the potential hospital bills, and you know, the risk of death, it might be a good investment for fashion-forward bikers. Really you should just be confident and realize that wearing areal bike helmet doesn’t make you uncool. But if that’s too much to ask, at least consider a Hövding.
social sciences and humanities matter because they help us understand and address "wicked problems" such as poverty, housing or climate change. Photograph: Afp/AFP/Getty Images
In this series of four guest articles, David Phipps, director of research services and knowledge exchange at York University, Toronto, Canada, writes about knowledge mobilisation; an emerging institutional infrastructure designed to maximise the impact of academic research on public policy and professional practice. David spent part of December in Edinburgh, Brighton and London exploring knowledge exchange and knowledge brokering in the UK.
In this first installment in the series, he introduces knowledge mobilisation.
The social sciences and humanities (SSH) matter. They matter because they help us understand and address "wicked problems" such as poverty, housing, immigration, climate change, security, Aboriginal issues and social determinants of health – to name a few. We can address wicked problems, but we have a tough time eradicating them. In 2008, John Camillus wrote in the Harvard Business Review that wicked problems: "occur in a social context; the greater the disagreement among stakeholders, the more wicked the problem. It's the social complexity of wicked problems as much as their technical difficulties that make them tough to manage." Wicked problems are social problems. Wicked problems are problems of the social sciences.
Universities are the main producers of new SSH research knowledge and graduate level talent. University knowledge and talent have the potential to contribute to new approaches to wicked problems, but they cannot benefit society if SSH scholars limit themselves to traditional academic paradigms of scholarly communication and dissemination. Knowledge mobilisation is the process of connecting academic SSH research to non-academic decision-makers so that this research informs decisions about public policy and professional practice. Knowledge mobilisation (the process) can enable social innovation (the outcome).
Since 2006, York University, Canada, has employed a knowledge-mobilisation unit to broker relationships between university research and expertise (both faculty and graduate students) and non-academic partners. York University described its work in 2009 and recently published details about its knowledge mobilisation services and lessons learned. York's knowledge mobilisation unit currently houses three full-time knowledge brokers, one of whom works in the community at York's primary community partner, the United Way of York Region. York's knowledge mobilistion unit is part of the university administration working under the auspices of the vice-president of research and innovation.
The unit serves the needs of all York University faculty, students and their non-academic research partners and has brokered collaborations in disciplines as varied as mental health, education, geography, immigration, green economy, arthritis, housing, communications, literacy and social determinants of health. The unit is a university-wide research infrastructure analogous to the ubiquitous technology transfer and commercialisation office.
Sandra Nutley and her colleagues from the University of Edinburgh Research Unit on Research Utilisation have published five ways that institutions can seek to enhance extra academic impacts of research.
These include: place value upon and provide incentives for generation of impact; support two-way interactions between researchers and users; provide injections of financial support, dedicated staff and infrastructure; develop the facilitating role(s) of knowledge intermediaries and communicate and increase the accessibility of research.
A note on terminology: many organisations use diverse terms to describe knowledge mobilisation. There are subtle distinctions between knowledge transfer (KT), knowledge translation (also KT), knowledge exchange (KE), knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE), knowledge translation and transfer (KTT), knowledge mobilisation (KM), and knowledge integration (KI); however, they are all terms to describe essentially the same process of connecting research to practice and policy. Recently, an effort to move away from the terminology recommends the term K* ("K-star") as a solution to those entrenched in their own identities and resistant to other terms. We prefer to use knowledge mobilisation. We also prefer not to get distracted by the debate on terminology because we are busy enough just doing it.
The remaining three articles in the series will reflect on the past (origins of KMb), present (KMb services provided at York University) and future (where the field is going or needs to go).
David Phipps is director of research services and knowledge exchange at York University, Toronto, Canada. For more on knowledge mobilisation at York University, and from David, see the Research Impact blog and follow @researchimpact on Twitter.
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the land-grant universities in the US, where knowledge mobilisation is rooted. Photograph: Richard Nowitz/Corbis
Earlier this month the Guardian Higher Education Network posted the first of four instalments in its series exploring knowledge mobilisation past, present and future.
My first piece introduced knowledge mobilisation as a new university-based research service that connects academic social sciences and humanities (SSH) research to non-academic decision makers, so that SSH research informs decisions about public policy and professional practice. In this second instalment I'm going to reflect on the past – on the roots of knowledge mobilisation.
Knowledge mobilisation (KMb) is not a new activity. Some university researchers have always worked with non-academic partners. In 2007, Jonathan Lomas (formerly of the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation) traced examples of university engagement with non-academic partners to the German dye industry in the late 1800s. The US land grant universities (those that concentrated on more practical subject teaching) have well-established extension programmes that date back to the turn of the 20th century.
However, in Canada, collaborating with non-academic partners has been an individual activity that occurs despite institutional barriers such as tenure and promotion (T&P) where faculty members are rewarded for traditional academic scholarship as well as teaching and service. Although a conversation about rewarding community engaged scholarship in T&P review is under way, in Canada traditional scholarship remains the foundation of an academic career and reinforces the perception of the university as a traditional, self-perpetuating and monolithic organisation disconnected from society.
An exception to this "disconnect" has been technology transfer (also known as university-industry liaison, and, in the UK, knowledge transfer). Technology transfer connects university researchers with industry to commercialise intellectual property (almost, but not always, patents) developed as a result of their research. Many universities throughout the world now have full-time professional staff who connect university researchers to partners from industry. Technology transfer has been almost exclusively focused on making money. In 2010, the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) reported that total royalty income from the commercialisation of university intellectual property in the US was $1.4bn.
Imagine if universities also supported connecting non-commercial research with organisations – the "decision makers" – seeking to maximise the social benefit of research by informing decisions about public policy and professional practice. That's knowledge mobilisation. As described in our KMb introduction video, KMb at York has its roots in technology transfer, but we have evolved this beyond a one-way transfer of knowledge to a multi-directional engagement of knowledge and talent.
But if technology transfer first developed as a way to make money from university inventions (or at least that's the promise), then why develop similar services like KMb for non-commercial research? I have previously addressed this on the Research Impact blog by linking KMb type activities to the public's expectations of a return on the investment of their taxes in research that occurs in public institutions like universities. The public and social benefits of technology transfer have also recently been articulated through the Better World Project – launched by AUTM to promote understanding of how academic research benefits the public.
Like technology transfer sometimes, KMb translates research and transfers it to decision makers; like we did at York with our ResearchSnapshot clear language research summaries. However, if all we needed to do was publish academic research in accessible formats, then we could publish on internet sites such as the Cochrane Collaboration, the Campbell Collaboration, What Works Clearinghouse, SCIE, RIP and NCDDR and let Google searching do the rest. But we found that this one-way method of knowledge transfer is necessary but not sufficient to maximise the impact of research on society.
In order to generate academic research that is also useful to non-academic decision makers, we practise KMb, a suite of services that maximizes research impact by supporting collaborations between academic researchers and their non-academic research partners. Basically, we help researchers and graduate students connect to and collaborate with partners from government and community organisations. KMb doesn't serve as a bridge between these two communities. KMb reduces the distance between them allowing them to collaborate in shared spaces.
David Phipps is director of research services and knowledge exchange at York University, Toronto, Canada. For more on knowledge mobilisation at York University, and from David, see the Research Impact blog and follow @researchimpact on Twitter.
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Participants, from academia and industry review the issues that make communication and collaboration difficult. Photograph: Amanda Brown/City University.
We recently ran a workshop, entitled 'Better conversations', at the two week Digital Shoreditch Festival, held in London's 'Tech City'. The festival is celebration of the creative, technical and entrepreneurial talent that is part of the digital economy in that part of London, and our workshop explored the question of how businesses and universities can engage more effectively with each other to solve business problems.
Around 80 participants, from both academia and industry, highlighted many of the issues that can make such communications difficult and provided innovative ideas on how academia and business could collaborate more effectively together.
The challenges that surfaced include a lack of trust over issues such as intellectual property, uncertainty about the potential benefits of working together, and the difficulty on both sides of finding the time for initial exploratory conversations. Participants also noted an apparent disparity between universities and businesses in the kinds of outputs that would make such collaborations seem worthwhile. While businesses may be seeking saleable products, academics prize excellent research outputs and publications. There were concerns, particularly among small businesses, that universities may not find their problems interesting enough to address, and that they didn't know who to talk to, or find out if a university could help them solve their business challenges.
Though industry-academic collaborations can be challenging, the benefits certainly outweigh the risks. Pfizer and University of California San Diego have created teams of university and industry scientists that combine the best academic thinking with the drug development expertise of industry to accelerate the development of new drugs for patients. A recent collaboration agreement between GlaxoSmithKline and the University of Cambridge puts academic scientists into the laboratories on the GSK campus in Stevenage - certainly a sign that UK industry see the potential of increased collaboration.
Benefits extend beyond the partnerships themselves. University-industry collaborations have delivered innovative commercial products. Professor Achim Kampker of Aachen University leads a consortium of over 50 companies that have designed and built a cheap, modular electric vehicle called the StreetScooter. The first cars hit the streets in June this year. It goes into full production in 2013 and DHL have pre-ordered 3500. That is commercial success facilitated by academic skills and inputs. And other examples abound, like Raven the surgical robot, a result of a collaboration between the Universities of Washington and California Santa Cruz, robot manufacturers and computer games companies.
There are case studies closer to home but also on display at Digital Shoreditch were some of the services that universities can offer to businesses, such as the Interaction Lab at City that was set up with funding from the Vodafone Foundation. The university benefits, not only because supporting clients of the Lab provides valuable experience for students in working in real business situations, but also because businesses can see immediate and tangible advantages to working with the Lab, and some of the contacts made in this way turn into longer term research collaborations, for example in the form of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.
However, it's one thing knowing that collaboration can be mutually beneficial and another finding out how to make more effective collaborations happen. Ideas mooted at the workshop included a single 'who you gonna call' phone number that businesses could ring to find the right person to talk to, or a 'dating agency' that could help pair up academics and business people with complementary interests and needs. 'Sandboxes' that allow groups to focus on and experiment with ideas without fear of failure, or a permanent 'café culture' where academics and business people alike can drop in at any time and be sure of finding someone with common interests to bounce ideas off.
'Jams', that extend the idea of hack days beyond just software coding, were also proposed. They could include opportunity identification, design, prototyping of software, physical prototypes, business models, or even the creation of start up companies. There is also a role for incubators to do more than rent desk space to companies. They should provide networking opportunities, access to the academic ecosystem, opportunities to learn, pitch for business funding and get advice from established entrepreneurs.
These ideas and more will now be forwarded to Knowledge London, the London network of knowledge transfer professionals, university incubators and other organisations that can take them forward. Our aim is to facilitate more frequent, more diverse and more effective conversations between universities and businesses to the mutual benefit of all participants.
We can't shy away from the challenges or fail to acknowledge the significant costs to many of the ideas above. For any of this to happen and succeed, senior management buy-in will be required. But the fact of the matter remains that collaborations provide stretching intellectual challenges, can enhance reputations and potential revenue streams for universities but these benefits are only available to those who are able to seize these opportunities.
Dr Sara Jones is a research fellow and course director for the Masters in Innovation, creativity and leadership at City University London.
Dr Stephen Clulow is director at Action for Innovation Ltd.
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26 July 2012—Canon begins selling a next-generation form of virtual reality technology known as mixed reality (MR) this month. The company suggests its version of MR is an enhanced, more grown-up version of the augmented reality provided by some smartphone apps and things like Google’s Project Glass. In contrast to augmented reality, which typically adds text or simple graphics to what the user sees, Canon’s MR adds computer-generated virtual objects to the real world in real time, at full scale, and in three dimensions.
In a further contrast to consumer-oriented augmented-reality schemes, the technology is initially targeted at engineering groups involved in designing and building new products. Canon claims that not only will it cut down on prototyping, it will also speed up concurrent engineering by allowing those involved on the manufacturing side to get a faster look at what is coming down the new-product pipeline.
The key technologies making this possible are packed into a video see-through head-mounted display (HMD). The HMD uses two charge-coupled-device (CCD) video cameras, one for each eye, to capture video from the real world, which is sent via cable (attached to the HMD) to a computer for integration with the computer-generated graphics or computer-aided-design data to be overlaid. The synthesized video is then sent back to twin SXGA-resolution displays in the HMD, which reflect the images through an optical system in the helmet and then into the eyes. The optics include a free-form three-sided prism for each eye, which refracts and reflects the image several times, enlarging the video and removing aberrations in the process, so “the images shown on the displays appear full size,” says Takashi Aso, deputy senior general manager of Canon’s Image Communications Products Operations.
When I was trying out the technology, Aso had me wear the HMD while I stood in front of a box the size of an office copy machine. Around the machine were placed three types of registration markers—white square boards with patterns of black hexagons in three sizes corresponding to their location on the box. Each marker had its own identification number, which enabled the computer to calculate my position vis-à-vis the box.
The technology works something like a bar-code setup. “But with a bar code, you need to scan the code straight on,” says Aso. “Because you will be moving around the object, the patterns have to be recognizable from any number of angles. We’ve found that hexagonal-shaped patterns are the best for reducing errors and for giving consistently good results.”
A second computer used the marker location data captured by the CCD cameras to overlay a realistic computer-generated image of a copy machine onto the box I was “viewing.” I was able to press a virtual button on the “machine’s” control panel, which triggered a preprogrammed demonstration that included the opening of a door panel and the rolling out of the toner mechanism. I also walked around the machine to observe it from all sides, noticing little delay as my view of it changed. I was particularly impressed when I was able to grasp the edges of the machine (the box) and turn it in real time.
The second demonstration replaced the registration markers with 10 optical motion-capture sensors placed strategically around a space to locate my position. These sensors are programmed to locate a group of five rods mounted on the HMD. To track several people viewing an object simultaneously, each HMD has a different pattern of rods, so that the PC can identify each individual.
As I donned the HMD again, a full-size car appeared before me. Because it was much longer than a virtual copy machine, it was apparent that the width of my view was restricted to just under half of what I would be able to see without the HMD, requiring me to turn my head more than usual to take in the entire vehicle. I was guided around the car and was asked to sit on a physical chair placed inside the simulation, from which I could view the dashboard and the car’s interior.
You might think a virtual tour of a sports car would be more exciting than one of a copy machine, but in Canon’s demonstration, the opposite was true. While the simulation was useful for viewing the color, style, and interior design of the car, the lack of movement and things to grasp, such as a steering wheel, made the overall experience less interesting than the copy-machine demonstration.
One drawback is that the HMD is cumbersome, as the attached location rods make it fairly weighty. It didn’t feel entirely secure when I moved my head quickly, and movement is restricted because of the attached cable. Aso estimates that simulating an object takes about 250 megabytes of video data per second, which falls within the bandwidth of wireless communications. Wireless technology itself, however, is not yet at a level that would support transmitting four channels of video data (two channels each of sending and receiving) to such a compact HMD with no delay.
Canon will market the MR technology as a complete system, first in Japan, then overseas—possibly as early as the end of the year in the United States. Pricing will depend on what customers can afford. A system that uses just the registration markers (the copy machine) will be less expensive—suitable, for instance, for a museum or a smaller company—than one that uses the high-quality optical motion-capture sensors (the car). Aso estimates the price of a basic system, employing a single HMD, at around US $125 000 and that of the advanced system, with motion-capture sensors, at around $500 000.
Jul 28th 2012 | HONG KONG | from the print edition
SAY the words “Apple” and “China” to Westerners, and many will think of sweatshops. Campaigners have accused Foxconn, which makes most of Apple’s gizmos in mainland China, of overworking and underpaying its staff. Apple has promised to insist on better working conditions.
Ask about Apple inside China, however, and you hear little but praise. It is one of the most admired brands in the Middle Kingdom. A survey last year by researchers at Stanford University found that iPad penetration was greater at an elite high school in Beijing than at one in Palo Alto, California. In the first quarter of this year Apple earned $7.9 billion in greater China, making it the firm’s second-biggest market (see chart). The latest iPad was launched on the mainland on July 20th.
Apple’s latest results, announced on July 24th, were excellent by normal standards: global revenues for the most recent quarter were $35 billion, with a gross margin of nearly 43%. Amazingly, this was worse than investors expected, so Apple’s shares slipped by 4.3%. Analysts blamed weak demand in Europe, as well as purchases deferred because of rumours of a new iPhone launch.
Sales in greater China fell to $5.7 billion, a plunge of 28% from the spectacular first quarter (when Apple launched the much-awaited iPhone 4S in the country). That was expected, however. More telling is that revenues rose by 48% year-on-year.
Sales of smartphones (of all brands) in China are soaring: they rose by 288% in April, year-on-year, and for the first time outpaced the sales of dumbphones. Sanford C. Bernstein, an investment bank, estimates that 270m people in China can already afford Apple’s products, and that each year another 57m will be able to. Many Chinese are desperate for its gadgets. This year a boy from Anhui, one of China’s poorest provinces, reportedly sold one of his kidneys to buy an iPhone and iPad.
Apple’s sales could also get a boost from another quarter. China Mobile, which counts two-thirds of China’s 1 billion mobile subscribers as customers, does not yet officially offer Apple products. “To go big in China, Apple must get a deal with China Mobile,” says C.K. Lu of Gartner, a market-research firm. Rumours suggest such a deal may be in the offing.
In short, Apple’s products are selling fast and likely to sell even faster. Some predict that China will overtake America to become Apple’s largest market within a few years.
Hang on a minute, though. The Chinese market is strewn with landmines, such as an unpredictable intellectual-property system. Apple’s recent tablet launch was held up for ages because of a lawsuit filed by Proview, a bankrupt Chinese firm that claimed to own the mainland rights to the iPad name.
Of trolls and leopards
Partly because it bungled its handling of the case, Apple was forced to pay $60m to settle. This has emboldened other patent trolls, which claim to own the Chinese rights to the name Snow Leopard (an operating system for Apple’s computers) and part of the technology behind Siri (a voice-recognition system on its phones).
Meanwhile, Chinese pirates are poking Apple with cutlasses. Cheap shanzhai (knockoff) handsets with fruity branding are rife. So are “GooApple” devices that look like iPhones but run on Google’s Android operating system. Nearly two dozen fake Apple stores were found in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, last year. Some fakes fool no one (see picture). Still, Apple could do more to prevent piracy. For example, it has failed to expand its retail network fast enough, leaving the field open for fakers. It vowed to have 25 shops in mainland China by this time, yet there are only six.
Another problem for Apple is that smartphone sales in China are driven mostly by cheap handsets. Sanford C. Bernstein estimates that two-thirds of smartphones sold last year in the country cost less than $300; the latest iPhone costs $800. Baidu, Alibaba and other local internet firms have introduced cheap cloud-connected handsets. Price competition at the bottom end of the market is so fierce that ZTE, a local handset maker, is thought to be losing money.
Apple could try to compete by offering a cheaper model with fewer features, something it has resisted in other markets. But that risks tarnishing its brand. Duncan Clark of BDA China, a consultancy, points out that Microsoft dumbed down its computers for the Chinese market in the 1990s—and flopped as a result.
A yuaning gap
The secret of Apple’s wild profitability in other countries is not just its elegant devices but the apps, music and films that customers download onto them. Its phones and tablets lure consumers into its lucrative iTunes ecosystem. At first glance, China is a promising market: last year app downloads shot up by 300%, rising to 18% of the global total. And Chinese sales at iTunes have gone up since it started accepting payments in yuan.
However, Chinese consumers are not parting with many of those yuan. They expect apps to be free, or at least to be offered on the “freemium” model. App Annie, a technology consultancy, estimates that payments made per Apple game app average $1.90 in Japan and $0.67 in America, but just $0.07 in China. This makes it hard for Apple’s business model to work there.
Some say Apple should copy an idea from Henry Ford. The great American carmaker paid his employees enough to afford a Model T. Will the workers who assemble iPads one day be able to own one? With wages soaring in China, that may not be a pipe dream. Given that wages account for only 2% of the retail price, bumping them up would hardly cripple Apple’s margins. And removing the “sweatshop” stigma might help its global reputation.
Apple has arguably helped to modernise Chinese attitudes towards enterprise and design. Chinese shoppers are eager not only to own its products but also to learn about the man behind the company; sales of a biography of Steve Jobs have been huge. Apple may even have helped nudge the Chinese government towards stricter protection of intellectual property—though pirated copies of the Jobs biography were available within days of the original, and at a fraction of the price.
ROALD DAHL, a children’s author, wrote the best study of innovation in the food-and-drink industry. In “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, he describes how old products can be delivered in new ways (eg, by teleporting chocolate bars into people’s homes via television). And he describes how a gifted innovator can produce entirely new products, such as cavity-filling caramels and everlasting gobstoppers. Dahl grasped that a company is most likely to innovate if the boss (Willy Wonka) and his minions (the Oompa-Loompas) are obsessed with their products. All these insights apply to adult beverages, too.
The drinks business is one of the world’s most conservative. Wine drinkers value ancient vintages. Regulars ask the barman for “the usual”. Brewers tussle mightily to increase their market share by a single percentage point. But none of this is true in emerging markets. There, drinkers have yet to become set in their ways, and innovation is rife.
Consider Diageo’s research centre in Bishop’s Stortford. It is less magical than Wonka’s factory. It is in a conspicuously normal office park in a conspicuously normal little town near London. The staff are of average height and seldom sing. But it is hard to visit the centre without feeling like Charlie Bucket (or, if you lack self-restraint, Augustus Gloop). There are lots of Wonka-worthy touches. A windowless seminar room is made tolerable by a full-service bar, offering cocktails on tap as well as beer. It also displays a “surger”: a device that puts a perfect head on a pint of canned Guinness by sending soundwaves through it. The walls display new products such as marshmallow-flavoured vodka—not quite Wonka’s edible marshmallow pillows, but as likely to send you to sleep.
The centre devises new ideas for Africa, the world’s most exciting market for stiff drinks. Diageo’s home markets are saturated—12 British pubs close each week. Africa, by contrast, is growing fast. Its population is soaring at 2.3% a year. (Asia’s is growing at 1.1%; the world’s at 1.2%.). Africa’s median age is a youthful 19.7. Most importantly, perhaps 60% of African drinkers slake their thirst with homebrew rather than branded booze, so there is plenty of room to upgrade. Paul Walsh, Diageo’s boss, wants the company’s sales in emerging markets to increase from about 40% of the total today to 50% in 2015. Africa will be crucial.
Yet it is a tough market. Currencies are volatile. Roads are bumpy. Power and water come fitfully. Officials often demand bribes. (Schumpeter’s editor once rode a Guinness truck in Cameroon that was stopped at roadblocks 47 times in 500km.) Some Africans find Western drinks bland. Diageo also faces fierce competition from other global giants such as Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller (a London-based firm with roots in South Africa).
So it must innovate. Diageo has spent more than £1 billion ($1.6 billion) in the past five years on improving its factories in Africa and crafting new products. It has put beer into cans rather than bottles to reduce breakages, and decanted spirits into small bottles to tempt the cash-strapped. It has tapped the local passion for football by sponsoring matches, including one between Argentina and Nigeria that attracted a television audience of 42m. It has also joined forces with Heineken, a rival, to attack an even bigger rival, SABMiller, in its South African castle.
And it has been straining to create new products. One observer estimates that innovation in the African drinks market is 80% about new products and only 20% about stretching old ones; in the rich world it is the other way round. So Diageo has created Snapp, a tipple for women in their 20s (a group brewers are desperate to woo, since they don’t drink as much as young men). The company has devoted as much energy to changing the image of alcohol as it has to creating Snapp’s apple flavour. Since many Africans associate brown beer bottles with prostitutes, Snapp comes in clear bottles decorated with leaves. The firm has also spent heavily on ads promoting women’s empowerment.
Another drink, Orijin, is designed for the emerging middle class: Africans with steady jobs and a bit of spare cash. Diageo noticed that a new drink—wines mixed with spirits and flavoured with herbs and spices—had taken off in the Caribbean. It also noticed that middle-class Africans had a penchant for products that project pride in African traditions. It put the two trends together and invented its own “traditional” African drink.
Diageo’s most successful African product, Senator Keg, was introduced six years ago and aimed at the impecunious. The Kenyan government was worried that cheap hooch was making people seriously ill, so it offered to excuse Diageo from excise duty if it produced a cut-price beer. Diageo found creative ways to trim the price, by using local barley and sorghum, by putting the beer in big kegs rather than costly bottles and by inventing a cheap hand-pump to serve it. Diageo outcompeted local distillers by painting bars in bright colours and providing them with flat-screen televisions. The company expects East African drinkers to splash out more than £100m on Senator this year.
The Wonkas of getting wasted
Diageo will one day have to ask whether it makes sense to house its African innovation centre in Bishop’s Stortford. The staff boast that they are always on the plane over the Sahara, but it is hard to understand African drinking habits when you do most of your own drinking in cold, damp Hertfordshire. Still, there will be plenty of work for Diageo’s equivalent of the Oompa-Loompas in the coming years. The company’s rivals are all furiously innovating, too. SABMiller produces cassava beer for the bottom of the pyramid and fruit-flavoured drinks for women. And the African market is changing as fast as it is growing. Tomorrow’s Willy Wonkas will not be wazungu (foreigners); they will be African.
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