Recently in R&D Category
Professor Michael Fry of the University of Sydney has offered public details about the Smart Services CRC's project in Multi-Channel Content Delivery. Professor Fry is seeking research students for two deliverables that can be taken as credit-bearing subjects: Trends in Mobile Technologies & Services and Emerging Vehicular Technical and Service Environments. From the second project's description:
I also had a 2006 conversation with the CRC's Dean Economou about XM Satellite Radio's financial troubles in the United States market. XM had established a new market channel through a factory installation deal with GM. Economou countered that Australia lacked the mature market for satellite radio to be scalable in the same way.
In March 2007 shortly before leaving the Smart Internet CRC I discussed the sensor and wireless networks aspects with Swinburne University's Professor Ryszard Kowalcyk. The details remain "commercial in confidence" and Kowalcyk impressed me with his team's knowledge, which will be vital to the Smart Services CRC.
The business trends dimension of Professor Fry's project is important because his team already faces a probable major competitor.
The project will study and analyse technical and business trends in vehicular ICT environments. The project is not about core automotive technologies, but rather addresses new and emerging in-vehicle sensors and wireless networks, vehicle-to-vehicle communications and networks, vehicle-roadside communications and networks, and their capabilities and possibilities for the provision of new services to vehicle users such as context-aware navigation and traffic congestion avoidance. Potential convergence with other in-vehicle technologies such as digital radio, mobile telephones, etc, should also be considered.In 2006 a senior project manager explained to me that the Royal Automobile Association of Victoria and its state counterparts were undergoing some fundamental shifts in customers, markets and their management portfolio for members. For example, the drivers for vehicle-roadside communication included the RACV's expansion into hotel and resort management. In return, I pointed the senior project manager to Peter Morville's book Ambient Findability (O'Reilly Media, Sebastapol CA, 2005), and his discussion of wayfinding, or how people use symbols and objects to spatially orient themselves when navigating. Wayfinding is thus relevant to developing context awareness in physical and virtual worlds.
I also had a 2006 conversation with the CRC's Dean Economou about XM Satellite Radio's financial troubles in the United States market. XM had established a new market channel through a factory installation deal with GM. Economou countered that Australia lacked the mature market for satellite radio to be scalable in the same way.
In March 2007 shortly before leaving the Smart Internet CRC I discussed the sensor and wireless networks aspects with Swinburne University's Professor Ryszard Kowalcyk. The details remain "commercial in confidence" and Kowalcyk impressed me with his team's knowledge, which will be vital to the Smart Services CRC.
The business trends dimension of Professor Fry's project is important because his team already faces a probable major competitor.
Innovation organisations who are looking to commercialise their research outputs and technology prototypes usually have a few options:
• Blue sky provocations and imagineering sessions for breakthrough thinking and concept generation via various methods.
• Intrapraneurs who tap organisation's common knowledge pool for technology transfer ideas.
• Developing early prototypes for products and services design - using a collaborative and iterative process such as Crystal or Scrum which leverages the energy and expertise of small teams.
• Spin-off companies that commercialise specific R&D projects such as Spatial Voice from the Smart Internet CRC.
• Positioning a spin-off firm for a Mergers & Acquisitions suitor: it worked for MySpace and News Corporation and might work if Microsoft acquires Facebook.
Newsweek and Slate scribe Daniel Gross recently noted another option - the entrepreneurial ecosystem:
• Blue sky provocations and imagineering sessions for breakthrough thinking and concept generation via various methods.
• Intrapraneurs who tap organisation's common knowledge pool for technology transfer ideas.
• Developing early prototypes for products and services design - using a collaborative and iterative process such as Crystal or Scrum which leverages the energy and expertise of small teams.
• Spin-off companies that commercialise specific R&D projects such as Spatial Voice from the Smart Internet CRC.
• Positioning a spin-off firm for a Mergers & Acquisitions suitor: it worked for MySpace and News Corporation and might work if Microsoft acquires Facebook.
Newsweek and Slate scribe Daniel Gross recently noted another option - the entrepreneurial ecosystem:
Toyota clearly stole a march on its slow-footed U.S. rivals and shut them out of a hot new market, much as Apple crushed its competitors with the ubiquitous iPod. But the iPod, and the broader innovation it represents--making huge quantities of music and video portable--has created a small entrepreneurial ecosystem.
