Ideas out loud

Original site senseable.mit.edu

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It seems those creative young minds over at MIT, with a few other partners, have come up with a clever solution to transform your existing street bike into a hybrid bike. This may not be of that great of interest to the already strong bike crowd, but to those that don't like the thought of getting on a bike, pedaling to work and getting there all hot and sweaty without the assistance of their familiar GPS to guide them, well this may be the add-on they've been waiting for.

The Copenhagen Wheel is an add-on for your existing bike, that cleverly encompasses all the components into the hub that can be retrofitted to your bike. Inside the hub comes a 3-speed internal hub gear, batteries, torque sensor, GPRS & sensor kit that monitors CO2, NOx, noise (DB), relative humidity and temperature. All of this linked up, via bluetooth, to your iphone which also doubles as the key to lock / un-lock your bike, change gears, select how much assistance you get from the hub and for viewing real-time information such as traffic as well as km's you accumulate and tracks that you ride, which you can share with your networks.

A great invention that is built upon an existing and tested technology, I really like this for several reasons; One, it links something off-line to the on-line world i.e. real time data, and the ability to share it with social networks. Two, existing bike enthusiasts can adopt this technology without having to purchase a new bike or transportation device. Lastly, it's viral both through the sharing of data through the social networks but also via its visual impact.

I look forward to it's release sometime soon, would love to know when...

Driptech, a small startup started by a young guy in the US is now helping people on the other side of the planet create a new sustainable irrigation system. Traditionally, irrigation systems are extremely expensive and limited to industrial farms of the Western World, however Driptech has found a cheap and reliable way for farmers in India & China to grow crops with the benefits of drip irrigation at a price that is affordable to these farmers.

This system may not just be for farmers in the developing nations either as a lot of small farms in the US, Canada and Australia, for example, could do with some lost cost solutions to better watering practices and more sustainable agriculture. Drip irrigation is especially relevant to places like Australia that are primarily arid and very weather dependent.

On the arrival of new technologies, incumbent firms are usually slow and unwilling to take notice. For the car industry electric powered cars have been extremely disruptive, no one has been better at jumping on this that Toyota, whereas GM was too busy listening to its core customers to see what was coming and has since paid a high price.

However, on the introduction of new and disruptive technologies incumbent technologies get a breath of fresh air, and are often drained of every single ounce of efficiency before their death. We have seen this type of behavior throughout history, one well documented example wass when steam engines were introduced to the shipping industry, which at the time was sail powered. Over the following years there were great improvements and innovation in sail powered vessels, until the efficiencies and cost associated with steam gave steam powered vessels the competitive edge.

In this example, the conventional gasoline engine gets a dose of innovation through the development of a dual injector system. The new injector system improves the fuel efficiency of the engine by 4% and also reduces the need for rare metals by up to 75%, what this means is an overall cost reduction of 60% in comparison to similar engine types. Quite impressive!

These latest innovations are part of the "Blue Citizenship" initiative of Nissan to protect our blue planet and be a better corporate citizen, one I believe all companies should be aiming towards. There are great benefits for organizations and the like focusing on more sustainable innovations.

Anyone have any other examples?