Technology

information & communication technology

Is research racing to the middle?

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From the annual report of the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation [my emphasis]:

Large amounts of public funding are available for researchers to get started. Large amounts of capital are also available for companies when they reach their growth stage, after they have taken flight. Banks make loans and, and stock markets offer IPO’s.

What about that fledgling point in between? Very little.

This graphic shows there is much more available funding for Fundamental Research (left) then (left to right) Applied Research; Proof of Concept; Seed Capital & Early Stage Venture Capital; hence NBIF’s focus on these. Venture Capital & Growth Capital are represented as much larger as well.

My own observations are showing this may not be the case, but I haven’t done extensive research. However, one of the primary funding agencies for fundamental research (e.g. discovery grants) is NSERC, which is definitely moving toward applied research, as reported by CBC:

Funding involving industry now represents about one third of NSERC’s budget, and is expected to grow. The agency wants to double both the number of academic-industry partnerships and industry participation rates in NSERC programs by 2014-15, Walden said.

‘These sponsors aren’t paying for the research out of philanthropy. They want results.’— Janet Walden, NSERC

She presented the figures as part of a panel titled “Universities as economic powerhouses: industry-academic collaborations” at the Canadian Science Policy Conference in Montreal.

Other agencies, such as Canada’s NRC and ACOA’s Atlantic Innovation Fund also fund applied research

The purpose of the Atlantic Innovation Fund is to:

  • increase research and development (R&D) being carried out in Atlantic Canada research facilities leading to the launch of new products, processes and services;
  • improve the region’s capacity to commercialize R&D;
  • strengthen the region’s innovation system by supporting R&D and commercialization partnerships and alliances among private sector enterprises, universities, research institutions and other organizations in Atlantic Canada; and
  • enhance the region’s ability to access national R&D programs.

Perhaps the NBIF graphic no longer portrays the situation in Canada. If significantly less money goes toward fundamental research, what will happen to the innovation continuum? I wonder if we are racing to the middle and in our quest to be “innovative” we are forgetting the basic research that fuels all innovation. One example is that for the widely-used Global Positioning System (GPS) to work you need to employ both theories of relativity. Now who would have thought of that application when those theories were first put forth?

Open Innovation

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The most interesting presentation at last week’s ACCTCanada Directors Forum was, in my opinion, on open innovation by Angus Livingstone, UILO at UBC. Much of the discussion by other presenters focused on patents and other control mechanisms, while Angus showed the shifting paradigms that we are experiencing in university knowledge transfer. He explained that the main shift over the next five years will be from closed to open innovation, in parallel with shifts from outputs to impacts and from transactions to relationships. Angus highlighted the old paradigm:

  • Patents
  • Licenses
  • Spin-offs
  • Proprietary industry research funding

and showed the new paradigm:

  • Industry engagement
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Knowledge mobilization

Since hearing that presentation and reflecting on the slides that Angus sent me, I came across Ed Morrison’s paper on how regional innovation clusters form. The initial step is to change the conversation.


The shifting conversation then encourages learning networks to develop, from which can emerge a concerted strategy for innovation. Ed calls the underlying activity, strategic doing:

Networks are complex adaptive systems. We can guide these networks, even manage them, if we follow simple rules. And that’s the point. We cannot guide complexity with complexity. Strategy in complex adaptive systems emerges from  following simple disciplines.

Both Angus Livingstone and Ed Morrison show that innovation is dependent on learning in networks. Social learning is about getting things done in networks. It is a constant flow of listening, observing, doing, and sharing. Effective working in networks requires cooperation, meaning there is no fixed plan, structure or direct feedback. Through social learning we can co-develop emergent practices. Social learning is how we move from transactions to relationships and foster knowledge mobilization.

Social learning is not some buzz word from the HR department but is a critical component in fostering innovation and hence prosperity. It’s the ‘how’ of business innovation and is important for decision-makers to not only understand but to embrace by doing. This is why I say that work is learning and learning is the work. Life in perpetual Beta is what every leader and manager needs to understand today.

Flipping the technology transfer funnel

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In The Learning Layer , the concept of reversing the idea funnel is discussed in depth. Traditional innovation processes take many ideas, and through elimination, narrow these down to a few. Flipping the funnel reverses this by breaking ideas into capability components and building on them.

Most business ideas are a bundle of two or more of our capability components [tangible & intangible assets – technologies, processes, people, IP, relationships]. For example, even if a business idea is based on a technological breakthrough, the overall opportunity is likely to also include other differentiating components, such as processes (say, a specific marketing process). It is the uniqueness of the bundle of components that provides the economic value-creating potential of the idea, and the ability to defy the easy copying by other marketplace participants that leads to rapid value collapse.

This is what effective innovators do, says author Steve Flinn – “They break things down into their essential features, and then try to visualize the effect of different combinations, orientations, and application approaches.”

One of my current projects is working on knowledge transfer, such as the commercialization of research, at Mount Allison University. I’m still learning how this happens here and at other universities, but for the most part, it seems to be a traditional funnel. However, this type of funnel can also be flipped.

Embedding the flipping-the-funnel process within the learning layer is a powerful, contemporary approach to the management of innovation and R&D. But there are other related learning layer opportunities that should not be overlooked. For example, technology transfer processes. Here the idea is to enable third parties to leverage inventions and developments that are developed by other organizations, whether private or public. As mentioned previously, extending the learning layer across organizations is an ideal way to generate creative synergy. And the flipping-the-funnel approach can be adapted, and coupled with the cross-organizational learning layer, to enable more collaborative and valuable technology transfers.

One example of cross-pollination in technology transfer is Futurity.org, which aggregates research findings from all AAU universities.

The ability to even conceive of a learning layer is due to our advances in network communication technologies. This has caused the explosion in web social media and user-generated content. While looking for a picture to illustrate this post, I came across the image below on Flickr, an image sharing service. The image was linked to a blog post that asks if the prevalence of social media require us to re-think the lead generation funnel. It seems that network effects have flipped some of our older industrial models.

Trends

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Here’s an infographic from Ross Dawson on Trend Blends to watch as we consider our common futures:

I’ve noticed these trends pop up in my readings and observations, for example:

Power Shifts Eastward: Clay Burell’s advice for teachers scorned:

Teachers have “asked what they can do for their country,” and they do it. Daily. But they should have the good sense to also ask what their country is doing for them, patriotic martyrdom propaganda aside. If their country has reached a “tottering, chaotic” point at which it “loathes” them, then teachers do have choices.

One of those choices is Asia. America used to be a magnet for other countries’ brain-drain. Asia seems the better magnet now.

It is for me, anyhow.  I’m thankful that I teach in Asia — because Asia is thankful for it, too.

Localism: Seeking Farmland is four people cycling across the land and connecting with local farmers. “We are two couples in our mid- to late twenties who, each having spent two to four years apprenticing on and managing various organic farms, are now seeking a long-term farming opportunity together.”
3 for the road

Volatility: A black eye for democracy, by Steve Paiken:

In Toronto the Good, we saw a law passed and enforced that was more anti-democratic than the War Measures Act. And we saw twice as many people arrested over a single 24-hour period in Toronto — more than 900 at last count — than what took place during the October Crisis in Quebec 40 years ago. And that event is in our history books as the most notorious abuse of civil rights in modern Canadian history.

Digitalisation: Goodbye to the office by Seth Godin:
  1. If you have a laptop, you probably have the machine already, in your house.
  2. If you do work with a keyboard and a mouse, the items you need to work on are on your laptop, not in the office.
  3. The boss can easily keep tabs on productivity digitally.
  4. How many meetings are important? If you didn’t go, what would happen?
  5. You can get energy from people other than those in the same company.
  6. Of the 100 people in your office, how many do you collaborate with daily?
  7. So go someplace. But it doesn’t have to be to your office.
Globalisation: The World is Watching – the World Cup online, from any device, anywhere. Or, as @umairh writes, “when Chinese wages rise, kiss your made-in-china lifestyle goodbye. time for betterness.”

Urbanisation: Urban Revival by Richard Florida, “Long-established trends in the growth and decline of  America’s cities appear to be shifting …” – Cities

Anxiety: We need to learn more about healthy workplaces:
What’s the future? A recent Canadian study showed that depression and anxiety affect up to 15% of pre-schoolers. Mental health is an important issue that will not go away and informed discussions are necessary at all levels. I’m glad I learned about this over the Summer.

Environmental Change: Climate change and environmental degradation should be obvious to all but many are still flogging the scientists.

DIY is here

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Over three years ago I wrote that the future of learning is DIY:

With Google you can find most information that you need. YouTube is a quick and easy way to get “learning objects” to the world. Apple gives the essential tools for knowledge workers, and in a nice package. Wikipedia has shown that the wisdom of crowds is just as good as the wisdom of elites. Starbucks gives free-agents and road warriors a place to meet and work. These top brands provide the equivalent of the interstate highway system for the creative age.

Enabling DIY (do-it-yourself) on the Web appears to be a good business model. Even on the fringes, such as wi-fi from a café. This is the power of informal learning, if organisations decide to enable it. It has to be DIY, user-driven and uncontrolled. People will figure out what’s best for them, as they have for millennia.

Has anything changed?

There seem to be more DIY platforms today and they are being used, though the business models are not yet clear. Facebook has enabled DIY ridiculously easy group forming, but it comes with a price on privacy. Ning was wildly popular as a DIY online community builder, but that business model did not seem to work. Open source Elgg may replace Ning with a non locked-in platform, but its success remains to be seen.

For mass DIY, ease of use is the trump card. Just look at Google Docs, the best and easiest DIY online collaboration suite, in my opinion. I remember using Writely (sold to create Google Docs) and it had a better user interface in my opinion, but was only used by digital savvy folks. Google dumbed-down the interface and functions and that ease of use, plus growing demand, made Google Docs a market leader. Timing is everything.

Now that many people have used DIY tools for their online work and play, I can’t see the trend being reversed any time soon. Enabling DIY should be a prime directive in the development of technologies for collaborative work and networked learning as well. Please pass this on to those folks in e-learning ;)

Instruments of Restraint

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Almost any technology can be a learning technology, I wrote a while back. It’s how it’s used, not what is used.

  1. What’s the difference between a conference room and a classroom?
  2. What is the difference between a CMS and an LCMS?

A learning technology is mostly about branding  and I’m more interested in non-educational tools (social networking, wikis, blogs, social bookmarks) in that they are not limited by some pre-conceived notions about learning or a constrained pedagogical framework. I can use general tools for instruction, guided study or discovery learning; just as the same physical classroom can be alternately an exciting learning environment or a temporary prison cell.

I believe that special *learning technologies* actually restrain us.

Restraint may be defined as:

1. The act of restraining or the condition of being restrained.
2. Loss or abridgment of freedom.
3. An influence that inhibits or restrains; a limitation.
4. An instrument or a means of restraining.
5. Control or repression of feelings; constraint.

First, the notion of learning technologies as separate from working technologies continues to keep learning separate from work. This makes little sense in a networked workplace. Second, learning technologies become a special class of tools that only learning experts understand or care to learn about. Third, they create a class of vendors focused on the training & development department and not the overall organization. My experience is that the only organizations that benefit from learning technologies are those whose core business is learning with a focus on formal, structured delivery – schools.

Learning technologies, by their limiting nature, are instruments of restraint for the networked organization.

IP Workshop

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I attended an intellectual property workshop in Moncton today. It was at the  DDx Health Strategies boardroom, a good location with lots of LAN ports and wi-fi. Of course, I hadn’t brought any devices as I assumed that the place would be locked-down. Lesson for next time.

The presentation was good, by a lawyer from Miller Thomson. I noted, “good presenter, but too much use of bullets on slides, should buy copy of Presentation Zen“.  A common criticism of many presenters, I’m finding, today (should follow TED Talks examples).

Highlights on IP, Patents and Trademarks:

1st Question to ask yourself: “What would a competitor need to use to compete effectively?”

IP = results of innovation that have market results.

Conversion to IP: Informal Knowledge => Formal Knowledge (codified assets) => Protected Assets (patents, trademarks, copyright)

Note: Several examples showed how patents stifle innovation, especially in software development.

Advice to Market Entrants: Attack incumbent patents early and confirm their validity.

Patents: Cover new technology but not business methods. Make sure you have clarified and know the difference. All applications should include “use cases” and make sure you have checked your industry for “patent trolls”.

An interesting aside: It seems that China is embracing patents because soon it will become a net exporter of technology, so it needs to protect its investment. At the same time, trademarks are not afforded the same protection and will continue to be appropriated.

Bottom Line: If you are developing intellectual property, get legal advice from a firm that understands this stuff.

University research and industry projects

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I attended the MonctonConnect business collaboration workshop yesterday. The event was sponsored by UNB and started with a presentation by Ken Kent on his joint project with IBM on the improvement of the Java Virtual Machine. They will be hiring 29 students and experienced developers in September. For more information see the CASA site.

Vivendra Bhavsar presented on semantic matching and Weichang Du talked about his cloud computing research, especially the development of new design patterns for business. Du clarified the difference between infrasructure/platform/software “as a service”, citing Oracle’s example.

A presentation on the MITACS program that funds mathematical sciences research projects was followed by a description of the new NSERC Engage program, a $25K grant that fosters the development of new relationship between companies and the academic researchers.

Synergic3

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I had the pleasure of spending the day getting up to date on the Synergic3 project, a joint effort between the National Research Council of Canada, l’Université de Moncton and Desire2Learn. The research agenda covers areas that may be of interest to those working with learning technologies:

DDRM – Distributed Digital Rights Management
MDX – Automated Metadata Extraction
LD Accelerators – Learning Design (and other) Accelerators
WWF – Weak Workflows

Some papers are publicly available here.

This applied research project has already resulted in commercial software:

The new Desire2Learn Instructional Design Wizard™ and Desire2Learn Course Builder™ are complementary to the existing content management tools, and are the result of substantial investment and years of intensive R&D involving clients, strategic research partners, including National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and Université de Moncton, along with many members of the Desire2Learn R&D group. For more information about this research partnership, please see www.synergic3.com.

I have watched this project evolve since 2004 – from idea to business model to proofs-of-concept & prototypes, and now to enterprise software. It has been most interesting and very educational.

Once more, across that chasm

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Geoffrey Moore’s analogy of “crossing the chasm” is that any new technology is quickly adopted by innovators and early adopters, but there is a chasm to cross in order to get the more pragmatic majority to adopt the new technology. For marketing, this is the real challenge – can the new product get widespread acceptance? In many cases the development costs can only be recovered if the majority purchase the goods or services.

I have referred to this model before and even tied it to Gladwell’s “tipping point” theory. My consulting work is mostly bridging the chasm:

  1. I am an early adopter myself, and use this experience to work with the early pragmatic majority. I also use a broader definition of technology; being the application of organized and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems. I spend much of my time watching the innovators, and
  2. I then determine which of their ideas and new technologies would make sense for my clients. To do this, I have to keep trying out new tools and processes in my own work.
  3. It’s a balancing act, being on the leading edge but not the bleeding edge.

In 2005 I wrote that these technologies were ready to cross the chasm:

  • Blogs (with some difficulties) & RSS
  • Workflow Learning (including wider acceptance of performance support instead of training)
  • Open Source

… and that these probably wouldn’t get across, yet:

A year later the use of blogs had exploded, while workflow learning had stalled and I noted that an understanding of the value of informal learning was catching on. Wikis were becoming more popular, especially those that replicated word processesors, like Writely, which was later purchased to become Google Docs, used ubiquitously today. There appeared to be a growing interest in natural enterprises and something to replace corporatism as a guiding model, and this continues, though too slowly for me.

In 2010 we’ve seen Twitter and micro-sharing cross the chasm, while virtual worlds, like Second Life seem to be floundering. Informal learning is being discussed throughout the profession, but in many cases it’s just lipstick on a pig. Mobile tools are poised for a major breakthrough, though more as performance support and knowledge management than courses online. In the next few years, the use of collaborative work technologies, such as Google Docs or Sharepoint, will grow, while stand-alone learning applications will see a decline.

I think the next big shift in training/elearning will be the integration of learning into work. As staff costs continue to increase and the economy sputters for several more years, companies will look for reductions that also improve effectiveness. Once companies pass on the word that their staff are learning without a training department the shift will happen quickly. Learning professionals won’t even be involved in these conversations. Come back in five years and see if I’m right.