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Regional Climate Change in Business Lexington

A write-up of December's Regional Climate Change forum has appeared in Business Lexington.

Innovation and Etrepreneurship conference to focus on Kentucky initiatives, talent

The Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation has posted information about the sixth annual Innovation and Entrepreneurship conference, which will take place April 6 at Lexington's Marriott Griffin Gate Resort.

This year’s conference will bring together distinguished speakers, tech-based economic development practitioners, innovators, and entrepreneurs. The conference will focus on opportunities for innovation, the state’s initiatives for entrepreneurship and economic development, and building science and engineering talent to grow local initiatives. The agenda (currently under development) will include key presentations, technology showcases (table tops), poster presentations, and more.

The conference is open to anyone from universities, the business community, state and local leaders, and students who are interested in technology-driven innovation, high-tech growth, university-business engagement, and job opportunities.

Online registration will open in February.

Business unusual: Redefine your market

Don't lose sight of the bottom line in a price war or by imitation popular products and services, says one entrepreneur. Instead, redefine your market.

Kentucky satellite components to soon take suborbital test

Flight-ready hardware designed by Kentucky Space is being delivered today to the Virginia Wallops flight facility in preparation for a suborbital flight later this month. One of two payloads on the Suborbital Cubesat Experimental Mission (SOCEM) mission, the student-designed Antenna Deployment and Mono-filament Actuator Satellite (ADAMASat) will reach an altitude of over 300km and be visible to ground stations in Kentucky as well as Virginia. ADAMASat will

test the KySat-1 antenna deployment mechanism and actuator circuit. The idea is to gain confidence of the antenna deployment mechanism that consists of a mono-filament wire wrapped around the satellite to hold down its antennas, and a Nichrome cutter that burns the monofilament line to release the antennas. ADAMASAT will perform four tests of this mechanism while in space.

KySat-1 is the orbital craft designed by Kentucky Space.

News and links regarding ADAMAsat, including the GUI software download for HAM operators and a countdown clock are online. A post and pictures about the on-site test fit of the hardware is here. Please follow ADAMASat on Twitter.

Top tech in 2010

Augmented reality could be a $714m industry by 2014, according to information in this BBC story on the technology and its uses. It could find its place among the top ten tech concepts you should be aware of for 2010.

Innovating around innovation

2009 wasn't a good year for large companies looking to find the next big idea - internally. But what about finding good ideas externally? At Boston.com, business writer Scott Kirsner describes how some companies are building businesses based on "crowdsourcing" new ideas.

Fail thee well!

In the context of science, Wired describes the very human dimensions of failure and why it's critical to success.

The reason we’re so resistant to anomalous information — the real reason researchers automatically assume that every unexpected result is a stupid mistake — is rooted in the way the human brain works. Over the past few decades, psychologists have dismantled the myth of objectivity. The fact is, we carefully edit our reality, searching for evidence that confirms what we already believe. Although we pretend we’re empiricists — our views dictated by nothing but the facts — we’re actually blinkered, especially when it comes to information that contradicts our theories. The problem with science, then, isn’t that most experiments fail — it’s that most failures are ignored.

Read the entire article for a handy guide to better failures.

Business innovation in 2009

BusinessWeek takes a look innovation in 2009.

In 2009 the world was no longer flat; much of it was flat broke. Deflated by slumping sales and income, companies roundly did what innovation consultants say they never should—they cut spending on research and development.

"For sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn"

"For sale: Baby shoes, never worn." This iconic six-word story from Hemingway works its way into a MacArthur Foundation Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning post on how texting, tweeting might be incorporated into the classroom, which links, in turn, to a Wired article on Abilene Christian University's strategy for using the iPhone in the classroom.

These are the specific educational problems Abilene is targeting with the iPhone. Instead of standing in front of a classroom and talking for an hour, Rankin instructs his students to use their iPhones to look up relevant information on the fly. Then, the students can discuss the information they’ve found, and Rankin leads the dialogue by helping assess which sources are accurate and useful.

Richard Florida: Creativity is the most important economic force

Describing how he arrived at the idea of a "creative class" and placing it in economic and historical context, Richard Florida talks about the fundamental economic force reshaping modern economies today - an ability to innovate, or to add creative value based, in part, on mental alacrity and a certain emotional IQ, but more importantly, in a larger willingness to view people as a potential to be maximized instead of costs to be minimized. Put another way, while it's certainly true that many agricultural or industrial activities can and will continue to provide jobs, today it's human creativity that is adding wealth.