thinkfuture

The Swap-O-Matic, Vending Machine Exchanges Goods for Goods

Chris Kalaboukis — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:31:13 +0000

The Swap-O-Matic is a vending machine art project based in Brooklyn where users can exchange goods without exchanging money. Lina Fenequito of Good World Media is the main designer and creator behind The Swap-O-Matic, which currently is a one-up retro-styled machine that travels between various New York City stores.

via The Swap-O-Matic, Vending Machine Exchanges Goods for Goods.

SOPA: Major Internet Companies Consider Coordinated Blackout

Chris Kalaboukis — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:25:30 +0000

Reason is reporting that Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter are considering a coordinated blackout of their services in protest of the SOPA legislation, which would curtail Internet freedoms. It is not clear how long the blackout would last.

Such a move would affect countless Internet users. Just think about it – even though there are plenty of search engines out there, what do people commonly say? “Google it.”

via SOPA: Major Internet Companies Consider Coordinated Blackout | The Freedom Bunker.

Asimo, make me a coffee…

Chris Kalaboukis — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:53:47 +0000

Honda Motor Co’s Asimo humanoid robot opens the top of a bottle to pour the drink into a cup during a news conference at the 42nd Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo November 30, 2011. REUTERS/Toru Hanai (JAPAN – Tags: BUSINESS SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY)

via Tokyo Motor Show Photos | Tokyo Motor Show Pictures – Yahoo! News.

A Beautiful Look at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, When The Future Was Magical

Chris Kalaboukis — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:17:44 +0000

If there was a high point for Space Age excitement about all things futuristic and shiny, it might well have been the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, at which we would be promised such great things as the Bubbleator Time Machine. Women dressed in skimpy outer space outfits posed in the Girls of the Galaxy revue, a monorail shook Seattle, and Washington State’s blue laws were repealed.

via A Beautiful Look at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, When The Future Was Magical.

Unprocessed Ideas Can Be Tastier

Chris Kalaboukis — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:00:39 +0000

Following up on my post yesterday on the processing of internal ideas, like organic food, which has has as little processing as possible, organic ideas, coming directly from the inventors, with as little added flavoring as possible, usually make the best ideas. Now it is possible that the initial idea was missing a business model or some other factor which you could conceivably add to make the idea more palatable to the organization, sometimes even unpalatable ideas need to be nurtured and launched out into the world, just to see if someone finds them tasty. Sometimes you never know if something is good until you try it. With some ideas, a good example is Twitter, there was no real thought to the business model, but one arose once it got into the marketplace and started to be used. The best ideas are like that, and I’d be willing to bet had the concept of Twitter arose within a corporate innovation program, it’s doubtful that it woudl have flown. What does this tell us? Maybe, sometimes, its good to just wing it, and let the market determine the business model

How Iteration-itis Kills Good Ideas

Chris Kalaboukis — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:00:42 +0000

While this particular example is about how an idea needs to get “processed” before it goes to an innovation council, the concept of iteration-itis has killed many a good startup as well. In fact, I can point directly at my last startup, where we had such a severe case of iteration-itis that we never truly launched anything to the market – we just kept tweaking it and tweaking it without EVER really putting it into the marketplace to see if the market even wanted what we were doing.

If you never launch, how will you know if anyone needs what you are doing?Build fast, launch early, and iterate like mad, now that is the formula for success. But even if you fail, you can iterate to success, or discard and move on. Either way, you’ve not wasted time and energy chasing rainbows.

How Iteration-itis Kills Good Ideas – Scott Anthony – Harvard Business Review.

Is innovation experiencing death by patent?

Chris Kalaboukis — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:00:01 +0000

Disagree, but an interesting take. Ideas need to be protected for the inventor as much as copyright works should be protected for writers and musicians.

Patents have been popping up in the news quite a bit over the last few weeks. As the economy continues to stumble along, companies and investors are working even harder to find ways to make a profit. This includes enforcing their patents. And these patent enforcement efforts have ensnared technology companies both large and small.

via Is U.S. innovation experiencing death by patent? – Ideas@Innovations – The Washington Post.

Innovate To Grow (From Recession)

Chris Kalaboukis — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:10:41 +0000

The truth is that the best way to deal with a recession is to innovate your way out of it. You could just cut back on everything but you will also cut back on the very things that can help you to survive and grow. You could just continue to spend as if there was no recession but you will run out of money and waste opportunities to improve the way you innovate.

via Max Mckeown — Innovate To Grow (From Recession).

What Kind Of Futurist Are You?

Chris Kalaboukis — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:00:47 +0000

I was at a job interview a while back and the interviewer noticed that I had “futurist” on my social network profile and asked me the question above. So I responded with “there are different kinds of futurists?” The question took me aback because I figured that everyone pretty much knew what a futurist was – one who envisions and creates future scenarios along many different axis (economic, social, demographic etc.) and attempts to use those scenarios in order to develop plans, products and services. And she responded with “Well, are you one of those ‘crazy’ kinds of futurists?” I asked her to elaborate, since futurists all have a bit of a crazy bent: “You know, always thinking about crazy out of the box ideas, thinking that the world is going to go in all these weird directions, kind of nutty” So while I assured her that I wasn’t one of those “crazy” futurists, I got to thinking, well, we do have to attempt to project future scenarios and some of those scenarios could get to be pretty extreme.

That’s not to say that they are any more or less valid than others. Envisioning a future is easy (well to most futurists I know) – envisioning the right future, well that’s nearly impossible. So some scenarios may seem crazy, but then flying planes into buildings was never thought of as a viable terrorist option until 9/11. Who knows, if the US government had futurists on staff looking at the trends in terrorism prior to that, maybe we would have thought the unthinkable and possibly could have changed the course of those events.

That’s what a futurist should do – think the unthinkable, so that it becomes thinkable. And if that seems crazy, so be it.

‪AHHHA: launching pad for your ideas‬‏

Chris Kalaboukis — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:00:58 +0000

A very cool idea: interested to see how things work from an IP perspective:
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How do you turn an idea into something more than just a fleeting thought? A company called AHHHA is leveraging ‘social ideation’ to take ideas from passing notions to actual businesses.

“If Facebook is social networking and Twitter is social media, AHHHA is social ideation,” explains Matt Crowe, Founder and CEO of AHHHA. “It’s really the evolution of the social internet and user interaction, basically allowing us to take ideas leveraging the crowd—comments, collaboration and votes—to bring ideas to life.”

via ‪AHHHA: launching pad for your ideas‬‏ – YouTube.