Technology – Page 42 – artdiamondblog.com

3-D Printers Promise Big Benefits for Consumers

“Lower-price 3-D printers like this one from Z Corp. are spawning new businesses.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

Neil Gershenfeld has argued that in the not-too-distant-future, ordinary people will have the ability fabricate objects of their own design, in their own home. His lab at MIT has been developing prototypes to fulfil this vision. The 3-D printers discussed in the article quoted below, are the earliest exemplars of this vision, to make it to the market.

If this vision is realized, the benefits to consumers could be immense, in terms of variety of products, speed in obtaining products, and consumer control over what is consumed.

(p. B1) The expansion by 3-D printers into manufacturing is happening thanks to a steady drop in the price of printers, improvements in the materials they can handle and a proliferation in the amount of 3-D data that can be turned into objects.

Historically, the printers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and were made by a handful of small companies including Z Corp. and Stratasys Inc. But now those and other new companies are producing more-affordable machines priced below $20,000, a change that has radically expanded sales.

The 3-D printing industry is about 20 years old, and in the past two years alone, it has sold around 8,000 machines, or 36% of the industry’s two-decade world-wide sales total of 22,000, according to consulting firm Wohlers Associates.

And sales are likely to increase further: A Pasadena, Calif., venture called Desktop Factory Inc. has already taken 350 pre-orders for a $5,000 3-D printer it plans to roll out next year, says Cathy Lewis, CEO of the company. About 40% of those orders are from universities and 35% from small businesses, she says. The company predicts printers could start finding their way into homes in five years or so.

For the full story, see:

ROBERT A. GUTH. “How 3-D Printing Figures To Turn Web Worlds Real.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., December 12, 2007): B1.

The reference to the Gershenfeld book is:

Gershenfeld, Neil. Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop–from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

“World of Warcraft figure made with a 3-D printer.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

Unhappy Italians: “More Fear than Hope”

"A priest passes an abandoned garage covered with graffiti in Milan. Italy’s malaise, an economic, political, and social funk, was summed up in a recent poll: Italians report themselves to be the least happy people in Western Europe." Source of caption and photo: online verison of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) ROME — All the world loves Italy because it is old but still glamorous. Because it eats and drinks well but is rarely fat or drunk. Because it is the place in a hyper-regulated Europe where people still debate with perfect intelligence what, really, the red in a stoplight might mean.

But these days, for all the outside adoration and all of its innate strengths, Italy seems not to love itself.   The word here is “malessere,” or “malaise”; it implies a collective funk — economic, political and social — summed up in a recent poll: Italians, despite their claim to have mastered the art of living, say they are the least happy people in Western Europe.

“It’s a country that has lost a little of its will for the future,” said Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome and a possible future center-left prime minister. “There is more fear than hope.”

. . .

. . .   In 1987, Italy celebrated its economic parity with Britain. Now Spain, which joined the European Union only a year earlier, may soon overtake it, and Italy has fallen behind Britain.

Italy’s low-tech way of life may enthrall tourists, but Internet use and commerce here are among the lowest in Europe, as are wages, foreign investment and growth. Pensions, public debt and the cost of government are among the highest.

. . .

(p. A18) . . .  entrepreneurs complain that they are alone. Politicians offered little help making Italy competitive, and this remains a major impediment to making their gains grow. Businesses want less bureaucracy, more flexible labor laws and large investments in infrastructure to make moving goods around easier.

. . .

. . .   Many worry . . . that Italy may share the same fate as the Republic of Venice, based in what many say is the most beautiful of cities, but whose domination of trade with the Near East died with no culminating event. Napoleon’s conquest in 1797 only made it official.

Now it is essentially an exquisite corpse, trampled over by millions of tourists. If Italy does not shed its comforts for change, many say, a similar fate awaits it: blocked by past greatness, with aging tourists the questionable source of life, the Florida of Europe.

. . .

. . .   “We have reached a point where hoping for some kind of white knight coming in saying, ‘We’ll sort you out,’ is over.”

“We Italians have our destiny in our hands more than ever before,” he said.

For the full story, see:

IAN FISHER "In a Funk, Italy Sings an Aria of Disappointment." The New York Times (Thurs., December 13, 2007): A1 & A18.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Marconi Matters

Source of book image: http://palmaddict.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/big_larsonthunderstruckdrm_1.jpg

Larson’s book plays off a murder mystery against Marconi as the innovator who brought us communication through the air.

I’m most enthused about hte Marconi part. It shows how he proceeded against the theorists of the day, whose theories told them that what he was trying to do was impossible. He was more entrepreneur, than scientist. And it turned out that it was a good thing that the theoretical scientists did not rule, as they might if all decisions about technology were made by the government.

What happened here is an example of what Taleb would call a Black Swan.

Source:

Larson, Erik. Thunderstruck. New York: Crown, 2006.

Alaska Air Used Skunk Works to Develop Check-In Innovation

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article cited below.

The innovation described in the article excerpted below is credited as arising from a ‘skunk works’ project. There’s a neat book called Skunk Works that describes how Lockheed set up an autonomous unit to develop the first stealth air force technology. (Their plant was in a smelly part of town, so it was dubbed the ‘Skunk Works.’)

Clayton Christensen has recommended that established incumbent companies set up skunk works operations in order to develop disruptive technologies that would not survive if they were developed within the main corporate culture and infrastructure.

(In the article excerpted below, it is puzzling to read that Alaska Air went to the trouble to take out a patent, even though they apparently have no intention of enforcing it.)

(p. B1) ANCHORAGE, Alaska — When the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport was planning a new concourse, prime tenant Alaska Airlines insisted on a counterintuitive design: "The one thing we don’t want is a ticket counter," said Ed White, the airline’s vice president of corporate real estate.

So the 447,000-square-foot Concourse C, which opened in 2004, has only one small, traditional ticket counter, even though the carrier’s 1.2 million Anchorage passengers checked in through that area last year. This unconventional approach — which uses self-service check-in machines and manned "bag drop" stations in a spacious hall that looks nothing like a typical airport — has doubled Alaska’s capacity here, halved its staffing needs and cut costs, while speeding travelers through the building in far less time.

. . .

(p. B4) Alaska’s design in Anchorage has turned heads in the industry, and in 2006 the airline was awarded a U.S. patent for the check-in process, something it calls the two-step flow-through. Mr. White says his company isn’t trying to keep competitors from going down the same path, but pursued the patent more to reward the many employees who helped to bring the idea to fruition.

Other airlines quickly sent scouts up to Anchorage to check out the new concourse, including a team from Delta Air Lines Inc., Mr. White says. A few months ago, Delta completed a $26 million renovation of its check-in hall at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and the finished product looks remarkably similar to that of Alaska Airlines. Greg Kennedy, Delta’s vice president for customer service there, says the new layout has enabled the airline to process passengers checking in during the peak spring break travel period in 20 to 30 minutes at most, compared with two or three hours three years ago — and all in the same amount of square footage but 50% more usable space. Mr. Kennedy says he isn’t aware of a visit to Anchorage but doesn’t dispute it.

. . .

Alaska, the nation’s ninth-largest carrier by traffic, started a "skunk works" lab a decade ago to figure out how to use technology to make air travel less of a hassle for passengers. Out of that effort came the airline’s ground-breaking ability to sell tickets on the Internet and allow fliers to check in online, developments other carriers quickly followed.

For the full story, see:

SUSAN CAREY. "Case of the Vanishing Airport Lines; Alaska Air Speeds Up Flow Of Passengers by Jettisoning Traditional Ticket Counters." The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., August 9, 2007): B1 & B4.

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article cited above.

Major Advance in Processor Chip Technology

Source of graphic: online verion of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B7) A fundamental shift in chip-manufacturing technology is bearing its first fruits: a collection of Intel Corp. microprocessors that is getting impressive early reviews.

Intel’s latest chips, being formally announced today at an event in San Francisco, were built with new manufacturing materials. Intel is building key portions of transistors in the chips from a material called hafnium instead of silicon dioxide, an industry mainstay since the 1960s.

"It’s one of the biggest changes in the last 40 years," said David Perlmutter, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s mobility group.

. . .

It shrinks circuitry dimensions to 45 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, from 65 nanometers. The new materials for making transistors, meanwhile, can increase their switching speeds by more than 20% while reducing their power consumption by about 30%, Intel estimates.

For the full story, see:

DON CLARK. "Intel Shifts From Silicon To Lift Chip Performance." The Wall Street Journal (Mon., November 12, 2007): B7.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

When the Oldest Car Was New, Only the Rich Could Afford One

When LaMarquise was made in 1884, only the very rich could afford to buy a car. Source of photo: online verison of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 11) David Burgess-Wise, a writer and automotive historian who closely examined La Marquise for Automobile Quarterly in 1995, said that some older steam-powered conveyances existed, but either they were no longer running or had not been designed as automobiles — that is, as relatively compact four-wheel machines that were not trucks, intended to carry people.

When the count lured Georges Bouton and Charles-Armand Trépardoux to make automobiles in Paris in 1882, the latter were turning out miniature steam engines and mechanical toys. The partners experimented with tricycles, then turned out two four-wheelers with vertical boilers, front drive and rear steering. They looked like coffee pots on perambulator wheels.

Then, in 1884, La Marquise was constructed with a much shorter boiler of concentric rings (like Russian nesting dolls, Mr. Burgess-White noted) and two cylinders beneath the floor driving close-set rear wheels via locomotive cranks. Water was carried in a tank under the seat, and coke or coal was kept in a square bunker surrounding the boiler. Coke was withdrawn through drawers at the bottom and poured down a pipe in the center of the boiler onto the fire beneath.

. . .

The company produced sales brochures in 1886 with illustrations of a steam phaeton, dog cart, truck, carriage and 18-seat bus. By 1889 you could buy a tricycle for 2,800 francs ($540) or a quadricycle for 4,400 francs ($850). But that was a prince’s ransom at a time when a French laborer might make five francs a day. Only the very rich could buy a motorized vehicle.

As a result, only about 30 De Dion steamers were made, Mr. Burgess-Wise estimated, including 20 tricycles, 5 quadricycles and a few larger carts and carriages.

Mr. Moore said he thought there may have been only four quadricycles, two of which remain. Six tricycles are known to still exist, but none are operable.

For the full story, see:

PAUL DUCHENE. "COLLECTING; For Sale: ’84 Model. Runs Great." The New York Times, SpotsSunday Section (Sun., August 19, 2007): 11.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Soon to be former owner Tim Moore (right) takes David Gooding for a characteristically steamy ride. Source of photo: online verison of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Von Hippel Promotes User-Driven Innovation

"Eric von Hippel of M.I.T., left, and Dr. Nathaniel Sims, with hospital devices Dr. Sims has modified. Mr. von Hippel says users can improve on products." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article cited below.

Some innovation is done by the devoted for free. But in his books, and in the article excerpted below, I think von Hippel puts too little emphasis on the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur’s profit motive, as drivers of innovation.

One example is the Moveable Type free program that underlies this, and many other blogs. It is often described as one of the best blog platforms, but it is hard to use for a non-techie, kludgey, and very limited in some obvious ways. For example, there apparently is no way that I can make comments to the most recent 10 entries visible on the main blog page. And there is only limited backup capabilities. And the spell-checker does not have "blog" in its dictionary, and asks me if I really meant to type "bog."

You can bet that if Moveable Type was produced for profit, they would have provided users these obvious capabilities. And I would rather pay for a more capable program, rather than get a less capable program for free.

(p. 5) DR. NATHANIEL SIMS, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, has figured out a few ways to help save patients’ lives.

In doing so, he also represents a significant untapped vein of innovation for companies.

Dr. Sims has picked up more than 10 patents for medical devices over his career. He ginned up a way to more easily shuttle around the dozen or more monitors and drug-delivery devices attached to any cardiac patient after surgery, with a device known around the hospital as the “Nat Rack.”

. . .

What Dr. Sims did is called user-driven innovation by Eric von Hippel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. Mr. von Hippel is the leading advocate of the value of letting users of products modify them or improve them, because they may come up with changes that manufacturers never considered. He thinks that this could help companies develop products more quickly and inexpensively than with their internal design teams.

“It could drive manufacturers out of the design space,” Mr. von Hippel says.

It is a difficult idea for research and development departments to accept, but one of his studies found that 82 percent of new capabilities for scientific instruments like electron microscopes were developed by users.

. . .

One problem with the user-innovation model is that it can run into intellectual property rights protections. . . .

. . .

. . . , Mr. von Hippel’s ideas are up against more conventional forms of user-aided design, such as sending anthropologists to study how people use products in their daily lives. Companies then translate their research into new designs.

Even some of Mr. von Hippel’s acolytes remain cautious. “A lot of this is still in the category of, ‘You could imagine this working out really well,’ ” says Saul T. Griffith, who as an M.I.T. engineering student was part of a group of kite-surfers who developed products for their sport that have since become commercialized. Mr. von Hippel wrote about Mr. Griffith in his 2005 book, “Democratizing Innovation.”

For the full story, see:

MICHAEL FITZGERALD. "Prototype How to Improve It? Ask Those Who Use It." The New York Times, Section 3 (Sun., March 25, 2007): 5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

von Hippel has two main books in which he defends his user-driven innovation ideas:

von Hippel, Eric. The Sources of Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

von Hippel, Eric. Democratizing Innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.

Motorola Hurt By Failing to Leapfrog Itself

Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article cited below.

Clayton Christensen, in a series of books, has highlighted why it is difficult for a successful incumbent to prepare a successor for its own winning product. The Motorola case below is another example.

Note, though, that Motorola’s failure is not the understandable one of failing to prepare what Christensen calls a "disruptive innovation." If the story below is right, it is a case of the less understandable failure to continue to deliver with what Christensen calls "sustaining innovation."

(p. A1) A year ago, Motorola Inc. appeared headed for a third straight year of rich profits under Chief Executive Ed Zander, driven by its hit cellphone the Razr. "A lot of you are always asking what is after the Razr," Mr. Zander said in an April 2006 conference call after another quarter of 30%-plus growth. "I say more Razrs."

But behind the scenes, Motorola was working furiously to get a successor phone to market by the second half of 2006, according to people familiar with the matter. When it failed to do so, profit margins on handsets narrowed and the company swung to a loss. Key executives left. And as the stock slid, activist investor Carl Icahn built up a position and began campaigning for a board seat to address what he called Motorola’s "operational problems."

Motorola’s travails illustrate the risks for a company that rides high with a big consumer hit. Amid its success with the Razr, it fell behind on developing a phone with the next generation of technology. Missing a beat is especially hazardous in cellphones, where it can take two to three years to develop a new line.

. . .

(p. A14) As the Razr grew hot, some former designers and engineers say Motorola repeated mistakes it had made a decade earlier with another big hit, the compact flip-top phone known as the StarTAC. That phone was a huge seller, but it also was an analog phone, and its popularity blinded the company to an industry shift to digital technology. Similarly, while Motorola was selling countless Razrs, competitors were hard at work on more sophisticated products for 3G networks.

Motorola put engineers and designers who could have been working on new products on the Razr and its derivatives, some former executives say. "All resources went to feeding the beast," says a former Motorola designer. "Suddenly, you created this thing that requires a lot of energy and attention." Other former executives dispute that the focus on the Razr diverted work from other products and contend Motorola was right to ride the still-popular Razr as long as possible.

For the full story, see:

CHRISTOPHER RHOADS and LI YUAN. "DROPPED CALL; How Motorola Fell A Giant Step Behind; As It Milked Thin Phone, Rivals Sneaked Ahead On the Next Generation." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., April 27, 2007): A1 & A14.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

The most complete source of Christensen’s theory and examples is:

Christensen, Clayton M., and Michael E. Raynor. The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2003.

Motorola CEO. Source of image: online version of the WSJ article cited above.

The Internet Adds Value for Restaurant Consumers and Efficiency for Restaurant Owners

Source of graph: online version of the NYT article cited below.

(p. C1) SAN FRANCISCO, June 17 — Town Hall, one of the busiest restaurants in this food-crazed city, seems the very model of old-fashioned dining. Patrons who arrive to claim their reserved seats are greeted by a hostess who consults a piece of paper with the day’s reservations and leads her guests to the appointed table.

But upstairs, in the restaurant’s office, a different scene is playing out. In a veritable mission-control setting, a reservationist answers eight phone lines while seated in front of two computers that log reservations and hold an archive of past and future electronic bookings.

The software also reveals the idiosyncrasies of thousands of guests. The restaurant staff knows in advance, for instance, that a regular always insists on a table under a particular piece of artwork. They know about another person’s request for kosher food — but only when dining in certain company. And there is the guest so reliably late that staff members know to add 45 minutes to the reservation time.

After decades of relying on telephones to book tables, and piles of index cards — or a maitre d’hotel’s memory — to collect information about diners and their quirks, the restaurant business has finally gone unabashedly high-tech.

Technology may not make it any easier for diners to get a reservation at the most sought-after spots, like the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., or Babbo in New York City. But the perseverance of a San Francisco-based company called OpenTable, which has come to dominate the business of online restaurant reservations, is making it much easier for restaurants to manage reservations and improve customer service.

. . .

(p. C5) Making a reservation through OpenTable costs the diner nothing. And it reduces the inconvenience. Say you want a table on short notice at a busy Manhattan restaurant — Danny Meyer’s Union Square Cafe. Placing a phone call there usually requires calling during business hours, enduring loud jazz for hold music, and talking with a reservationist for a while before finding an acceptable time. OpenTable might give you the same results, but it will do the work in 10 seconds.

. . .

Many of the restaurants discovered that they had to surrender to the automation because their popularity suffered if they did not.

“It was a long, long time before that was proven,” said Bill Gurley, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist whose company, Benchmark, has invested $21.6 million in OpenTable over the years.

It took three years for OpenTable to seat its one-millionth diner. But now, the company seats two million diners every month. And Zagat, the restaurant rating service, has adopted OpenTable for reservations made through its site, zagat.com

For the full story, see:

KATIE HAFNER. "Restaurant Reservations Go Online." The New York Times (Mon., June 18, 2007): C1 & C5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

"Doug Washington, left, and Mitchell Rosenthal are partners in Salt House in San Francisco, one of 7,000 restaurants using OpenTable." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article cited above.

“Merchant Generator” Leads Nuclear Renaissance

Source of graphic: online version of the WSJ article quoted, and cited, below.

(p. B1) In a move that could mark the beginning of a nuclear-power revival, a New Jersey-based energy company today plans to submit an application to build and operate two new reactors. The request, the first submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 31 years, comes from an unlikely source: NRG Energy Inc., a company that has never before built a nuclear plant.

The application — for a two-reactor addition to the company’s existing South Texas nuclear station — could offer the first full test of the nuclear agency’s new licensing process, which has been under development since the 1980s. The new process allows companies to submit a single application for a construction permit and conditional operating license, eliminating the risk that a firm could build a plant but not be allowed to run it.

. . .

(p. B2) . . . , the industry has regained momentum, partly because other forms of power generation have continued to show significant flaws. Coal-fired plants undermine efforts to combat global warming. Many natural-gas-fired plants rely on a fuel with volatile prices. And renewable energy mostly comes from intermittent forces like wind, rain and sunlight.

This first application comes from a somewhat unlikely source; NRG is a so-called "merchant generator," a company that makes electricity and sells it on the open market. NRG has never built a nuclear plant, and because it doesn’t own a utility, has no ratepayers to whom it could bill the estimated $5.5 billion to $6 billion expense.

"We’re like the uncola," says David Crane, NRG chief executive in Princeton, N.J.

. . .

So far, it appears merchant generators think Texas provides the most promising market. Deregulation in that state has resulted in a sharp run up in wholesale power prices since 2004. A recent decision by Dallas-based TXU to abandon efforts to build eight coal-fired plants could result in shrinking electricity reserves in the coming years, creating an environment receptive to operators looking to bring large units online and sell such units’ full output.

For the full story, see:

REBECCA SMITH. "Nuclear Energy’s Second Act? Bid to Build Two New Reactors In Texas May Mark Resurgence; NRC Gears Up for Many More." The Wall Street Journal (Tues., September 25, 2007): B1 & B2.

(Note: ellipses added.)