Futurist Thomas Frey: Yesterday my wife Deb and I had lunch at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants, and afterwards we’re given the typical fortune cookies that come with the bill. Jokingly I broke open the first one and asked, “I wonder if it’d be possible to create a real fortune sometime in the future and put it into these cookies?”
The credit card industry is much bigger than just the credit card companies and the banks. There’s an entire ecosystem of payment processors, service providers, and would-be disruptors from Silicon Valley fighting over the space.
Continue reading… “Who the main players are in the credit card payments industry”
A new report, Sharing is the New Buying, offers important insight for big brands who are grappling with the emergence of the Collaborative Economy, and for the startups that are driving this growth. The collaborative economy is a powerful movement in which people are getting the things from each other, it’s a combination of trends like the sharing economy, maker movement, and co-innovation. (Infographic)
Continue reading… “Sharing is the new buying: Insights into the Collaborative Economy”
Pebble Smartwatch
The crowdfunding startup, Kickstarter, has raised 500 million alone in the last 12 months. This week, Kickstarter announced it has passed $1 billion in pledges, contributed by 5.7 million users across 224 countries.
Continue reading… “Kickstarter passes $1B in crowdfunded pledges”
Workers install solar electric panels on a residential rooftop.
The head of America’s second-largest power company, David Crane, said microgrids will soon phase out large centralized electrical grids making the industry’s current business model obsolete.
Continue reading… “Microgrids will soon make large electrical grids obsolete”
Wage discrimination isn’t a problem women face in the tech industry.
For a long time, Silicon Valley has suffered the reputation of being unwelcoming to women, from brogrammer attitudes to sexist apps to gender inclusivity. Whatever problems women may have with the tech industry, wage discrimination isn’t necessarily one of them. New research shows that there is no statistically significant difference in earnings between male and female engineers who have the same credentials and make the same choices regarding their career.
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder County has more tech startups per capita than any U.S. metropolitan area, and it’s no wonder – the brightest minds flock to Boulder to work with companies that define innovation on a daily basis. And not only do startups thrive, seasoned technology companies and professionals find that being in this vibrant community is a large contributing factor to their long-term success.
Continue reading… “Boulder has more tech startups per capita than any U.S. metropolitan area”
Embedded tracking technologies are being used to remotely monitor individual health and performance.
Personal wearable devices are painting a more intimate picture of your health and overall fitness level by the data they are collecting. The real opportunity of wearables may be in connecting that information to a person who can help us make sense of the data and in turn, build a new relationship between patients and experts, one that carries with it highly personalized layers of analysis and recommendations.
Continue reading… “How wearables will redefine the doctor-patient relationship”
Futurist Thomas Frey: I’ve always loved ideas and I think it stems from the fact that I’ve had so many to choose from. But it wasn’t about the sheer number of ideas I got to play with. Rather it was finding that one truly remarkable gem, the golden epiphany, hiding in amongst the others.
The Maker Movement Encompasses all kinds of activity from traditional crafts to high-tech electronics.
In recent years, one of the more significant trends is the impact of technology on homemade manufacturing. The Maker Movement, a diffuse entrepreneurial community, has been using open source design to drive a telling resurgence in American manufacturing. Encompassing all kinds of activity from traditional crafts to high-tech electronics, linked by the adoption of digital tools, not just for design, but increasingly for manufacture through 3-D printing, technology has transformed DIY enthusiasts operating on their own at home into real communities.
Continue reading… “Homemade goods could become the global brands of tomorrow”
The only way to run a no-manager company is very publicly.
Ryan Carson broke the big news when he was presenting Treehouse’s latest numbers to investors. In the middle of the presentation, one investor stopped and asked, “Wait, who reports to who?” “My co-founder [Alan Johnson] and I just kind of looked at each other and laughed,” says Carson. Then they fessed up. “We said ‘No one reports to anyone.’”
Continue reading… “Do companies work better without bosses?”
Next generation of wearables needs to focus more on keeping users engaged in the long-term.
Companies such as Sony, Pebble, Meta, LG, Garmin, Razer and others introduced at least 10 new wearable devices at CES in January. Yet despite the enthusiasm in the market, the dirty secret of wearables remains: almost all of the current generation of products fail to drive long-term, sustained engagement and behavior change.
Continue reading… “3 critical factors wearables need to be successful”