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PARC in the news
Filtering Dirty Water, By Losing the Filter [video]
14 May 2012 | Bloomberg
"Planet Forward’s Frank Sesno discusses the growing challenge of keeping water clean. He reports on Bloomberg Television’s 'Bloomberg West.'"
PARC, 10 Years After Xerox Spin-Off, Says It's All About Innovation
14 May 2012 | Forbes
by Connie Guglielmo
"Its clients include big names like Samsung, Procter & Gamble, Panasonic, Motorola and Honda, the U.S. government and a bevy of startups, some of whom it has spawned or invested in. Last year, 40 percent of its deals were with startups, up from 12 to 15 percent just three yeas ago.
In addition to 200 researchers – including ethnographers who study people and their problems to understand how technology can actually work on their behalf – Hoover also manages a business development and marketing team of about 20 people who work with those researchers to identify potential projects and inventions with market potential."
Creating the National Science Foundation Network with Van Jacobson [video]
Computing Conversations podcasts
1 May 2012 | IEEE Computer
"To better understand computing's potential future directions, it's important to know our past and how we arrived at our current state. This column is dedicated to meeting and talking to people who range from the early pioneers to current visionaries...
[IEEE] Computer’s multimedia editor Charles Severance captures a video interview with Van Jacobson on the creation of the National Science Foundation network in the 1980s. From Computer's May 2012 issue."
Printing: Changing how electronics are made
[invited/ guest contributed]
1 May 2012 | Industrial + Specialty Printing
by Gregory L. Whiting, Ph.D.
"...novel manufacturing platforms could enable an even wider application space to be addressed, which would be complementary and disruptive to conventional semiconductor fabrication."
PARC showcases business models, not products, at 10 year anniversary
29 April 2012 | Ars Technica
by Nathan Mattise
"The message of the day was clear with the first words to greet guests at the registration table (via both conference workers and a commemorative bookmark). 'Just wanted to let you know, "Xerox PARC" is so 10 years ago. Today, we're "PARC, a Xerox company".'
PARC's Power of 10 is a year-long series of events, including public-friendly guest presentations and this half-day conference, to commemorate the company's first ten years of independent operation. In 2002 Xerox incorporated PARC as an independent, wholly owned subsidiary, shifting the R&D pioneers toward an open innovation business model that took center stage on Thursday.
...Chesbrough's point was best emphasized after his presentation. The rest of the afternoon featured panels with representatives from a few PARC-collaborators. They all shared their projects, but the most eye-catching were Nicole Tricoukes, Senior Maverick at Motorola Solutions, and Davor Sutija, CEO of Thin Film."
Episode 134: PARC
27 April 2012 | Press:Here
by Erci Savitz & Farhad Manjoo
"PARC has a long history in Silicon Valley…but do we still need corporate labs?
‘Press: Here’ features the top names in Silicon Valley's technology industry and world-class technology reporters from The Economist, The New York Times, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Businessweek, Forbes, The Financial Times, NPR, and Fortune. The show is seen in the San Francisco Bay Area on NBC and on cable in New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas and Washington DC. High-definition podcasts are available from iTunes."
Predatory IP threatening the progress of open innovation
PARC celebrates 10 years anniversary with a warning
26 April 2012
by Iain Thomson
"Henry Chesbrough, executive director of open innovation at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, said that patents were originally relatively undervalued, since there was no court system set up to deal with them. But with the advent of specialized courts and legal practices around patents, the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
...Chesbrough was speaking at the celebrations to mark 10 years of PARC as an individual company rather than as [just] the research arm of Xerox."
Internet Hall of Fame Inductees Honored at Historic First Annual Awards Ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland
Internet Society celebrates inductees' landmark achievements at Global INET 2012
23 April 2012 | release
by Internet Society
"The names of the inaugural Internet Hall of Fame inductees were announced today at the Internet Society's Global INET 2012 conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Internet pioneers and luminaries from around the world gathered at the conference to mark the Internet Society's 20th anniversary, and attend an Awards Gala to honor the following 2012 inductees...
Innovators -- Recognizing individuals who made outstanding technological, commercial, or policy advances and helped to expand the Internet's reach: Mitchell Baker, Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, Van Jacobson, Lawrence Landweber, Paul Mockapetris, Craig Newmark, Raymond Tomlinson, Linus Torvalds, and Philip Zimmermann."
The Internet Gets a Hall of Fame (Including Al Gore!)
23 April 2012 | Wired
by Ryan Singel
"The best revolutionaries eventually find themselves hailed in tributes... So it’s almost inevitable that nearly 30 years after the official birthdate of the internet, some of the net’s best-known pioneers, radicals, and troublemakers are being inducted into the Internet Society’s Hall of Fame. The inaugural group includes 33 of the net’s most influential engineers, evangelists and entrepreneurs...
Innovators: [PARC Research Fellow] Van Jacobson: When the internet began to grow in the late 80s, Jacobsen devised a flow control algorithm for TCP that allowed the network to scale and avoid congestion, which is still used today. A leader in network diagnostics and performance, he won a ACM SIGCOMM lifetime achievement award in 2001."
The age of flexible electronics is upon us
16 April 2012 | VentureBeat
by Dean Takahashi
"It has taken decades to reach this point because it requires the invention of new semiconductor manufacturing technologies, which have to be reused in ways that apply to the new kinds of materials. The good thing is that putting a little bit of electronics into flexible or wearable materials can result in a lot of new applications that don’t cost all that much to build. Flexible electronics is still looking for home-run applications, but it’s not as pie-in-the sky as it sounds. The manufacturing has improved to the point where simple memory devices cost just pennies."
Memory Foraging: When the Brain Behaves Like a Bee
Researchers test the idea that we hunt for memories in our minds the same way some animals search for food
16 April 2012 | Scientific American
by Ferris Jabr
Peter Pirolli, a research fellow at PARC in California who has studied how foraging theories apply to memory, sees the new findings as strong experimental support for an idea that is increasingly popular. 'The general sense that searching for things in the world might have been exapted [sic] to other purposes, such as searching for information internally, is a meme that got started in the 1990s," he explains. "I see more and more work applying this aspect of behavioral ecology not just to memory but to all kinds of search and task management."
...Research Projects Aimed at Making Healthcare Less of a Pain
10 April 2012 | HealthNewsDigest
"If you think back to the last time you saw a doctor, it’s easy to see the barriers that stand between patients and physicians: excessive paperwork, difficulties sharing test results and medical records, confusing payment instructions, not to mention the limited time doctors have with each patient.
...Mobile care coordination: Ethnographers – researchers who track the habits of workers as they go about their day – and technologists at PARC, A Xerox company, are working with practicing nurses to develop the Digital Nurse Assistant – a combination of in-room displays and mobile technology that delivers information on past, current, and planned actions for a patient. Displays turn on automatically when a recognized clinician enters a room to treat a patient, and mobile devices allow caregivers to document their work without locating and logging into a workstation."
How Computers Are Creating a Second Economy Without Workers
Call it the post-employee economy: The digital revolution is creating billions of dollars of wealth in a second world without people
10 April 2012 | The Atlantic
by Bill Davidow
"The Second Economy -- a term the [Visiting PARC Researcher and] economist Brian Arthur uses to describe the computer-intensive portion of the economy -- is, quite simply, the virtual economy.
...Arthur's article in the McKinsey Quarterly, titled 'The Second Economy', does a wonderful job of explaining it."
Flexible displays bend what's possible for computers
..."Just one word. Plastics," he whispers. "There's a great future in plastics."
5 April 2012 | USA Today
by Jon Swartz
"Until then, flexible displays will be visible in smaller, more modest designs such as smart security tags, shelf and food labels, and loyalty cards with memory, says Janos Veres, who manages the printed electronics team at PARC.
PARC, the storied research center that inspired many of the features in the original Macintosh computer, is tinkering with plastic memory, chips on consumer goods packaging, sensors on helmets, and more.
One project is a wearable patch with sensors to monitor a patient's heart rate, temperature and blood pressure. PARC is also looking at the concept of a flexible battery to save energy and space, Veres says."
Announcing Make's Hardware Innovation Workshop
5 April 2012 | O'Reilly Radar
by Dale Doughterty
"We are starting to see what results from a powerful combination of open hardware + personal fabrication tools + connected makers... Even now, the pace of development is quickening and the number of hardware startups is rapidly growing.
Tim O'Reilly has been urging that the opportunity is now to showcase makers as professionals who are starting new businesses and developing new products. So, I'm happy to announce a new business conference during the week of Maker Faire... Presented by Make, the Hardware Innovation Workshop will be held Tuesday and Wednesday, May 15-16, at PARC, a Xerox company, in Palo Alto, California. (I'm excited to have PARC host us and this event because of its long history as a source of technology innovation.)"
Could content-centric networking provide a profitable future?
4 April 2012 | European Communications
"When Van Jacobson has something to say, people tend to listen. His algorithms for the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) helped solve the problem of internet congestion and enabled it to survive a major traffic surge in 1988-89 without collapsing. Jacobson is currently a research fellow at PARC, the company that invented ethernet, and is warning telcos that new problems lie on the horizon.
...Thanks to the strain on their networks, telcos are well aware of the content revolution underway; however, Jacobson said the 'fixes' they have used to handle the shift will not last forever. ...The ENC has brought together a range of partners to work on PARC’s answer to this problem: content-centric networking."
Thinfilm Wins IDTechEx Product Development Award for World’s First Printed Addressable Memory
4 April 2012 | Printed Electronics Now
"Thinfilm Addressable Memory, the result of an extensive collaboration involving PARC, a Xerox company, Solvay and Polyera, is a significant step toward the Internet of Things (IoT), a technology trend identified by Gartner as one of the Top 10 Strategic Trends of the decade."
Can new CEOs fix H-P, RIM, and Yahoo?
Over the last few weeks, new chiefs at three once pioneering tech companies...have begun making drastic moves and tough choices as they try to turn around the tarnished giants.
3 April 2012 | WSJ MarketWatch
by Therese Poletti
"'In the beginning, products are too expensive...The technology is always more than what people can use,' said Clayton Christensen, the author of The Innovator’s Dilemma and other books, who spoke to a packed house at PARC in Palo Alto, Calif. last week. 'There are always, though, a few nerds — like here — who will never be satisfied.'"
Data 2.0 Summit Explores the Big Data, Social Data, and Open Data Revolution
...speakers from over 80 companies discuss why cloud data is the next $100 billion dollar industry.
2 April 2012 | release
by Data 2.0 Summit
"Highlighting the Data 2.0 Summit are speakers including: Jim Fowler, Co-Founder of Jigsaw.com (now Data.com); Bram Cohen, founder of BitTorrent; Gil Elbaz, founder and CEO of Factual; as well as executives from PARC (a Xerox Company), 10gen, Hadoop, DataStax, Intuit, Dun & Bradstreet, RapLeaf, GNIP, Mashery, RadiumOne, Kaggle, Cloudera, MTV Networks, Experian, Bizo, BlueKai, and Walmart Labs."
How To Get From A Great Idea To Actual Innovation
There's a tendency for all of us to glorify the ideation process when in fact it's the reduction to practice that's perhaps more important, says Stephen Hoover, CEO of PARC, a Xerox company.
30 March 2012 | Fast Company [invited/ guest contributed]
by Jocelyn Hawkes
"'You'd think we'd have a really complex answer for this one, given that PARC is in the business of breakthroughs... But for me, it's really simple and can even be captured in one phrase: Inventions with impact. As in impact on people, our clients' businesses, and the world. In whatever forms it takes.'"
Building content smarts into the network
PARC - the company that invented the mouse/pointer/icon combination you're probably using to navigate this story - has just launched a three letter acronym: the Emerging Network Consortium (ENC)
29 March 2012 | TelecomTV
by Ian Scales
"In essence, today's Internet of computers just talking to each other is so 'yesterday'. Tomorrow's evolved Internet will need to be all about shifting an ever-increasing flood of video efficiently and securely - the current Internet is not architected to cope."
Global industry collaboration key focus for China
20 March 2012 | pv magazine: Photovoltaic Markets & Technology
by Becky Stuart
"Another newcomer to the Chinese solar scene is PARC… Scott Elrod, vice president and director of the hardware systems lab explained that the company is focused on the cleantech industry, and works with companies in Europe, the U.S. and Asia. PARC specializes in advanced cell architecture, and particularly focuses on photovoltaic cell printing, metallization, grid lines, laser processing and point contacts."
How Super-Connectivity Kills Economics
The result of increased connectivity has been a more volatile and less predictable economy -- and theories that no longer apply to our frenzied world.
20 March 2012 | The Atlantic
by Bill Davidow
"I'm using the words positive feedback in an engineering sense... Here's where economists come in. Positive feedback greatly magnifies the differences between reality and idealistic theory. As W. Brian Arthur, a visiting researcher at PARC points out, 'conventional economic theory tends to simplify its questions in order to seek analytical solutions'."
Materials Research Society Announces 2012 MRS Fellows
Twenty-eight honored for distinguished research accomplishments and contributions to the advancement of materials research
19 March 2012 | release
"The Materials Research Society (MRS) will recognize the following 28 members as Fellows of the Materials Research Society at the 2012 MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco. This recognition honors MRS members who are notable for their distinguished accomplishments and their outstanding contributions to the advancement of materials research, worldwide... "
John Northrup, PARC, a Xerox company -- "For guiding insights based on first-principles calculations of total energies and band structures related to atomic arrangements in semiconductor materials, particularly on surfaces, heterointerfaces, dislocations, and chemical defects"
Can ARPA-E build a bridge across the 'Valley of Death'?
6 March 2012 | E&E News
by Umair Irfan
"PARC is investigating clean-tech, using its expertise in printing to print better solar cells and more energy-dense lithium ion batteries... [Scott Elrod] explained that the company is going after energy investments, including power generation, because it's an emerging market that's here to stay. The company received some funding from DOE, but not under ARPA-E."
The Culture of Innovation
What Makes San Francisco Bay Area Companies Different?
1 March 2012 | Booz & Company
by with Bay Area Council Economic Institute
"The most recent incarnation of PARC, Xerox's storied Silicon Valley research facility, is an example. PARC is now a separate division of Xerox, with a mission to innovate not just for the benefit of theparent company, but also for other companies and the government..."
Reinventing energy at ARPA-E: Plastic light concentrator [photos]
28 February 2012 | CNET
by Martin La Monica
"The ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit brings a number of startups but a large portion of the exhibitors are from national labs, universities, and research organizations. PARC, which is a Xerox company, has an energy research arm and is displaying this solar concentrator. It reflects light with dies in a sheet of plastic and then directs it up through the Fresnel lens on the top. The idea is to manufacture this at very small scale so that you could use sheets of plastic with this design embedded in it to reflect light cheaply."
Meshin Introduces Recall Into The Android Market
[and] 10 Questions With Meshin CEO Chris Holmes
22 February 2012 | The Droid Guy
"…Meshin have introduced another great app to the Android Market. Our Apps Editor… has his own way of reviewing apps, for me though most apps that I consider 'best' are apps that qualify as productive or business. Meshin Recall is one of those apps. It integrates with your Evernote account and all, or as many of, your calendars that you want."
"Meshin came out of PARC with their biggest chunk of funding coming from Xerox..."
Wanna Manage The Innovation Process? Focus On Planning Scenarios, Not Fighting Fires [PARC comment]
22 February 2012 | Fast Company Co.Design
by Jeffrey Phillips
article excerpt: "Perhaps the most important transition point is between idea selection and product development. History is replete with examples of organizations that generated hundreds of great ideas that were never developed or implemented. ...Scenario planning isn’t difficult and it is a great tool to begin to anticipate possible futures."
PARC comment excerpt: "Sure, scenario planning is a useful tool, and great for helping companies innovate when they know where they want to go. But the reality of innovation is that people in boardrooms and laboratories don't decide what's successful in the marketplace: people do. That's why incorporating human factors insights from social scientists and ethnographic observations of people in context (which reveal what people do, not just what they say they do) can help companies determine where they SHOULD go. In other words: don't just focus on solving the problem 'right', but focus on solving the 'right' problem."
The perils of Farmville: A look into the social gaming phenomenon [audio]
15 February 2012 | WHYY Radio
by Marty Moss-Coane
"Zynga, a social games company that has created hits like Farmvilleand Words With Friends, made headlines recently after Facebook released data indicating that Zynga is responsible for about 12 percent of its annual revenue... Generating billions of dollars and claiming over 50 million users, they are extremely popular and an important part of the gaming industry. But these types of games have been embroiled in a debate...
We also here from Nick Yee of PARC, who studies player motivations and the psychological implications of social gaming."
DoD Taps PARC To Help Detect Insider Threats
PARC, famous for its innovations, will develop technology for the Department of Defense that aims to identify inside security threats, using behavioral data, social networks, and other sources.
15 February 2012 | InformationWeek
by Elizabeth Montalbano
"PARC...is spearheading a new effort called the Graph Learning for Anomaly Detection using Psychological Context (GLAD-PC). The project will leverage large-scale behavioral data sets as well as information from social networks and other sources to determine when someone inside the military could pose a security risk.
...The DoD has awarded PARC $3.5 million for its role in the project, and the technology developed could have commercial potential after it's deployed within the government."
Love and Warcraft: Spouses Being Pushed Aside For Video Games
14 February 2012 | U.S. News & World Report
by Jason Koebler
"A survey has found an increasing number of spouses who don’t play video games are becoming 'gaming widows', seeing their significant other spend all their time in online worlds.
...Nick Yee, a research scientist at PARC who focuses on social interactions in virtual environments, says the findings aren't surprising..."
The Perils and Pleasures of Online Gaming for Married Life
14 February 2012 | Scientific American
by Ferris Jabr
"...Nick Yee of PARC in California has surveyed more than 35,000 players of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), such as World of Warcraft. He has found that only 25 percent of MMORPG players are teenagers. What’s more, nearly 36 percent of players are married and 22 percent have children."
A Revolution of Machines Quietly Hums
9 February 2012 | New York Times
by Chrystia Freeland
"Mr. Arthur’s contention is that a second, machine-to-machine economy is emerging and that it will bring deep economic, social and political change comparable to the transformation wrought by the Industrial Revolution."
Progress in Printed Electronics: An Interview with PARC’s Janos Veres [podcast]
31 January 2012 | ElectroIQ
by Pete Singer, Solid State Technology
"PARC is a pioneer in the development and commercialization of thin film transistors, circuits, and sensors. With a 40 year history of commercial innovation, PARC scientists have a deep knowledge of printing technology applied in domains such as displays, image sensors, and medical sensors, PARC's technical expertise and facility support printed dielectrics, nanoparticle metals, organic, oxide, and silicon (amorphous, polycrystalline, printed nanowire) semiconductors. Solid State Technology editor Pete Singer caught up with Janos Veres, area manager for printed electronics in the electronic materials and devices laboratory at PARC."
Printed Stickers Designed to Monitor Food Temperatures
Effort aims to merge technology from four companies to create the first sticker with all-printed electronics.
30 January 2012 | Technology Review
by David Talbot
"A plastic temperature-recording sticker that could provide detailed histories of crates of food or bottles of vaccine would be the first to use all-printed electronics components—including memory, logic, and even the battery. The cost per sticker could be only 30 cents or less.
Thin Film Electronics, based in Oslo, Norway, aims to marry the company's printed memory with printed transistors from PARC in Palo Alto, California; a printed temperature sensor from PST Sensors, a spin-off from the University of Cape Town in South Africa; and a printed battery from Imprint Energy, a spin-off from the University of California, Berkeley. The first prototype using all the components is expected later this year."
Printable smart tags could link carrots to the internet of things
25 January 2012 | SlashGear
by Chris Davies
"The culmination of several decades of R&D by ThinFilm Electronics, with some help from PARC’s printed transistors, the multilayer tags combine a year’s worth of battery power, sensors and a small display, and will initially be used to show a temperature record of perishable food and medications.
...by adding in PARC printed transistors, meanwhile, the tags can collect information themselves and process it."
State of Green Business 2012
[invited/ guest contributed]
18 January 2012 | GreenBiz.com
by Scott Elrod
"Someone at PARC once famously quoted, 'The best way to predict the future is to invent it.' When that concept is applied to cleantech – where the future is focused on deploying solutions at a massive scale, and where there is no Moore's Law for PV – I'd say the best way to predict the future is to 'innovate' it."
Man vs. Machine: Behind the Jobless Recovery
17 January 2012 | Wall Street Journal
by Timothy Aeppel
"The trend toward using labor-saving machines and software isn't limited to factories. W. Brian Arthur, an economist at PARC, says businesses are increasingly using computers and software in the place of people in the nation's vast service sector. Many companies, for instance, use automation to process orders or send bills. 'It's not just machines replacing people, though there's some of that,' Mr. Arthur says. 'It's much more the digitization of the whole economy.'"
Venture capitalists need to put their money on real risk [PARC comment]
11 January 2012 | Harvard Business Review
by Bruce Gibney and Ken Howery
article excerpt: "It's time for VCs to return to boldness. We must find and help build the revolutionary startups that will generate transformational change and create billions in value. That is where the returns lie."
PARC comment excerpt: "We'd like to point out, though, that there are problems that are simply too big and complex for any one type of entity... So if VCs and startups want to play a role in fostering disruptive change, they need to connect the players, beyond their typical networks. Besides enabling access to expertise and resources not otherwise available to small companies, PARC for example helps create the partnerships and ecosystem necessary to solve big, complex problems."
It’s a new day at the PARC
6 January 2012 | Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal
by Diana Samuels
"'It's amazing from a small company's point of view to work with these guys because you have ideas that you want to see as an extension of your product and some of these research centers, amazingly enough, are working on these concepts,' Pfeiffer [CTO of Power Assure] said. 'You can find really amazing case studies, research that you can then leverage for your own development.'"
Reinventing Xerox PARC As a Money Maker
22 December 2011 | Slashdot
The Comeback of Xerox PARC
...Xerox's R&D subsidiary has a new strategy for innovation: make money.
21 December 2011
"PARC, which once served only Xerox, now has an expanding list of technologies in development with outside partners that include Fujitsu, Motorola, NEC Display Solutions, Microsoft, Samsung, SolFocus, and Oracle. The change in strategy has helped turn it from a multimillion-dollar financial sinkhole into a modest, but growing, innovation business.
For PARC, the partnerships are signs that open innovation is working. 'There are plenty of great ideas at PARC, but you learn early on that execution is often the hard part—execution and timing,' says St. Claire. '...You almost have to be as innovative in the commercialization—especially when you have game-changing technologies—as on the technology side.'"
PARC: A Brief Nod to the Minds Behind Laser Printing, Ethernet, the GUI and More
Technology News and Analysis
20 December 2011 | TechSpot
by Matthew DeCarlo
"Although we generally associate technological advancements with the companies that successfully commercialize them, there are often underappreciated bodies toiling away behind the curtain. In many cases over the last 40 years, PARC has been that hidden player…
PARC continues to tinker with bleeding edge technology, with much of it focused on 'clean tech.'…It's also studying sensemaking along with other human behaviors and working on 'context-aware, content-centric' networking to improve the way data shifts around the Internet."
Thinfilm CEO Davor Sutija Wants Your Stuff To Talk To You
14 December 2011 | Forbes
by Alex Knapp
"'For example,' Sutija says. 'Think of your car. Right now you rely on a maintenance schedule for replacements, repairs, service, etc. But imagine that the individual components of your car can be tagged – your brakes can tell you when they need to be replaced by using its own sensors and reporting the information.'
That’s the future that Thinfilm is working towards through a new partnership with PARC, a Xerox company. Last October, the two companies announced that they had created a printable chip using PARC’s transistors and Thinfilm’s memory to create a low-cost, low-power memory that’s capable of being subject to programming logic."
PARC Spin-Out PowerCloud Systems Raises $6 Million From Qualcomm
14 December 2011 | TechCrunch
by Robin Wauters
"PowerCloud Systems, a spin-out of PARC that offers a ‘networking-as-a-service’ platform for OEMs and service providers, has raised $6 million in Series B funding in a round led by Qualcomm Ventures, with prior backers Walden Venture Capital, Javelin Venture Partners and PARC participating...PowerCloud Systems is not only a spin-out from PARC, but its technology is also supported by intellectual property developed at the research center, including 10 patents in areas ranging from cloud-virtualized network controllers to usable security."
PowerCloud Systems Secures $6 Million in Series B Funding Led by Qualcomm
Funding Fuels Growth of Networking as a Service (NaaS) Platform for OEMs and Service Providers
13 December 2011 | release
by PowerCloud Systems
"PowerCloud Systems is a spin-out from PARC, a premier center for innovation, and the technology underpinning the CloudCommand platform is supported by intellectual property developed at PARC..."
Men, women – and machines
The rise of interconnected digital machines is threatening to change our economy in profound ways
9 December 2011 | Financial Times
by Gillian Tett
"One might almost call these machines the third great sex: in the labour market now, it is not simply a question of men versus women, but men, women – and machines.
Does this matter? Brian Arthur, an esteemed economist, scientist and visiting scholar at PARC, thinks it does. For the crucial thing to understand about these new digitised machines…is that they are not automating human processes; …these machines have been communicating with each other and interacting with decreasing human oversight. The net result is the rise of a second, 'digitized economy', which is operating alongside the 'real' human world – and threatening to change our economy in profound ways."
The Empire Strikes Back
How Xerox and other big corporations are harnessing the force of disruptive innovation.
1 December 2011 | Technology Review
by Scott D. Anthony and Clayton M. Christensen
"As Burns plunged Xerox into the services business, she devoted R&D resources—at the storied PARC lab and elsewhere—to developing...
This is disruptive innovation—making the complicated simple, making the expensive affordable, driving growth by transforming what exists and creating what doesn't. And it appears to be working: profits in Xerox's services business rose..."
Can the Jobs-and-Income Crisis End Well?
Some economists believe that today's grinding unemployment and slow growth are masking the transition to a vibrant digital economy
25 November 2011 | Bloomberg BusinessWeek
by Chris Farrell
"In recent writings, such scholars as Eric Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, W. Brian Arthur, and Richard Florida, as well as consultants at McKinsey & Co., have made a strong case that we’re living through a transition toward an economy dominated by a digital ecosystem. 'Technological progress—in particular, improvements in computer hardware, software, and networks—has been so rapid and so surprising that many present-day organizations, institutions, policies, and mindsets are not keeping up,' write Brynjolfsson and McAfee, scholars at the MIT Sloan School of Management and authors of the e-book, Race Against the Machine. Adds Arthur, a visiting researcher with PARC in a McKinsey & Co. essay: 'Is this the biggest change since the Industrial Revolution? Well, without sticking my neck out too far, I believe so.'"
On moving printed electronics from enabling technology to application
22 November 2011 | Printed Electronics World
by Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx
"IDTechEx recently visited PARC in California and learnt of its business model today, culture, and legacy pioneering technological change...among many other industry contributions.
Below, I share some updates on what IDTechEx has been observing at PARC. Taken together, these updates convey an important movement beyond the enabling materials, processes, equipment, and components."
Fresh Copy: How Ursula Burns Reinvented Xerox
Xerox's PARC research center has already developed a host of technologies to transform the service industry--parking meters that can call 911 and road sensors that ticket you if you go too fast.
19 November 2011 | Fast Company
by Ellen McGirt
"'Look,' Burns chimes in [a joint conversation with PARC CEO Steve Hoover], 'not everything that happens here makes it to the marketplace. But PARC now has a model that allows them to dream beyond the boundaries of what Xerox can use...'"
Who Are the Power Players Out West?
16 November 2011 | AlwaysOn
by Tony Perkins
"...check out the list of players that have already been nominated" -- includes PARC.
Digitized Decision Making and the Hidden Second Economy
Techonomy [invited/ guest contributed]
10 November 2011 | Forbes
by Stephen Hoover
"There’s something big happening right now. I’m not referring to any of the popular technology memes per se—big data, social, cloud, mobile, augmented reality, context, post-PC devices, consumerization, 3-D printing, etc. I’m referring to something behind, and beyond, all of these technologies: the digitization of decision making. This increasing trend is creating a 'second economy' underneath and alongside the physical economy we know so well, and on a revolutionary scale…
[PARC visiting researcher and Santa Fe Institute external professor W. Brian] Arthur argues that this second economy, which author Nick Carr in turn dubs the age of 'deep automation,' may represent the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution, and lead to increases in productivity output as well as decreases in physical jobs.
...Since joining PARC, a Xerox company approaching its 10-year anniversary as a business for open innovation with multiple clients, I have been focused on the following question: just what will happen to invention and innovation in this second economy? More specifically, what will be the role of R&D and innovation organizations in a new global innovation landscape?"
PARC's Best Idea Today: A Better, Faster, Stronger Internet
We asked the Palo Alto Research Center -- the guys who invented the Ethernet...and the laser printer -- to tell us the most interesting thing they're working on today. Here's what they gave us.
10 November 2011 | The Atlantic
by Derek Thompson
"The problem: …The tubes, if you will, get congested. This is partly because the Internet was designed to be a communications network -- in which users connect with each other -- but it has become a distribution network, where one piece of media goes out to many different users. We need a new Internet to deal with new media.
The idea: PARC is trying to build that new Internet with a technology called 'content-centric networking' or CCN. Here's a dramatically simplified version of how this idea is supposed to work...
The potential: A faster, more powerful, more secure, and all-around better Internet."
Dentsu and PARC reach ethnography agreement
Research firm Dentsu Marketing Insight and its ad agency parent have reached an agreement with Xerox-owned innovation firm PARC to source ethnography services.
9 November 2011 | Research
by James Verrinder
"PARC Ethnography Services Group will work with the Japanese firms to make naturalistic, in-person studies of consumer behaviour available to Dentsu clients.
Kenichi Kobayashi, CEO at Dentsu Marketing Insight, said: "Ethnographic research scientifically defines how to truly understand your customer. We know our clients will now see their services, brands, and products in a completely new light through these ethnographic findings."
Meshin for Android tackles communication chaos
2 November 2011 | GigaOM
by Kevin C. Tofel
"Meshin, a Xerox-funded incubator project at PARC, updated its beta Android application that hopes to 'bring order to communication chaos.'
...there’s a number of companies working on this problem. However, I’m surprised that these applications aren’t getting adopted by the mass market: More people are buying smartphones, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that these same people are or will be inundated by notifications and messages.
Am I the only one with 'communication chaos' or do I just have too many digital contacts across my work and personal worlds? Regardless, I’m keeping an eye on this space."
Why Ideas are Unprofitable
American companies are not proficient at turning original concepts into vibrant businesses. What they need is a balanced approach to innovation
27 October 2011 | Bloomberg BusinessWeek
by Matt Reilly
"The dirty little secret about American ingenuity is that we’re terrible at translating original ideas into profit-producing businesses. This might be considered heresy in the era of popular thinkfests such as TED and Davos, but ideas are inherently unprofitable. The value of an idea (and its inventor) is essentially zero. True economic value lies in the person or company that can figure out how to scale an idea and deliver it efficiently to market.
...Companies presently caught in the innovation death spiral need not despair. In 2002, Palo
Alto Research Center was incorporated as an independent business. Today, it is a $60 million research organization that helps clients leverage their own technologies while seasoning them with concepts originated in-house."
Stephen Hoover on Innovation: The business of breakthroughs [video]
Babbage: Science and Technology
27 October 2011 | The Economist
"In this Tea With the Economist video, PARC CEO Stephen Hoover talks about the business of invention, employing laser-printer know-how to purify water, and creating an internet of content."
Researchers Couple Printed Logic with Printed Memory
The device processes only small amounts of data, but at a very low cost.
26 October 2011 | Technology Review
by Kate Greene
"Printed electronics have been advancing in bits and pieces for years -- a crude processor here, a basic memory device there. Now researchers at PARC and the Norwegian company Thinfilm Electronics have announced a printed electronic device that, for the first time, marries transistors with memory.
...Earlier this year, Thinfilm showed off a handheld device capable of reading cards printed with circuits that store 20 bits of data. In May, the company announced engineering deals with two major toy manufacturers who plan to use its printable memory.
...The prototype is a 'building block' that can be used for a number of different applications, says Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx, a research firm. 'There has been a huge effort on printing transistors globally,' Das says, 'but very poor effort on making useful building blocks like this, which can be used horizontally for many applications.' The announcement by PARC and Thinfilm, he says, is 'very good news.'"
America’s New CIO Wants To Disrupt Government And Make It A Startup
26 October 2011 | Talking Points Memo
by Sarah Lai Stirland
"It’s not a coincidence that my first speech is being made in PARC," Steven VanRoekel tells a roomful of curious people in Silicon Valley who have come to spend their Tuesday evening to find out what the nation’s federal chief information officer actually does.
"America’s future now depends on our capacity to innovate, and to harness technology," VanRoekel says during his first public speech in his new role as America’s second chief information officer at PARC’s auditorium in Palo Alto. The event was organized by the Silicon Valley social and business groups The Churchill Club, TechNet and TechAmerica.
The legendary PARC has played a role in the development of many game-changing aspects of modern computing from the development of personal computers to key details such as the graphical user interface. The company, a subsidiary of Xerox, continues to work with both private companies and governments to come up with new ideas in computing and business processes."
Hand-in-Hand: Security and Innovation
'Future First' Theme of VanRoekel's First Speech as Federal CIO
26 October 2011 | GovInfoSecurity.com
by Eric Chabrow
"We shouldn't make the false choice between security and innovation," VanRoekel said Tuesday at PARC, the storied Xerox research company in Palo Alto, Calif. "In fact, innovation can make us more secure as long as we build security into everything we do."
Addressable memory for RF devices in progress
26 October 2011 | EE Times Asia
by Peter Clarke
"Thin Film Electronics ASA and PARC have combined their printed memory and organic addressing regime, respectively, to create a working prototype of a printed non-volatile memory. The ferroelectric polymer storage is addressed with p- and n-type organic circuits similar to CMOS circuitry."
NFC Technology Drives Thinner, Cheaper Circuits
24 October 2011 | Mobiledia.com
by Kendra Srivastava
"Cheaper, two-way circuits may change the way objects and phones carry and transmit information, but their success depends on NFC's wider adoption in the mobile payment marketplace.
The Addressable Memory transistors by Thinfilm and PARC are printed on thin plastic and cost a fraction of their silicon equivalents, RFID tags. They can also both send and receive data from smartphones, unlike the passive product labels available on today's market.
The chips are set to be unveiled in 2012, with plans to have them wirelessly broadcast information about products by 2013."
New printed chip could spark cheaper sensor networks
21 October 2011 | GigaOM
by Stacey Higginbotham
"Thin Film Electronics ASA...has developed a way to add computing to its circuits through a partnership with Xerox PARC. This means it can offer thin, disposable tracking tags for a few cents apiece, and it could soon provide a valuable component for the Internet of things.
Thin Film is an Oslo-based company that has been in business since the mid-90s. It has been manufacturing thin-film memory chips that provide about 20 kilobytes of storage, which were used in toys and games. But thanks to its partnership with PARC it has added transistors to its circuits, which gives the chips a soupcon of intelligence — enough to perhaps track inventory or send environmental data from a sensor back to the network. It has also added a bit more memory.
…A low price is important, because it makes the technology far more accessible than RFID or other technology that today is used for tracking high-value inventory. RFID chips are built on silicon and can cost a few dollars, so aren’t practical for everyday items."
Printable transistors usher in 'internet of things'
Billions of systems, printed dirt cheap
21 October 2011 | The Register
by Rik Myslewski
"Thinfilm and PARC's breakthrough is a technology that can print not only memory onto, well, thin films, but can now also print transistors to address and manage that memory.
…Up until Friday's announcement, Thinfilm's non-volatile, ferroelectric memory was completely passive – it just sat there, holding those 20 bits in its memory cells. To be rewritten or read, it needed to be accessed by an external device which used one access pad for each memory cell. What Thinfilm and PARC have now developed is the ability to print not only the memory cells, but to also print the logic onto the same substrate needed to manage those memory cells.
…Thinfilm and PARC aren't working in a vacuum. 'There are a number of companies, [Thinfilm CEO] Sutija told us, 'that have been working on printed sensors, printed power sources, printed displays, and we're going to be active in build an ecosystem with these other partners to be able to then create integrated products.'"
Thin Film, PARC tip printed 'CMOS' memory
21 October 2011 | EE Times
by Peter Clarke
"...produced a working prototype of a printed ferroelectric polymer non-volatile memory that is addressed with p- and n-type organic circuits, the equivalent of CMOS circuitry.
The companies claimed that the combination of Thin Film's printed memory and PARC's organic addressing regime is the key to producing roll-to-roll printable memory that can be used in the Internet-of-Things where everything has an IP address and is connected to the Internet via a smart tag. Such smart tags require rewritable nonvolatile memory that is low cost and supports integration with sensors and other electronic components, which this technology supports, the companies said.
...The prototype will be publicly demonstrated at PARC on Monday, Oct. 24, in conjunction with a visit from the Norwegian Minister of Trade and Industry, His Excellency Trond Giske."
Collaborating with Industry on Printed Electronics
[invited/ guest contributed]
6 October 2011 | Industrial + Specialty Printing
by Dr. Ross Bringans, PARC
"Printing enables low-cost advantages and novel form factors not easily attained by other electronics-manufacturing methods. The applications, from consumer electronics to biomedical devices, are endless. A great deal of progress has been made recently in printed electronics, but why don't we see printed devices around us everyday, everywhere?"
Smart objects may talk, but will we listen?
27 September 2011 | GigaOM
by Barb Darrow
"The drive to web-enable all manner of non-computery things...means that people can be reminded to do something... This 'Internet of Things' is already here… But the design of the notifications — in addition to that of the devices themselves — has to be considered very carefully from the start, according to speakers at Mobilize 2011 on Tuesday.
'There will be a proliferation of smart objects, just like there is a proliferation of apps in the app store,' said Bo Begole, principal scientist at PARC, which does a lot of work in this area. Some of these apps will deal with important healthcare matters and some with less urgent consumer-oriented tasks. That means that the alerts and alarms have to scale accordingly to avoid potentially perilous alarm fatigue. 'We have to unify the feeds into one channel and then prioritize them,' Begole said."
...List of 2011 Senior Executive Exits
19 September 2011 | eWeek
by Clint Boulton
"The year has also been marked by an unusual level of rapid churn among high-profile tech executives...However, high tech has seen some other more graceful exits by CEOs, key executives and engineers... Well, there are many reasons for the wholesale turnover. Take this brief trip with eWEEK through the carousel of CEO departures and other changes."
Is Ubicomp at a Tipping Point?
23 August 2011 | Intelligence in Software
by Tim Kridel
"PARC coined the term 'ubiquitous computing' in 1988, but it took the next two decades for the PARC researchers’ vision to start becoming a part of the workplace and the rest of everyday life. As manager of PARC’s Ubiquitous Computing Area, Bo Begole is shepherding ubicomp into the mainstream with some help from a variety of other trends -- particularly the growth in cellular and Wi-Fi coverage, smartphone adoption and cloud computing.
Begole recently discussed what enterprises need to consider when deciding where and how to implement ubicomp, both internally and as a way to better serve their customers. One recommendation: People need to feel that they’re always in control."
6 computer labs that gave birth to the digital world
17 August 2011 | ExtremeTech
by Sebastian Anthony
"Throughout history there is a recurring theme of like-minded individuals coming together to create a shared 'hive mind' intelligence that is greater than its constituent parts. There are extremely rare cases of geniuses that worked on their own, but for the most part almost every famed inventor, pioneer, or philosopher was part of a group or cadre of other great thinkers. The fact is, we work best when we have something to bounce ideas off...
By far the youngest laboratory in this list is PARC, which was set up as a division of Xerox in 1970. By this point all of the major components of computers had already been invented, and so PARC set to work on doing interesting things with computers..."
PARC hosts summit on content-centric nets
12 August 2011 | EE Times
by Rick Merritt
"PARC will gather as many as 100 researchers in September for the first event focused on content-centric networking, a new direction for organizing Internet traffic. The approach promises greater security and faster connections to popular content but will require new protocols and changes in router chip and systems designs.
Content-centric networking represents a shift from today's focus on using network addresses to find content... The idea is largely the brainchild of Van Jacobson, an Internet pioneer who helped develop multicasting and trace route capabilities for Internet Protocol. About four years ago, Jacobson brought the concept to PARC which has been gestating it ever since."
Reinventing Innovation at PARC
28 July 2011 | Harvard Business Review HBR Blog Network
by Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer
"A few weeks back, we saw firsthand a hotbed of innovation in a place that many observers had long ago given up on. Its resurrection convinces us that other organizations can do the same by creating a culture of consideration, coordination, and communication, and marrying that culture to a responsive business model. That resurgent hotbed is PARC (formerly Xerox PARC)…
Over the past several years, PARC — spun off as an independent, wholly-owned subsidiary of Xerox in 2002 — has reinvented itself as a font of innovation for Xerox and a variety of other organizations worldwide. It has delivered a stunning array of software and hardware innovations to global corporations, startups, and the U.S. government, and it does a brisk business in IP licensing.
How is it that this place, widely ridiculed 20 years ago, has revived? When we visited, we not only saw pieces of PARC's storied past, but we saw what happens there today, how it happens, and how innovation continues to thrive."
Parsing the Twitterverse: New Algorithms Analyze Tweets
Smarter language processors are helping experts analyze millions of short-text messages from across the Internet
22 July 2011 | Scientific American
by Francie Diep
"But the research tools at scientists’ disposal are highly imperfect. Keyword searches, for example, return many hits but offer a poor sense of overall trends.
Scientists at PARC recently developed one such program. It relies on text processors, called parsers, which are typically tested on news articles. Parsers can distinguish between words and punctuation, label parts of speech and analyze a sentence’s grammatical structure. But 'they don’t do as well on Twitter,' says Kyle Dent, one of the Palo Alto researchers. He and his co-author wrote hundreds of rules to account for hash tags, repeated letters (as in “pleaaaaaase”) and other linguistic features perhaps not common in the Wall Street Journal…
Dent and his colleagues also tried to use their program to distinguish between rhetorical questions and those that require a response. Businesses could use such a program to find what people are asking about their products. In a recent trial, their program classified 68 percent of 2,304 tweets correctly. 'For a brand-new field, that sounds like a decent first attempt,' says Jeffrey Ellen of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, which provides intelligence technology to the U.S. Navy."
Tech leaders ponder future of mobile
The pace of innovation and change in mobile devices is so dizzying it is difficult to predict the winning platforms and products of the next few years.
21 July 2011 | PhysOrg
by Chris Lefkow
"With that caveat, a panel of technology executives and experts nevertheless took out their crystal balls on Wednesday at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in this Colorado resort to take a glimpse into the mobile future.
Before an audience of movers and shakers from Silicon Valley and elsewhere, they looked at trends among smartphones and the fast-growing market for tablet computers pioneered by Apple's iPad.
...Stephen Hoover...said next-generation mobile capability will involve the seamless 'integration of the physical and digital worlds.' Mobile devices will be able to provide 'the information that's most relevant to me now, physically where I am, and in the context of what I'm trying to do,' Hoover said. 'We're at the cusp of really being able to integrate all of these different sources of data and understand people's intention in context and give them the information that's useful at the time they need it,' he said."
ESGR presented the Patriot Award, an Above and Beyond Award, the Seven Seals Award and also the Statement of Support to PARC. PARC was presented "these Prestigious Awards of Honor by one of their own contractors with Securitas Security, Inc, Sergeant Robert M. Lopez, USMCR, currently deployed and is the PARC Security Site Supervisor, who nominated PARC for these honors. PARC and their Directors have a very strong commitment to their employees who serve in our Military Service and have many Veterans in their organization."
Printed Electronics -- Materials Thought Leaders series
...insights from the world's leading players
13 July 2011 | AZoM - The A to Z of Materials
by Dr. Gregory L. Whiting [PARC]
"As a manufacturing method printing brings many benefits including processing over large areas at high speed or over curved surfaces. Using an additive method which places the material only where it is required greatly reduces the number of steps needed compared with a subtractive method where the material is deposited everywhere and then etched back into the required pattern. Printing also readily allows digital methods to be used (such as ink-jet), so that new layouts can be created directly from the design, enabling rapid prototyping and facile customization. Furthermore, printing should also enable manufacturing sites to be set up at a fraction of the cost of conventional semiconductor fabrication lines, allowing smaller, more diverse organizations to be involved in the manufacture of electronic components."
100 great things about America
Sometimes it's easy to overlook our country's glory. For the second year running, we present 100 outstanding things about the U.S.A.
1 July 2011 | Fortune/ CNN Money
by Andy Serwer
"The Silicon Valley lab where Ethernet and laser printing were born; a veritable genius center for the hatching of big tech ideas."
PARC: Still Inventing Cool New Stuff After All These Years
The Tech Trade
1 July 2011 | Forbes
by Eric Savitz
"And PARC is still at it, hiring Ph.D.’s and putting them to work on some of the world’s bigger technology problems.
…In the new PARC, Xerox is the largest client, but accounts for just half of the center’s overall workload, with the rest for a variety of government and commercial clients. Hoover says PARC has a 'solid business base,' with growing revenues."
Internet's next evolution: 'a Facebook without Facebook.com'
22 June 2011 | ZDNet
by Joe McKendrick
"That’s the way Teresa Lunt, VP and director of the computing science lab at PARC, describes the Internet that will be emerging within the next couple of years — driven by content and data that is completely independent of underlying systems or network points..."
How PARC wants to reinvent the Internet
22 June 2011 | GigaOm
by Janko Roettgers
"Forty years later, the lab is back at it: Teresa Lunt, VP and director of the computing science lab at PARC, showed off a new networking technology dubbed Content-Centric Networking (CCN) at GigaOM’s Structure conference in San Francisco today.
…Sounds futuristic? Lunt believes that first commercial applications based on CCN could appear in the marketplace within 18 months. PARC has been busy making that happen, partnering with Samsung, releasing CCN open source code for Android and maintaining an open source community at CCNX.org."
Software Extracts Your Location on Twitter Even When It's Secret
34 percent of Twitter users don't fill out the "location" field with accurate information, but a new algorithm can infer it from their tweets
17 June 2011 | Technology Review
by Christopher Mims
"Part two of the researcher's efforts involved applying a machine learning algorithm to the corpus of 10,000 active Twitter users' recent tweets. While it wasn't able to pull out their address or even their zip code, it was able to determine what country and state users inhabited. Analyzing the data after the fact, the researchers even discovered that some terms were highly predictive of location."
Twisted structure preserved dinosaur proteins
Collagen coils might have kept Tyrannosaurus molecules safe from harm for millions of years.
14 June 2011 | Nature
by Ed Yong
"Scientists have discovered how fragments of the protein collagen might have survived in fossilized dinosaur bones…The results, which are published in PLoS ONE, support the contentious claim that dinosaur proteins have been recovered and sequenced.
The study is 'interesting and plausible, but speculative', says Marshall Bern, a computer scientist at Palo Alto Research Center in California, who has also analysed dinosaur-protein data. 'It's hard to extrapolate too far from the little bit of sequence that has been found,' he says."
Context Awareness, Contextual Intelligence, and Information Overload
IDC Link: Real-time IDC Research opinion on industry news, trends, and events (subscription required)
8 June 2011 | IDC
by Susan Feldman
"As great a step forward as today's context aware systems are, though, they still depend on a limited set of clues about who you are and what you want. The next step will be to tie additional clues from the physical world to the online clues, and to put some intelligence behind interpreting the purpose of your information gathering, and to then predict what information you will need and what your next steps might be in using it. This may sound like either a step toward Big Brother or an impossible dream. In fact, some of these systems already exist. Ubiquitous Computing for Business, a new book by Bo Begole, Principal Scientist at PARC, delineates the possible sources for contextual intelligence that these systems might use…"
Gladwell on Innovation: Truths & Confusions: Part 1 & Part 2
23 May 2011 | Forbes
by Steve Denning
From Part 1: "Malcolm Gladwell’s article on innovation in The New Yorker entitled Creation Myth is a brilliantly written piece that, in the process of killing some innovation myths, creates some new ones…What Gladwell’s article doesn’t shed any light on is how the Apple of the 2000s (and other firms) have learned how to generate continuous innovation in sector after sector, along with disciplined execution. Nor does it shed any light on how the world of innovation in the 1980s is fundamentally different from the world of innovation in 2011."
From Part 2: "What has emerged over the last decade is a group of firms...that have learned how to get to the root of the problem and combine continuous innovation with disciplined execution. They are managed in a radically different way from traditional management. Their practices create workplaces that are congenial to the 'commandos' while also generating disciplined execution and customer delight. There are five fundamental and interlocking shifts."
Innovation That Lays the Golden Eggs
22 May 2011 | Marketoonist
by Tom Fishburne
"There is an inevitable friction in bringing ideas to life within a company. That friction can polish an idea and make it stronger, sand the edges of the idea and make it weaker, or kill the idea altogether. Anyone who works in innovation is familiar with that tension. Navigating it is part of what makes innovation so difficult.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote an illustrative New Yorker article on the mythic 1979 story of Steve Jobs and Xerox PARC...
The modern day Xerox PARC replied to Gladwell’s article with a fascinating post on the merits of open innovation as one way to resolve that friction…
There is no longer merely a 'go' or a 'stop' in innovation, as Gladwell originally characterized. There are other options for the golden eggs."
Malcolm Gladwell Discovers That Innovation And Invention Are Not The Same
from the indeed dept
20 May 2011 | Techdirt
by Mike Masnick
"In his latest piece, Gladwell goes a step further in his exploration of innovation, in writing about the difference between invention and innovation, picking apart the classic story of Steve Jobs seeing the GUI/mouse combo at Xerox PARC and "copying" it for the Macintosh. Gladwell points out that the lessons that some take from the story aren't really correct…
It's interesting to see that the modern day PARC has responded to the story directly, pointing to some key 'lessons learned' that are demonstrated by the article, and with some additional background…
The PARC blog also talks up the importance of 'open innovation,' and sharing ideas outside of a company, recognizing (frequently) that others may be better able to take an idea and run with it by creating something really powerful on top of that."
A tour around “first church of technology” PARC [videos]
(the innovative lab that started a ton in tech)
17 May 2011 | Scobleizer
by Robert Scoble
"While there I met with several people to get a taste of what they are working on now. Visiting here is like visiting Jerusalem (home of the first church). It’s where everything seemed to start and is still filled with brilliant people."
PART ONE: Future of Networking
PART TWO: How Ethnographic research leads to new business ideas
PART THREE: Ubiquitous Computing research
PART FOUR: Keeping our Cloud Computing Safe
PARC Responds – Apple and the Truth About Innovation
16 May 2011 | Blogging Innovation
[This post was syndicated to Blogging Innovation.]
Innovation, a story told by patent applications
15 May 2011 | The Decision Tree blog
by Brian Mossop
"As Gladwell says in his story, it’s difficult for a company to be both a true innovator and one that can readily bring consumer products to market. And as the patents show, Xerox PARC and Apple weren’t adversaries, because it seems they were never competing for the same prize."
NASA ARC Award
FRACSAT: An integrated Lifecycle Decision Support Toolkit for Fractionated Spacecraft Architectures
13 May 2011 | SpaceRef
by Ames Research Center
"PARC and its partners will design, develop, and deliver an integrated lifecycle decision-support toolkit for fractionated spacecraft architectures. When completed, the FRACSAT toolkit will enable space mission designers to rapidly generate feasible mission architectures, select optimal design solutions given programmatic uncertainty, justify the business case using mission-relevant cost and benefit metrics, and adapt to unforeseen events or changes during the program lifecycle for maximum mission impact."
The Problem with Fitting New Ideas Into Old Business Models
13 May 2011 | Innovation Leadership Network
by Tim Kastelle
"Malcolm Gladwell retells the story of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the latest issue of the New Yorker… The story of PARC is fascinating, and Gladwell provides a nice twist to it.
…This leads to a key point. PARC is still there, and they are still coming up with brilliant ideas. It has actually been an incredibly successful operation for an extended period of time. By focusing on the ideas that didn’t work so well for them, we recreate a myth of innovation – that every idea that we have must work for us to be successful."
PARC Fires Back at New Yorker, Claiming Old Apple Legend Misses Point of How Innovation Works Today
13 May 2011 | Xconomy
by Wade Roush
"Three staff members at PARC, aka Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, have published a feisty response to Malcolm Gladwell’s May 16 New Yorker article, 'Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and the Truth about Innovation.' In short, the post acknowledges that the legend of Xerox PARC—the oft, oft, oft-repeated story (repeated once again by Gladwell) that Xerox 'flubbed the future' by giving away its best idea ever, the personal computer, to a young Steve Jobs—is basically true. But the essay points out that it took some circumstances unique to PARC to generate the idea in the first place, and that the story wouldn’t play out the same way if were happening today.
...PARC is now largely in the business of open innovation, helping its clients capitalize on their own technologies and seasoning them with concepts homegrown at PARC."
We want to invent the next killer app
[invited/ guest contributed]
12 May 2011 | Front End of Innovation
by Tamara St. Claire
I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard this... Because most companies have incremental and next-generation innovation down – it’s the disruptive, non-core, 'next big thing' innovation that eludes many and presents the most challenges. Yet this type of innovation is a necessity for any business that wants to access new markets, create a new line of revenue, or re-invent themselves in anticipation of future directions. So here’s my question: what happens AFTER you conceive the next killer app for your industry?
Thinfilm's financial report first quarter 2011
10 May 2011 | Reuters
by press release
"BUSINESS REVIEW In the first quarter, Thinfilm passed its first milestone towards creating integrated systems and introduced the OBA demo game powered by printed rewritable memory.
...'Activities with PARC have generated significant interest from both prospective customers and technology companies to link printed components, such as electrochromic displays, thin-film batteries, and sensors with Thinfilm memory,' [Thinfilm CEO Davor] Sutija continues."
Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation.
9 May 2011 | The New Yorker
by Malcolm Gladwell
"The fair question is whether Xerox, through its research arm in Palo Alto, found a better way to be Xerox -- and the answer is that it did, although that story doesn't get told nearly as often." ... "Gary Starkweather's laser printer made billions for Xerox. It paid for every other single project at Xerox PARC, many times over."
25 ways IT will morph in the next 25 years
9 May 2011 | Computerworld
by Carolyn Duffy Marsan
"Experts say the overall pace of innovation in the IT industry will speed up, resulting in a mind-boggling array of developments…These changes will revolutionize industries... 'I use the term technology avalanche,' says Dave Evans, Chief Futurist at Cisco. 'We're on the precipice of huge developments. Things are going to start changing very, very quickly...Where it's going is unlimited computer and storage and networking speeds, and the birth of some pretty exciting times.'
Here are predictions that leading researchers are making about what IT will look like in the year 2036: ...21. A fundamentally different Internet architecture may evolve. Researchers at PARC are working on a new underlying architecture for the Internet called content-centric networking…"
Making Memories With Specialty Printing
The success of PE memory devices depends significantly on the cost.
3 May 2011 | ISP (Industrial + Specialty Printing)
by Randall Sherman
"ThinFilm Electronics announced the first commercially available rewriteable memory device produced using roll-to-roll printing processes...ThinFilm received its first order through one of the ten largest toy manufacturers out of Japan and hopes to apply its technology to interactive games, collector cards, RFID, and biometric applications. The company is targeting addressable applications of 40- to 128-bit memories and hopes soon to merge printed transistors together through an alliance with PARC."
Executives Call for More R&D
29 April 2011 | Internet Evolution
by Michael Singer
"Research and development is under budgetary pressures these days, and yet more and more executives are touting its benefits. Why is there a disconnect? And what can be done about it?
The primary issue around R&D spending is that by itself, research and development doesn't guarantee profitability. Companies must weigh how much they are willing to invest in future innovations that may never pan out.
During the Internet Evolution Radio program this past week, Dr. Steve Hoover, CEO of the Palo Alto Research Center, noted that companies need to really prioritize research and development projects based on their long-term investments."


text:
UK architect Heatherwick Studio has designed "Airo", an electric concept vehicle for Chinese car manufacturer IM Motors.
Launched at Shanghai Motor Show, Airo will not emit fossil fuel pollutants, and has a high-efficiency particulate air (Hepa) filtering system allowing the car to clean the air of pollution created by other cars.
The car doubles as a mobile living space, with a pop-up table for dining, rotating seats that can face each other or be folded away to create room for a bed, while the roof turns opaque for privacy.
Heatherwick Studio has also designed a charging station for the Airo, intended to become a part of a city’s urban fabric.
Thomas Heatherwick, Heatherwick Studio founder, said:Â "Airo isn’t simply another electric car that doesn’t pollute the air. Instead, using the latest Hepa filter technology, it goes further by also vacuuming-up pollutants from other cars as it drives along.
"Designed to simultaneously address the global space shortage, Airo is also a multi-functional room with extra space for dining, working, gaming or even sleeping. As a new room for our lives, with a changing view, Airo is a car intended to transport us to a cleaner and better future."
Manufacture of the Airo is expected to start in 2023.
Images courtesy of Heatherwick Studio

domain: news


text:
CHICAGO — Many businesses regularly undergo a SWOT analysis.
This process looks at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats a company faces to improve the probability of success for various projects and important decisions.
After the challenges of 2020, American Laundry News thought it would be beneficial to do a SWOT analysis of the laundry and linen services industry in the hopes of helping businesses making positive steps in 2021 and beyond.
TRSA, the association for linen, uniform and facility services, the Association for Linen Management (ALM) and the American Reusable Textiles Association (ARTA) answered the call to examine the state of the industry to help it move forward in the coming years.
Going into 2021, the laundry and linen services industry has many strengths that operations can rely on. The first is that laundry operations today provide maximum hygiene.
Capable of washing, drying and finishing at high temperatures in serving customers in all industries, linen and uniform services are superior in these respects to smaller on-premises laundries and home washing machines, according to TRSA.
“Some 250 such services have been certified Hygienically Clean by TRSA,” says Joseph Ricci, TRSA’s president and CEO. “Their industrial-scale laundries facilitate hygiene by providing enough space to prevent cross-contamination (separating clean from soiled items) and for social distancing of workers, reducing the likelihood of a virus outbreak.”
Another strength for the industry is that reusables substitute well for disposables. TRSA says this attribute has been evident in COVID-19 regarding healthcare garments, particularly isolation gowns, as linen and uniform services have fulfilled high demand.
“An April 2020 U.K. government study determined such substitution in healthcare gowns can produce savings up to 75%,” Ricci shares. “Decreased waste disposal costs contribute to that difference. Reusable materials and products are also known to improve hygiene. They don’t need to be stockpiled.”
“The laundry industry will benefit from a renewed interest in reusable products in areas where disposables had almost become the only option (e.g., infection control gowns),” adds Gabriel Boardman, president of ARTA and vice president of Product Development for MIP Inc.
“Many of the industry’s textile suppliers have domestic resources that help them in situations where borders are closed or where certain key offshore suppliers may hoard production for selected customers/markets.”
ALM adds that the laundry-processing industry continues to be of high value to businesses serious about reducing their carbon footprint.
“Commercial processing’s efficiencies from water reclamation and the impact of a business utilizing reusable textiles over the disposable/single-use products makes them a highly desirable corporate partner,” shares Linda Fairbanks, ALM’s executive director.
TRSA also sees the fact that the industry is founded on competitiveness as a strength.
“While some companies anticipate reduced sales, budget cuts and cashflow and employment issues, some see competitive opportunities,” says Ricci. “They envision spending time and resources on incorporating technology and automation, building a superior work situation and investigating supplier relationships.”
Also, areas such as cleanliness are expected to grow as cultural shifts in travel, social distancing and overall sanitation take precedent.
Boardman adds, “Competitors (whether suppliers or operators) have similar goals and there is an openness to share ideas that benefits the industry.”
Laundry and linen services are large, essential businesses as well, and TRSA says the long-term market is well-suited to improved profitability.
“In an environment characterized by increased focus on hygiene, decreased pressure from marginal competitors and an acknowledgment of company services as ‘essential,’ there is reason to believe that once linen and uniform services are able to achieve the economies of operating at or near capacity, margins can improve,” Ricci says.
Another strength is strong access to customers. Linen, uniform and facility services are among the few types of B2B suppliers that personally serve customers’ business locations by visiting them once a week or more, according to TRSA.
“Prior to COVID-19, linen and uniform service route personnel were so well recognized in these locations that, once their presence was noted, they could walk unaccompanied throughout such facilities as valued contractors,” Ricci points out. “Virus prevention has increased touch-free/outdoor deliveries but route service personnel remain highly visible.”
Laundry and linen services are also bolstered by the fact that they are long-term contract businesses.
“While operators have been flexible in payment terms and recognized customers’ hardships, these are viewed as goodwill gestures likely to be rewarded with customers’ continued loyalty as they recover,” Ricci says. “The legal standing of long-term contracts appears sound subject to usual grounds for breakage, such as bankruptcy.”
Also, the industry has flexibility in contract terms. TRSA says customers who procure laundered textiles by the pound can “pay as you go,” maintaining their connectivity to their linen suppliers through reduced orders without severing the relationship.
“In uniform rental, adds and stops are common,” Ricci points out. “Absent stipulated minimums, contracts can remain in force as minimal service continues. Conversely, if a customer is a loss leader who has been carried without reaching such a minimum, an amicable parting of ways may be likely.”
Finally, Boardman points out that laundry and linen services have many educational and support opportunities.
“The abundance of great associations (TRSA, ARTA, ALM, IAHTM, etc.) allows members to benefit from many networking events where members share common values and interests,” he points out.
While the laundry/linen services industry has many strengths going for it, there are weaknesses that operations have to overcome. One such weakness relates to operational infrastructure.
“With some companies experiencing major reductions in revenues, forecasting their inability to return to previous levels for up to two or three more years, lowering margins will require budget cuts and efforts to preserve cash,” Ricci says. “That can curtail spending needed to expand or economize.”
Operators will also need to think creatively about the supply chain and build relationships with other vendors, instead of relying on the international supply chain as in the past, says TRSA. Disruptions are anticipated in importing textiles, along with possible impacts from tensions in trading between the United States and China.
“In healthcare, operators envision more alignment with suppliers to manage costs, given reductions in reimbursements provided to medical facilities,” says Ricci. “Such challenges and disruptions portend the loss of reliable access to some textile items and increased costs.”
ARTA notes that the disposable industry has deep pockets.
“The production of disposable items benefits from automation that gets faster and more efficient by leaps and bounds,” Boardman points out. “Quality and availability will need to trump abundance and low cost per unit.”
Lower margins are another weakness the industry is facing.
“Capital spending will need to rise for improvements to contend with reduced labor,” Ricci points out. “Greater aggression in signing new customers will be required to increase revenue to offset those costs. This combination of higher expenses and lower revenues squeezes margins.”
Because many operators invoice customers often, lack of payment disrupts cash flow, TRSA says. Receivables rise as customers face decreased revenues (e.g., restaurants’ limits on capacity) and higher costs to adapt to increased health and safety concerns.
“Such financial difficulties are forcing linen and uniform service management to prioritize, making balancing customer retention with customer delinquency tricky,” shares Ricci. “General managers are being asked to make decisions based on the long-term value of a customer and its financial position. Long-term contracts may become less prevalent.”
Unfortunately, services that are dependent on foodservice and hospitality will continue to suffer as COVID-19 restrictions remain.
“Linen and uniform services that specialize in these markets are deeply invested in the infrastructure and expertise to serve them,” Ricci points out.
“These customers require access to capital markets to sustain customers and expand. Their lack of such access extends to our industry as banks are very suspect to make new loans connected with travel or tourism, making it difficult to pivot from these markets to others.”
As foodservice and hospitality businesses reopen, they are likely to be cash-strapped and have a deficient customer base, prompting them to consider moving to the cheapest suppliers regardless of service or quality, shares TRSA.
ALM believes a company’s greatest weakness lies in the failure, or fear, to accurately know where they stand in comparison to other like operations.
“In a conversation with a very reputable and successful laundry operator, regarding their hesitancy in participating in an external benchmarking program, they shared it was fear that their data would reveal they are not as good as they think they are,” Fairbanks shares.
“It has been shown that production-based companies that utilize benchmarking data in decision-making outperform their competition.
“Companies that make business decisions without accurate data are placing themselves at a distinct disadvantage. External benchmarking is a business practice that demands the time and attention of operators.”
Check back Thursday for the conclusion on opportunities, threats and strategies to move forward.


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The latest episode of the "Dialogue Minnesota" podcast features part two of Jim du Bois' interview with University of Minnesota Economics Professor Timothy Kehoe.
In the last episode, Kehoe provided expertise on the trade deal between the U.S., Canada and Mexico that President Donald Trump signed, which will have a big impact on Minnesota agriculture.
In part two, Kehoe and du Bois address the ongoing trade wars and the impacts of tariffs on Minnesota farmers and retailers.
"Trade war is going to force them to search for new suppliers or have them drastically increase their prices," Kehoe said of businesses like Target and Best Buy.
They also discuss General Motors' plans to close plants in the U.S. and lay off thousands of workers.
You can find all of the Dialogue Minnesota podcasts right here.


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On 6 April, the Belgian creative labelMosaertpresented its very first fashion show atLe Bon Marché Rive Gauchein Paris to mark the release of its latest collection,“Capsule no 5.”
This latest capsule was designed byMosaert‘s chief designer and stylistCoralie Barbier.At the show, 2,000 spectators were treated to an“enhanced fashion show” combining movement and choreography by esteemed dancer and choreographerMarion Motin.
The set was designed byMosaertandLe Bon Marché’screative teams and was set to an original 10-minute soundtrack titled“DÉFILER,“created by internationally acclaimed artistStromae.
Produced especially for the occasion,“DÉFILER” was co-composed with his brother, the label’s artistic director,Luc Junior Tamand isStromae’s first solo work to be released since his last studio full-length “Racine Carrée.”
Mosaert’s first ever fashion show is now immortalized by a stunning new video directed bySacha WiernikandLuc Junior Tam.
“DÉFILER” is available worldwide on all streaming platforms. ListenHERE.


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MG ZS EV, the newest electric SUV for the Indian market has been unveiled today, and we have all the highlights here. Expected to be launched in early 2020, the new electric SUV will be rivalling the likes of the Hyundai Kona Electric, and today MG Motor India revealed all the details about it's second car for the Indian market. The new MG ZS EV, also known as the eZS in the global markets, will be launched in only 5 cities in the country to begin with; these include, Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Also Read: MG ZS EV Specifications and Launch Details
The India-spec MG ZS EV will come to our shores via the CKD route and it's expected to share its powertrain with the UK spec model. So, the electric SUV will come with a 44.5 kWh battery, powering a synchronous motor that churns out 141 bhp and 353 Nm of peak torque. The lithium-ion unit can be charged up to 80 per cent in 40 minutes with a 50 kW DC charger or takes up to seven hours with a standard 7 kW charger. The company has also said that its electric vehicles will get over-the-air (OTA) technology and would go over 300 km on a single charge.
Visually, the ZS EV gets the signature MG look, featuring a diamond-studded pattern for the grille with a chrome surround, flanked by sharp LED headlamps. The front bumper comes with some sculpted lines with a wide central airdam. Other elements include stylish alloy wheels, silver roof rails, ORVMs with integrated indicators, among others.


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The atmosphere in "Hundegger's Beer Garden" at LIGNA 2015 was laid-back, although the team got down to business during the meetings.
"For Hans Hundegger AG, LIGNA is the most important international trade show".
"Customers expect to see us there and our large staff takes care of them personally - among other places in our beer garden's informal business atmosphere."
"Acquiring new customers and raising awareness of our brand among international visitors" are among Hans Hundegger AG's main objectives at LIGNA. That is why the company launches its new products here year after year. "Innovations in timber construction are our company’s expertise," explains Hans Hundegger. During the five days at the trade show, the firm’s owner and his 22-member team communicate extensively with professionals from the industrial and handicraft sectors. "We are able to bring the international trade public up to date on the latest information regarding the best technology available," according to Hundegger.


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Tale of Tales, the independent developer of some of the most truly artful games this industry has ever seen, has decided to call it quits on the industry, citing the poor financial performance of its most recent game, Sunset, as the main driving reason.
“Sunset was released one month ago today,” Tale of Tales said in a tweet. “We couldn’t have picked a more appropriate title for our last game.” The developer is linking to a blog post, which can be accessed here, but wasn’t loading at time of writing.
This is a genuinely sad day for the industry, as Tale of Tales was one of the most consistently innovative and brave game developers around. Titles such as Luxuria Superbia, The Path, and Sunset itself all pushed the boundaries of interactivity, creating spaces to explore that no other developer would have (or could have) ever dreamed of. In an industry when independent developers so often ape their AAA counterparts, or build games of slavish homage to the retro era out of a sense of nostalgia, Tale of Tales was one of the few developers that could be genuinely considered unique.
At the same time, it was always easy to see how the industry frustrated Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey, the two owners and founders of Tale of Tales. Though they clearly loved what interactivity meant to creating stories and artistic experiences, the commercial side of the industry, and the way it was so driven by certain themes (violence being one of them) put their work at odds with the kinds of games necessary to build a sustainable development business. When I spoke to them both to interview them for my book, one of my favourite anecdotes and moments from the interview came from Samyn, who related how he challenged himself not to play a violent game for a year as a New Year’s resolution… and ended up missing almost everything released this year.
In that context I’m sure the duo see this step out of the games industry as a positive move, and an opportunity to explore their creativity in other mediums. And I wish them all the best for it, because their games have absolutely inspired me, and if anyone deserves success to go with their creativity, it’s the Auriea and Michael.
Related reading: An interview with Tale of Tales from 2012.
With that said, as someone who cares deeply about games, from a purely selfish point of view it is both disappointing and crushing to see one less arthouse developer in an industry that badly needs them, however.
– Matt S.
Find me on Twitter: @digitallydownld


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Allen’s and Peters partner again for new lolly range
The new Allen's Lollies inspired by Peters Ice Cream
Allen’s Lollies and Peter’s Ice Cream have partnered again, this time for an ice cream inspired lolly range.
The new range includes ‘Allen’s inspired by Peters Frosty Fruits’ with tropical, watermelon & pineapple and orange & grapefruit flavours. It also includes Allen’s inspired by Peters Drumstick with vanilla, chocolate and boysenberry.
Both Allen’s and Peters are brands originating from Australia but are today under foreign ownership. Allen’s is owned by Nestle and Peters is owned by UK ice cream producer, R&R.
Nestle General Manager of Confectionery, Martin Brown, said the experts at Allen’s have worked tirelessly to bring the flavours of Peters ice cream to the confectionery aisle.
“Allen’s and Peters are both iconic brands that ignite fond memories for Aussies, from childhood moments of fun, to summers at the beach and road-trips with friends,” Brown said.
“We hope that this new range will bring a smile to people’s faces and can’t wait to see how they embrace the range – whether they eat them like the originals, bite the tops off or eat each lolly whole in one delicious bite.”
Peter’s Director of Sales and Marketing, Emma-Jane Collins, said Peters is just as excited about the collaboration as Allen’s.
“We love that the new Allen’s inspired by Peters lollies are a great representation of our existing ice cream products and are true to their flavour delivery,” Collins said.
Allen’s inspired by Peter’s Frosty Fruits and Allen’s inspired by Peters Drumstick are available now in 170g packets at Australian supermarkets and convenience stores. The recommended retail price is AUD $2.99 per 170g serving.
- Peters Australia partners with Nestle for confectionery inspired ice cream range
- Peters and Arnott’s partner for new ice cream range
- Peters and Arnott’s partner again for Jatz inspired Drumstick
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text: The bells are ringing today for The Salvation Army’s annual Red Kettle campaign, after the familiar long-time fund-raising campaign started Thursday in the Southern Tier and elsewhere.With shoppers carrying less cash these days — and also less actually going to brick-and-mortar stores — it poses a challenge to The Salvation Army, which funds much of its yearly budget through The Red Kettle Campaign. So, the campaign is going hi-tech.Now, you can donate with “Kettle Pay” that accepts Apple Pay or Google Pay. This holiday season’s Red Kettles now feature stickers that allow you to donate almost as easily as dropping cash in the kettle.The Salvation Army has placed smart chips and QR codes on Red Kettle signs across the state, allowing donors to simply “bump” or scan their phones to make a digital donation.Donors will be directed to a custom donation page that accepts Apple or Google payment options. The funds will then be distributed to local Salvation Army units based on the donor’s billing ZIP code, and an email receipt will be sent directly to their phone.Donors with an Apple iPhone Xs, Xr, and Xs Max or Android phones made since 2012 can just bump their phones on the sign. Donors with older phones can scan the QR codes.“For nearly 155 years, The Salvation Army has employed creative, forward thinking to find solutions. More consumers are using their phones to pay for everyday items and Kettle Pay makes it even easier for donors to join The Salvation Army’s Fight for Good. Anyone can fight for our neighbors who are experiencing poverty by donating to Salvation Army programs, including food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, and Christmas assistance for families in need,” said Major Ivan Rock, Commander of The Salvation Army.


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