MIT's Innovation Dean on 3 Big Predictions for the Future of Technology
MIT professor Vladimir Bulović,
also the founder of three startups, says we're at the beginning of a vast
opportunity in nanotechnology and solar energy.
If you could learn
about innovation from an entrepreneur who holds more than 85 patents--and is
the co-founder of three promising nanotechnology startups with a combined 200
employees--you'd probably jump on that chance.
Especially
if that entrepreneur also happened to be an MIT professor.
That's why I was eager to hear what serial
entrepreneur Vladimir Bulović, also Associate Dean for
Innovation at MIT's School of Engineering, had to say in his Oct. 1
keynote address, called "Redefining Innovation." He gave the
talk at Innovation Day 2015, an annual conference hosted by Cambridge Consultants, a design, innovation, and
product-development firm based in Boston.
Bulović
did not disappoint. Here are three big ideas he emphasized, using examples from
his private sector career and his daily involvement with the MIT
community:
1. Solar energy will one
day power more than you think.
One of Bulović's startups, Ubiquitous Energy, is developing transparent solar
technologies you can use on any surface. In plainer English, the company makes
clear coatings for use on the displays of Kindles or another mobile devices.
"You'd never have to recharge it again," said Bulović. The
reason? The coating would catch enough solar power and ambient light to give
the device a seemingly infinite amount of power.
This
technology--the name of the field is transparent photovoltaics--also has the
capability to power office buildings, if you apply it to the windows of the
buildings. In addition, it could provide perpetual power to hearing aids, if
you put the coating on, say, your eyeglasses.
2. There will always be
opportunies for startups in hardware.
"It takes a decade to invent a new
hardware technology," says Bulović. In some cases it takes even
longer. He pointed to examples as diverse as the zipper, velcro, high-powered
microscopes, and the OLED screen displays on Samsung Galaxy phones. In each
case, the hardware innovation reached the hands of customers or users more than
10 years after the initial technology was invented. The Ziploc bag is another example.
Why
do paradigm-shifting hardware innovations take such a long time to reach the
marketplace? For one thing, hardware requires the making of actual objects. And
if the objects are game-changers, then the manufacturer isn't only making the
object: Usually the manufacturer also has to make the machines that make the
object. Especially if the object is a bona fide, groundbreaking piece of
nanotechnology.
By
contrast, you can build, test, launch, and sell a new software app in a
six-month span. With hardware, the initial building and testing are a
significant, cash-draining challenge.
And
when it comes to the selling, innovative hardware makers face the same
challenges anyone with a never-seen-before product faces: They are often
subverting or reinventing traditional categories. Consider, as a hypothetical
example, how you'd sell Ubiquitous Energy's transparent photovoltaics coatings
for use in an office building. To whom would you actually sell them? The
landlord? The tenant? Window makers? Contractors? Architects?
Likely
all of the above. And that's no easy task.
Given these realities, Bulović notes, there
will always be opportunities for startups in hardware. For established companies with balance
sheets to burnish, investments in slow-reward hardware innovations will never
look as flattering as investments in quick-to-market software. The
difficult part is keeping your startup alive long enough to see the idea become
a product.
3. The next big innovations won't come just
from the private sector.
Large companies face immense pressure to make
their numbers each quarter. Their budgets for innovation or research and
development are already under scrutiny--and often difficult to justify to the
bean counters. Which is why so many large companies feel more comfortable hoarding their capital for acquisitions.
Intellectual property partnerships with universities are
a potential solution for large companies seeking to access cutting-edge
research without harming their capital-return metrics.
The
university wins too, by getting a market-driven sense of how to prioritize its
research efforts. "Universities are amazing at inventing things that don't
matter," says Bulović. "We can solve any problem. We just don't
know what the [relevant] problems are."
In other words, Bulović believes that
university-corporate partnerships can provide a useful creative constraint on the school's entrepreneurial
ecosystem. It can help a school's efforts go from interesting inventions to
real-world innovations--products with the potential for legitimate marketplace
impact, even if it's decades down the road.
BY ILAN
MOCHARI
http://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/3-big-predictions-for-future-of-technology.html http://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/3-big-predictions-for-future-of-technology.html http://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/3-big-predictions-for-future-of-technology.html
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