Innovation Blog

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Twitter founder launches iPhone credit card reader

Friday, June 04, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories: Media, Technology | Tags: financial, technology, Twitter, Credit Card Reader, iPhone, Jack Dorsey, Square, Android

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has launched a mobile payment solution that allows anyone with an iPhone to take plastic

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A billion clouds per second. Gates seas tech innovation solution to global warming

Friday, June 04, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories: Environment, Technology | Tags: research, eco, Bill Gates, Microsoft, Clouds, Greenhouse, Engineering

In the marvelous playground that is the mind of Microsoft billionaire, Bill Gates, the world must look like a Mario Kart video game. Gates is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards, seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.

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Nathan Myhrvold’s opens the gates to ‘Invention Capital’

Friday, March 26, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories: Environment, Technology | Tags: technology, innovators, economist, eco, Bill Gates, nuclear, travelling-wave reactor, TerraPower, Nathan Myhrvold

The Economist online runs a profile of formidable innovators involved in a phenomenal project.

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3-D Organ Printing – New Bio Organ Creation

Friday, March 26, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories: Technology | Tags: research, university, engineering, print

For around $200,000, a true spring bargain, you will soon be able to buy the first commercial 3D bio-printer for manufacturing human tissue and organs.

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Jawbone adds apps to uber-cool headset

Monday, March 08, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories: Technology | Tags: Design, Leaders, Jawbone, Headset, Audio Innovation, Wall Street Journal, apps

This is the coolest piece of innovation I’ve seen so far this year… the Jawbone device

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Green business – Energy and Auto

Friday, February 12, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories: Business, Environment, Technology | Tags: links, renewable energy, energy, science, car, economist, engineering, eco, euronews

This is the year for green energy. All the main players have put there money where their mouths have been for years. We will see more and more serious, competitive, ambitious lifestyle products focused on green values. Electric cars have been a persisting favourite of this column, and finally our television screens are selling us real, cool, cheaper electric cars we can be smug to be seen in.

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Consumer Technology – i-Pad

Wednesday, February 03, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories: Business, Technology | Tags: digital, video, knowledge, literacy, i-Pad, innovation, management, start-up

The Wall Street Journal hits the mark with and article on finding the next iPod, and why it so difficult to exploit hit products.

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Story of the Week – Fox or Hedgehog, What Are You?

Wednesday, February 03, 2010 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories: Technology | Tags: digital, video, knowledge, literacy, i-Pad, innovation, management

Article of the week, by a hare’s breadth, is Ben McIntyre’s Fox or Hedgehog piece for The Times. Generously, for those who may have given up on reading in a digital age, Ben’s recorded a short video blog, so you can get the gist without all that grammar and words n’stuff.

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Solar-powered bras, slump-time inventions and a 2010 events calendar – innovation roundup

Thursday, January 14, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Business, Environment, Healthcare, Technology | Tags: innovation, links, recession, patents, patent, teamwork, NHS, solar power

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Ingenious solar-powered designs, successful products from recessions past, radical innovation in the NHS, innovation events around the UK, and more – the Grant Thornton Innovation team aims to bring you the most popular business stories and useful links each month. Here’s what we’ve been reading…

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Multi-touch platforms, the innovation of precision

Monday, January 11, 2010 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories: Technology | Tags: innovation, media, technology, global, economist, eco, Wallpaper, 3-D, multiplatform, augmented reality, Innovation Island Conference, Sensitive Object

Aretha Franklin wanted us all to “reach out” and we thought it was a bit personal, but today, reaching out, touching, creates a new connection likely to integrate your finger tip with a remote control system based uniquely on acoustics.

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Zuckerberg - Innovation Without Boundaries

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories: Media, Technology | Tags: Bill Gates, Facebook, Innovation, Microsoft, Google, Superfreakonomics, Mark Zuckerberg, Ross Perot, Social media, billionaire, Steven Levitt, Economist Innovation Award, social networking, award

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Mark Zuckerberg has a huge problem – what’s he going to do next? This year’s Economist Innovation Award winner, the 24-year old billionaire creator and Facebook CEO, may have peaked too early. Until Facebook develops an application to tell the future, the profile of another Ivy League drop-out, entrepreneur and programmer provides some insight. Zuckerberg may be the next William Gates III – energetic, opportunistic, commercially savvy.

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Robots, ice and taxis – innovation roundup

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Business, Environment, Media, Technology | Tags: links, Twitter, robots, TED, climate change, photography

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This month, the Grant Thornton team has been reading about robots with smiling faces, documenting climate change using time-lapse photography and ‘tweeting’ for a taxi home…

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Innovation links 15.09.09

Wednesday, September 16, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Business, Environment, Media, Technology | Tags: entrepreneurs, links, Cirque du Soleil, music, Innovation

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From the reef-like nature of innovation and new ideas, to innovation lessons from the Cirque du Soleil, here’s what the Grant Thornton Innovation team has been reading about this week…

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Blogging brands at the hotdog stand

Monday, September 14, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories: Media, Technology | Tags: technology, FT, Twitter, fashion, IFA, 3-D home cinema, Dell, Netbook, Berlin, Scott Schuman, pay-per-click, Ralph Lauren, The Times, The Sartorialist, Samsung, consumer technology, Sascha Pallenberg, Gap, Blogging

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Berlin’s brand ‘n’ blog gateway opened to a flood of technology innovation last week. The annual IFA, one of the world’s largest tech exhibitions, served as the launch pad for streams of new consumer devices, not least of which is the 3-D home cinema experience. At the hotdog stands, the buzz was all about Samsung’s giant exhibition space, the heart of which was a thirty metre tall entertainment dome. It was all very sci-fi, and I’m still not sure if there was a point to it, other than to elicit hundreds of thousands of “Wow” sounds from visitors, and to create a buzz, around the hotdog stands.

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New iawards for British innovation – call for entries

Tuesday, September 08, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Business, Environment, Media, Technology | Tags: government, iawards, James Caan, innovation awards, BIS

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Is your organisation British and inventive? Does its innovative products, practices and projects deserve wider recognition? Then the iawards might present an interesting opportunity. They’re the first innovation awards to be backed by the British government, in conjunction with entrepreneur and BBC2 Dragon James Caan. You can nominate your own UK-registered company but you’ll have to be quick as the deadline is 16 September 2009. So, how to enter?

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Don’t Mess With the Monkeys – Get the Robots to Do It!

Friday, September 04, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories: Healthcare, Technology | Tags: Nano-science, Robots, science, innovation, medical, technology, healthcare

Evolution and progress, they’re not always on the same page. This week, cute little simian features announced the arrival of the mammal with two mums. This is not smart science. Some years from now, teenage Cheetah will be confronting three biological parents. Married Cheetah will bring two mother-in-laws to the wedding. Researchers are considering this genetic modification for humans – they think it’s a good idea, but have they really thought it through? Spare a thought for the Yiddish kid from Brooklyn whose two mothers are disappointed he’s not a doctor or a pilot; life should not be this cruel or unusual.

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Listen in on real-time talk about innovation (and more)

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Technology | Tags: innovation, chart, Twitter, investors, conversation, StreamGraph, Neoformix, inventors, real-time, graph, invention

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Innovators, investors and inventors – and, no doubt, lots of other types beginning with ‘I’ – need to keep their ear to the ground. How can you do that in a fun way? With this new Twitter infographic, you can tune into real-time conversation just by typing in a keyword.

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Measuring global innovation by patents filed and granted (Infographic)

Monday, August 17, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Business, Technology | Tags: innovation, infographic, global, chart, statistics, World Patent Report, patents

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Who is leading the world in innovation right now? Using the latest data from the ‘World Patent Report: A Statistical Review’ (2008), Grant Thornton has charted the new world powers in innovation. The infographic shows which countries have filed the most patents for each dollar of research budget – and which ones have had the most patents granted. The results may surprise you…

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Mean machines – Hassle-free urban transport

Thursday, August 13, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories: Environment, Technology | Tags: innovation, technology, renewable energy, energy, science, car, engineering, eco, car industry, fuel, General Motors, heathrow, airport, hydrogen

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“Wanted: silent taxi driver - no jip, no ranting, no dodgy fare charges; must run on hydrogen.” Coming to a terminal near you, this sci-fi reality of urban transport is no false dawn.

For a generation, General Motors and Volkswagen have been focused on manufacturing autonomous vehicles for everyday public use. An initiative which began as a defence sector project to provide self-guided battle craft, has become a marketable public transport solution. If the auto-cabs we see on our streets within five years have a voice, they will smoothly declare: “This isn’t just innovation, this is marvellously spectacular innovation.”

 

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In defence of a nation - Innovation

Monday, July 27, 2009 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories: Technology | Tags: innovation, technology, research, global, university, science, europe, intellectual property, engineering, robots, defence

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http://www.wordle.net/

21st Century Western defence systems are based on Sun Tzu’s assertion: “The art of using troops is this…when ten to the enemy’s one, surround him.”

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