More than one billion people are without access to safe water, and nearly half of the world’s poor suffer from waterborne diseases. Over 6,000 people – mainly children – die each day by consuming unsafe drinking water.

Developed by The Vestergaard Frandsen Group of Denmark, the LifeStraw is an innovative, mobile water filtration system, and a practical response to this urgency. The straw costs about $3.50. [thanks, BBC]

[UPDATE: 10-11, 2006:  The LifeStraw is catching on - check out this NY Times article printed yesterday.]

Forbes (free subscription required) has an interesting article this month about Atlantis Memorial Reef, Gary Levine’s $10 million, 15-acre underwater cemetery in the tropical waters 3 miles off the coast of Key Biscayne, Florida, which will open in July, and eventually accomodate the remains of up to 80,000 people.

DARPA has filed a patent application this week for a human cannon system, which can quickly launch special forces, and other emergency personnel onto roofs of tall buildings. Compressed air would launch a chair up a ramp, in the vein of a pilot’s ejection seat, and a computer would devise the correct angle and speed of ascent. The patent claims that a 4-metre-tall launcher could put a man on the top of a 5 story building in less than 2 seconds.

[thanks, Barry Fox]

The Agency is also seeking proposals to fund the development of innovative technology to create insect-cyborgs, possibly enabled by intimately integrating microsystems within insects. Various microsystem payloads could potentially be mounted on the platforms with the goal of controlling insect locomotion, sense local environment, and scavenge power.

DARPA and Boston University are also developing a program to implant sharks with a neural device to control them remotely by electronically stimulating their brains to simulate their sense of scent, causing them to turn and move at the reasearchers’ will.

[thanks, Engadget]

Fraser Kelton, an entrepreneur, and writer of Disruptive Thoughts, has written the following post exclusively for SHARKRIDE.

_______________________________

Innovation is changing. The process itself is taking direction from its definition and is adapting to our changing world.

Traditionally, we’ve had manufacturer-centric innovation processes: companies innovated and launched new products, improved products, or created entirely new market segments. Occasionally a visionary individual, independent of an organization, would introduce a new innovation. However, these individual innovations still followed the manufacturer-centric innovation process – a company was formed around the innovation and grew with its success (an example is Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company).

A number of innovative forces guide this form of innovation – internal industry experts, focus groups, market researchers, etc. There has been valuable discussion over the past few years about the challenges and limited return from this form of innovation.

Lots of smart people have discussed this issue and I’m not going to get into the benefits of the “Democratizing of Innovation” except to say that they’re real. And that the democratizing of innovation isn’t the change that is occurring. It’s simply an enabler of a greater change that is underway.

There’s another piece of the innovation of innovation puzzle that needs to be understood before we continue – the appearance, and rise, of specialization companies.

Innovation is not only being democratized, it’s also being segmented into specializations. These two enablers are introducing significant change to the innovation process.

So where’s innovation going? Here’s a quick summary of a number of changes that we’re going to observe during the coming years (I’ll expand and explore them further in the coming weeks/months at Disruptive Thoughts):

Innovation off of the balance sheet

P&G has made it a goal for 50 % of their innovation to come from outside sources. As they’ve worked towards this goal they’ve had fantastic results. The positive results will continue, other companies will follow the lead, and, the results will only get juicer thanks to…

The maturation of the matching process

A number of services have been developed that harness new technology to enable innovators to connect with interested organizations – literally creating a market for innovation. These markets, like any young and immature market, are inefficient (economist speak for far from perfect) but will improve over time. These markets are paving the way for…

The rise of specialized innovation companies

Increases in technology paired with falling prices, the creation of innovation markets, easy access to capital, etc. have made specialized innovation companies possible. Small groups (1 +) of experts of a specific technology can now focus on continually innovating within their area of expertise without worrying about the manufacturer-centric processes traditionally required to help monetize the innovation. Because of their size, expertise, etc. along with their distance from the commercialized product these companies will have a competitive advantage with respect to developing disruptive innovations and all other innovation that creates a new technological curve, rather than simply an upward improvement. However, because of their arms-length distance from end-users and the commercialized product these companies will have a disadvantage with respect to sustainable innovation. Sustainable innovation will be handled by…

The new role of an organization’s innovation process

Organizations who take substantial amounts of innovation off of their balance sheet will continue to have a role for internal innovation. It’s up to the organizations to develop the ability to rapidly integrate an external innovation into their system. Not only that, they’ll have to become hyper-efficient at producing sustainable innovations, internally, for their products. This will come from harnessing the power of democratized innovation and monitoring, and listening, to all of the new streams of information.

Other business processes have significantly changed and developed during the past decade(s) and the process of innovation has begun to, well, innovate. The change will bring substantial benefit to many. The real winners will be the large organizations and the small innovators who anticipate the change and adapt their processes quickly to harness the new innovation model. The losers, as always, will be those who are too blind with pride to adapt and open.

Scientists at the Centre for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices, a research consortium of Australian universities, report that they are on the verge of creating a photonic chip that processes optical signals without the limitation of silicon electronics. The innovation would effectively increase the speed of the Internet by a potential 1000x, which would mean a high definition movie could be downloaded in a fraction of a second.

For a detailed description of the technology, click here.

[thanks, Random Good Stuff]

Researchers at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition are developing technology, which enables the tongue to process sonar and visual signals, so soldiers in the field can have superhuman 360 degree sight capabilities similar to fish, owls, and snakes, for example. In addition, the device has enabled blind people to see figures, navigate through doors, and catch balls. The Institue has funding from the Department of Defense.

[thanks,  CNN]

Sensatex, a textile engineering company, is developing a smart shirt system, a wearable, and fully washable shirt with a seamlessly integrated biometric monitoring and physiological information aggregation and broadcast platform, which allows for remote monitoring of data, including heart rate, respiration and body temperature. The shirt has a number of applications, including monitoring athletic performance for athletic training, home health monitoring for the elderly, remote monitoring for first responders, hazard materials workers, and soldiers in the field, and watching professional truck drivers’ vital signs to alert them of fatigue. The company has funding from DARPA.

[thanks, Oliver Starr]

Siemens is developing paper-thin display technology, which is composed of a polymer-based photochromic material, and capable of displaying digital text and images. The power source is based on commercially available, ultra-thin batteries, and the images are stored by electronic memory strips.

In less than two years, Siemans says that electronic display technology will be so inexpensive it could be used on everything from milk cartons to cereal boxes.

[Thanks, Wired]

The Netherlands has introduced a “video stamp,” which utilizes a sophisticated variation technology to the simple three or four framed disney characters on a ruler who moved, depending on the angle it was held, which we had when we were kids. The technology can be applied to business cards, vending machine signs, billboards etc. — and potentially packaging. For more information, visit Lenticular.