I just uploaded a new tutorial that shows you how you can add physics to your Flash projects using the Box2D physics library. In particular I show you how to do this from Flash CS5 without writing any code by taking advantage of an amazing new library called the World Construction Kit.

very cool flash physics library

A SCRAPBOOK OF STUFF I’M READING / LISTENING TO / LOOKING AT ON THE NET.

Posts tagged “viznotes”

May 11, 2010

I’m giving some of these notebooks away over on my blog.

May 05, 2010

Mike Rohde’s Sketchnotes

My friend Mike talks about his sketchnotes. We were on a SXSW panel together on Visual Note-Taking.

May 04, 2010

» Interactive Podcasts: Visual Note-Taking 101 | SXSW.com

vizthink:

It’s audio only but still lots to learn in this recording of the #viznotes session @ SXSW this year

This was the SXSW panel I was on this year. We’re working on matching some visuals to the podcast.

May 03, 2010

Duarte Blog » Advanced Stickynoting

The folks at Duarte Design use sticky notes spread out over eight whiteboards to lay out their presentations.

We had lots of existing slides that we wanted to use as part of the story. So, instead of sketching them out, we printed them out. We discovered something cool, which we pass on to you for free: If you print out your slides from PowerPoint in 9-up, landscape handout mode, they are the same size as small sticky notes!

Filed under: post-it notes, lay it all out where you can look at it

» The birth of the pros and cons list: Benjamin Franklin’s 1772 letter to Joseph Priestley

In this 1772 letter, Ben Franklin lays out how his invention, the pro/con list, works:

…my Way is, to divide half a Sheet of Paper by a Line into two Columns, writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con. Then during three or four Days Consideration I put down under the different Heads short Hints of the different Motives that at different Times occur to me for or against the Measure. When I have thus got them all together in one View, I endeavour to estimate their respective Weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out: If I find a Reason pro equal to some two Reasons con, I strike out the three. If I judge some two Reasons con equal to some three Reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the Ballance lies; and if after a Day or two of farther Consideration nothing new that is of Importance occurs on either side, I come to a Determination accordingly.

And tho’ the Weight of Reasons cannot be taken with the Precision of Algebraic Quantities, yet when each is thus considered separately and comparatively, and the whole lies before me, I think I can judge better, and am less likely to take a rash Step; and in fact I have found great Advantage from this kind of Equation, in what may be called Moral or Prudential Algebra.

Dave Gray mentioned this in our SXSW Visual Note-Taking panel, but I completely forgot until listening to the podcast.

Apr 19, 2010

Visual Note Taking talk @ UX Camp London

Neat little slideshow on #viznotes. Interesting to see people running with the idea… (Also: why am I not on the lecture circuit?)

Mar 05, 2010

Another set of notes from Sunni Brown at one of Dan Roam’s workshops

My friend Sunni Brown takes notes at one of Dan Roam’s workshops

Nov 24, 2009

Core-Toons: MindMapping - Core77

Really funny cartoon mindmap by Lunchbreath. Probably pointed at people like me, but then, I’m just as skeptical of mind-mapping as anyone…

Oct 28, 2009

Bill Keaggy really nails it with these viznotes by using different-colored post-it notes for each speaker, and then arranging them onto a single page. This would also be perfect for note-taking with books. Well-done, Bill!

Over 100 people signed up for Tuesday’s Vizthink “Visual Note-taking 101″ webinar put on by me, Sunni Brown, Mike Rohde, and moderated by Dave Gray (with great support from Ryan Coleman and Chris Pascucci…thanks, guys!)

It was a rad way to spend 3 hours: I taught the first section called “But I Can’t Draw!” that tried to get people thinking about drawing as building or collage using a simple alphabet (line, point, circle, square, triangle). We learned to draw stick figures and faces…oh, it was good fun. AND I found out that I really, really love teaching: what could be better than sharing your passion with eager students?

Here are a couple of screengrabs from my session:

UPDATE: Here’s a short version of my “How To Draw Faces” activity:

I drew live in Sketchbook Pro during Mike and Sunni’s presentation, and here are the results:

Mike Rohde’s Sketchnoting presentation

(see it bigger)

Map of Sunni Brown’s, “The Art of Listening” presentation

see it bigger

Here are two thrilling shots of me in action:

And here’s my webinar setup:

Mike has a good recap that pretty much covers everything that went down, including notes from my section and notes from the awesome participants, and Sunni has posted her tips on listening for graphic recording and visual note-taking.

I also highly recommend checking out the notes tagged viznotes on Flickr and all the great Twitter chatter about the event.

(And for fun, go see Rob Court’s cartoon of my dog Milo, who started whimpering about 2/3 of the way through.)

You can see two little slideshow excerpts from my presentation: “The Battle Between Pictures and Words” and “Anatomy of a Mind Map”

And be sure to check out VizThink!

A SCRAPBOOK OF STUFF I’M READING / LISTENING TO / LOOKING AT ON THE NET.

Posts tagged “viznotes”

May 11, 2010

I’m giving some of these notebooks away over on my blog.

May 05, 2010

Mike Rohde’s Sketchnotes

My friend Mike talks about his sketchnotes. We were on a SXSW panel together on Visual Note-Taking.

May 04, 2010

» Interactive Podcasts: Visual Note-Taking 101 | SXSW.com

vizthink:

It’s audio only but still lots to learn in this recording of the #viznotes session @ SXSW this year

This was the SXSW panel I was on this year. We’re working on matching some visuals to the podcast.

May 03, 2010

Duarte Blog » Advanced Stickynoting

The folks at Duarte Design use sticky notes spread out over eight whiteboards to lay out their presentations.

We had lots of existing slides that we wanted to use as part of the story. So, instead of sketching them out, we printed them out. We discovered something cool, which we pass on to you for free: If you print out your slides from PowerPoint in 9-up, landscape handout mode, they are the same size as small sticky notes!

Filed under: post-it notes, lay it all out where you can look at it

» The birth of the pros and cons list: Benjamin Franklin’s 1772 letter to Joseph Priestley

In this 1772 letter, Ben Franklin lays out how his invention, the pro/con list, works:

…my Way is, to divide half a Sheet of Paper by a Line into two Columns, writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con. Then during three or four Days Consideration I put down under the different Heads short Hints of the different Motives that at different Times occur to me for or against the Measure. When I have thus got them all together in one View, I endeavour to estimate their respective Weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out: If I find a Reason pro equal to some two Reasons con, I strike out the three. If I judge some two Reasons con equal to some three Reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the Ballance lies; and if after a Day or two of farther Consideration nothing new that is of Importance occurs on either side, I come to a Determination accordingly.

And tho’ the Weight of Reasons cannot be taken with the Precision of Algebraic Quantities, yet when each is thus considered separately and comparatively, and the whole lies before me, I think I can judge better, and am less likely to take a rash Step; and in fact I have found great Advantage from this kind of Equation, in what may be called Moral or Prudential Algebra.

Dave Gray mentioned this in our SXSW Visual Note-Taking panel, but I completely forgot until listening to the podcast.

Apr 19, 2010

Visual Note Taking talk @ UX Camp London

Neat little slideshow on #viznotes. Interesting to see people running with the idea… (Also: why am I not on the lecture circuit?)

Mar 05, 2010

Another set of notes from Sunni Brown at one of Dan Roam’s workshops

My friend Sunni Brown takes notes at one of Dan Roam’s workshops

Nov 24, 2009

Core-Toons: MindMapping - Core77

Really funny cartoon mindmap by Lunchbreath. Probably pointed at people like me, but then, I’m just as skeptical of mind-mapping as anyone…

Oct 28, 2009

Bill Keaggy really nails it with these viznotes by using different-colored post-it notes for each speaker, and then arranging them onto a single page. This would also be perfect for note-taking with books. Well-done, Bill!

Magazine

January%u2013February 2010

• Buy Reprint
• Idea in Brief

HBR.org  >  January%u2013February 2010

The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2010

When the business community supports an idea, change can happen fast. HBR%u2019s annual ideas collection, compiled in cooperation with the World Economic Forum, offers 10 fresh solutions we believe would make the world better. Ranging from productivity boosting to nation building, from health care to hacking, any of the ideas presented in the following pages could go far with broad-based buy-in. Which ones will you get behind?

1: What Really Motivates Workers

by Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer

Understanding the power of progress.

The Problem.

Ask leaders what they think makes employees enthusiastic about work, and they%u2019ll tell you in no uncertain terms. In a recent survey we invited more than 600 managers from dozens of companies to rank the impact on employee motivation and emotions of five workplace factors commonly considered significant: recognition, incentives, interpersonal support, support for making progress, and clear goals. %u201CRecognition for good work (either public or private)%u201D came out number one.

Unfortunately, those managers are wrong.

Having just completed a multiyear study tracking the day-to-day activities, emotions, and motivation levels of hundreds of knowledge workers in a wide variety of settings, we now know what the top motivator of performance is%u2014and, amazingly, it%u2019s the factor those survey participants ranked dead last. It%u2019s progress. On days when workers have the sense they%u2019re making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak. On days when they feel they are spinning their wheels or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are lowest.

This was apparent in vivid detail in the diaries we asked these knowledge workers to e-mail us every day. In one end-of-day entry, an information systems professional rejoiced that she%u2019d finally figured out why something hadn%u2019t been working correctly. %u201CI felt relieved and happy because this was a minor milestone for me,%u201D she wrote, adding that her efforts to enhance a specific version of software were now %u201C90% complete.%u201D A close analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries, together with the writers%u2019 daily ratings of their motivation and emotions, shows that making progress in one%u2019s work%u2014even incremental progress%u2014is more frequently associated with positive emotions and high motivation than any other workday event. For example, it was noted on 76% of people%u2019s best days, when their reported moods were most buoyant, and on only 25% of their worst. (The exhibit %u201CWhat Happens on a Great Workday?%u201D shows how progress compared with the other four most frequently reported positive events.)

The Breakthrough Idea.

As a manager of people, you should regard this as very good news: The key to motivation turns out to be largely within your control. What%u2019s more, it doesn%u2019t depend on elaborate incentive systems. (In fact, the people in our study rarely mentioned incentives in their diaries.) Managers have powerful influence over events that facilitate or undermine progress. They can provide meaningful goals, resources, and encouragement, and they can protect their people from irrelevant demands. Or they can fail to do so.

This brings us to perhaps the strongest advice we offer from this study: Scrupulously avoid impeding progress by changing goals autocratically, being indecisive, or holding up resources. Negative events generally have a greater effect on people%u2019s emotions, perceptions, and motivation than positive ones, and nothing is more demotivating than a setback%u2014the most prominent type of event on knowledge workers%u2019 worst days.

The Promise.

You can proactively create both the perception and the reality of progress. If you are a high-ranking manager, take great care to clarify overall goals, ensure that people%u2019s efforts are properly supported, and refrain from exerting time pressure so intense that minor glitches are perceived as crises rather than learning opportunities. Cultivate a culture of helpfulness. While you%u2019re at it, you can facilitate progress in a more direct way: Roll up your sleeves and pitch in. Of course, all these efforts will not only keep people working with gusto but also get the job done faster.

As for recognition, the diaries revealed that it does indeed motivate workers and lift their moods. So managers should celebrate progress, even the incremental sort. But there will be nothing to recognize if people aren%u2019t genuinely moving forward%u2014and as a practical matter, recognition can%u2019t happen every day. You can, however, see that progress happens every day.

Teresa M. Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Steven J. Kramer is an independent researcher and writer based in Wayland, Massachusetts.

2: The Technology That Can Revolutionize Health Care

by Ronald Dixon

Hint: It%u2019s not high cost or high tech.

The Problem.

When people talk about technological breakthroughs in medicine, they%u2019re usually referring to high-tech (and high-cost) innovations such as next-generation MRI machines or surgical robots. Oddly, they rarely talk about technologies that could improve the most critical factor in the quality of health care: the patient%u2019s relationship with the provider.

Having graduated from medical school in 1998, I was well accustomed to the advantages of e-mail. Once I became an attending physician, I thought it would be a valuable way to communicate with patients. I sent messages to people who were suffering from hypertension, for example, asking that they give me readings from their home blood-pressure monitoring, and then adjusted their prescriptions accordingly. Quickly, however, a hospital administrator intervened: Because such contact wasn%u2019t a form of care that we could charge for, he directed me to stop.

What%u2019s more, no information gleaned through such communication could enter a patient%u2019s medical record. So, for example, someone reviewing the formal record of a patient of mine named Don, to whom I provided palliative care after chemotherapy failed to keep his cancer from metastasizing, would conclude that Don and I had had no contact in the last four months of his life%u2014although we had closely connected through Skype consultations every two weeks.

The rules about payment and paperwork aren%u2019t without justification; they reflect the belief that in-person visits are essential to care. Certainly it%u2019s true that physical examinations can%u2019t be conducted by videoconference. But consider that a large proportion of patients%u2019 office visits are for follow-up on lab test results and ongoing management of chronic diseases. For those purposes virtual interaction can support more solicitous care, not less%u2014and lead to better outcomes.

Consider Agnes, a 75-year-old woman who suffers from congestive heart failure. In one period of just four months she was hospitalized six times%u2014two of them within four days of having been discharged. After she left the hospital the sixth time, I tried something different: A few days later I picked up the phone and checked in with her, asking about warning signs and even having her step on the scale. Either a nurse or I called Agnes every four days thereafter. Six months later: still no trip to the hospital. What was the revolutionary technology? The telephone.

The Breakthrough Idea.

Now imagine that instead of simply having a phone conversation, we could remotely monitor patients using a kiosk like the one some colleagues and I are currently alpha testing. (We envision such kiosks in assisted-living facilities and other multiuser locations.) If reliable data on blood pressure, pulse rate, and so forth could be captured and beamed to the physician, some fragile individuals would be saved the necessity of making trips to the doctor%u2019s office. And physicians would have many more readings, meaning more chances to discern patterns and detect anomalies in time to act.

To determine whether a more virtual practice would be feasible and acceptable to both patients and physicians, we recently conducted two studies, one focused on videoconferencing and the other on templated e-mail %u201Cvisits%u201D that would enter medical records. Both studies subjected real patients and their accustomed practitioners to these encounters. Both produced high levels of satisfaction, proving that people are ready for innovation%u2014even eager for it. We just need to change the rules and overcome the lingering cultural barriers that currently prevent it.

The Promise.

When the day comes that physicians and patients readily engage in all three types of virtual interaction%u2014asynchronous (such as e-mail), synchronous but remote (videoconferencing), and device-intermediated (kiosk collection of vital signs)%u2014up to three-fifths of today%u2019s office visits can be eliminated. Much of the time saved can be used to provide quality health care for additional patients%u2014a crucial efficiency in light of the current shortage of primary-care physicians.

There is no question that we must improve how we deliver health care in the United States. Technology will never substitute for the relationship between physicians and patients, but its thoughtful and practical use will make that relationship richer and more collaborative. If we build increasingly interactive platforms to enrich feedback at each stage of diagnosis and care, patients and physicians can make better health decisions together.

Ronald Dixon, MD, MA, is the director of the Virtual Practice Project at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

3: What the Financial Sector Should Borrow

by Lawrence M. Candell

A military approach to keeping the economy safe.

The Problem.

What can you do in a democracy when you rely on the private sector for solutions in an area of critical national importance?

In the case of U.S. national defense, the government funds nonprofit research centers like the one I work for%u2014MIT Lincoln Laboratory, in Lexington, Massachusetts. These centers are stocked with technology experts and innovation capabilities as good as those to be found in industry, but they answer only to the public, not to profit-seeking shareholders. Seated across the table from large defense contractors, federally funded R&D centers function as independent honest brokers: They allow innovative defense contractors to thrive, as the system needs them to do, but they also check the contractors%u2019 occasional temptation to do what is most profitable rather than what is really needed. These centers clearly perform a valuable function, and the cost of funding their expertise is less than 1% of the Defense Department%u2019s budget.

As the financial crisis erupted in late 2008, some of my colleagues and I couldn%u2019t help wondering why there was no similar setup in the financial industry. Here was another area of extreme national importance. Why didn%u2019t the wizards who were devising new financial instruments in the private sector have a mirror image operating in behalf of the public?

Of course, there are many public-spirited experts developing and studying next-generation financial solutions at our universities%u2014just as there are many professors working on military technology. But that academic contingent can%u2019t be expected to protect the public interest. With an annual budget of $650 billion, the Department of Defense engages with industry on a scale far beyond what a collection of scholars could ever address. To decide how best to invest its resources, the department needs understanding and guidance at the systems level. The same would seem to be true for a financial industry that annually moves trillions of dollars.

The Breakthrough Idea.

Let%u2019s federally fund an R&D center that, borrowing the best practices of defense research centers, could design, analyze, prototype, and troubleshoot financial innovations, making sure they promoted our economic security and prosperity. That would mean hiring top talent from a wide range of disciplines in both academia and industry in order to provide a high-level systems perspective on problems. It would mean having the resources to build rapid prototypes and surrogate test beds%u2014not anywhere near industrial production capacity but sufficient to inform a full-scale approach. And it would mean transferring lessons learned to the industrial base, in part by establishing requirements for novel financial instruments and providing guidance to financial regulators.

The sheer complexity of the financial system may lead some to believe that such a center could never attain what our national-security-focused labs strive for: a deep understanding of the threats we face, and the know-how to design systems that respond to them. Unlike defense procurement, this problem area may have too many degrees of freedom and too few immutable laws and principles to guide us to some useful solutions.

The Promise.

There is little risk in trying. The center would have the greatest possible impact if its efforts were focused at the right level. They should complement rather than duplicate what researchers in academia are already doing, and should therefore target large-scale problems and aim to provide insights that would shape national policy.

If the center provided any answers that helped prevent another financial crisis of the magnitude of 2008%u2019s, the expense would be more than justified.

Lawrence M. Candell is the assistant head of the aerospace division at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts.

4: Getting the Drugs We Need

by Eric Bonabeau, Alpheus Bingham, and Aaron Schacht

Simple standards would spur innovation.

The Problem.

In an era of imploding business models, big pharma%u2019s may be the next to go. But society%u2019s need for new drug therapies, and companies%u2019 interest in seeing a return on their investments, can still be served if we rally support for a simple change.

That we need a new model of some kind is beyond doubt. Major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies know that with each passing year it takes more money and time to develop a new drug, and the number of costly Phase III and postlaunch failures is increasing. Meanwhile, generics are coming to market earlier and more aggressively. The blockbuster model, the salvation of big pharma in years past, is further threatened by continuing advances in genomics and the discovery of drug response markers. This is leading to a rise in tailored drugs aimed at smaller markets. The combined effect of these forces will make the economics of being a large, fully integrated pharmaceutical company increasingly untenable. Already, innovative drugs are routinely coming from smaller players.

How, then, should a traditional drug company change its business model? In the short term, it can focus on becoming the scaling partner of choice%u2014using its infrastructure to support smaller innovators in conducting clinical trials, manufacturing efficiently, and marketing and selling globally. That will remain a viable model as long as one-size-fits-all blockbuster drugs continue to offer value, however limited, to payers and patients. In time, however, even that oasis will dry up, and a reinvention will be necessary. The survivors will be companies that have moved beyond their fully integrated past and established orchestrated drug-development networks.

Such networks have already been seeded; large companies have been acquiring or licensing pipeline innovations for years. But their imperatives to grow through innovation require them to form many more external partnerships, and faster. The problem is that despite advances in information and communications technologies, the coordination and transaction costs of operating a network model remain high.

The Breakthrough Idea.

One change would make a substantial difference: the creation of agreed-upon standards for digitally representing drug assets. The challenge is that every company has its own idiosyncratic (and therefore redundant) means of collecting, storing, and exploiting information from development trials, making it difficult to share the hundreds of gigabytes of documents and images among partners. Not only does this throw up barriers to collaboration, but it makes market transactions highly inefficient. It is not uncommon for the seller of an asset to have to set up as many data rooms as there are potential acquirers or licensees, since each one requires its own format. If a common standard for drug asset representation existed, it would speed up transactions, reduce coordination costs, and promote better decision making across networks by providing what the military calls a %u201Ccommon operating picture.%u201D

The Promise.

Let%u2019s play out the probable consequences of taking this relatively simple step. If we created a standard that was accepted across the industry, the drop in transaction costs would enable the largest players to share risk and monetize their undeveloped assets. Foundations or even patient groups could have drugs developed that targeted markets too small for the big players. Venture capital firms would be able to develop assets that were languishing at failed portfolio companies. Smaller pharmaceutical companies, government labs, and academic institutions would be able to broadcast the availability of their assets to a wide audience and find eager developers and partners. In short, tremendous innovation in drug development would be unleashed.

The emergence of fluid drug development networks would change how the value of intellectual property was captured. As information flowed more freely among partners, we would need clear mechanisms for assigning credit. The regulatory framework would have to adapt to innovative uses of information. It%u2019s easy to imagine the emergence of a new type of business dedicated to orchestrating development activities.

The end of the fully integrated pharmaceutical company needn%u2019t be the death of today%u2019s big pharma and biotech companies. They can continue to play a central role by embracing a network model and, with their depth of expertise, acting as its orchestrators. But whether they choose to or not, their world will move on.

Eric Bonabeau is the founder and chairman of Icosystem and a cofounder of Hive Pharma. Alpheus Bingham is a cofounder of InnoCentive and Hive Pharma. Aaron Schacht is the COO of Global External R&D at Eli Lilly.

5: A Market Solution for Achieving %u201CGreen%u201D

by Jack D. Hidary

Financing that encourages building retrofits.

The Problem.

It%u2019s easy to get excited about the promise of clean technology%u2014especially new high-efficiency and solar devices that can significantly reduce the energy use of existing homes and commercial buildings. But the retrofitting challenge we face is immense, and if we hope to see major progress, we must help home and building owners overcome the barrier of up-front costs.

Few of today%u2019s owners have the necessary capital on hand, or can tie it up until the break-even point is reached and payback begins. In theory they could tap into lines of credit and home equity to pay for clean tech, but in practice they are reluctant or unable to do so. Institutional investors, meanwhile, have the capital and the appetite for the sure and steady returns of clean-tech installations; but they are set up to write large checks, not to finance disaggregated, small-scale projects. And, as smart investors, they are leery of opportunities where borrowers can default but improvements can%u2019t be undone and funds recouped.

Already we are at the point%u2014thanks to falling prices from large-scale production in China and other manufacturing hubs, and thanks to government rebates%u2014where some clean-tech retrofits achieve cash payback in less than three years. But unless we can provide the necessary assurance to investors and tap into private capital markets, the improved economics of clean technology won%u2019t make enough difference.

The Breakthrough Idea.

Enter PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) bonds, which are just being introduced in 15 states across the country. PACE bonds are debt instruments issued by a municipality and backed by property-tax liens on buildings whose owners take PACE loans from the bond pool. Here%u2019s an example: Suppose a commercial building in Annapolis, Maryland, has utility costs of $20,000 a month, which include electricity and natural gas. The building owner, Annapolis Management, has done an energy audit and concluded that a $300,000 investment in energy efficiency (retrofitting windows, lighting, and HVAC) would bring monthly utilities down to $13,000.

Annapolis Management takes a $300,000 loan from the city%u2019s PACE program and retrofits the building. The owner repays the loan over 20 years through an increase in the building%u2019s annual property taxes equal to one-twentieth of the loan amount plus interest. In this example, assuming an 8% interest rate, that means additional taxes of $1,350 a month. Because this expense is markedly less than the utility cost savings of $7,000, the owner is cash-flow positive from day one after retrofit.

The Promise.

Let%u2019s examine PACE bonds from the perspective of the city. The municipality issues the bonds, which are bought by institutional investors. Investors are drawn to bonds backed by property taxes, because they have very low default rates. The obligation to pay them survives foreclosure, so even if a property owner defaults on a mortgage, the new owner who buys the building at a bank fire sale must immediately bring the tax payments up to date.

PACE bonds are also very attractive to political leaders. As opt-in solutions, they raise taxes only for the property owners who choose to take loans. Other constituents%u2019 pocketbooks are unaffected. Furthermore, retrofitting projects financed by PACE bonds bring employment for more construction and installation workers, potentially amounting to hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs as this idea spreads across the country. What politician would not want to lay claim to a program that increased property values, lowered monthly utility costs, and created jobs?

Jack D. Hidary, who is based in New York, is the chairman of PrimaryInsight.com and serves on the national steering committee of PACENow.org.

6: A Faster Path from Lab to Market

by Robert E. Litan and Lesa Mitchell

Removing the technology licensing obstacle.

The Problem.

University-based innovators routinely produce breakthrough technologies that, if commercialized by industry, have the power to sustain economic growth. Because their research is largely funded by the U.S. government (much of whose $150-billion-plus R&D budget is channeled through universities), it is all the more imperative that these innovations find their way to the marketplace and generate benefits for society. But our system today is suboptimal: Many university-developed innovations could reach the marketplace much faster than they do now. The problem, ironically, centers on the very entities designed to facilitate commercialization. Nearly 30 years ago Congress provided a huge incentive for universities to pursue more commercialization of federally funded innovations. Through the Bayh-Dole Act, it granted them the rights to the intellectual property. That carrot got immediate results: Virtually every U.S. research university created a technology licensing office (TLO) to organize its commercialization activities and increase revenues from them. These centralized offices require that faculty members disclose their inventions to the TLO and pursue licensing opportunities through it.

Yet like the student who could earn A%u2019s but consistently takes home B%u2019s, TLOs are underperforming. For example, although funding from the National Institutes of Health has mounted over the years (and is now some $30 billion), the output in terms of new FDA-approved drugs has been falling. As the Department of Energy prepares to spend tens of billions of dollars on R&D to replace dirty fossil fuels with alternative sources of energy, it is critical that the disappointing pattern in drug commercialization not be repeated in clean tech.

Perhaps it was not a bad idea at first for universities to centralize their commercialization capabilities and give TLOs control of the process; they gained immediate organizational benefits and economies of scale. But this monopolistic model has since evolved into a major impediment. Inventive faculty members are hostage to their TLO, regardless of its efficiency or contacts. Moreover, because many TLOs are short-staffed, professors must queue up to get proper attention for their inventions.

The Breakthrough Idea.

So why not free up the market in technology licensing? Let%u2019s allow any inventor-professor to choose his or her licensing agent%u2014university-affiliated or not%u2014just as anyone in business can now choose his or her own lawyer. This would be as simple as having the Commerce Department amend the rules of Bayh-Dole. (Maybe the Small Business Administration would have to revise its rules as well.) Specifically, federal research dollars should come with a condition attached: University recipients must allow faculty members to choose their licensing agents.

The Promise.

A free and competitive market in technology licensing would disturb neither the legal status of the invention nor the way royalties or license fees are divided between faculty member and university (a subject governed by the standard employment contract). But like other free markets, it would dramatically speed up the commercialization of new technologies, and ultimate consumers%u2014in the U.S. and around the world%u2014would thereby benefit from them much more rapidly. A free market would also most likely lead university TLOs to specialize or turn to outside agents with the appropriate expertise. A university might drop its TLO altogether but continue to earn licensing revenues%u2014less the fees charged by outside TLOs or agents.

Let%u2019s stop penalizing professors who come up with new ideas and the universities they work for. Most important, let%u2019s not keep the world waiting for new products and services%u2014some of them lifesaving%u2014while valuable ideas languish on university shelves.

Robert E. Litan is the vice president for research and policy, and Lesa Mitchell is the vice president for advancing innovation, at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri.

7: Hacking Work

by Bill Jensen and Josh Klein

Learn to love the rule breakers.

The Problem.

When a 12-year-old can gather information faster, process it more efficiently, reference more diverse professionals, and get volunteer guidance from better sources than you can at work, how can you pretend to be competitive? When the personal tools in your mobile phone are more empowering than what your company provides or approves for your projects, how can you be saved from devastating market forces? You can%u2019t.

The tools we use in life have leapfrogged over the ones we use at work. Business%u2019s lingering love of bureaucracy, process, and legacy technology has fallen completely out of sync with what people need to do their best.

The Breakthrough Idea.

So what can you do? Hack work, and embrace the others in your midst who care enough to do so. Hackers work around the prescribed ways of doing things to achieve their goals. The benevolent among them do this rule bending for the good of all. And once frontline performers and middle managers try hacking work%u2014and discover they%u2019ve increased their output by a factor of 20%u2014they never go back.

Richard Saunders (not his real name) is a benevolent hacker. He works for one of those banks that did its job so well in 2008 that we landed in the worst financial hole we%u2019ve seen since the Great Depression. As the crisis unfolded, the bank%u2019s senior executives cried out, %u201CReports! Our kingdom for more reports!%u201D The problem was that what they really wanted%u2014useful, insightful analysis%u2014couldn%u2019t easily be produced with the software provided by corporate IT.

Poor Richard. What to do? Work 29 hours a day, 10 days a week, to manually create those reports and the much-needed analysis? No way. He hacked the system. He softened up a vendor, got a password, tapped into the database, and began creating never-before-possible reports for the C-suite.

Would the bank%u2019s auditors and IT security guys freak out if they knew that Richard had hacked their system? Uh, yes. But since then, Richard has become incredibly productive and is now a go-to guy companywide. He%u2019s a hero to all those senior execs who wanted more than data dumps. If only they knew the full story. Says Richard, %u201CAs a result of this hack, I keep senior management off our backs, so we%u2019re able to continue doing more for our clients with less.%u201D

He%u2019s not alone in believing that he has to take matters into his own hands in order to get the job done and achieve better results for the organization. Many in the workforce are coming to the same conclusion. The illusion of corporate control is being shattered in the name of increased personal productivity.

The Promise.

This kind of work-around isn%u2019t new%u2014your company has been hacked from the inside for ages. What is new is that the cheat codes are becoming public, and there%u2019s nothing you can do about that. Bloggers are telling your employees how to bypass procedures. Forums give tutorials on how to hack your software security. Entrepreneurs are building apps to help your employees run their own tools and processes instead of yours.

There%u2019s only one successful strategy for a hacked world: If you can%u2019t beat %u2019em, join %u2019em. Change the debate within your company to leverage what your hacker employees know. We%u2019re seeing managers in enormous corporations such as Google, Nokia, and Best Buy embrace things that benevolent hackers would pursue with or without them: greater worker control over tools and procedures, increased transparency, and meritocracy. As even senior management begins to feel the pain of outdated tools and structures that refuse to budge, what was once shunned as bad is now the new good.

Bill Jensen is the president and CEO of the Jensen Group, a change-consulting firm in Morristown, New Jersey. Josh Klein is a New York%u2013based hacker and a consultant on security and workplace effectiveness. The two are collaborating on a forthcoming book, Hacking Work (Portfolio).

8: Spotting Bubbles on the Rise

by Sendhil Mullainathan

We have the tools to sound the alarm early.

The Problem.

Will Rogers had sage advice on investing: %u201CBuy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don%u2019t go up, don%u2019t buy it.%u201D The guidance we get today regarding economic bubbles is just about as helpful: If it bursts, it was a bubble. That kind of postmortem analysis is useful to historians, but it does nothing to limit the collateral damage caused by, for example, a sudden collapse in housing prices.

An early warning system would be more valuable. For one thing, it would change the way that regulators go about securing the safety and soundness of financial institutions. To ensure that a financial institution is sound, regulators must discount the value of its assets for their riskiness. Under the current Basel regulatory framework, the discount is determined by looking at market pricing of risk. This has disastrous consequences during a bubble, when almost by definition, the market is underpricing significant downside risk. A financial institution holding $50 million worth of mortgage-backed securities in its trading book in January 2007 was facing far more risk%u2014and was less sound%u2014than the market price suggested. If we had a reliable metric for pronouncing an asset class to be in a bubble, regulators could dampen the risk. They could more aggressively discount asset values and analyze an entire balance sheet%u2019s exposure to the threatening burst.

The Breakthrough Idea.

At ideas42%u2014a behavioral economics R&D lab that I codirect%u2014we have taken on the challenge of creating an early warning system. We are asking, %u201CCould a bubbles committee%u2014like the committee that does recession dating for the National Bureau of Economic Research%u2014use the research in behavioral finance to identify bubbles as they form?%u201D The answer appears to be a guarded yes.

Understand that our goal is not to be able to predict when a bubble will burst. That might never be possible. Luckily, in terms of the public interest it isn%u2019t necessary. To regulate risks it would be helpful merely to recognize when we are in one%u2014a far simpler task. That is why a public effort must create such a committee. (The market itself is far more interested in the timing of bubbles. Any smart arbitrageur would rather ride a bubble for some time than lean against it; a fortune can be made by riding the bubble up and selling right before the burst.)

How would the committee make the call on a rising bubble? Behavioral finance gives us the perspective to spot telltale signs. We know that when markets work well, it%u2019s because they are incorporating disparate views of asset value and distilling them into a single price. When markets fail, as they do during bubbles, that is no longer true. After prices have risen for a prolonged period, the bears have sold all their shares, so their downward influence on price is lessened. If they believe that shares are overpriced and due for a fall, they must bet against them in more expensive (and hence less potent) ways, such as short selling.

This suggests an approach to finding warning signs. Looking at short interest, demand for put options, and trading on a variety of derivatives, a bubbles committee could construct technical measures of those opinions that are underrepresented. In taking these factors into consideration, the committee wouldn%u2019t strictly be going against consensus opinion; it would be discovering times when narrow asset prices alone did not measure the consensus.

A bubbles committee need not be passive. If it suspected a bubble in an asset market, it could selectively recommend introducing derivatives that explicitly target bubble risk. Consider a long-horizon put option designed to pay out only in the case of a significant drop in prices. The market price of that security would help regulators decide how to view that asset class. Of course, the committee%u2019s activities might serve to burst a bubble early, but that need not be its primary goal; we should be satisfied if the committee simply minimized the social costs of the bubble%u2019s eventual burst.

The Promise.

Translating these raw insights into a concrete methodology will take some work. Careful research is required. Diverse technical measures must be gathered to quantify contrarian investors%u2019 bets. These must be integrated with traditional indicators of fundamental value, such as P/E ratios. New consumer-sentiment measures, based on insights from consumer psychology, will also need to be explored. All of this must be tested against historical data. In this we are lucky: There is no shortage of data. Numerous asset classes around the world have gone through what in hindsight were obviously bubbles. The steps outlined above are technically challenging but very manageable if we make a concerted effort.

We can%u2019t prevent earthquakes or hurricanes, but construction engineers have learned ways to minimize their damage. Similarly, financial bubbles will surely continue to rise and burst around the world, but with one big R&D push we can put tools that contain their effects in the hands of a public-minded committee.

Sendhil Mullainathan is a professor of economics at Harvard University and a cofounder of ideas42.

9: Creating More Hong Kongs

by Paul Romer

How charter cities can change the rules for struggling economies.

The Problem.

Knowing how hard it is to transform a change-averse organization, managers sometimes create a skunkworks, an autonomous corporate division where pioneers can build something new. A leader who starts a successful skunkworks changes the firm by showing rather than telling. Target is a good example: It began as a discount-retailing skunkworks at Dayton-Hudson and eventually remade the entire firm.

Transforming a nation is even harder, but the dramatic reforms in China show that it can be done. When China%u2019s leaders started the reform process in the late 1970s, they could leverage a special asset: Accidents of history had made Hong Kong the skunkworks for Chinese political and institutional reform. The British government had administered rules that made the city livable and allowed a market-based economy to flourish. After World War II, it was a place where millions of Chinese could seek work%u2014sewing shirts, for example, or making toys%u2014and begin accumulating wealth, marketable skills, and the habits and values that sustain the quality of life in a well-run city. Hong Kong%u2019s success showed Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders how to bring urbanization, market incentives, and foreign direct investment to the mainland.

Wisely, China%u2019s leaders did not compel every citizen to switch to the rules of the market. They started with special economic zones that Chinese workers and foreign firms were free to enter. Encouraged by the dramatic success of these zones (showcased by Deng%u2019s famous southern tour in 1992), the Chinese government accelerated the pace of urbanization and economic reform. As a result, the quality of life has dramatically improved for an unprecedented number of people. Hong Kong was the nearby model that demonstrated the power of the market and the potential of special zones. By establishing it, Britain may inadvertently have done more to reduce world poverty than all the intentional aid programs of the past century.

The Breakthrough Idea.

Today many countries are stuck with rules that slow down inflows of technology, prevent successful urbanization, and stifle personal ambition. They need new rules that will let their citizens take full advantage of mutually beneficial exchange with millions of fellow citizens and with people and firms from around the world. Those rules could be introduced by chartering new cities like Hong Kong.

Creating this kind of city is not unlike launching an autonomous corporate division. It starts with a piece of uninhabited land and a charter listing the rules that will prevail in the city to come. With full knowledge of that charter, people choose whether to live and work there, to invest in its infrastructure, and to build and manage its apartments, factories, call centers, and shops.

A number of countries could benefit from chartering such cities. What if Ra�l Castro wanted to follow this path and do for Cuba what Deng Xiaoping did for China? Even if he established attractive rules, no one could be sure that his successors would abide by them. The political risk would be too large for Cuba to attract meaningful levels of immigration and investment.

To make his commitment to new rules credible, Castro could enter into a joint venture with another nation. Canada could be party to a new treaty in which the United States handed over its rights to Guant�namo Bay. It could take over local administration for a defined period of time and establish a charter city there. The Canadian government would reduce political risk and attract foreign investors and citizens, just as the British government did in Hong Kong.

People would come because they knew that even if Cuba suffered from periods of political instability, the new city could use its port to trade with the rest of the world%u2014just as Hong Kong did when China was going through the Cultural Revolution. Cubans who were eager to adopt the market model could move to the new city, while their more cautious fellow citizens could wait to see how things played out. The flow of goods and people between the charter city and the rest of Cuba would increase, and wages would begin to catch up with those in developed nations. The charter negotiated with Canada could structure the venture as an enormous build-operate-transfer project. As the final step in the nation%u2019s political and economic transformation, people on both sides could eventually vote to integrate the city into the Cuban political system.

The Promise.

Many nations need to change their rules. North Korea%u2019s, for example, are too strong and harmful; Somalia%u2019s are too weak, lacking even a basic legal system that provides personal security. Many countries at intermediate levels of development still need rules to prevent cronyism, preserve competition, limit congestion and pollution, support modern utilities and infrastructure, and provide real educational opportunity for all.

Groups of people always find it hard to change the rules, even when other rules would clearly be better. Charter cities%u2014dozens of them, perhaps even hundreds%u2014could be the skunkworks that bring systemic change to entire nations. Ultimately, they could give the billions of people who will soon move to cities the chance to experiment with, and opt into, rules that let them achieve their full potential.

Paul Romer is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the president of Charter Cities, a nonprofit research organization.

10: Independent Diplomacy

by Carne Ross

Why pretend that only nation-states shape international affairs?

The Problem.

As globalization puts all of us at the whim of forces without borders, the power of states is in decline, and that of other actors is rising. The UN Security Council was constituted in 1945 to deal with conflict between states. Today more than three-quarters of its agenda involves so-called nonstate actors%u2014guerrilla groups, separatists, the remnants of decaying states, and the kernels of new ones.

Yet established nation-states, for the most part, still have a virtual monopoly on the practice of international diplomacy. That hardly seems sensible in a world that%u2019s growing more complex and is increasingly shaped by a diverse cast of players, be they new or emerging states, global corporations, criminal networks, or armed groups. The diplomatic system evolves slowly. Those cut out of the current system%u2014small states, nonstate entities%u2014need help getting their legitimate needs addressed. But we all face the challenge of how to engage.

The Breakthrough Idea.

To many, %u201Cindependent diplomacy%u201D will sound oxymoronic. It is, if you believe that diplomats by definition represent states and thus are anything but independent. When I was a traditional diplomat for Britain, that was my belief. Now I see it differently.

My views shifted because I saw up close the limits of the traditional model. In 2004 I gave evidence to an inquiry examining the intelligence on Iraq%u2019s reported development of weapons of mass destruction. As the UK%u2019s Iraq %u201Cexpert%u201D at the UN Security Council, I had detailed knowledge of that intelligence. I testified that the British government had manipulated the case for war and had ignored available alternatives. I had no choice but to resign, but no plan for what to do next.

It was Kosovo, where I was working at the time, that gave me inspiration. Kosovo%u2019s future was then the subject of intense and secretive diplomatic negotiations. But, perversely, its democratic government was prohibited from having diplomats, and the country had no representation in those discussions. This exclusion was not only unfair; it invited instability. Diplomacy was a trade I knew, so I created a nonprofit organization to give advice on diplomacy. Kosovo became Independent Diplomat%u2019s first client.

The Promise.

The organization Independent Diplomat was born out of a particular crisis, but the idea of independent diplomacy responds more generally to the seismic global changes that are rendering the traditional model obsolete. Particularly when smaller players are at risk of being marginalized in international negotiations, an independent diplomat can help them ensure that their interests are represented. My group is working now, for example, with small island states on the highly complex climate change talks. We%u2019re also helping the Burmese opposition advance a transition to democracy, and advising representatives of the dispossessed inhabitants of Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara.

When I share the idea behind Independent Diplomat, I never claim that it is a perfect solution for our elaborate international system; it is only a necessary part. Power is shifting, and marginalized players need help. Excluding them increases the risk of conflict. Most important to me is helping (and urging) others to move beyond a naive reliance on governments to control the forces and events that affect our lives. My experience has taught me this: Outcomes are determined by those who join in, who act. When all is connected and every action has international consequences, everyone can be an independent diplomat. Indeed, everyone may need to be one.

Carne Ross is the founder and executive director of Independent Diplomat, a nonprofit advisory group based in New York.

Copyright � 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

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TED Talks provide viewers with insightful and thought-provoking commentary and ideas. The contents of many TED Talks can be directly or indirectly applied to your classroom practices. While you're on holiday break, you may want to watch one or all of these TED Talks. If you're interested in learning more about using TED Talks in your classroom, check out Teaching With TED.

TED Talks directly about education.
1. John Wooden on Winning vs. Success.
What strikes me most about Coach Wooden's talk is his emphasis on teaching and developing character over winning. One of his three most important rules, "no criticizing of teammates, I'm paid to do that," is a great rule that translates well to the classroom and the workplace.

2. Clifford Stoll Teaches Physics to Eighth Graders.
Clifford Stoll has done many cool things in his life including catching a KGB spy, but the coolest thing he's done is teaching college level physics to 8th graders. What I like about Clifford Stoll is that instead of just talking about ways to teach and improve education he is actually getting on the front line and trying his ideas. (Stoll has definitely done enough things and made enough money to sit back and be a "consultant" but instead he's actually teaching, something I have tremendous respect for). In this talk he gave at TED in February 2006 Stoll talks about and demonstrates measuring the speed of sound with an 8th grade class. Stoll also makes a very profound, but somewhat obvious, statement about the future. He says, "if you want to know what the future generation will be like, ask a Kindergarten teacher."

3. Don't Eat the Marshmallow
In this TED Talk given by Joachim de Posada talks about the behavior of children when they are given a marshmallow and told not to eat it for fifteen minutes. In the talk Joachim de Posada reveals that the response of children to this challenge can be indicative of future success in life. In addition to being informative and thought-provoking, the talk includes some really cute video clips. The information shared in the talk confirms what most of us know about the impulse control of small children. None-the-less, it's nice to have a reminder that can inform our planning of day's lessons.

4. Bill Gates Talks About Mosquitoes, Malaria, and Education.
In this interesting TED Talk (they're all interesting) Bill Gates discusses mosquitoes, malaria, and education. The education part of his talk (the last eight minutes) presents some interesting fodder for conversation. While you may not agree with everything that Gates proposes in this talk, it will definitely make you think about what does and doesn't work in education.

5. David Merrill Introduces Siftables
Siftables are the high-tech version of the alphabet and number blocks we all played with as children. Siftables are little computer blocks or digital blocks that contain motion sensors, neighbor detection sensors, digital displays, and wireless communications. The blocks can be manipulated to create words, equations, pictures, and designs. Siftables are not yet commercially available nor do I have any idea what they would cost, but there is a ton of potential for Siftables as an educational resource. Siftables would be great for young students just learning to spell and do arthimetic. Siftables could also be great for older students to develop and try solutions to mathematics problems.

Update: Sir Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity.
I don't know how I forgot this one, but thanks to a comment left by Dolores Gende I was reminded that I should have included this talk. In fact, it probably should be first on the list.

TED Talks with implications for education
6. Tom Wujec - 3 Ways the Brain Creates Meaning.
In this short talk Tom Wujec explains how the brain interprets words, images, feelings, and connections. As an educator I always take interest in research and discussion about how the brain absorbs and processes information. Knowing how the brain processes information should influence how we present information to our audience(s).

7. Jimmy Wales - The Birth of Wikipedia.
Do a Google search for just about any academic term and more times than not Wikipedia is at the top of the results. So how did Wikipedia get started? How does it continue to run? Watch this talk by the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, to find out.

8. Julian Treasure - 4 Ways Sound Affects Us.
In this talk Julian Treasure tells us that people working in open plan offices are 66% less productive than those in quiet rooms. Treasure follows that up by saying if you are in a noisy open plan room, wear headphones and listen to soothing sounds and your productivity goes back up. The ideas and information in the video are good to remember the next time you have students working independently in a large classroom. Perhaps instead of trying to keep them as quiet as possible, we should allow kids to use their mp3 players when they're working on independent assignments.

9. How Cell Phones, Twitter, and Facebook Can Make History.
In this talk Clay Shirky examines how text messaging and social networks empower citizens to report the news without state-run media censorship. This TED Talk could be good for getting students to think about the positive things that they can accomplish using the technologies that they often think of as just fun tools.

10. Matthew White Gives the Euphonium a New Voice.
If you're a music teacher, this two minute performance might be something you'd like to share with your students to encourage them to develop their improvisation skills.

Update: Lead Like the Great Conductors.
Again, this is one that was brought to my attention by Dolores Gende. This talk has great lessons for school administrators.

Bonus: David Pogue on the Music Wars
In this video David Pogue performs a catchy medley about the changes in the way today's consumers access music and television. Pay particular attention to the middle section of song where David mentions how younger consumers watch two minute shows instead of traditional television shows. Watch and enjoy the video it will put you in a good mood for at least five minutes and you might learn something about shifts in media consumption too.

Update #2: More reader suggestions
Pranav Mistry - The Thrilling Potential of Sixth Sense Technology.
Benjamin Zander - On Music and Passion
Dan Pink - The Surprising Science of Motivation

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Douglas Rushkoff is a very smart thinker.

His latest book is called, Life Inc. - How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back, and he has ten other best-selling books on new media and pop culture (including: Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out and Coercion, winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book). He does tons of teaching, public speaking, produces and writes documentaries (The Merchants of Cool and The Persuaders), and has even written a series of graphic novels for Vertigo called, Testament (with another series on the way).

He spoke at the recent Web 2.0 Expo in New York City (November 2009) and his topic was titled: Radical Abundance: How We Get Past "Free" and Learn to Exchange Value Again.

This is a very deep and rich lecture (and well worth your 15 minutes to watch and think about):

By Mitch Joel

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