What's Emerging October 2020
A newsletter on interesting stuff that is emerging around the world so you can think about strategy
Introduction
Welcome to our end of October newsletter.
In the next few weeks, Paul will be working on a platform strategy in the cleaning industry. He is also working on a community vision project for a Melbourne Council, and creating a consortium in the Not for Profit sector to assist in the “Build it Back Better” movement. He is also participating in a working group with the Leading Edge Forum in the UK looking at the industrialisation of robots. He will also be presenting to graduating vets via the AVA on what working as a vet might look like in 10 years time.
If any of this interests you or you want to talk about the use of foresight in your strategy then please Contact Us
The Emergent Futures Team
In case you missed it. The most popular link from the last edition:
A 12-storey pig farm: has China found the way to tackle animal disease?
The buildings do not even look like farms. They are huge grey concrete blocks, many storeys high, which stand side by side in the middle of what might look like a quarry, a “hole” of red earth dug in the heart of a mountain.
What are we Writing About?
Could organisations that create radical emergent strategy from the edges of their structures dominate the future? Paul has written on this following his training experience on the Haier organisational structure last week. You can go to our HOME PAGE to see the post under our latest work. Or Contact Us if you want a discussion about the model and how you might adapt it to your organisation.
What’s Emerging?
Burma Superstar’s new Oakland restaurant has a surprise investor: DoorDash
“Burma Bites is an example of working alongside a restaurant to find new ways for our partnerships to adapt to the new normal,” …… “We set out to take the authenticity and uniqueness of the Burma Superstar dine-in experience, and the success they’ve seen with delivery from their other locations, and build a more permanent delivery model for their business.” A sign of things to come for the food industry?.…. Read More
Balto raises $10 million to analyze call center conversations with AI
Balto’s AI listens to both sides of a conversation and visually prompts agents what to say next. A smart checklist feature reminds agents of the prescribed conversational flow, with Balto automatically checking each point off a list. Balto also offers voice-trigged dynamic prompts, including rebuttals, compliance statements, and product knowledge. Notifications give agents feedback on keywords, soft skills, and other habits, while reminders can be delivered via digital sticky notes, along with team leaderboard rankings...…. Read more
Lab-grown meat can be genetically enhanced with plant nutrients
Researchers from Tufts University have genetically engineered bovine cells to produce lab-grown beef containing beta-carotene, a plant nutrient that is converted into vitamin A in the human body. The researchers suggest lab-grown meats in the future could be nutritionally engineered to convey a broad assortment of health benefits ..…. Read more
Open-Source Leg: The quest to create a bionic limb that anyone can build
“The overarching purpose of this project is to unite a fragmented field[R]esearch in prosthetic hardware design, prosthetic control, and amputee biomechanics is currently done in silos. Each researcher develops their own robotic leg system on which to test their control strategies or biomechanical hypotheses. This may be successful in the short term since each researcher produces publications and furthers knowledge. However, in the long term, this fragmented research approach hinders results from impacting the lives of individuals with disabilities — culminating in an overarching failure of the field to truly have the impact that motivated it.” ….. Read more
China Conducts Test Of Massive Suicide Drone Swarm Launched From A Box On A Truck
China recently conducted a test involving a swarm of loitering munitions, also often referred to as suicide drones, deployed from a box-like array of tubular launchers on a light tactical vehicle and from helicopters. This underscores how the drone swarm threat, broadly, is becoming ever-more real and will present increasingly serious challenges for military forces around the world in future conflicts. (Paul - this has been on the focus areas of the research group I am part of, but with wider applications)...…. Read more
H&M's 'looop' recycling system transforms unwanted garments into new fashion favorites
H&M has developed a machine that dissembles and assembles old clothes into new ones with ‘looop’ — the world’s first in-store recycling system. ‘looop’ opened to the public in an H&M store in stockholm on october 12, 2020, with customers able to watch the container-sized machine recycle their old textiles into something new …. Read more
Activists Turn Facial Recognition Tools Against the Police
Mr. Howell, 42, is a lifelong protester and self-taught coder; in graduate school, he started working with neural net technology, an artificial intelligence that learns to make decisions from data it is fed, such as images. He said that the police had tear-gassed him during a midday protest in June, and that he had begun researching how to build a facial recognition product that could defeat officers’ attempts to shield their identity. …..…. Read more
Relectrify and Dynamic Manufacturing US deploy second-life EV batteries in industrial storage
Leading US remanufacturer Dynamic Manufacturing and battery technology company Relectrify have jointly taken into operation Relectrify’s latest energy storage solution: a next-generation commercial and industrial battery system. The storage system combines Relectrify’s BMS+Inverter technology with battery packs from several Nissan Leaf electric vehicles (EVs) to provide a 3-phase 380-480V output suitable for commercial and industrial use.…. Read more
Economic recovery will be 'unpredictable and uneven' RBA warns as it models 50pc property price fall
More Australians could go into "negative equity", where the value of their property falls below the outstanding balance on their mortgage, if the pandemic-led recession leads to a big fall in house prices, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). ...…. Read more
Coronavirus antibody prevalence falling in England, REACT study shows
Led by Imperial College London, analysis of finger-prick tests carried out at home between 20 June and 28 September found that the number of people testing positive dropped by 26.5% across the study period, from almost 6% to 4.4%. Antibodies are only part of he immune response but this is a worrying development. ….Read more
These mushroom balls turn your yard into a climate-change-fighting machine
Though they look a bit like bath bombs, NetZero mycelium orbs are actually meant for the ground. When you dissolve one in a watering can or hose sprayer and water your lawn, the orb inoculates your yard with fungi known to capture atmospheric carbon. One inoculation lasts 10 years and allows the average-size American yard, which is about a quarter acre, to absorb a ton of atmospheric CO2 every year. . …. Read more
Huge Drone Successfully Beamed Internet from 62,500 Feet High
Japanese company HAPSMobile carried out a successful test flight of its massive solar-powered drone, Sunglider, that beamed internet from the stratosphere. HAPSMobile used Google's parent company Alphabet's Loon mobile network technology, which was recently used to beam internet with 35 balloons over Kenya..…. Read more
Kiwi ‘fuel-free’ magnetic space engine could be in orbit in 2022
Zenno Astronautics, which is based in Auckland’s LevelTwo technology incubator, is developing a magnetic propulsion system powered by solar panels that could in theory keep satellites in space indefinitely. …..Read more
Newcastle Waters Station in Northern Territory earmarked for world's biggest solar farm
Sun Cable has told ABC Rural that it requires 12,000 hectares of the station to build a 10-gigawatt solar farm that would supply energy to Singapore via a 4,500-kilometre undersea cable. The $20 billion project has the backing of tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, as well as resources billionaire Andrew Forrest, and earlier this year it received major project status from the Federal Government. .… Read more
Business Tips
Flying with Kingsford-Smith and other adventures of 107-year-old Dorothy Harris
Obviously not a business tip but inspiring still the same.
Zoom Rolling Out End-to-End Encryption Offering
To use it, customers must enable E2EE meetings at the account level and opt-in to E2EE on a per-meeting basis. . .….. Read more
Slack wants to make life easier for remote teams with its 5 new Workflow Builder templates
Workflow Builder is a visual tool that allows any Slack user to automate routine processes. …. Read more
Try This Weird Trick to Improve Your Public Speaking
Here's the secret: Don't follow the script's periods and commas!
…. Read more
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