Smarter Traveler traffic prediction tool

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Peter Fransson
Establishing Shot: The 405

Image by Atwater Village Newbie via Flickr click for video

For me, commuting to and from work normally takes at least 2 hours per day, I guess I’m quite lucky compared to a lot of people living in larger cities.
Although I’m constantly trying to improve my personal commuting habits by using “Commute Greener” I would  like to plan my trips better in advance, for instance to be alerted to traffic problems before it’s too late to avoid them.

IBM Reserach has recently announced that they have developed a new predictive modeling tool that will let drivers quickly access personalized travel recommendations to help them avoid congestion, and save time and fuel.

The “Smarter Traveler tool” relies on predictive analytics software, GPS monitoring and sensors already on the roads to not only offer alerts, but build a model of each person’s usual commuter route. Once the system is trained a bit, commuters are able to check out what’s effectively a forecast of their entire route before they even leave the house.

The tool is currently being tested in the San Fransisco Bay area.

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China – a great experience

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Kerstin Hanson

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So finally, after a lot of planning and many phone conferences with Chinese colleagues, Tommy and I got to experience the real thing.

China! So far away, but not as different as I had expected. However there were of course some obvious differences such as the architecture and language. What I found most striking was the spirit that we experienced. China has still a long way to go, but the people want, can and will develop! And everything moves in Maglev speed!

Wangfujing Street, Beijing Author: Nggsc (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported)

So, maybe it is true, constraints and challenges really fuels innovation? At least that’s my experience after meeting and ideating with the people at Beijing Walker, Volvo Trucks Operation in Beijing and Volvo Construction Equipment in Shanghai. I’m really looking forward to continue this exciting journey with you!

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Prototyping & Creativity workshops in China & Japan

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Tommy Hansson

After two full weeks of travelling and working together with collegues in China and Japan I feel energized! The creativity workshops in Beijing, Shanghai and Ageo together with our collegues generated many, many ideas adopted to the local market needs. I remember that Kerstin and I tried to keep up with documenting all ideas about new services and applications for the aftermarket & Softproducts teams - sessions like this really gives me energy!

On going creativity Workshop

Service by Voice prototype testing in action

Many discussions we had during the trip was about reversed innovation and also how we could utilize the exponential growth on the consumer market to find solutions, consumerization, suitable for the local markets in Asia.
During a lunch at a restaurant close to the office in Beijing I noticed that the waiter used a standard feature phone and tapped in all our order in an application on the phone – this is exatcly the solutions that we need to explore and reverse back to the western countries. Using consumer products and applications inside the business processes would most certain allow us to develop solutions to a lower cost and with accepted functionally. A similar mindset and resoning that we used when developing our prototypes, Service by Voice and Connected Mechanic, that we tested at the Beijing walker dealership – enabling the mechanics to access service instruction via a smartphone application.

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After market innovation – adding intelligence – reducing dead weight?

Posted on March 30, 2011 by JP Fendrich
Innovation

Image via Wikipedia

It is very exciting to work on the next BIG thing, next generation of products and services. I believe that it really is necessary to both continuously and in a disruptive way challenge the way we do things. Are we getting the most “bang for the buck” in alignment with both profit, people and planet?

When thinking of the areas in which innovation activities are found in an organization I guess most of it has a really cool name or reports to the executive leadership in some way. At the same time it is more urgent than ever to understand the whole product life cycle rather than just pushing the new, next etc. I am simply thinking about how to apply tools, ideas, perspectives, technologies and end user input to create innovative solutions for the existing products – all the things that were designed and developed with the best available knowledge, but maybe a while ago…

One just have to look around – in your home – on the tram – in your car etc to find that a lot of things and opportunities to make use of the (old) core product maybe re-vitalized with more intelligence. All to make sure that the life cycle of the product is being optimized – not only in its original form but continuously until its being totally recycled.

I know that this is not a new idea, there are certainly a lot of reconfiguration, upgrades etc available in the market but how is that process handled? With open minds or strong “hard point” boundaries – processes etc.

What do you think? Is it time to put after market innovation in the spotlight?

 

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The Chinese Language and the Internet

Posted on March 25, 2011 by JP Fendrich

I came across this diagram about the development of the Chinese language on the Internet. If it continues like this Chinese will be the dominating language within a few years. I hope we will have good translation software when that day comes. Chinese keyboards are very complicated and confusing for me!

This development of course reflects the general economic development in China. Where is all this heading? It reminds me of the American development during the 40′s, 50′s and the 60′s  Which Chinese products will conquer the world, in other words what will the Chinese version of Coca Cola and McDonald be?

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Are you working in an Enterprise 1.x or 2.0 ?

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Stephane Parisot

Web 2.0 is a set of tools that allows people to share knowledge on internet.
Most of people have heard about wikis (like wikipedia), or social networks (like facebook or linkedin), or blogs, ….

More and more companies share an interest for using these 2.0 tools. Why?
Well, for several reasons but I believe the most important ones are :

  • to improve knowledge management by sharing information and knowledge
  • our future employees are used to work with such tools

A lot of people think that they can take the benefit of these tools and transform their enterprise 1.0 into a enterprise 2.0 by just introducing tools 2.0. So simple….

However introducing a 2.0 tool is not enough to be an enterprise 2.0. You need, before to deploy it, to change the mindset and sometimes the culture.
2.0 means sharing and working in a network environment that is totally opposite to working in silos which do not communicate very well…

In the past, information meant power, but tomorrow, who will win the race ? Enterprises 1.0 or Enterprises 2.0 ?
Do you believe sharing and working in networks will help to be more efficient, agile and faster ?

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Virtual meeting rooms

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Peter Fransson

Everyday I’m in global virtual meetings, sometimes it works excellent and sometimes it’s a disaster.
Best experiences are when participants in different locations are in rooms with “telepresence – video”, we use a Tandberg (Cisco) solution today and have a few rooms with excellent quailty.
Some of our smaller rooms are equipped with the Roundtable solution from Microsoft.

What will be the next step, considering that we all want to be able to connect to our meetings wherever we are, with any type of device -  will there be interoperability between different new & old solutions?
I guess that no-one has missed the launch of iPad 2 which comes with two cameras.

Another interesting solution is from Skype and Panasonic:

And i guess there is a lot of other solutions available and there will be more to come and I’m really looking forward to the day when global virtual meetings with audio & video is easy to join.

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One tonne life

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Marie Lagstrom

A while ago you could read about the success story of Commute Greener! here on Innovite. Commute Greener! is an elegant mobile application service that helps you to very easily reduce your carbon dioxide emissions. This application has realized that, as within many other developing areas, the actual technology is usually not the limitation, it’s rather the level of accessability! In order for people to live more environmentally friendly lives the solutions needs to be easy and motivating to use.

Here’s another very positive initiative that has come to the same conclusion – the One tonne life project!

The Swedish power supplying company Vattenfall, the house specialists A-hus and Volvo Cars has worked together in a project to create a climate-smart household. A selected family will try the “One tonne life” for six months and is soon moving in to the new house featuring solar cells on the roof that are used to recharge the electric car parked in the driveway. This means that they will try to meet the target of one tonne carbon dioxide emissions per person and year yet at the same time live a normal life. This is a major challenge bearing in mind that the global average today is about seven tonnes! However, should it succeed and get positive feedback from the test family, it will set an important example to others.

Good luck and welcome home!

Stay updated on the project’s own web site!

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Driverless vehicles

Posted on February 27, 2011 by JP Fendrich
Schematic of in-vehicle system Intelligent Cru...

Image via Wikipedia

The first Technology Outlook this year is about this subject. You can read it here. Following are some more comments about it.

My new car has a driver security system that have some annoying features. It warns me when I am too close to the vehicle in front of me. It warns me if I cross the lanes on the road without using the turn signals and so on. The really useful feature is this in combination with the adaptive cruise control system. I put in the max speed as usual in the cruise control and now the car drive by itself. If the car in front of me is slower my car slows down automatically in order to keep the distance.

This feature is one step forward to make the car to drive completely by itself. It still need GPS to navigate and cameras, radars and sensors to observe what is going on on the road. The car must read the road signs, see objects on the road and understand if they are moving. It must understand how to act in different weather conditions and so on.

Except for some experiments I think that we will see cars like this within 8-10 years.

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Openness is in the air…

Posted on February 24, 2011 by JP Fendrich
Looking south from Top of the Rock, New York City

Image via Wikipedia

Aren’t we sharing more about ourselves these days; about where we are, what we like, what we do? As individuals we seem to be willing to share more and more – some suggest that the “digital natives” may continue to be as open in their 30s as they are as teens now…

But this kind of openness doesn’t seem to be evenly spread between all aspects of life, when it comes to how countries, institutions etc are willing to share all the data that is being mined every day about the bigger picture – not where you and I are going – where the planet is moving…

There are some good signs though, for instance the World Bank Group has joined with governments in the US, UK, Australia, India and several others in some kind of movement that can be called “Open Data”  – that claim that liberating data can pave the way for others to create valuable products, tools, and mash-ups to understand trends, correlations, and development outcomes in new ways.

Another example of openness in government is happening in New York, initiated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. New York City includes nearly 70 agencies, employs more than 300,000, has a budget of $63 billion, and serves more than 8 million residents. It is now possible to access what is called “The City of New York DataMine” and retrieve a repository of government-produced, machine-readable data sets. In New York they have even launched a competition called NYC Big Apps 2.0, a $ 20,000 Software Challenge to help New York City to become more transparent, accessible, and accountable.

What is the future of this so called openness? If we allow ourselves to dream a little, will there be a direct democracy – with a virtual “Agora” as they had in Greece where the crowd, through a personal device, will vote on anything and let a clever and fair supercomputer do the balancing act – to create an optimal solution –for the people by the people – liberté, égalité, fraternité etc.

What do you think – the power of mobile internet, wisdom of the crowds and transparency has only begun – but where do you think we are heading?

http://www.nyc.gov/html/datamine/html/home/home.shtml

http://blogs.worldbank.org/dmblog/node/741

http://nycbigapps.com/

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