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Venture Capital, DisruptedFor a new generation of technology company founders, money is the easy part.
Silicon Valley's venture capitalists make their money by funding ideas that disrupt established industries. But these gatekeepers of the technology business are now being challenged themselves.
technologyreview.com | 08-Feb-2012 06:00
Letting Hackers Compete, Facebook Eyes New Talent
The social network puts engineers, not HR, in charge of a global search for young programmers.
technologyreview.com | 06-Feb-2012 06:00
Too Young to Fail
17-year-old Laura Deming doesn't drive and can't vote. Is now her chance to change the world?
technologyreview.com | 03-Feb-2012 06:00
Innovation without Age Limits
Young stars dominate the technology headlines. But outside the Internet, research shows, innovators are actually getting older as complexity rises.
Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley prefer to fund the young, the next Mark Zuckerberg. Why? The common mantra is that if you are over 35, you are too old to innovate. In fact, there is an evolving profile of the "perfect" entrepreneur—smart enough to get into Harvard or Stanford and savvy enough to drop out. Some prominent figures are even urging talented young people to skip college, presumably so they do not waste their "youngness" on studying.
technologyreview.com | 01-Feb-2012 06:00
Beyond the Personal Automobile
Information technology means we can rethink transportation
technologyreview.com | 31-Jan-2012 06:00
Hacking Cars to Keep Them Safe
Researchers are challenging the auto industry to rethink security.
technologyreview.com | 30-Jan-2012 06:00
The Online Map Wars
Inspired by Wikipedia, Waze lets app users draw its maps.
Getting a map and directions in your car used to require a several-hundred-dollar investment in a GPS device. The popularity of this equipment led to fast growth for companies like TomTom and Garmin, the dominant makers of "personal navigation devices," as well as profits for companies that supplied digital street maps, like Navteq and Tele Atlas.
technologyreview.com | 27-Jan-2012 06:00
Better Place Launches Electric Fleet in Israel
A network of fast battery-switching stations offers an unusual business model for electric cars.
technologyreview.com | 26-Jan-2012 06:00
Sensor Networks Could End Parking Rage
Cities hope systems that guide drivers to parking spots will reduce congestion and help downtown businesses.
In many urban areas, a third of the cars on the road have already reached their destination and are just circling the block waiting for a parking space. This leads to a cascade of problems, including pollution, traffic congestion, and accidents. Now massive arrays of networked sensors installed in city streets could significantly improve the situation by helping drivers find parking spots quickly.
technologyreview.com | 25-Jan-2012 06:00
U.S. Tests Whether Consumers Like Car-to-Car Communications
In a driving clinic, 120 volunteers avoid fender-benders with the help of alarms, flashing lights, and cars that talk to one another.
Traffic is moving fast and freely. You glance down at your phone—just for a second—and then a warning tone alerts you to slam on the brakes. When you look up, you see the rear of the car you nearly plowed into.
technologyreview.com | 24-Jan-2012 06:00
The Car Safety Czar
As automakers put more communication technology into cars, regulators must decide if it's safe.
As administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, David Strickland drafts the regulations that make cars safe to drive.
technologyreview.com | 23-Jan-2012 06:00
Europe's Driverless Car (Driver Still Required)
European automakers pursue an evolutionary answer to Google's experimental self-driving car.
technologyreview.com | 20-Jan-2012 06:00
Automobile Design for the Connected Age
BMW's chief designer predicts that tomorrow's cars will be controlled by voice commands, gestures, and touch screens.
technologyreview.com | 18-Jan-2012 06:00
At Gadget Show, Mercedes Announces Plans to Pursue Generation Y
The maker of luxury vehicles is developing a less expensive line aimed at people more interested in phones than cars.
Getting your first car used to be a big deal. It offered danger, excitement, and most of all freedom. Today all that comes over the Web—and, thanks to smart phones, into the palm of your hand. Who needs a car?
technologyreview.com | 17-Jan-2012 06:00
Collaborative Consumption Reaches the Garage
Peer-to-peer services that let strangers borrow your car could redefine auto ownership.
technologyreview.com | 12-Jan-2012 06:00
Join the Mobility Revolution with These Five Apps
Smart phones are creating radical new ideas for getting around. Technology Review picks six of the most promising.
technologyreview.com | 11-Jan-2012 06:00
Ford Bets on the Digital Car
The 108-year-old automotive company is embracing the technologies, business tactics, and spirit of Silicon Valley.
About a decade ago, Doug VanDagens, a senior executive at Ford Motor Company, raised his hand at a board meeting and asked a fundamental strategy question: Why go proprietary when the world is moving to open-source?
technologyreview.com | 09-Jan-2012 06:00
Revenge of the Electric Car
The Nissan Leaf is the first all-electric car to try to connect to a mass market. Now Nissan is betting on a U.S. factory that can turn out 150,000 cars a year.
When General Motors cancelled its EV1 electric car in 2003, some called it a technology tragedy. The cars, which could travel around 60 miles on a single charge of their lead-acid batteries, were taken off the roads and crushed. Protesters staged a mock funeral; others accused GM of failing intentionally. While GM never revealed the actual cost of building an EV1 (the vehicles were only leased, not sold), the company had invested $1.5 billion in the project. But it declared the car an economic failure with no chance of reaching a mass market.
technologyreview.com | 05-Jan-2012 06:00
Your Connected Vehicle Is Arriving
As our cars become networked—to the Internet and to one another—new trends in technology and society will redefine transportation. What's certain: tomorrow's automobiles will provide experiences that go well beyond driving.
I am passionate about cars and always have been. As a child, I imagined owning a car that would do whatever I wanted it to. Of course, it could fly as well as drive. But more important, it would do much more than simply getting me from point A to point B. My future car would look out for me, entertain me, and make sure that I would never be late for a playdate with my friends.
technologyreview.com | 03-Jan-2012 06:00
What If Electric Cars Were Better?
Improving the energy density of batteries is the key to mass-market electric vehicles.
Electric vehicles are still too expensive and have too many limitations to compete with regular cars, except in a few niche markets. Will that ever change? The answer has everything to do with battery technology. Batteries carrying more charge for a lower price could extend the range of electric cars from today's 70 miles to hundreds of miles, effectively challenging the internal-combustion motor.
technologyreview.com | 29-Dec-2011 06:00
Inside Johnson & Johnson's Innovation Shop
J&J is seeding small, high-risk ventures through RedScript Ventures, a two-year-old accelerator program.
A huge health-care company like Johnson & Johnson requires a steady stream of innovation, but that's getting harder and harder to create. So the 125-year-old company is getting more aggressive at mining ideas from outside. It's seeking out very early ventures that it once would have considered far too risky and seeding them with money or dishing out advice on how to nudge untested ideas out of the laboratory.
technologyreview.com | 28-Dec-2011 06:00
Flying Windmills
A small company is taking an unusual tack to produce cheaper wind energy.
In a concrete control tower of a decommissioned naval air base just outside Oakland, California, a team of engineers is building what might best be called a hybrid of an unmanned aerial vehicle and a wind turbine.
technologyreview.com | 27-Dec-2011 06:00
Electricity from the Air
California company Makani Power is developing a flying wind turbine designed to generate cheap renewable power.
technologyreview.com | 26-Dec-2011 18:00
Help, We're Being Disrupted!
The fast pace of technological change has inspired a new literary form: the memo that warns an entire company it must alter its course.
technologyreview.com | 22-Dec-2011 06:00
The Comeback of Xerox PARC
Infamous for failing to commercialize the technologies it invented, Xerox's R&D subsidiary has a new strategy for innovation: make money.
technologyreview.com | 21-Dec-2011 06:00
When the Price is Free(mium)
How cloud startups are disrupting enterprise giants with a business model.
technologyreview.com | 20-Dec-2011 06:00
Red: The Camera That Changed Hollywood
How a sunglasses entrepreneur helped end the golden age of the 35-millimeter film camera.
In Hollywood history, 2011 will go down as the year during which the last three companies still making traditional 35-millimeter film cameras—the gently whirring behemoths that directors sit next to on movie sets—all said, in effect, that they were getting out of the business. Film cameras would remain in inventory, but Panavision, ARRI, and Aaton announced that from here on out, all their new models will be digital.
technologyreview.com | 19-Dec-2011 06:00
Nokia's Stephen Elop Speaks
The Finnish phone giant fell behind the smart-phone wave. Now it is seeking a comeback.
technologyreview.com | 16-Dec-2011 06:00
The Innovator's Investments
The eminent innovation guru Clayton Christensen puts his money where the disruption is.
Clayton Christensen is a giant in the world of technology innovation. The Harvard Business School professor (who stands 6 feet 8 inches tall) came up with the influential theory of disruptive technology and this year was crowned by Forbes magazine as the "the world's most influential business thinker."
technologyreview.com | 15-Dec-2011 06:00
5 Disruptive Technologies Happening Now
From e-books to 3-D printing, TR spotlights the technologies that are destroying markets and creating new ones.
technologyreview.com | 14-Dec-2011 06:00
Medicine Needs Frugal Innovation
A low-cost pocket ultrasound device can see into the human heart. So why do so few doctors use it?
technologyreview.com | 12-Dec-2011 06:00
You Press the Button. Kodak Used to Do the Rest.
Kodak saw the shift from analog to digital photography coming. Here's why it couldn't win.
When I photographed Eastman Kodak's shuttered and vandalized film processing center outside of Stockholm a few years ago, it became clear to me that I held the very cause of all this destruction in my own hands: a digital camera.
technologyreview.com | 09-Dec-2011 06:00
Does Apple's Siri Threaten Google's Search Monopoly?
The iPhone speech aid is boosting visits to search engines such as Yelp and Wolfram Alpha.
technologyreview.com | 08-Dec-2011 06:00
How Autodesk Disrupted Itself with an App
A maker of high-end design software accidentally discovers a consumer hit.
When Chris Cheung and Thomas Heermann, two middle managers at the software company Autodesk, first showed off their new iPhone drawing app, they got some skeptical looks. Why would anyone want to doodle on that tiny screen? And what could a $2.99 app matter to a company with around $2 billion in annual revenue?
technologyreview.com | 07-Dec-2011 06:00
The Trouble With India's People Car
Tata created the world's least expensive automobile. The only problem now is selling it.
Ratan Tata, head of the 143-year-old Indian conglomerate that bears his family name, is known as a passionate innovator so committed to risk-taking in his $83 billion empire that he gives an annual award for the "best failed idea." But that prize could go to Tata himself for one of his own dream projects: the Nano car.
technologyreview.com | 06-Dec-2011 06:00
A Company in Danger Seeks Disruption from Its Labs
The head of research at Hewlett-Packard talks about the technologies that could ensure HP's survival.
technologyreview.com | 05-Dec-2011 06:00
The Empire Strikes Back
How Xerox and other big corporations are harnessing the force of disruptive innovation.
technologyreview.com | 01-Dec-2011 06:00
Five Companies to Watch
Even though not all of these publicly traded (or soon to be publicly traded) companies make games, all are exploiting their popularity. Two of them, Zynga and Apple, are relatively new players in the games industry, but both have benefited immensely from the surging demand for casual games, which can be played in spare moments on a smart phone or a social-networking website. The other companies have track records in the mature, though still lucrative, market for complex, "hard-core" games typically played on consoles and personal computers. But now they are adjusting their strategies to take mobile and social gaming into account.
technologyreview.com | 30-Nov-2011 06:00
Mark Pincus on What Makes Zynga Hum: Short Attention Spans
A booming business in virtual goods adds up to huge profits for the online gaming company.
technologyreview.com | 29-Nov-2011 06:00
Real Money for Virtual Coin
Companies like Facebook and Zynga are making a mint from storefronts embedded into games.
"Virtual goods" are imaginary playthings that exist only inside computer games. But their rising popularity is creating billions of dollars in very weal wealth and might even establish a beachhead for a new payment system for physical goods.
technologyreview.com | 28-Nov-2011 06:00
Serious Games
Six titles to train employees, educate the public, or recruit new customers.
technologyreview.com | 23-Nov-2011 06:00
How Games Are Driving a Mobile Graphics Revolution
The needs of players are helping to push advances from chip makers like Qualcomm and Nvidia.
technologyreview.com | 22-Nov-2011 06:00
OnLive Targets Mobile Workers with Game Technology
A cloud-based system developed to meet the hair-trigger demands of gamers will power virtual desktops.
Hard-core gamers play fast-paced action games set in realistically depicted 3-D environments that require powerful graphics hardware. Traditionally, playing these games meant owning either a game console or a high-end personal computer. But a startup called OnLive created a system that allows even players with less sophisticated systems to enjoy the latest action games via a network connection. Now the company is planning to roll out the same technology to businesses so that remote workers can use demanding professional applications as if they were sitting at a powerful workstation in the office.
technologyreview.com | 21-Nov-2011 06:00
The Fruit Ninja: Shainiel Deo
The CEO of Halfbrick Studios on how mobile devices are transforming the game industry.
technologyreview.com | 18-Nov-2011 06:00
Playing with Project Management
A startup called RedCritter turns software development into a game.
Software development projects are notorious for blowing past deadlines and through budgets, however managers try to track progress and motivate workers to hit milestones. A startup called RedCritter is taking a new approach, with software that turns the task of measuring performance and sticking to a schedule into something more like a game. And managing software projects is just the beginning. The company's founder, veteran entrepreneur Mike Beaty, wants to apply these techniques to other business problems, like increasing sales leads and improving customer service.
technologyreview.com | 17-Nov-2011 06:00
Startups like Bunchball Turn Brands into Games
New websites motivate consumers to remain loyal to a brand and even advertise it to their friends.
technologyreview.com | 16-Nov-2011 06:00