Forum for Innovation

The Forum for Innovation reads the Internet so that you don’t have to, sharing a short list of curated blog posts for your Friday reading. 

Reena Jana takes an insider look at Facebook’s “internal innovation culture,” and teases out 3 ways the company is working to change the game in social media:

1. Encourage everyone — even those in the C-suite — to learn by making
2. A winning mobile strategy: ask what's essential and contextual
3. Physically mix up your work environment on a regular basis 

Some of the greatest inventions today involve the human body, and especially around devices that lead to the “quantified self,” or ways to upgrade human health using the power of Big Data. Forbes contributor Adam Ozimek asks a very pertinent question then: “Will body monitoring implants be the future of healthcare?” 

Darrell West of the Brookings Institution argues that the need for invention in the mobile economy has never been greater. He went on to say, as GE’s Ideas Lab highlights, that “this involves making needed research and development investment, commercializing knowledge, promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, reforming our immigration system, and maintaining a sound patent system.” 

Tyler Cowen asks, Are we living in the modern-day equivalent of the early 19^th century? In other words, if we were to compare today’s Information Revolution with the Industrial Revolution, where on the development scale are we and what does that timeline portend for our future? The answer:

“Eventually all of the creative ferment of the industrial revolution pays off in a big “whoosh,” but it takes many decades, depending on where you draw the starting line of course.  A look at the early 19th century is sobering, or should be, for anyone doing fiscal budgeting today.  But it is also optimistic in terms of the larger picture facing humanity over the longer run.”

Video: The Economist looks at revolutions at home, starting with the thermostat.  Yes, that little device on the wall that we all ignore. This is what happens when one person asked why thermostats aren’t, well, smart and beautiful.