The School of Lifelogging

Could lifelogging address the educational "achievement gap" while preparing children from all backgrounds to work with data? Securing personal data from unwelcome eyes will likely remain a challenge. Lifelogging is not just about quantitative analysis. Highly engaging, qualitative storytelling can also emerge from data gathered by learners. Stories of self-determination would involve the learner's own understanding of personal ambitions and dreams.

Lifelogging is part of a growing movement known as "the quantified self". Wearable sensors and cameras capture data about an individual's everyday experience to improve self-understanding. Ordinarily focused on health and wellbeing, lifelogging could disrupt education as we know it. Smartphones were only the beginning. Performance data from wearable devices could personalise learning in ever more intimate ways.

Manufacturing intelligent services

We highlight a trend toward value-added services as a means for medium-sized manufacturers to drive innovation.

When you're a manufacturer on a slim budget, it's not easy to muster up the courage to innovate. When product demand begins to decline, however, innovation becomes a necessity. In an effort to survive organisations are seeking ways to commercialise successful innovations quickly. In some cases, the challenge has led medium-sized manufacturers to pursue a strategy called 'servitisation'. It is no quick journey to success, but research insight lends credence to the idea.

To 'servitise' means to combine value-added services with products that deliver additional capabilities to customers on an ongoing, 'pay as you go' basis. If, like other manufacturing companies, you're eager to pump all your innovative forces into generating income and saving money, then you might want to take note of the term, 'servitisation'. Even if you're not interested in the jargon, it's worth considering its essence: the shift from a focus on product to service.

Buy locally, my dear Watson

Investigating the potential of an artificial intelligence that could assist midsized organisations in making smarter purchases locally.

In the pursuit to save money, some of those responsible for procurement and purchasing have hopped on the bandwagon of offshoring and taken advantage of the globalisation of suppliers, neglecting their local economies. Consumers have been making similar choices, turning away from local purchasing toward buying online. What some may deem progress, others experience as draining the life out of their local High Street.

To achieve a mix of local and global, a clearer understanding of product/service's supply chain must be available, both for consumers, and those involved in business. Imagine the day when Watson, the cognitive computer that defeated humans at the quiz show 'Jeopardy' in 2011, develops a heart. Who knows, with IBM's recently announced business unit, The Watson Group, along with its $1 billion initial investment, anything may be possible in the years ahead.

The winds of disruptive innovation

Disruptive Innovation involves simplification. Clay Christensen, who coined the term, didn't quite put it that way, but explained how his theory represents the transformation of a complex and expensive product used by experts into something more accessible for a larger population.

In this way, it is also a strategic move. By targeting the bottom of a market with simplicity, the innovation disrupts the legacies of overly-complicated and costly competitors. You may enjoy hearing his examples in the following video.