Cup Stacking Champ !-)

10 year old Steve Purugganan is is the new Cup Stacking World Champion...

Update ~ Waves of Economic Convergence

An update on my earlier Waves of Economic Convergence post: again using Gapminder, this time I added Australia to the mix and in order to see even more clearly wave after wave of accelerated growth and convergence between once poor Asian countries and the richest set of countries represented by the US. Here we see first Australia, then Japan, then South Korea and now China on fast growth per capita trajectories! And just to help you appreciate that even today's rich countries -- like the US -- also converged with earlier rich countries, here I again used Gapminder to add the UK data to the chart... Imagine, of course, if all these growth takeoffs had occured earlier. We would have much greater general prosperity much sooner. Could this have happened? With proper policies -- property rights, rule of law, peace & security, openness to trade, minimal distorting government influences/subsidies/distractions -- could we have have accelerated things in the past? And, more importantly, how can we accelerate convergence in the future?

Just by my eyeballing it, I think the rich-country growth rate is about one order of magnitude -- i.e. 10x -- every 5 generations, at 20 years per generation that's one century or 100 years. The average maximum catch-up takeoff rate, on the other hand, is more like one order of magnitude -- i.e. 10x -- every 2 generations or every 40 years. So, the most compelling thought experiment is obviously: What if all current developing economies grew at the rate of 10x over the coming four decades? Where would they be, would this be compelling, how rich would they be? And can we grow economies & accelerate convergence at this pace?

Robots for Surgery ~ Medical Innovation in O.R.

Good survey article in the New York Times this weekend entitled Prepping Robots for the O.R. discussing this growing $1 Billion segment of the medical devices sector. The author, Barnaby Feder, spotlights several companies including ones founded by Dr Frederic Moll, such as Intuitive Surgical and Hansen Medical. Of course, the startup end of the business spectrum is especially exciting with newcos like Restoration robotics in the mix. One company the article didn't mention is very early days, the MIT spinoff Robopsy...

MIT-Masdar Symposium

Today is the MIT-Masdar Symposium, an unveiling and celebration of MIST, the Masdar Institute of Science & Technology and joint-engagements between MIST & MIT. This morning Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company/Masdar, described the founding vision of the Initiative and Institute. Among his comments: "We're started small, just like MIT in 1860s." "We both learn by doing." He emphasized that "vision without action is absolutely meaningless." So with a "$15 Billion initial investment" to create MIST and pursue "every facet of clean technologies" through a "number of investment vehicles, including a $250 Million cleantech fund" they are "applying scale & capital." To sum up, Dr Al-Jaber quotes Frank Ghery saying... "In Abu Dhabi we can do things which are unthinkable anywhere else." (Which is a bit worrisome since MIT is suing Ghery for incompetence.)

Following Dr Al-Jaber, Falah Al Ahbabi, General Manager of the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council showcased Plan Abu Dhabi 2030, the urban plan and growth vision for Abu Dhabi generally, including the Masdar ecocity. Fascinating! Here's a rendering of the overall plan for Masdar...

Dolphin Prosthetic!

Winter, a bottlenose dolphin whose tail was chopped by a crab trap, now uses a specially-fitted fin, a prosthetic tail of plastic & silicone! More pix!

Health Wealth & Happiness Worldwide

Gapminder compares material progress to health... And Progress Daily spotlights that Material Progress Makes People Happier (although perhaps one might quibble with the causality assertion)...

Emerging Disease Hotspots

From the Earth Institute at Columbia, Growing Threat Seen In Human-Wildlife Conflict, Drug Resistance...

Waves of Economic Convergence ~ e.g. Japan, South Korea, and China with US

If we use Gapminder (and other means of Visualizing Economics) to look at a couple centuries of Income per Capita vs Time this allows us to see the remarkable phenomenon of economic convergence or catch-up waves as one economy after the other -- for example, first Japan, then South Korea, and now China -- takeoff and begin to grow disproportionately faster and converge, in per capita economic terms, with the wealthier countries (which are growing more slowly and steadily) represented by the United States... We need to understand these growth-takeoff success-stories well enough to spread prosperity policies everywhere in order to accelerate convergence world-wide, especially among the bottom 50-60 economies, Paul Collier's Bottom Billion.

Quick thought experiment: If all developing countries, starting today (or soon), began growing at the average "takeoff rate" of Japan/Korea/China, roughly when would be the timeframe of economic convergence with US and the rest of today's rich?

Doctor Noize Rockz On!

Fellow Los Altan Cory Cullinan rockz on as Doctor Noize! In his live shows, Doctor Noize...

gives a super high-octane interactive show encouraging kids to explore their creativity. Kids leave thinking everybuddy has some creative genius and that they can play an instrument, sing, dance, and even write and record their own songs. During the show The Doctor sings and plays a bunch of instruments and arranges and records a song live on the spot with crowd participation and wowza cool technology.

Absolutely lovely stuff from a kindred spirit. I've known Cory and his Mom and Dad since being friends with older brother Tracey in Junior High. It is a total joy to see Cory thriving!

Paul Collier on How to Tackle Africa's Challenges

I just found this 2006 Royal Economic Society lecture by Oxford's Paul Collier on the top problems Africa faces and what the most effective solutions might be (strictly speaking, Collier "argues that the key distinction is not Africa/non-Africa, but between around 60 fragile, low-income countries and the rest")... Collier, who is the director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford, subsequently published his book, The Bottom Billion, which he discusses in further lectures, for instance... The Bottom Billion has won several awards and was especially spotlighted by the FT's Economist Martin Wolf in a review entitled How the bottom billion are trapped. Collier covers four less well-appreciated traps:

• the Conflict Trap
• the Natural Resources Trap
• the Landlocked Country with Bad Neighbors Trap, and
• the Bad Governance in a Small Country Trap

Finally, Collier argues for three top recommendations for how to tackle these traps:

• Security Assistance through Military Intervention
• Improved Governance through Transparency Laws and Standards & Codes
• Economic Recovery through Trade Preferences

(Btw, not everyone's a fan of Collier's analysis, for instance, see William Easterly's review in The Lancet). Just this past week Collier also makes some excellent comments on Martin Wolf's recent FT article entitled Food crisis is a chance to reform global agriculture.

Within Trillion Dollar Sectors are Billion Dollar Opportunities...

I had the delightful good fortune just now of running into MIT Professor Larry Sass -- Director of the Digital Design Fabrication Group -- in his architecture fab lab. He and students are in the middle of the latest incarnation of their snap-to-fit full-scale building initiative. I first witnessed this effort in real-time as they built their first "plywood cabin" out of field-cut rapid-printed plywood parts right behind the MIT Museum on Mass Ave... This fast-fab effort alone is hugely compelling and will, no doubt, transform construction approaches in rich and developing countries alike.

As I walked Larry to his bus stop, we chatted about how his own broad body of work is a key element of the emergent revolution in the enormous arena of architecture + building technologies + construction + development + real estate finance. Economic and practical considerations are driving real innovations in energy efficiency, assembly methods, construction processes, materials uses, lifecycle accountability, total-system financing, and more! As he boarded the bus I told him why this is so fantastically exciting to me: in trillion dollar economic sectors there are multiple billion dollar opportunities awaiting those who are inventive and entrepreneurial enough to grasp them!

Planning Harvard ~ From 2020 to 2050 & Beyond

Given our interest at the Institute in thinking about what MIT 2020 might look like -- or rather, ought to be like -- it's good to see what our wealthy up-river "rival" has formally proposed to the powers-that-be in Boston. In the multi-decade master plan framework for Allston, Harvard University proposes a sustainable, interdisciplinary campus. The overview rendering of Harvard in 2050 has several compelling features, including tunneling the riverside roadways thus creating true pedestrian parks along the Charles. That's what we need in front of MIT -- to create Memorial Park by depressing Mem Drive underneath! Our own Little Big-Dig, only much cheaper and more effective!

David Danielson ~ Rising Energy Rockstar VC

Mass High Tech profiled Rising energy star Danielson [who] seeks 'Earth-changing ideas' in their VC Tech Turks column today! Not merely content with the average ho-hum billion-dollar idea...

David Danielson is looking for that trillion-dollar idea to fix the global energy crisis, and is confident that he will find one here in New England.

Good thing he went to The Innovation Institute where he was a "minor Muddy legend" according to Xconomy.com! Indeed...

Danielson's interest in the renewable energy market -- as well as the surrounding politics, technologies and policy issues -- grew exponentially while at MIT, where many other students were also engaged in the topic. He started a discussion group at MIT to share ideas about energy issues and the overall energy market. The group met in a small local pub every week and grew into what is now the 700-member MIT Energy Club, which encourages renewable energy initiatives.

I had the great fortune of working with Dave behind the scenes on several of these activities and it's excellent to see him thriving now in the investment arena!

My MIT Developmental Entrepreneurship Student Teams win in IDEAS Competition!

An excellent line-up of winners in the MIT IDEAS Competition this year! I'm especially proud of two student teams from my Developmental Entrepreneurship class last semester doing well: both Ghonsla and AssuredLabor (photo above) won $5,000 Prizes!

Time Warp ~ Discovery Show w/ Jeff Lieberman

Great new show Time Warp hosted by MIT's Jeff Lieberman where time is a variable due to the miracles of high-speed photomagic...

MIT IDEAS Competition ~ Finale TONIGHT Thurs 5/1!

MIT IDEAS Competition awards ceremony and reception is tonight, Thursday May 1, 7:30pm on the MIT Stata Center Student Street and 32-123. Featuring Keynote speaker Dr Bill Rodriguez, Program leader at the Partners AIDS Research Center focused on developing point-of-care devices for HIV, TB, and malaria and Former Senior HIV Advisor and Director of HIV operations for the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative, and more. Plus, of course, the winners of the various IDEAS Prizes & Awards!

ABB Pick-and-Place Uberbot!

Fantastic ABB industrial robot picking & placing croissants! More videos at HackedGadget!

Harmonix Rocks On!

Great to see MIT Entrepreneurship Competition alumnus company Harmonix featured in a Newsweek article entitled Rock-and-Roll Fantasy: Harmonix, creator of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, is changing videogames. The article profiles Media Lab collaborators Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos who created the business back in 1995 when yours truly was the Lead Organizer of the Competition! While it was tough going in the first few years -- lots of cool ideas and core technologies, but very difficult to hone in on profitable products -- they hit a series of homeruns with video games Guitar Hero and more recently Rock Band. MTV acquired them in 2006 and they continue to rock on!

Internet Domains Worldwide

Caliendo Impressionifies !-)

Priceless!