Consumer Products Blog
Cambridge ideas that could change the world!
By Duncan Smith - Last updated: Thursday, April 22, 2010
I went to Robinson College last night for the “Cambridge ideas that could change the world!” event, the Cambridge Corporate Gateway open meeting. This isn’t a full write-up, but some take-aways, at least from my product innovation point of view.
I’ve heard it said that these events can be somewhat inward looking. The word Cambridge does get mentioned quite a lot and there were plenty of local consultants there – a risk at any Cambridge event – many of whom seemed to be alumni from my place. However there were enough real people there to stop any in-fighting and the topics of the talks were genuinely of global interest and potential impact.
Professor Felicia Huppert explained her research into measuring well-being and the importance of, essentially, making people happier. She discussed the impact of this on measurable parameters such as productivity, and even hinted at the positive economic impact. I wonder whether, in five years time, consumer products that focus on improving mental well-being will be as important a market as those that currently improve their physical health? I’d have loved to ask whether her group have considered how technology can address this issue. My colleague Rachel has blogged about this but this is very early days – I think we will see a lot of product innovation in this area very soon.
Professor Gehan Amaratunga talked about his work on microgeneration, in particular on distributed inverters for solar panels. More futuristically he discussed nano-generation (my word not his) in future products like mobile phones where the energy is scavenged from various sources – motion, light and heat – and transferred to a supercap from which the battery can suck the charge. I was itching to do a back-of-an-envelope calculation to see if the additional cost of the parts wouldn’t be better spent on increasing integration or otherwise reducing the consumption of the hypothetical product. It’s a bit early for that I think.
Dr Cameron Frayling of base4innovation described his research into high speed detection for DNA sequencing. Not my personal area although some of my colleagues would have a technical view, I’m sure. He did paint a clear picture of the potential benefits of the technology, including worldwide diagnostic screening systems that could be software updated to detect a newly identified pathogen. Fascinating stuff.
All in all an enjoyable and highly diverse evening. By the way there was no punting…. just thought this post was a bit short of Cambridge references.
