Lifeboat Foundation

No, it’s not forbidden to innovate, quite the opposite, but it’s always risky to do something different from what people are used to. Risk is the middle name of the bold, the builders of the future. Those who constantly face resistance from skeptics. Those who fail eight times and get up nine.

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Fernando Pessoa’s “First you find it strange. Then you can’t get enough of it.” contained intolerable toxicity levels for Salazar’s Estado Novo (Portugal). When the level of difference increases, censorship follows. You can’t censor censorship (or can you?) when, deep down, it’s a matter of fear of difference. Yes, it’s fear! Fear of accepting/facing the unknown. Fear of change.

Continue reading “Innovation is a risk!” »

Love it or hate it, Starlink might be the biggest space undertaking ever once completed. The combined mass of the Starlink satellite constellation exceeds any prior space endeavor. The SpaceX network provides global satellite Internet access will weigh in more than any other prior space program. The constellation consisting of thousands of mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit adds up quickly. Each Falcon 9 launch gets packed full of sixty Starlink satellites. The satellites neatly fit in both size and mass limitations of the Falcon 9.

In 2018, The Federal Communications Commission granted SpaceX approval to launch up to 4,425 low-Earth-orbit satellites at several different altitudes between 1,110km to 1,325km. The following year, the FCC approved a license modification to cut the orbital altitude in half for 1,584 of those satellites. The lower altitude for the Starlink satellites reduces the latency of the Starlink. Yeah initial Starlink will be nearly the mass of the ISS.

MANILA, Philippines — A dengue case forecasting system using space data made by Philippine developers won the 2019 National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s International Space Apps Challenge. Over 29,000 participating globally in 71 countries, this solution made it as one of the six winners in the best use of data, the solution that best makes space data accessible, or leverages it to a unique application.

Dengue fever is a viral, infectious tropical disease spread primarily by Aedes aegypti female mosquitoes. With 271,480 cases resulting in 1,107 deaths reported from January 1 to August 31, 2019 by the World Health Organization, Dominic Vincent D. Ligot, Mark Toledo, Frances Claire Tayco, and Jansen Dumaliang Lopez from CirroLytix developed a forecasting model of dengue cases using climate and digital data, and pinpointing possible hotspots from satellite data.

Correlating information from Sentinel-2 Copernicus and Landsat 8 satellites, climate data from the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PAGASA) and trends from Google search engines, potential dengue hotspots will be shown in a web interface.

Using satellite spectral bands like green, red, and near-infrared (NIR), indices like Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) are calculated in identifying areas with green vegetation while Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) identifies areas with water. Combining these indices reveal potential areas of stagnant water capable of being breeding grounds for mosquitoes, extracted as coordinates through a free and open-source cross-platform desktop geographic information system QGIS.

Check out the website here: http://aedesproject.org/

Life in the digital age is raising fundamental questions about the future of business and employment and hence the strategies, skills, and abilities we need to develop to survive in the next economy. This article explores two key changes that we need to start developing a core of capabilities for – namely the quest for exponential growth and the growing use of corporate venturing.

Why are these becoming important? Well, technology and the thinking it enables are driving new ideas and experiments on commercial strategies, the shape and structure of organisations, business models, and the relationship with extended ecosystems of partners. Both strategies are seen as options to drive growth and accelerate the realisation of market opportunities.

Exponential thinking is seen as a fast track approach to driving business innovation and growth. We are used to the idea of exponential growth in many fields of science and technology. For example, Moore’s Law in information technology tells us that the amount of computer power we can buy for £1,000 doubles every 18–24 months. This has inspired digital innovators to try and grow their business at the same pace or faster than the underlying technologies. The broader business world is taking notice. The stellar rates of development and growth we are witnessing for some exponential businesses in the digital domain are encouraging many organisations across literally every sector from banking to aviation to try and apply similar thinking to some or all of their activities.

Hence, it is now common to see businesses pursue a vision of doubling of revenues within three to four years and a achieving a 2-20X or more improvement in other aspects of the business. For purely digital entities, their business models are predicated on using network effects to drive exponential growth or better in user numbers and revenues. Some suggest that to embrace the exponential model, businesses must reject defined end goals and step-by-step plans in favour of such ambitious visions and develop a high tolerance of uncertainty. Typically, the exponential growth initiatives are driven through a combination of iterative task specific ‘sprints’ to define, test, refine, and deliver business changes that could result in massive performance improvements in specific areas of the business.

Continue reading “Strategies for the Digital Age, Part 1” »