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News
23/06/2016
The top 10 emerging technologies of 2016

A diverse range of breakthrough technologies, including batteries capable of providing power to whole villages, “socially aware” artificial intelligence and new generation solar panels, could soon be playing a role in tackling the world’s most pressing challenges, according to a list published today by the World Economic Forum.

The top 10 technologies to make this year’s list are:

1. Nanosensors and the Internet of Nanothings – With the Internet of Things expected to comprise 30 billion connected devices by 2020, one of the most exciting areas of focus today is now on nanosensors capable of circulating in the human body or being embedded in construction materials. Once connected, this Internet of Nanothings could have a huge impact on the future of medicine, architecture, agriculture and drug manufacture.

2. Next Generation Batteries – One of the greatest obstacles holding renewable energy back is matching supply with demand, but recent advances in energy storage using sodium, aluminium and zinc based batteries makes mini-grids feasible that can provide clean, reliable, round the clock energy sources to entire villages.

3. The Blockchain – Much already has been made of the distributed electronic ledger behind the online currency Bitcoin. With related venture investment exceeding $1 billion in 2015 alone, the economic and social impact of blockchain’s potential to fundamentally change the way markets and governments work is only now emerging.

4. 2D Materials – Graphene may be the best-known, single-atom layer material, but it is by no means the only one. Plummeting production costs mean that such 2D materials are emerging in a wide range of applications, from air and water filters to new generations of wearables and batteries.

5. Autonomous Vehicles – Self-driving cars may not yet be fully legal in most geographies, but their potential for saving lives, cutting pollution, boosting economies, and improving quality of life for the elderly and other segments of society has led to rapid deployment of key technology forerunners along the way to full autonomy.

6. Organs-on-chips – Miniature models of human organs – the size of a memory stick – could revolutionize medical research and drug discovery by allowing researchers to see biological mechanism behaviours in ways never before possible.

7. Perovskite Solar Cells – This new photovoltaic material offers three improvements over the classic silicon solar cell: it is easier to make, can be used virtually anywhere and, to date, keeps on generating power more efficiently.

8. Open AI Ecosystem – Shared advances in natural language processing and social awareness algorithms, coupled with an unprecedented availability of data, will soon allow smart digital assistants help with a vast range of tasks, from keeping track of one’s finances and health to advising on wardrobe choice.

9. Optogenetics – The use of light and colour to record the activity of neurons in the brain has been around for some time, but recent developments mean light can now be delivered deeper into brain tissue, something that could lead to better treatment for people with brain disorders.

10. Systems Metabolic Engineering – Advances in synthetic biology, systems biology and evolutionary engineering mean that the list of building block chemicals that can be manufactured better and more cheaply by using plants rather than fossil fuels is growing every year.

For more information, download the Top 10 Emerging Technologies 2016 Report by clicking on the link below:

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GAC16_Top10_Emerging_Technologies_2016_report.pdf

News
15/06/2016
What It Takes to Innovate Within Large Corporations

Companies that want to engage innovators, and enable these behaviors in others, should offer incentives to keep them engaged and set them up as role models for the rest of the organization. But who are the innovators within large corporations?

A recent case study lists their main characteristics:

They are equipped to address difficult dilemmas. More specifically, they employ a diverse combination of capabilities to solve problems that aren’t being addressed by organizations as part of their everyday operations. Innovators use soft skills, including the ability to imagine new solutions and enlist others in the process through passionate persuasion, and hard skills, becoming experts in the science underlying their ideas.

They don’t go it alone. Innovators reach across aisles to bring others on board. Innovators find partners, attracted financing, and cultivated a community of internal supporters. 

They proceed on the cheap. Given their limited resources, innovators are able to reuse existing resources, repurposing an underutilized resources as opposed to creating new ones. They might proceed on their own time and with a very limited budget. 

They are driven by passion. Propelled by their fascination with the idea itself and a deep desire to solve a particular problem, these individuals begin at the edges of organizations and persevere until they can create a path to the center. 

For more details, please, read the recent Harvard Business Review article:

https://hbr.org/2016/06/what-it-takes-to-innovate-within-a-corporate-bureaucracy?utm_campaign=HBR&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

 

 

News
28/04/2016
Dr. Zoltán Csedő Re-Elected as Member of the Board of Hungarian Association of British Alumni

Dr. Zoltán Csedő, Managing Partner of Innotica Group, has been re-elected to a further term of office as Member of the Board of Hungarian Association of British Alumni, at the Association's General Assembly, yesterday.

The Hungarian Association of British Alumni is a non-profit organization open to the former British graduates and all those experts who have been in contact with the UK in the field of education, science or arts.

The Association was founded in 1995, and is currently Central Europe’s largest British alumni organisation. Members come from a wide variety of professional background, from energy industry to banking, technology, marketing and law, public administration, design etc. with a membership of more than 250 people. Some of the members are former Chevening scholars.

The patron of the Hungarian Association of British Alumni is Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Hungary, Mr. Iain Lindsay.

Dr. Csedő serves as Member of the Board since 2008. He leads the international networking initiatives of the Association. Since more than three years, with his leadership, British alumni in Visegrad countries share their knowledge and leadership experience in order to increase the innovativeness and competitiveness of the Visegrad countries.

 

News
12/04/2016
New Business Models in an Increasingly Digital Ecosystem

Given the amount of turmoil digital disruption is causing, it’s time for companies to evaluate the threats and opportunities of the digitizing business world, and start creating new business options for the future — the more-connected future of digital ecosystems.

A recent MIT research found many of the companies were seeking to transform on two dimensions:

  • to know more about their end customers, and
  • to operate in an increasingly digital ecosystem where they become a destination to solve a customer’s life or business need with products and services from their company, from complementors and sometimes from competitors.

These two dimensions became the axes of a 2×2 framework with four business models:

  • supplier,
  • omnichannel,
  • ecosystem driver,
  • modular producer.

The Supplier Model

Suppliers have, at best, a partial knowledge of their end consumer, and typically operate in the value chain of another powerful company. As enterprises continue to digitize and search becomes easier, suppliers are likely to lose power and be pressured to continually reduce prices, perhaps resulting in further industry consolidation. 

The Omnichannel Model

Omnichannel businesses provide customers access to their products across multiple channels, including physical and digital channels, giving them greater choice and a seamless experience. The challenge is to gain more and more knowledge of the end consumer and his or her goals and to reduce the amount of customer churn. 

The Ecosystem Driver Model

Some companies establish an ecosystem by creating relationships with other providers that offer complementary (or sometimes competing) services. Ecosystem drivers provide a platform for the participants to conduct business; the platform can be more or less open. Like omnichannel businesses, ecosystem drivers use their brand strength to attract participants, ensure a great customer experience and offer one-stop shopping. They aspire to “own” the customer relationship in one domain like financial services by increasing their knowledge of their end consumers. They extract rents from participants in their ecosystem — both consumers and service providers — and rely on brand strength and feedback from consumer ratings and reviews to build their reputation and revenues. An ecosystem needs to be a destination for customers in a specific domain (for example, health care, retail, entertainment, financial services or small business).

The Modular Producer Model

Modular producers provide plug-and-play products or services that can adapt to a variety of ecosystems. To survive, modular producers must be among the best in their category. To thrive, they need to continue rolling out new products and services to demonstrate that they are among the best options available and also well priced. After all, they operate in a hypercompetitive environment in which it’s often very easy for customers to search for alternative solutions and switch. 

For more information, please, read the article in MIT Sloan Management Review:

http://mitsmr.com/1cYrMqL

 

Event
07/03/2016
Think.BDPST - Connect to the Future Conference

Meet us at think.BDPST, a strategic conference focusing on regional development and the perspectives of research, innovation and future technologies, organised on 8-10 March 2016, by the Antall József Knowledge Centre in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary and the International Visegrad Fund.

The main objective of the conference is to provide a regional platform for high-level representatives of the governmental, academic, and business sectors to initiate dialogue about the different approaches to innovation and new technologies, including the security, economic, and social dimensions. Think.BDPST also offers an opportunity for policymakers to discuss possibilities of fostering smart growth solutions, exchanging experiences and best practices, as well as drafting joint action plans.

With initiating such dialogues, the conference aims to foster cooperation, promote the implementation of joint activities, as well as facilitate the formation of strategic partnerships in the Central European region, with specific regard to the V4 countries. The conference could greatly contribute to the establishment of a common regional development framework.

As part of the eleven panels of the three-day think.BDPST conference, the following topics will be discussed in greater detail: perspectives and possibilities for an R+D friendly environment; the social dimensions of innovation, with special regard to the impact of innovation on education, the ways in which innovation transforms the structure of the labour market, a new dimension of content consumption; social entrepreneurship including the possibility of changing public services to new providers, the role of innovation in urban planning and new technologies in urban infrastructure; genetic engineering and its risks; as well as security challenges in the age of new technologies.

For the detailed agenda, please, have a look at the conference website:

http://think.bdpst.org

 

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