At the Marcus Evans Innovate 2014 Conference in Shanghai today, I met Rosalie Wu, the head of marketing in China for the rapidly growing startup, Uber. Rosalie was Uber’s first hire in China and exemplifies the energetic, entrepreneurial spirit that is driving Uber to global success. She spoke about the development of Uber’s innovative business …
In a previous post here, I reported a huge loan to a Chinese paper company backed by its mostly Chinese IP as collateral. The 8 billion RMB obtained by China’s Tralin Paper (Quanlin Paper in Chinese, though they use www.tralin.com for their website), one of the biggest IP-backed loans in the world, not only shows …
In response to recent court cases, the USPTO has dramatically revised its approach to dealing with a wide variety of patents. Its new guidelines to patent examiners on subject matter eligibility for inventions involving natural products seem to go way beyond the legal decisions on which they are allegedly based, adding extremely high barriers to patentability. …
Excluding Natural Products from Patent Protection? Read More »
As we’ve discussed previously on this blog, the West often gets things completely backwards when it comes to China, and the misunderstandings can be serious barriers to Asian innovators seeking global markets. The “Tragedy of Chopsticks” helps illustrate this. A few years ago while in the US, I became concerned about chopsticks in China. The …
The Tragedy of Chopsticks: Getting Things Straight in China Read More »
While flying to Denver recently, I met Nick Davis, Regional Executive Chef for Whole Foods out of Colorado. He handles Whole Foods cuisine for a large portion of the West. Nick has been a champion for innovative offerings based on street foods, and has been approving new products and developing recipes based on the successes …
In the Fast Lane of Culinary Innovation at Whole Foods: Street Foods Read More »
Did you know that carpets can be recycled? The typical carpet has nylon fibers and a polypropylene backing. Thanks to Dr. Chris Roberts in the Chemical Engineering Department at Auburn University, there is now a clear, simple, practical way to extract pure nylon powder from used carpet. The remaining polypropylene can be used as well. …
Recycling Carpet: A University Invention Becomes a Green Business Read More »
The federal government has set bold and challenging goals for future increases in the production of energy from non-fossil fuel sources. Seeking to curb our dependence on foreign oil as well as fossil fuels in general, our nation is encouraging the development of fuels from biological sources. Biofuels, diesel and gasoline made from renewable sources …
The Future of Biofuels: Environmental Innovation Fatigue for Environmental Advances? Read More »
During the CoDev 2011 conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, I was impressed with a speech given by a local CEO, John (“Jay”) Rogers of Local Motors in Chandler, Arizona. This small company designs exciting new vehicles using design contests that are open to the public. Their rapidly growing community (12,000 participants so far) contributes designs and …
Local Motors: Successful Crowdsourcing as a Design Tool for Innovation Read More »
I’m back from the week-long Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in Salt Lake City, Utah, where over 4,200 engineers from around the country and many other nations were gathered. Hundreds of technical papers were presented from researchers and leaders pursuing advanced in energy, biotech, materials, nanotechnology, chemicals, and related fields. …
The world of automobiles today is radically different than it was a twenty years ago, based on several metrics. In the area of fuel efficiency, it was once an automotive maxim that if you wanted good fuel efficiency, manual transmission was clearly the best way to go. Automatic transmission was more convenient but far more …