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Finland has a population of 5.2 million only, but was able to
produce the all-time best selling Nokia phones, among others.
In welcoming the 21st Century, an upstart
consulting California-based company, Seriosity, say they use the
power of computer games to transform information work. Some
changes they have implemented includes:
• Work teams are renamed “guilds” and
projects are called “quests.”
• Workers receive “badges of honor” for
excelling in certain tasks or solving difficult problems.
• Point systems for providing ideas or
exceptional work, and tables to rank the high scorers.
• Holding informal meetings in virtual worlds
for employees in different branches,
• Each employee is given a limited pool of
virtual money. All e-mails sent out must be assigned virtual
dollars, and more important ones could be assigned more.
Employees will think twice before exhausting their limited
“funds” with trivial e-mails.
The December issue of Readers Digest also listed
33 new and amazing inventions “that you should have thought up
from around the world.”
• No-stick salt that sprinkle free and easy in
place of the usual salt crystals that bind together when they get
even just a little moist. (India)
• Biodegradable plastic made of starch.
(Australia)
• Wireless electricity or a way to beam
electricity across the room and run electronic devices without
wires. (USA)
• High-tech toilets that checks the sugar
levels in your urine and sends the data to your PC, seals waste
inside diaper-like bags in a bin below the seat and one made of
stain-resistant glass, packs its own scrubbing bubbles, helping to
flush clean while also conserving water. (Japan)
• Houses that float so could be built on all
available land—lakefronts, riverbanks, areas below sea level. (The
Netherlands)
• CPRGlove, invented by two engineering
students, guides you to do a cardio pulmonary resuscitation (Canada)
• FogScreen that creates a 3-meter display out
of thin air and enables you to watch movies anywhere. (Finland)
• Zero-emissions vehicles that runs on
compressed air. (France)
• Motel in motion is built on a trailer,
converts into a 42-square-meter building big enough to sleep 44
people in eight bedrooms, 3 suites on 2 stories, with an upper deck,
bathrooms, big-screen TVs and other amenities. (Spain)
• Smog scrubber is a new cement coating that
takes smog out of the air. The pollution eater, which can be
painted on buildings, bridges, and streets, also keeps surfaces
white and bright. (Italy)
• Feed the Cow bins inspire many in Argentina
to dispose of plastic bottles, paper and glass more responsibly.
• And, of course, there are the
energy-efficient light-emitting diodes (LED) that consume 30
percent to 90 percent less power than conventional lighting and can
last 20 to 30 years without being replaced or even wiped clean.
My point here is that what have we, a population
of 85 million in a natural resource-rich country contributed to the
betterment of this world and enhancing our entrepreneurship?
Most of the products we find everywhere here are
imported from China, USA and all parts of the world. We are
reduced to becoming traders and buy-and-sell experts. We even
sell our resources in its raw form at basement prices and buy back
the finished products at enormously high prices. Yet we pride
ourselves in saying that we have one of the most creative minds in
the world.
Next week, I shall have an interview with our
local inventors group and I will continue to roam around Metro
Manila and elsewhere to check what’s happening with our SMEs.
Even my Internet service provider is doing a
fantastically unsatisfactory job. They are quick to cut your
service when you do not pay in advance. I am looking for a new
provider who is more entrepreneurial than plain money-making.
innovationcamp@yahoo.com;
www.learningandinnovation.com.
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