The Hindu Business Line : Computers with emotions, bikes with penguin contours

The new biology is humanity's future, when innovations will be inspired by living things, says Robert Frenay in Pulse. Tony Davila et al discuss seven innovation rules in Making Innovation Work. And, Shivanand Kanavi documents, in Research by Design, the innovation process in TCS. Pulsating reads for the week.

A superior challenge is just around the corner. And it will prove the inadequacy of the machine age that has shaped the culture currently surrounding and shaping us, foresees Robert Frenay in Pulse, from Little, Brown (www.littlebrown.co.uk). "Our best innovations will no longer be like those that sparked the industrial revolution... they will increasingly be like living things."

Pulse is sign of life, a beat that all living systems answer to, writes Frenay. "A pulse is also a seedhead, carrier of the design for a new generation." Technology to come will take up the pulse, that beat, ``and with it the energy cascades, feedback cycles, and other dynamics that drive evolution''. Declares Frenay: "The new biology is humanity's future."

What is the new biology? Not biotech, genetic engineering or cloning, he clarifies. "Most biotech treats nature as if it worked like a machine. The new biology makes machines that work like living things." Insights that were once in the domain of ecologists, zoologists, and cell biologists are ``laying a new foundation for everything from materials science and medicine to farming, from robotics and artificial intelligence to community planning, from industrial design to the global economy''.

Frenay anticipates a sea change to happen in the current century: "Soon to come are computers with emotions, ships that learn from fish, and `soft jets' that flex and twist like swooping birds. Fabricated arteries will pulse and contract just as they do in life. Industries will reabsorb waste, like fallen leaves fading into the earth, while a new kind of money looks to energy cascades in nature."

These are not blue-sky dreams, avers the author. Advanced work is already happening in these areas. "The military has developed battle armour based on insect carapaces, and `bioskins' are being `grown' to filter biological-warfare agents and as self-repairing surfaces for space probes... Designers have adapted bird wingtips to planes and penguin contours to racing bikes."

To understand these, which can seem more awesome than El Niño, read a section titled `El Nano', in a chapter on `building blocks'. Nano is Greek for `dwarf,' Frenay writes. "A nanometer is one-billionth of a metre, or the length of several atoms placed side by side. How small is that? A million of them would fit into the period at the end of this sentence."

Nano is not just the stuff of only research laboratories or sci-fi movies. "Companies around the world are now gearing up to think small. Nanotech is unquestionably the hot new filed in engineering innovation," says Frenay. Examples that he cites are not limited to IBM, Intel and HP, which are into nano-computing studies. "L'Oréal puts nano-capsules in beauty creams, to help them penetrate more deeply into the skin; Wilson Sporting Goods makes longer-lasting tennis balls with nano-enhanced cores. General Motors uses nanoparticles to strengthen plastic running boards, while the glassmakers PPG and Pilkington use them for self-cleaning glass... Eddie Bauer now sells stain-resistant Nano-Care khakis."

We need to plan not only for the next decade, or even the next century, but for the next one hundred thousand years and beyond, pleads the author in the final chapter titled `feedback culture'. The phrase means `computerised and densely interactive communication webs' that convey ``a ripe mix of ideas, spawned by decentralised free media and by a schooling based on truer apprehension of the basic rules of life''.

There is more than one way to have a global economy, insists Frenay. "The model in use today is best described as `corporate globalisation'... The large corporations now running the global economy don't want free markets and open competition." Capitalism does not have to be a tool of corporatism, he reasons. "Imagine a world where a truly democratic capitalism is the spearhead of human rights... in which community stakeholders have a greater say in corporate decision-making." Sadly, Nandigram episode may go down in history as an example of just the opposite of what Frenay argues for.

"The long term is long. Life on earth has existed for nearly four billion years, and species tend to live for millions," reads the concluding paragraph. "Modern humans bring a new kind of awareness to life but are a mere one hundred thousand years old. We are still babies in evolutionary terms. We have only just opened our eyes. We are just beginning to see." A book that throbs with life.

Seven innovation rules

What is Nokia's real business? Not phones, but innovation, as its management affirms. "In Nokia's case, innovation is a capability fused to the core of the organisation; the company calls its culture of continuous innovation `renewal'," write Tony Davila, Marc J. Epstein and Robert Shelton in Making Innovation Work, from Pearson (www.pearsoned.co.in).

Through innovation, companies can make their mark on the evolution of business, they postulate. "The only reliable security for any company is the ability to innovate better and longer than competitors," say the authors. "A key to successful innovation, and something that requires the attention of the CEO, is a periodic health check to determine exactly what needs attention."

The book lays down ``seven innovation rules'', which include: Integration with basic business mentality, alignment with company's business, and neutralising organisational antibodies.

An important rule is that the basic unit, or the fundamental building block, of innovation is "a network that includes people and knowledge both inside and outside the organisation." A theme, you'd agree, which pulsates in Frenays' work too.

"The primary unit of innovation is not the individual; a person is not the basic building block. Rather, it is the network that extends inside (R&D, marketing, manufacturing) and outside (including customers, supplier, partners, and others)," explain the authors.

"Innovation requires developing and maintaining this network as an open and collaborative force — no easy task considering the complexities of relationships, differing motivations, and differing objectives."

Absorbing read.

An application-oriented mindset

Shivanand Kanavi offers you ``the first ever glimpse into the innovative heart of Asia's biggest software and services company, Tata Consultancy Services,'' in Research by Design, from Rupa & Co (www.rupapublications.com). The book brings together interviews and essays that chronicle the history of innovation in TCS.

In the opening essay, S. Ramadorai writes, "We have looked for an application-oriented mindset, where the output of any thinking, innovation or research has to be an input into a service or consulting." F. C. Kohli recounts the tale of TRDDC (Tata Research Development and Design Centre); he emphasises how research had to be in all domains of knowledge ``because at some stage of design, development or manufacturing, computers would be involved''. An example Kohli cites is of the Tata Electric Companies which had computerised all their operations in the late 1960s; "a digital computer was controlling an entire grid that had hydro and thermal plants and even a nuclear plant."

Do you know that TCS has developed a low-cost water filter named Sujal? `Soo-juhl' means good water, explains Kalyan Das' essay.

The filter uses RHA (rice husk ash), an abundantly available common waste, to remove microorganisms and metal ions. "Sujal costs roughly Rs 300. The cost of replacing the filter bed is about Rs 25. The bed has a shelf life of four to six months, depending on the quality of the input water. The filtration rate is approximately three litres per hour." Thousands of Sujal filters rushed into devastated areas, post-tsunami, as a unique contribution from the software giant...

Ideal books about ideas worth idling with, for a whole week.

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