FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog

Browse by Category › davos 2007

January 27, 2007

China Gets Innovative

That was the title of a session in Davos today that looked at how China is moving rapidly from manufacturing to serving as a hotbed of technical and scientific innovation, as well as a fount for design and other forms of creativity. Moving, in fact, more rapidly than many of us recognize. And here was a scary anecdote: Jack Ma Yun, the founder and CEO of Alibaba.com (the eBay of China), described how impressed he was when he visited Silicon Valley eight years ago. The work ethic, he said, was astounding: Judging by the traffic to and from offices and the lights he could see burning at all hours, people were working late into the night and all weekend. But on a return visit three years ago, the lights were out by evening and the office parks were dead on Saturday and Sunday. The opposite is true in China today (where increasing numbers of Chinese engineers and scientists who were educated in the U.S. and who cut their teeth in Palo Alto are returning because the opportunities are so great). Today, Ma said, "Silicon Valley is in China."

Posted by Mark Vamos at 12:09 PM | 10 Comments

Stuff By Us, Part Two

Another soundbite from a Davos discussion on user-generated content. In something of a metaphor for the UGC phenomenon, much of the most trenchant stuff came not from the formal panel members but from the audience. Jeff Jarvis, editor of Buzzmachine.com, described three phases of interactivity on the web as practiced by large companies. Phase 1 was "we let you talk." Phase 2 is "give stuff to us" and we'll use it on our site. In Phase 3, the next phase, he argued, companies need to think of themselves as "a network instead of a vault." Just like the original TV networks, large media and web companies may end up not producing or owning any content, but will instead serve to provide money, distribution and support to outside creators of content. In this model, he said, Yahoo can be seen as the last old-line media company, while Google represents the first fully distributed one.

Posted by Mark Vamos at 11:57 AM | Add Comment

Davos: Last Day

Today is the last day of my maiden voyage to Davos. I'm getting more emboldened in my belief that the real benefit to coming here is the networking...both deliberate and serendipitous. Our company (Advanced Diamond Technologies (http://www.thindiamond.com)) made tie clips with the names of some of the luminaries written in diamond. Part of our evangelism is showing people what's possible with diamond (we convert natural gas into diamond), so what better way than to have a personalized gift, made from diamond, to give the world's influencers and thought leaders, no?

Continue reading "Davos: Last Day"

Posted by Neil Kane at 5:55 AM | 1 Comment

January 26, 2007

Stuff By Us, Part One

A panel at Davos on user-generated content--or "stuff by us"--brought together some interesting folks, including Michael Wolf, the recently ousted president and chief operating officer of MTV, Thomas Glocer, the CEO of Reuters, and Shelly Lazarus, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather. As often happens here, there were some pretty intriguing characters in the audience, too, including Chad Hurley, the co-founder and CEO of YouTube, and Jeff Jarvis, editor of Buzzmachine.com and all-around interactive media guru. I'll pass along some of the better comments in a series of posts, beginning with one from Michael Wolf.

Wolf pointed out that the supposedly viewer-generated content that gets the most traffic on sites like YouTube in fact consists of professionally produced material that has been clipped, manipulated and mashed up by users--think clips of Steven Colbert or Saturday Night Live. The message: "Big media companies need to realize that allowing your content to be unleashed on the Internet will only enhance your brand rather than hurt it." Ironic, then, that a factor behind Wolf's departure from MTV was supposedly the frustration of Sumner Redstone, chairman of MTV parent Viacom, at MTV's failure to acquire MySpace (which was bought by Rupert Murdoch).

Posted by Mark Vamos at 10:05 AM | Add Comment

OneVoice at Davos

There's always the potential for drama, and for progress, when leaders confront the authentic voices of their people. That's what happened yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, at a panel on the Middle East conflict featuring Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's vice premier Shimon Peres, and Israeli foreign affairs minister Tzipi Livni.

OneVoice, one of the Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award winners, organized and presented videos from hundreds of youths gathered in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Tel Aviv. One after another, student leaders demanded peace, an end to the conflict via the so-called two-state solution.

It's powerful stuff. You can watch the proceedings at Davos here.

Posted by Keith Hammonds at 8:39 AM | 1 Comment

Davos: Out too late

I was told prior to coming that the real action, and the real value of Davos happens at night. During the day they have workshops, lectures, conferences (mostly outstanding), but the nighttime is what its about. I had that experience last night. Somewhat against my will I wound up staying out until 4am. Not a big deal, but today I, along with the other Technology Pioneers, are supposed to pitch for the VCs who are here. I could have used more sleep.

One of the few people I knew before coming here was Magid Abraham of comScore Networks (www.comscore.com). Magid is a fellow tech pioneer. Rumor has it that during a discussion dinner last night Magid got in a spirited debate with a former US cabinet secretary who was none too pleased. Discretion prevents me from naming names. What happens in Davos stays in Davos.

Posted by Neil Kane at 4:46 AM | Add Comment

January 25, 2007

Coverage from the World Economic Forum

Fast Company editor, Mark Vamos, is in Davos attending the annual World Economic Forum, and he's already addressed the overwhelming theme of global warming and climate change. Today, he wrote about engineering living body parts.

As well as Vamos's coverage, there's also a guest blogger on board. Neil Kane, a former Fast 50, is writing his "Davos Diary," which offers his freshman account, thoughts, and impressions on sharing the global stage with 2,000 of the world’s most powerful and influential political and business leaders.

Kane is an entrepreneur with a focus on starting companies based on technologies originating at universities or government laboratories. A degreed engineer from the University of Illinois with an international MBA from The University of Chicago, he spent the early portion of his career at IBM and Microsoft in both technical and sales roles. More recently, he has helped form numerous high tech companies in the areas of nanotechnology, advanced materials, and software as Entrepreneur-in-Residence with a venture capital firm.

Read more for our Davos report here.

Posted by Lynne d Johnson at 1:15 PM | 3 Comments

Davos: Tech Pioneers Gathering

I spent the afternoon in a "closed" meeting of the Tech Pioneers. Unlike the previous sessions I've attended, this one was a workshop, and my group spent nearly two hours talking about "Crossing the Chasm" by the subject-master on the topic, Geoff Moore. It was a great opportunity to learn about the businesses (and challenges) of the other Technology Pioneers.

Its nighttime here. Time to start running the gauntlet of dinner functions and parties. Somehow I was invited to the "Global Climate Change" nightcap which starts at 11:30pm. According to the invitation it is being hosted by Vinod Khosla, Gavin Newsom, Claudia Shiffer and Al Gore. The first three I know are here. I dont' know if Gore is actually here, but after seeing his movie recently, my desire to meet him has gone up considerably.

Posted by Neil Kane at 12:14 PM | 1 Comment

The Real Star Power At Davos

Last night, I went to a reception hosted by the Burda media group of Germany. The room at the Steigenberger Belvedere, the hotel where the real masters of the universe stay in Davos, was crowded with corporate luminaries like Michael Dell, Jamie Dimon, and Steve Case. But the place really became electrified when model Claudia Schiffer walked in. Even in this crowd, celebrity outshines the wattage of national leaders and CEOs.

Last year, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie repeatedly brought things to a halt wherever they turned up--so much so that they were apparently banned from Davos this year.

Posted by Mark Vamos at 10:25 AM | Add Comment

Engineering Living Body Parts

That's the name of a fascinating talk this afternoon in Davos given by Linda Griffith, professor of biological and mechanical engineering at MIT. Just her job title tells you a lot about the extraordinary developments in this arena--and her Biological Engineering Department is the first new undergraduate department at MIT in 40 years.

Griffith discussed the work of Tony Atala, who was one of Fast Company's Fast 50 last year. Atala has been growing functioning bladders by placing living bladder tissue on a sort of scaffolding. The scaffolds used for this sort of organ growth, and in other applications such as growing cartilage, are highly complex structures. One thing that came as interesting news to me is that biological engineers are turning to another technology we've mentioned in the magazine, 3D printing. These devices follow computer instructions to lay down layers of a powdered substance, eventually creating a solid object. You can use pretty much anything that can be turned into a powder, making these machines potentially very useful for building the scaffolds that could be the basis for engineered body parts. How cool is that?

Posted by Mark Vamos at 10:12 AM | Add Comment

One Hour Later

I gave Sergey Brin a tie clip that I had made for him with his name written in diamond using our diamond deposition process. It generated a nice discussion where he made quite a few suggestions about business opportunities and new applications.

I'll reserve final judgment until the conference is over, but I suppose this is what Davos is all about...connecting, meeting, networking, brainstorming...

I had intended to attend a CNN event, but wound up missing that in favor of talking to Sergey. Time well spent, I presume.

Posted by Neil Kane at 7:06 AM | Add Comment

First Visit to Davos

I feel like I was asked to the prom by the head cheerleader. Our company was recently selected as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, and one of the privileges of that distinction is that I get to attend the WEF Annual Meeting in Davos this year and next. Its very tempting to name drop, and its hard not to be star struck here since the captains of industry, world politics and the media are all here, although I haven't seen any real entertainers of the Hollywood-type.

For me, as the President of an early-stage company with 11 employees, its the opportunity of a lifetime. The cool-factor is very high, but make no mistake, I'm trying to get some business done while I'm here. Our company has some technical collaborations going on with a few companies whose CEOs are here, and the chance to introduce myself to them doesn't come around every day.

Continue reading "First Visit to Davos"

Posted by Neil Kane at 5:51 AM | Add Comment

January 24, 2007

The Climate's Changing At Davos

The World Economic Forum is getting underway in earnest--and I do mean earnest--today in Davos. A major theme is climate change. It's a hot topic of discussion, if you'll forgive the expression, and the subject of several formal sessions. The warming of the planet feels particularly visceral and immediate here because Switzerland has been experiencing one of its warmest winters on record. For most of the two-hour ride from Zurich to Davos, there wasn't a patch of snow to be seen, even on the mountaintops. Just verdant fields.

In a debate this morning on "Making Green Pay," James E. Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy, had the thankless task of arguing in favor of nuclear energy and clean coal. But he had one very trenchant point: that any solution to the problems of energy, the environment, and global warming must be multi-faceted. There is, as he put it, no silver bullet. Only silver buckshot.

And speaking of climate change, the temperature in Davos dropped sharply overnight, and there was a heavy snowfall.

Posted by Mark Vamos at 10:16 AM | 2 Comments