All Features
Jeffrey Phillips
Lately I’ve been reading about the efforts to build or create innovation accelerators. Universities, businesses, and even cities and regions are talking about innovation and the need to create accelerators or innovation enablers. I’m glad that everyone is excited about innovation, and that they…
Benjamin Jones, Mohammad Ahmadpoor
What does hailing a ride with Uber have to do with 19th-century geometry and Einstein’s theory of relativity? Quite a bit, it turns out.
Uber and other location-based mobile applications rely on GPS to link users with available cars nearby. GPS technology requires a network of satellites that…
Greg Hutchins
I live in the Northwest of the United States. We are now the small business and startup mecca of the country. Why? San Francisco and Silicon Valley are too expensive. So, folks are moving in droves to Portland and Seattle; one-third of the license plates in my hood are out of state.
But there are…
Greg Anderson
In part one of this series, I described the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center and its mission to test innovative payment and delivery models, and to implement the Medicare Access and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Reauthorization Act (MACRA) Quality…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
We set aside our cardboard glasses and our papers pricked with holes, stepped away from the telescope guy, the one who would have been “that weird guy” any other day, except for today, when he’s your new best friend. And for those who thought maybe they could just glance at the eclipse with their…
Annamarie Mann
Once the status symbol of anti-establishment Silicon Valley tech companies such as Google and Facebook, the open-office floor plan now pervades U.S. workplaces. According to The Washington Post, about 70 percent of U.S. offices have an open-office floor plan.
Supporters say open floor plans…
Ryan E. Day
Sponsored Content
For growth-minded organizations like TS Tech, global supplier of automobile seats and interiors, “the way we’ve always done it” is rarely good enough. As a tier-one supplier to major automotive OEMs, TS Tech always has an eye out for ways to improve quality and throughput. They…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), those gadflies of airborne technology, are poised to sweep into our day-to-day lives. Does this take you by surprise? Like the lawn needing mowing (again), or your kid suddenly old enough for college, a swarm of drone innovations seems to have arrived almost…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Our August 11, 2017, episode of QDL looked at the role of technology in after-market service, stairs that help you up, Fidget Cubes, and more.
“Climbing Stairs Just Got Easier With Energy-Recycling Steps”
These stairs actually help you go up.
“The Curious Case of the Fidget Cube”
How a product…
Ryan E. Day
Innovation within industry is a must to improve processes, products, and customer experience. Although some innovations, like Amazon’s floating distribution center, seem implausible, other sci-fi technology is already revolutionizing and redefining the way employees accomplish tasks.
Tales of…
Jason Maderer
Researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University have created a device that makes walking up and down stairs easier. They’ve built energy-recycling stairs that store a user’s energy during descent and return energy to the user during ascent.
The spring-loaded stairs compress when someone comes…
Greg Anderson
The Affordable Care Act created the CMS Innovation Center to allow Medicare and Medicaid programs to test innovative payment and delivery models that improve patient care and lower healthcare costs.
The Innovation Center organizes models into seven categories. Some models are based on payment…
Bruce Weinberg
Science funding is intended to support the production of new knowledge and ideas that develop new technologies, improve medical treatments, and strengthen the economy. The idea goes back to influential engineer Vannevar Bush, who headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development during…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
I recall, back in 1995, trying to decide whether to get an internet account. I only knew two or three people who had them. Email sounded like a cool idea, but you still needed to pick up the phone to get in touch with someone. (Remember when the question was, “Do you have an email address?”…
Jeffrey Phillips
I have just returned from a trip to Dubai to speak at an innovation conference there. This is my third trip to Dubai, and I always come away consistently amazed at what the people and the government are doing. When I return to the States, people ask me what Dubai is like. I joking tell them that I…
Shaun Wissner
Sponsored Content
Connectivity has changed the world we live in. While today it is a trend, the true potential of connectivity lies in the future. As manufacturers begin to investigate how they can integrate this developing technology, they rely on solutions from organizations, like Hexagon…
Laurel Thoennes @ Quality Digest
There is no shortage of weirdness in quantum mechanics, and the phenomenon known as entanglement is weird with a capital “W.” When two particles are entangled, they share a connection no matter how far the distance between them.
Measuring one particle can tell you what measuring the other…
Scott Gottlieb
It is incumbent upon the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure that we have the right policies in place to promote and encourage safe and effective innovation that can benefit consumers, and adopt regulatory approaches to enable the efficient development of these technologies. By…
Jason Furness
Following on from yesterday’s column (which can view here), we explore the right-hand side of the diagram below and see the outlook you can adopt that is the most productive for you personally. Transitioning the thought processes of your team to this ideal quadrant is a necessary and highly…
Mike Richman
The July 17, 2017, episode of QDL focused on some of the nitty-gritty of quality improvement, from the value of personal certifications to the opportunities of disruptive innovation, and to the fundamentals of risk management to the challenges of customer service. In case you missed it, here’s a…
Georgia Tech News Center
A marimba-playing robot with four arms and eight sticks is writing and playing its own compositions in a lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The pieces are generated using artificial intelligence and deep learning.
Researchers fed the robot nearly 5,000 complete songs—from Beethoven to…
Pat Toth
Recently a segment on my favorite morning news program stopped me in my tracks. The young and attractive hosts (why are they always so young and attractive?) were demonstrating new appliances, among them a smart refrigerator. The fridge was equipped with all kinds of high-tech features including…
Michael O’Shea
Sponsored Content
Opportunities are becoming more frequent to apply metrology to adaptive robot control for many applications. There are many different techniques to accomplish this, from regular calibration to real-time feedback, using anything from laser trackers to optical devices in order to…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
More than 2,000 years ago a huge ship crashed beneath the cliffs of Antikythera, a small island off the coast of Greece. Later discovered in 1900, the wreck yielded a trove of antiquities, including an amazing geared mechanism that, just for starters, predicted eclipses and the location of the sun…
MIT Sloan School of Management
There are few executives today who don’t wish they could be more productive. Even the most successful individuals are looking for new and better ways to get more accomplished while maintaining or increasing their quality of life.
“Regardless of location, industry, or occupation, productivity is a…
