grownskis.com is a new ski brand that will launch its operations in the winter 2008/2009. They have emerged from a team of outdoor sports enthusiasts that were looking for a sustainable and environmentally friendly ski. Made up of an engineer, a carpenter and a sustainability expert, they have come up with an innovative product that has just won the Volvo eco design award.

“Grown is a young South German brand designing and producing high performance eco-efficient all mountain and backcountry freeride skis. Grown Skis are virtually developed high tech creating less environmental impact. By combining traditional carpentry handcraft with modern virtual development methods Grown Skis perform as high end freeride skis while minimizing the use of non-natural materials to achieve more eco-efficiency at the same time. “ 

Congratulations!

In the online version of the manager-magazin.de one can read an interesting article about the the future of Second Life. The article starts with a summary of what happened to Second Life a year ago and concludes with an outlook of how Second Life might look like in the future. The article is interesting and can be found her.

I just found out about the Boston Consulting Group’s activities in the field of social network analysis. It is reported that the strategy consulting firm uses a proprietary software to analyze patent and scholarly databases in order to sort out who is working with whom on which topics. The results seem to be quite useful as the following cite shows.

“[..] Companies and organizations have used the BCG maps to survey the state of research in their fields; to scope out potential acquisition targets; or simply to foster more teamwork across disciplines or among employees. BCG declined to say what it charges for the tool, but the fees typically are included in the cost of a broader consulting service. [..] “(source: businessweek.com)

The software they use now is the subject of a US patent application number.   

I just discovered the following presentation on slideshare.net. It shows how firms can use facebook to better understand the audience of endcustomers that they might be addressing with their products.

I am wondering how many firms actively use this opportunity. When you think of XING for instance. XING allows you to conduct a target search along a vast variety of dimensions such as company names, what persons have or want wants, industries etc. The question I pose is whether such access to information help firms to better understand their target audience?

As it can be read in the online version of the New York Times, readers shift fro, paper based newspapers to online versions of newspapers.

source: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/11/06/business/06adcographic.190.1.jpg

“[...] The drop, reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, reflects the growing shift of readers to the Internet, where newspaper readership has climbed, and also a strategy by many major papers to shed unprofitable or marginally profitable print circulation. [...]“

That is interesting to see and makes me ask myself the question how long it will still take until we can use electronic papers such as e-ink to read online news in an “offline” environment.

I just stumbled upon the following article on techcrunch which I find pretty intriguing:

“Details Revealed: Google OpenSocial To Launch Thursday“

“[...] OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

[...] Partners are in two categories: hosts and developers. Hosts are the participating social networks, and include Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle. Developers include Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide. (source:techcrunch)”

Basically this means that Google will create a system that allows developers to create new tools and widgets in one standardized language that applies to multiple social networking sites. Furthermore, I assume, this means that users of the partnering social networking sites can use their profile and friendship information in various sites at a time (although I am not a 100% sure if this is really the case ).

I just got back from a meeting with Pascal Reichenberger who is running the Logitech EPFL Incubator on the campus of EPFL. In collaboration with EPFL, Logitech has implemented an organization that aims to identify and develop novel ideas/prototypes for Logitech. Since Logitech is more focused on turning great prototypes and related business models into practice, this incubator aims to spot new technologies that could turn into great products one day.

I think this a great set-up for EPFL scientists as well as for Logitech because both parties can play to their strengths while benefiting from each other.

• EPFL scientists are incentivised because their research might become funded and their results can turn into great products or applications.
• For Logitech, the incubator serves as a creative platform to think about and create prototypes that that could be commercialized with in Logitech’s powerful infrastructure.

Such industry-academia collaboration might become a future model for “technology commercialization” within a university setting. We’ll see how it evolves.

Within the last week friends of mine sent me the link to a video that is commercial for Wilkinson razors. The video originates from the Wilkinson site (link).

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It is a nice example of how can use the tools of new internet media to reach people all over the world.

Ines Mergel and I have recently compiled an article that outlines a research methodology to study the sustainability of online ties. The article is now available online in the Program on Networked Governance Working Paper Series. You can download our paper here.

Studying online tie sustainability is important since it may provide insights into the long term success of online social networking sites such as XING or facebook.com.

I just defended my dissertation which I conducted at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) at the Chair for Corporate Strategy and Innovation (EPFL-CSI). Here are the two presentations I prepared.

This is the more scientific version for the private defense:

And this is the version for the public defense, which is slightly more vulgarized.

Both presentations are very condensed versions of my PhD. In case you have any further questions, let me know!

You can download the thesis from my box.net account by clicking .