Last week I was having coffee with Adam Morgan from Eat Big Fish, and conversation turned to the contrasting architecture of the Shard versus the Tower of London. What seemed to us to be a delicious juxtaposition of the past and the future is a blot on the landscape to UNESCO.
innovations
Following the advent of Strongbow’s digitally-enabled bottle top StartCap, based on an RFID technology, and Heineken’s Ignite battery-powered bottle that responds to light and motion, another globally recognized beer brand Beck’s has created a not-for-sale prototype of a music bottle that can be played on a specially-built device based on Thomas Edison’s original phonograph.
In early spring, adidas unveiled a digital archive of its iconic products and marketing content, highlighting the brand’s past achievements in the sportswear industry. Now, the brand continues the effort with the launch of the “adidas lab,” which comes as the first in a series of events to celebrate the adidas’s future through its innovative gear.
Nike is seeking new approaches that may revolutionize the shoe industry in the nearest future. In partnership with NASA, the U.S. State Department, and USAID, the sportswear giant is announcing the fourth Launch Challenge, calling R&D textile manufacturers to submit their groundbreaking ideas on new sustainable materials and entrepreneurial practices. The LAUNCH System Challenge 2013 that runs from April 24 through July 15, will accept “early bird” submissions starting June 15.
In early February, General Electric invited American creators to share their groundbreaking ideas with the world in celebration of National Inventor’s Day that coincided with the greatest U.S. inventor, Thomas Edison’s, birthday on February 11. The company teamed up with the BuzzFeed website and launched a social-media campaign #IWantToInvent on Twitter to collected revolutionary ideas submitted by public.
As part of the project, GE released a plethora of blueprints with the user-generated concepts.
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Sergey Brin (Google) and Yuri Milner (Digital Sky Technologies) along with some other notable figures in the IT sector have joined forces to launch the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation to foster researchers in the biotech sphere. The list of founding sponsors also includes Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla Chan, Brin’s wife and co-founder of 23andMe Anne Wojcicki as well as Art Levinson of Apple, who has been appointed the Chairman of the Foundation’s board.