NBR Transcripts-February 16, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009Top 30 Innovations The Last 30 Years-The ABC's of Gadgetry
PAUL KANGAS: NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year by counting down the top 30 innovations of the last 30 years.
SUSIE GHARIB: Tonight, we look at the ideas and products that have had the greatest impact over the last three decades.
PAUL KANGAS: And Susie, as you know, many of the innovations on our list are things we use every day and as Dana Bate reports, often take for granted.
DANA BATE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Hi there. Welcome to the start of my day which usually involves listening to my MP3 player on the way to work to get me going and normally I would head straight up to the office, but I actually need to get some money from the ATM today. And a lot of times if I don't know where the nearest ATM is, I can punch up my GPS which will show me where the nearest ATM is. But today I know that my ATM is right across the street, so I'm just going to run over, grab some money and then head up to the office. Now that I'm at the office first things first, I have to check my e- mail, see if there's anything that will change our plans for the day, looks like we're pretty much on schedule to do as we had planned. But I also want to take a look at the news wire service that we use, which updates us on breaking news, things that are happening on Capitol Hill. There doesn't seem to be any breaking news. But I want to give a call to my bureau chief Darren Gersh, to see what he thinks and whether or not we're on track for today. Here I am in our control room and that loud sort of buzzing that you hear is actually our converter box that's going to help us with our transition to digital television. And we also get feeds in here from all over Capitol Hill, all over Washington and actually all over the country and all over the world. But right now I have to run. I have to take our morning conference call. But I just thought I'd show you a few of the innovations that help me start my day here at NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT every day.
Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years-Bio-fuels
PAUL KANGAS: Bio-fuels were among the energy advances in our top 30. Large- scale wind turbines and photovoltaic solar cells also made the list. NBR's Stephanie Dhue looks at the development of these alternatives to fossil fuel and one man in whose life they're already playing a big role.
STEPHANIE DHUE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Scott Sklar lives energy innovation. Take for example, this mini wind turbine he installed to run his home office.
SCOTT SKLAR, PRESIDENT, THE STELLA GROUP: Wind turbines are getting smaller and quieter and so we have several companies that have developed turbines that are part of the building or right next to the building.
DHUE: Sklar also uses solar energy to help power his home and office. He says there's an easy peel- and-stick solar technology that can be added to metal roofing. And where do you see the innovation going there?
SKLAR: I think the innovation is going not only among flexible materials and nano technology kinds of films that are - go on the inside of the window, but even paints that will go on the rooftop and on the south side of the building that in the future, will be producing electricity for your home or office building.
DHUE: Sklar should know. He's a consultant and 30-year veteran of the alternative energy business. He advises companies and governments on how to integrate cost-effective, energy-saving technologies into their plans. Sklar says nano-technology advances are making solar panels more efficient, more flexible and cheaper.
SKLAR: These are light-sensitive dyes that produce electricity. You can do them on flexible materials and these materials will be on window shades and awnings so you will be able to use them in much more elegant ways.
DHUE: Energy innovation is also moving bio-fuels to the next generation. Soon, it will no longer be a question of growing food versus fuel as bio-fuel moves from using corn to using waste materials.
SKLAR: You can't go from Kitty Hawk to a 747 jet, so there's a lot of learning that has to be done. But we're making immense progress very quickly and we're starting to see these technologies in the marketplace.
DHUE: Getting those energy innovations into the marketplace will require government help, from local governments making it easier to get building permits to state regulators making it easier to connect to the grid.
SKLAR: There are lots of different rules and regulations that can be quite cumbersome, that we need to make it easier for people to do and less expensive.
DHUE: Sklar's ahead of his time when it comes to energy use, but he predicts the nation will catch up. He expects half the nation's energy demand to met by renewables by the year 2050. Stephanie Dhue, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Arlington, Virginia.
Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years-Top 30 in Technology
PAUL KANGAS: Media file compression is one of the latest advances in computer science. Over the last 30 years, the industry has revolutionized the way we work and play. NBR's tech guru Scott Gurvey reports.
SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: A computer on every desktop? That's standard today, almost as standard, an Internet connection in every pocket. But 30 years ago, information technology was quite different. Thirty years ago, most computers were huge. They filled entire rooms and were as costly as they were large. The microprocessor had been around for nearly a decade, but personal computers were mainly for hobbyists. Then a couple of Steves-- Jobs and Wozniak -- had begun selling a computer they called the Apple. The Apple II was announced in 1977. And in 1981, IBM jumped on the bandwagon with its personal computer. "PC Magazine's" Lance Ulanoff says that was the big bang.
LANCE ULANOFF, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, PC MAGAZINE.COM: The pace of change, the pace of innovation, goes faster and faster with each passing year. So, we used to see major changes every three to four to five years. Now, we're seeing major changes every six to 12 months.
GURVEY: The microprocessor is high on our list of innovations, also the personal computers they make possible. Many of the innovations fall in the category of connectivity -- the Internet, broadband and the worldwide web, mobile phones and electronic mail. Professor of computer science Edmond Schonberg calls this connectivity revolutionary.
EDMOND SCHONBERG, PROFESSOR EMERITUS, COMPUTER SCIENCE, NYU: The fact that information can be shared instantaneously across the world is something whose full implications we haven't completely absorbed.
GURVEY: Along with the connectivity has come a major change in the way we interact with our machines. The graphical user interface, with its windows on the screen and mouse in the hand is also on our list. Today, the interface is moving toward touch and even motion-sensing control, what is called a gesture-based interface. Tomorrow, we may finally get voice recognition for command and control. But there is an irony in the information technology revolution. John White of the Association for Computing Machinery says as the technology becomes second nature, people lose sight of the opportunities for future innovation.
JOHN WHITE, CEO, ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY: We need a steady stream of the best and the brightest kids coming out of high school who look at the future understanding that computing is going to underpin everything and the more that they look at studying computer science and computation, the better prepared they're going to be to have an impact in almost any dimension of business, government or society.
GURVEY: Scott Gurvey, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York.
The Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years-Wharton Roundtable
SUSIE GHARIB: A panel of judges from the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania helped us choose the top 30 innovations. I recently talked with three of them: Professors Kevin Werbach and Karl Ulrich and Vice Dean Thomas Colligan. I began by asking Colligan why the Internet was selected as one of the blockbuster innovations on our list.
THOMAS COLLIGAN: The Internet has connected billions of people across the world. So access to data as the price points have come down dramatically, so when people get up in the morning they can go to the Internet and they have access to the outside world.
GHARIB: Kevin, as I look down this list of the top 30, they're in so many different industries. Is there a unifying theme? What ties all of these innovations?
KEVIN WERBACH, PROF., LEGAL STUDIES & BUSINESS ETHICS, WHARTON: One thing that ties them together is that they are all innovations that are platforms for new innovations. Take the Internet or e-mail or even things like the human genome project. It's not just the innovation itself. It's the new kinds of industries and content and applications and so forth that get grown on top of that original innovation that allows it to be magnified in its importance.
GHARIB: So Karl, are these innovations a solution to a problem or were they a breakthrough, a novel way of doing something?
KARL ULRICH, CHAIR, OPERATIONS & INFO. MNGMT, WHARTON: They can be both of those things. But in every one of those cases, the innovation solved a fundamental human problem. If it didn't, it wouldn't have exploded the way it did.
WERBACH: But the funny thing though is that the people who designed it didn't necessarily fully see the problem they were solving. So you can take the Internet 30 years ago these kooky academic engineers didn't realize they were building the kind of platform that Tom talked about. It just they put the technology in place and then it flourished.
ULRICH: Sometimes you get lucky. You solve your own problem and it turns out to be a problem that everyone has. Sometimes you don't.
GHARIB: Tom, everybody talks about innovation. Why is innovation so important?
COLLIGAN: Well innovation typically helps you first to market and gives you periods of exclusivity, gives you margins that you would otherwise not have until people come in and try to replicate what you're doing.
GHARIB: Do you think, Karl, that with some of the financial issues that many companies are facing and individuals are facing that this means less innovation, less entrepreneurship?
ULRICH: I doubt it. I think this period right now presents some unique opportunities. You look at our MBA students, many of them are now exploring entrepreneurial careers, in part because they don't have some of the same options they have in financial services.
WERBACH: It's actually fairly well established, in IT at least, that big innovations happen in the down economic times, the talent is cheap, everything else is cheap. There's space to create something and build it up. It's actually a really good time to be an entrepreneur rights now.
COLLIGAN: I do worry about the health care space, because the pharma space because research and development dollars have continued to increase and the question is will we ever give get a return on that investment.
GHARIB: This list of innovation suggestions was pretty long. Were there any innovations that didn't make the final list, didn't make the final cut, Karl?
ULRICH: There were some really major innovations in agriculture, for example, that didn't make the list. I speculate that it's because they're really the result of loss of incremental changes and no single blockbuster innovation.
COLLIGAN: The financial services space has been excluded from this I think principally because of the current environment. So when you really look at what's happened in that space, capital markets, technology, hedge funds, private equity and so on, that's been excluded from the list.
GHARIB: Kevin, do you think the United States will continue to be the leader when it comes to innovation?
WERBACH: Only if it continues to be a magnet for the great talent around the world. We're in a fundamentally global environment, no country, no organization can go it alone. The real innovators are the ones who can draw on great platforms for the best ideas and the best people from anywhere in the world.
ULRICH: Let me just add one thing to that, which is, a lot of companies, the U.S. gets a lot of credit because it often is a home to many of the innovative companies. But often those companies draw on talent for their projects from all over the world. I'm involved in a project now that draws on people from Australia, the UK., Mexico and United States and the U.S. gets credit for that.
COLLIGAN: And remember, we're 4 percent of the world's population and with the Internet connecting billions of people, I don't think we're going to be as dominant as we once were.
GHARIB: You're all educators. Do you think our school systems are properly educating the new generation of innovators and entrepreneurs?
COLLIGAN: Our school systems need some improvement. I think technology can clearly get us up to scale from where we are currently.
WERBACH: We need to use those innovations that we have to tackle the challenge of the schools. No, we're not nearly going far enough with our school systems and it's critical if you're going to nurture future innovation.
GHARIB: Let's look ahead 10 years. What's going to be the next new big innovation, Karl?
ULRICH: I think we'll look back in 10 years and say that genomics was really the big change in the last decade.
GHARIB: Tom? What do you think?
COLLIGAN: I agree with Karl, I believe it's the health care area. I believe that health care will be significantly improved over the next 10 years.
GHARIB: Kevin?
WERBACH: I think it's still going to be the Internet. We're actually just getting started. We're just at the point now where the whole world is connected. The real innovation starts going forward.
GHARIB: Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. Tom, Kevin, Karl, we really appreciate it.
The Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years-Medical Advances
PAUL KANGAS: The first MRI exam was done in the late '70s. It took over five hours to create just one image. Now, multiple images can be processed in moments. It's just one of the ways innovation touches our lives. NBR's "Bill of Health" reporter Jeff Yastine looks at where medical advances are headed.
JEFF YASTINE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Next time you visit someone in the hospital, stop by the physical rehabilitation lab. Chances are you'll see this -- patients using video games to relearn nerve and muscle control. And that says health futurist Doug Goldstein, is a growing trend. Healthy gaming goes beyond rehab. Goldstein says there's a surge in games aimed at maintaining good health and sharpening memory.
GOLDSTEIN, PRESIDENT, MEDICAL ALLIANCES: Last year in the United States, Americans spent $6.7 billion on healthy games. That includes brain fitness games, healthy eating games, exer games. So it's real dollars, it's a real market and it generates real activity and exercise.
YASTINE: Another advance: software that can catch errors in diagnosis and treatment before a mistake harms a patient. But the systems work best when all of a patient's healthcare records are digital, says Doctor Sanjaya Kumar, president of medical software developer Quantros.
SANJAYA KUMAR, CEO, QUANTROS: Things happen. Errors are due to systems issues and the only way that you can actually find out what is wrong within your system is to track and monitor and trend the appropriate data points over time.
YASTINE: And thanks to advancements in digital pathology, personalized medicine is expected to take off in coming years. Your DNA will be used to custom-design cancer therapies, drug cocktails and other treatments. That focus on the individual, say experts like Goldstein, is the key to a better quality of life.
GOLDSTEIN: Those advances have made a tremendous difference in the ability to treat and take care of illness and disease and expand lifespan. But there are many things that we can do -- an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
YASTINE: In an era when the cost of medical care continues to rise, maintaining your good health may be the biggest medical innovation of all. Jeff Yastine, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Miami.
The Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years-One on One with Thomas Okarma of Geron
SUSIE GHARIB: Number five on our list is DNA testing and sequencing of the human genome. It's a field that's leading to amazing medical advances. One company using those technologies to find new treatments for heart disease and spinal cord injuries is Geron. I recently sat down with Geron's CEO Thomas Okarma and began by asking him what's the next big breakthrough in medicine?
THOMAS OKARMA, CEO, GERON: We're learning how different individual patients have different manifestations of the same disease. And that we think will lead to better and more individualized treatments.
GHARIB: Tom, your company, Geron, just got the go ahead from the government to use embryonic stem cells in the first human clinical trial, which is a milestone in itself. What are the implications of that for medicine and for patients?
OKARMA: Well, to give a specific example with heart failure or heart attacks, we've learned how to make heart muscle cells from embryonic stem cells. And instead of in the future having a heart attack and going home with a damaged heart, in the future you'll go to the hospital and you'll have that damage specifically repaired by injecting new heart muscle cells. So that you go home not only with a regenerated heart muscle fixed from the damage, but it will contain new healthy cells that can also respond to today's heart drugs.
GHARIB: So how close are you to delivering on these innovations?
OKARMA: Well, we are here for spinal cord injury. This trial will start in a few months. It will be another year or two before we're ready, but the second cell type, which will probably be heart muscle cells for heart attack. Another year before we're ready to do the Type I diabetes cell type.
GHARIB: Besides what's going on in your company at Geron, what else is new in medical technology that's bubbling up?
OKARMA: Well, there are new pills. There are new drugs that are much more powerful and more specific for the disease in an individual. So we're beginning to understand how a cancer, the same cancer in you might be treated differently if I have the same tumor as you do. And that individual variation is what's going to be very important as we march forward to get over treating symptoms and focus more on eradicating the fundamentals of the disease.
GHARIB: Everyone is talking about the health care crisis and about health care reforms. Can medical innovations reform the system in terms of lowering health care costs and also promoting wellness.
OKARMA: Innovation has the potential to advance the cause of health. But unfortunately much of the recent innovation comes at a very high cost in relationship to the value added. The $100,000 cost of treatment that adds two or three weeks to the life span of a cancer patient. So we are selective in how we view innovation, not simply another step with another pill, but a phase change, a new value paradigm that completely changes outcome at a minimal increase in cost.
GHARIB: Tom, if you fast forward to the future, is it possible that there will be cures for most diseases or is that just a science fiction dream?
OKARMA: I think it's absolutely possible. The more we understand about the fundamental biology of disease, the more likely we are able to engineer a specific and permanent cure for that disease. So like any other technological advance, the more we understand about the problem, the more likely we are to find a solution that works.
GHARIB: Tom, thank you so much, great seeing you.
OKARMA: Thank you for having me.
