John Hanke NIANTIC LABS 

'ADVENTURES ON FOOT' DICE2014  

4 Design Principles: 

The World is the Game - Move to Play - Urban Exploration

John leads an innovative 'startup' within Google called Niantic Labs. Niantic was founded by John as an independent group within Google to explore new kinds of mobile applications at the intersection - Hyperinnovation - of mobile, location, social, and with eye towards an emerging class of wearable devices. 

The group has launched two very well received products to date - Field Trip, a guide to the hidden secrets and amazing places of the world, and Ingress, a mobile app that turns the entire world into an interactive, multiplayer game.

Multidirectional Impact Protection System Helmets

For years a helmet's goal was to prevent skull fractures, but designers are now working on ways to fight concussions too. 

The Giro Combyn helmet, worn by athletes including U.S. half-pipe-hopeful Gretchen Bleiler and already on the market for consumers, has a vinyl–nitrile liner and a flexible shell designed to withstand the multi-impact falls common in BMX, skateboard, and snowboard events. The materials remain pliable in the cold, transmitting less energy to the brain in the event of a wipeout. 

Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal, the Super-G gold medalist in 2010, wears headgear featuring the Multi-directional Impact Protection System available in various brands. The shell has an inner membrane that slides during impact, dissipating the rotational forces unleashed on the head. 

Aerial and mogul skiers will use technology designed by HIP-TEC, a company that creates sport-specific liners using data from rotational- and blunt-force crashes. 

The tech should be available for consumers this spring.

Cheetah Ultra Sports Whip F-117 is an interesting new snowboard design. Company called Cheetah Ultra Sports has spent four years developing the product which I believe won’t work well on all terrain. There is a big opening in the middle of the board, which makes us scratch our heads here at the “Homeboy Headquarters”.. Why on earth has a snowboard got a huge opening in the middle?

Cheetah Ultra Sports says, “The main purpose of the opening is to reduce the amount of surface which comes in contact with snow. Smaller surface means less drag, which translates into more gliding speed.”

Wow! Wait a minute.. Less surface means more gliding speed? Maybe this idea works on hard slope, but when riding powder snow I guess the opening will cause some serious trouble. I believe you get tons of snow right on your face through the big opening. I might be wrong, but what else could we expect?

Then those huge “shelves” for attaching bindings of Whip F-117 look really interesting to me. Why so big? Unfortunately I don’t know the answer to my question, but there must be a good reason. Anyhow they look cool, eh? The cool design has also the negative side, and it is the fat price of $1,900. 

Written by: Marko Pyhajarvi 

Hyperinnovation 12 Years On!

My book ‘Hyperinnovation’ was published in 2002. The product of 12 years R&D, with its primitive inception in 1990.

Its underlying idea was (is), ‘The multidimensional Interconnection of Ideas.’ The collateral convergence, divergence, paralleling, customising, real-time and accelerated pace of innovation.

In the late 1980s, when I began to maul over and incubate that concept, I had hard time debating the idea (let alone achieving dialogue) with my peers. Back at the end of the 80s, things - technology, organisations (inside and out), markets and industries – were a hell of lot more disparate and disjointed.

The Internet was some esoteric term, and the technology mostly and often exclusively exploited by the highbrow scientific community. The World Wide Web had not even got out of bed. In parallel, Automobiles were still a near empty tech-box on wheels. Utilities (gas, electric, water, telecom) supply came from a linear, single resource service vendors. Cell Phones were the size of a brick, and all you could do was ‘Voice!’ Music, videos, gaming, and books, came via discrete physical mediums. Socialising meant mostly going to the pub, park or family Sunday Lunch. Point is, things were a whole lot more disconnected back in the day.

Today, the term Hyperinnovation is part of universal business language. Reflecting the reality that things are evermore interconnected; and thus dynamic, virtual, instant, and perpetually evolving.

But the underlying idea of Hyperinnovation has been leveraged and transformed into many kinds of new idiom from street slang to high-end commerce. Here’s a list:

·  Mashup! As in, pulp together. By way of example, Mashup.com is one of the premier tech-newscast site. Always on the cusp; always interconnecting (mashing) fresh ideas.

·  Mixology! The study of blending physical, virtual and imagined concepts. Coined by Lord Alan Sugar on his ‘The Apprentice’ programme; he has been an advocate of the interconnected business worldview for some time now.

·   GE’s Hyperinnovation. Looks at the ingredients for a successful and well-balanced innovation program – www.innovationexcellence.com.

·   Sony’s Futurescapes, Scenario 1 - Hyperinnovation. One of four videos we created for Sony Europe highlighting four possible scenarios in 2025. www. http://vimeo.com/39059428.

·  Is it Time to Rewrite the Innovation Playbook: Ten New Requirements in the Age of Hyperinnovation. www.innovationmanagement.se.

· The British Regulatory State: High Modernism and Hyperinnovation. www.books.google.co.uk

· Get ready for hyperinnovation. By Jim Carroll. www.camagazine.com.