Small Business Labs

Siri: A Cloud Based Digital Assistant for the iPhone

Siri is a new generation virtual, digital assistant that is meant to act just like a human assistant.  It understands what you say, accomplishes tasks for you and gets better at understanding what you want as you spend more time with it.   

Initially available as an iPhone application, Siri can make reservations at restaurants, find movie times, provide weather forecasts and accomplish other relatively simple tasks.  Siri uses speech recognition software, so you have the option to speak or type commands.

Siri is a new product with limited capabilities.  The Siri website explains:

"Siri is young and, like a child taking its first steps, may be awkward at times. Siri may occasionally misunderstand things you ask it to do even within its range of understanding.

Nonetheless, Siri will improve quickly by getting to know you better and understanding a broader set of tasks. In fact, right now, Siri’s learning how to handle reminders, flights stats and reference questions. Our vision is that, over time, you’ll trust Siri to manage many personal details in your life - from recommending a wine you might enjoy to managing your to do list."

The major difference between Siri and previous generations of digital assistants is that Siri resides in the cloud.  Prior generations of digital assistants depended on a single user to learn from. 

This means Siri learns from everyone using the software.  For example, if another user of Siri teaches it (her?) to accomplish a task, Siri can then perform that task for all users.  The more users Siri has, the better she will get.  And the more you use Siri, the better she will understand what you want.

Cloud storage and processing is creating an exploding number of applications that analyze and create new insights and value from large data sets.  This is part of a trend we call "the rise of machines," which includes sensors and smart objects, automation tools, analytical software and robotics.  The cloud connects these devices, collects, collates and synthesizes their data, and amplifies their abilities and impact. 

It sounds Borg like, but there is no Jeri Ryan and no evil intent (at least on the part of the machines). 

Good Summary of Small Business Hiring Sentiment

Jan Norman's On Small Business column in the Orange County Register has an excellent summary of various surveys on small business hiring plans.  It's no surprise that small businesses continue to be hesitant to hire. 

Steve Rubel on Facebook Eating the Web

Steve Rubel's Facebook Could Eat the Web expands on a theme we've been examining over the last 6 months or so, which we call Is Facebook Taking Over the Web?   Since Steve is a communications professional, it's not surprising his title is better. 

For those not familiar with Steve, he is an SVP at the giant PR firm Edelman and one of the most influential and thoughtful thinkers on the impact of social media and connective technologies on communications, media and marketing.  Key quote from his post:

"In short, I believe Facebook is unstoppable. They aren't just the next Google. They're the next web."

Steve's post provides a lot of information supporting these statements and is well work reading.

 

A few months ago we suggested that most small businesses do not yet need a Facebook presence, but they should start to explore and experiment with it. 

 

With an estimated 700,000 small businesses on Facebook today, it is clear that the platform is working for many - especially consumer-based businesses. 

 

So let us update our advice: If your business is not on Facebook or experimenting with it, you should be.   

Baby Boomers Flocking to Facebook, Twitter

eMarketer is reporting that the number of baby boomers using Facebook increased 107% from 2008 to 2009 and Twitter usage jumped 714%.  The chart below, from an eMarketer email, shows the growth for a number of social networking sites.

  

Other interesting observations about this data include:

 - There are about 78 million baby boomers, so almost 30% of all baby boomers are on Facebook.  This is an impressive number and reinforces our view that Facebook may be taking over the Web. 

- I'm not surprised to see Myspace losing visitors, but I am a bit surprised that 16 million baby boomers visited the site in 2008. 

- LinkedIn continues to grow (not sure why they don't have 2008 data).  Our research indicates that baby boomers see LinkedIn as the site for business networking.

- Not sure why the total baby boomer Internet audience would fall 12% from 2008 to 2009.  We will look into this.

Next Fab: A Gym for Innovators

Next Fab is a new "gym for innovators" that recently opened in Philadelphia.  According to their website, Next Fab provides:

• Innovation facility: state-of-the-art members-only workspace with high-end design and prototyping tools.
• Education: courses and workshops covering topics such as software and equipment use, design and engineering, and entrepreneurship.
• Technical services: in-house experts providing technical support for member projects, and product prototyping, and model-building on a contract basis for the community at large.
• Community: a place to connect and collaborate with a network of fellow innovators with wide-ranging skills and diverse perspectives.
• Retail sales: safety gear, raw materials, and tools.

Much like the SF bay area's Tech Shop, Next Fab offers members access to a wide range of machinery for making things and charges a gym-like monthly fee. 

Places like Next Fab and Tech Shop give many hobbypreneurs their start by providing access to equipment that they couldn't afford on their own, training and coaching.   

Global Poverty Rate Falling

Fascinating article on the Vox blog with the very un-fascinating title of Parametric Estimation of the World Distribution of Income.  In case you couldn't guess, Vox is a site for and by economists. 

The chart below is from the article and shows the dramatic decline in the global baseline poverty rate, which is defined as those living on less than $1 per day.

    

While South East Asia has done the best job at reducing poverty, poverty reduction happened all over the world during this time frame.  According to the article:

"From 1970 to 2006, poverty fell by 86% in South Asia, 73% in Latin America, 39% in the Middle East, and 20% in Africa."

The article also reports that the global Ginni Coefficient, a measure of world income inequality, fell substantially during this time frame (meaning global incomes became more equal).

Obviously there is still a lot to do on the global poverty front.  But this is still good news. 

A long term driver of change we follow closely is economic decentralization.  A major component of this trend is the growing economic power of the developing world. 

Led by China, India and others in South East Asia, the developing world's share of global GDP has consistently increased over the last few decades.  Many believe their share of global GDP will exceed that of the developed world by 2030.  This shift is driving a wide range of economic and social changes across the globe. 

This data nicely illustrates one part of this trend and helps explain why we believe the next decade will see substantial increases in global trade and small business globalization. 

What is Foursquare & Why is it Getting So Much Hype?

Foursquare is the leader in a new generation of "find a friend" applications.  According to their website, Foursquare "is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things."

To use Foursquare you simply tell the application where you are and comment in some form.  This is called a "check-in."  Foursquare targets mobile phone users and the vast majority of check-ins are done using smartphones. 

Below is an example "check-in" that I grabbed off the Foursquare feed:

Graham W. in London, United Kingdom:

wrote a tip @ Thai Aubergine: Try the chef's special Salmon. It was awesome.

As you can see, a "check-in" is very Twitter like but focused on location.  Check-ins can contain any information, but I chose this one to illustrate Foursquare's growing use as a local review and recommendation site.

 

Foursquare rewards usage by awarding badges and points to active users.  For example, people who check-in the most at locations are declared Foursquare Mayors for that location (they get a mayor's badge).  The game play features are designed to encourage use.

 

The Foursquare business model is not yet fully fleshed out, but it is clear that lead generation and advertising are going to play major roles.  Businesses are already starting to use Foursquare check-ins and related information to reward people who frequent their location. 

 

Hubspot has a good post on adding Foursquare to your marketing mix and the Foursquare website has examples of how small businesses are using their service.  Small business use so far mostly consists of loyalty programs based on Foursquare status.  For example, some retailers reward mayors and/or multiple visitors with free goods or discounts. 

 

Foursquare is getting a lot of hype for several reasons.  First, it sits at the intersection of a number of interesting technology trends: location-awareness, mobile computing, social media, social commerce, the real-time web and social games.  This is an exciting mix for the geeks that hype these things.

 

Foursquare is also easy to understand, is fun to use and has the potential to add value to both consumers and businesses.  It also benefits from the "shiny new object" syndrome - the tech field has a non-stop need for new things to talk about. 

 

Foursquare is not without competitors, big and small.  Twitter is adding support for location data, Google plays in this space, Yelp has added competitive features and a number of start-ups are targeting this area.  So while Foursquare is the flavor of the day, long term success is not guaranteed. 

 

As a consumer, I like Foursquare.  But the vast majority of small businesses do not need to worry about Foursquare for now.  Just be aware and be ready if and when it does become important to your customers. 

 

But if your customers are serious techies - a bar targeting 20 somethings in the SOMA area of San Francisco, for example - then it is well worth investigating. 

 

***Update:  Good overview presentation on Foursquare for businesses from We Are Social***

Webinar: Using Facebook to Grow Your Business

MyVenturePad, in partnership with SAP, is hosting a free webinar -  Using Facebook to Grow Your Business.  The webinar is scheduled for February 2nd at 1:00pm Eastern (10:00am Pacific). 

The webinar will cover:

•  How small businesses are using Facebook to improve customer service, generate leads and increase sales
•  How to get started on Facebook
•  How to grow your presence and fan base
•  How to create an interactive community of fans for your product or service

The webinar features:

Clara Shih:  author of the best selling book The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff, which has been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, CRM Magazine, and is being used as a textbook at Harvard Business School.  Clara is also the CEO of Hearsay Labs, which provides software to help companies manage and measure their social media presence.

Jonathan Smart: a small business owner who has been successful in using Facebook and other social media tools for his business. He's the president of the Jimmy Smart Allstate Insurance Agency in Columbus, Georgia, helping clients with insurance for homes, autos, renters, landlords, boats and more.

I will moderating the discussion and will be sharing recent survey data and research on Facebook usage by small businesses. 

I look forward to seeing you on the 2nd.  Please click here to register for the event. 

The End of Men

I jokingly refer to a set of trends related to changing gender roles as "the end of men." I am joking, so please don't send hate mail.

But there is a growing set of data and trends indicating that men are not as well equipped for the demands and stresses of modern society as women.  Men die younger, have substantially higher substance abuse rates and are much more likely to be in jail. 

Recent studies also show a major shift in mental health, with depression rising among men and decreasing among women.

Men don't do as well in school as women.  The chart below is from The Rise of Wives, a Pew study on marital changes caused by women outpacing men in education and earnings growth over the past couple of decades.

    

The shift towards women in college is so pronounced - over 58% of U.S. undergrads are female - that many universities have affirmative action programs for men. 

Women still earn less than men, but the gap is closing.  The Rise of Wives points out that women's inflation adjusted earnings grew 44% from 1970 to 2007, compared with just 6% for men. 

Structural economic shifts will likely result in additional gains for women. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook job forecast shows that categories with higher levels of women employment are expected to outperform categories dominated by men over the next 10 years.  This means the earnings gap should continue to close, and earnings parity may happen by the end of the next decade.   

We're also seeing a shift towards women small business owners, a trend we highlighted several years ago in the Intuit Future of Small Business report Changing Face of Entrepreneurs.

Adding to this is a recent study by the Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute.  While they don't explicitly state it, you can't read their research summary without thinking their results show that women are better suited for small business ownership and management than men. 

So while I am joking about the end of men, the rise of women is a clear trend. 

Time Spent on Social Networking Sites Exploding

Can't say this is new or surprising, but it is still worth noting that the amount of time people are spending on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is rapidly expanding. 

The chart below - from Nielsen Wire - show that the time spent on social networking sites increased 82% year over year and is over 5 hours per month. 

The chart also shows that the global, unique number of people who visited social networking sites in December exceeded 300 million. 

As our post last week shows, Facebook is dominating this sector. 

Small businesses have noticed and a rapidly increasing number are creating Facebook pages and fan sites.  A fun and interesting example I ran across last week is the fan page for artisan soap maker Sarva Soaps.

Top 10 Social Networking Sites

Marketing Charts has a good post on the top social networking sites.  Not surprisingly, Facebook is by far the leader.  Their chart, shown below, ranks the top 10 sites by visits.  The data is for the U.S. and from Hitwise. 

 
  
This chart is another data point showing that Facebook may be taking over the web.

Reshaping Business Education In a New Era

The McKinsey Quarterly's Reshaping Business Education in a New Era is one of the best descriptions of how business education needs to change I've seen. 

It is an interview with Blair Sheppard, Dean of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and he discusses the changing student expectations and environment business schools face. 

The key points are (1) there is growing student interest in social entrepreneurship and public-sector management; (2) business schools need to provide an integrated curriculum that includes other departments and majors beyond the business school (environmental education and public policy studies are given as examples); and (3) the schools need to provide a broader, more diverse set of degrees and programs.

Registration is required at McKinsey Quarterly, but this interview is well worth the effort.  There is also an interview transcript.

Follow the Money to Spot Trends

One of the tools we use in our small business trend identification process is "following the money."  By this we mean keeping track of where venture capitalists, private equity firms and money managers are investing. 

The reason we do this is simple.  The rewards associated with successful investing are enormous - just ask anyone working for Goldman Sachs.  Because of this, the financial industry attracts very smart people and spends a lot of time, energy and money trying to understand where things are going. 

Money management firm Oppenheimer recently released their list of 2010 investment themes.  One of their key themes is the recovery will be led by the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and other developing nations.  The chart below from their report highlights expected 2010 economic growth for selected countries.

 

This growth picture is a key reason we believe small business globalization will increase in 2010 and continue to grow in the coming years. 

Autism Clusters and the Coming Human Enhancement Divide

NPR has a fascinating, but not surprising, story on autism clusters.  According to researchers at UC Davis, clusters of children diagnosed with autism tend to occur in places where parents are older, well educated and white.

It's not that these people have more kids with autism.  The clusters occur because this socio-economic group is more likely to go through the time consuming, complicated and often expensive diagnosis process. 

This is an early sign of the coming human enhancement divide.  Simply put, rich people are going to have better access to technologies and drugs that improve cognitive ability and other forms of human enhancement than poor people.  The same will be true for rich countries versus poor countries. 

Cognitive enhancement is already here in the form of drugs (called nootropics) that improve concentration.  The ADD drug Ritalin, for example, is widely used by students, high tech workers, financial professionals and others interested in gaining a mental edge.  

More powerful nootropics are under development, and other forms of human enhancement and genetic engineering are much closer to use than commonly believed.

I'm often asked what future trends scare me.  Cheap, easy to make bio-weapons tops my list. 

But not far behind is human enhancement.  This field and technologies are moving much faster than our ability to deal with the related ethical and moral issues. 

Pet Industry Trends

One of my favorite list of trends is the annual Pet Industry Trends from Laura Bennett and published on SmallBizTrends.

We own 3 dogs, so this topic is near to my heart.

My favorite trends relate to the activities of pet parents.  These are people who treat their pets as children.  Great quote from the trends list:

"Pet parents are including their pets in their own lifestyles so visits to the spa, exercise regimes, and restaurants have become more common in urban areas."

The number of pet parents continues to grow and as baby boomers age, we will see more of them.

My brother and sister-in-law are pet parents.  Their dog, Chico, goes with them everywhere including spas, the gym and restaurants.  Chico has organized "play dates" and they spend more time worrying about his emotional well-being than we do with our human kids. 

I'm not a pet parent, I'm a dog owner.  The big difference is my poor dogs will never visit a spa, or go to the gym with me.  I do take them to a local restaurant on occasion, but they are tied up outside.  Chico sits at the table. 

The article mentions proposed legislation - the Happy Act - that would allow taxpayers to deduct up to $3,500-a-year in pet care expenses, including vet care.

Given the state of human health care in this country and our growing deficit problem, this may be the dumbest way to spend tax money I've heard in a long time.  The article says it is unlikely to pass.  I hope this is true. 

Despite being just a dog owner, I enjoy reading about pet trends.

Myths About Entrepreneurial Risk and Growth

Several interesting articles this week on entrepreneurial risk and and small business growth.  Over at Business Week, John Tozzi covers the recent New Yorker article Sure Thing (subscription required to read the full article) by Malcolm Gladwell.  It says entrepreneurs are not wild risk-takers.

As John points out, anyone who has been an entrepreneur or small business owner - or has talked to them about business will not find Gladwell's article surprising. 

I'm curious about where the myth of entrepreneurs being unbridled risk takers comes from.  I can't think of a single successful entrepreneur that fits this description. 

This week's other interesting myth article comes from the New York Times.  Why Would a  Business Say No to Growth covers a pizza shop in Chicago that is choosing not to grow.  The article's closing sentences are "Is there something wrong with that? If not, why don’t more people make the same choice?"

Actually, the majority of small businesses do make this choice.

We did some research about 1.5 years ago on how small business owners define success.  We found few small business owners had an objective of growing their small business into a medium or large business.  Most felt their businesses weren't capable of becoming big, or they believed it wouldn't be worth the effort to get big. 

Since that project, we generally ask entrepreneurs and small business owners about this in our interviews and surveys. 

We consistently hear from established small businesses that most are looking for modest growth and many no growth, with owner lifestyle reasons increasingly the reason given. 

Unlike the risk myth, I understand where this comes from.  High growth entrepreneurs are widely celebrated.  This leads to the impression all entrepreneurs are trying to build the next Google or Apple, even though most are not.   

Tatum Survey of Business Conditions Optimistic

The January Survey of Business Conditions from executives services, consulting and search firm Tatum provides a positive view of the economy. 

According to the survey "The Tatum Index of Business Conditions as of January 1 took a leap upwards and definitely out of Recession territory."

The survey respondents were also positive about business conditions for the next 60 days.  Key quote:

"the outlook for the next 60 days was positive for all indicators in the Survey: Order Backlogs, Capital Expenditure Commitments, Employment, and Financing Conditions."

Tatum surveys about 1,000 CFOs, controllers and CIOs across a wide range of industries and company sizes.

While other surveys are less optimistic about the economic outlook - NFIB's, for example - this survey is another indication that the recession has ended and the economic recovery has begun. 

Guardian Life's Small Business Research Center

At Smallbizlabs we are always excited when we find a new source of small business data or research.  And yes, we don't get out as much as we should.   

Anyway, yesterday I stumbled across a new, or at least new to me, small business research institute.  It is from Guardian Life, who describe their Small Business Institute as "an intellectual resource devoted to better understanding America’s small business owners."

I haven't had a chance to look closely at their work, but they have a couple of things that caught my eye:

1.  They are forecasting that women owned small businesses will generate 5 to 5.5 million new U.S. jobs by 2018.  This is roughly half the jobs the BLS is projecting the U.S. small business sector will generate in that time frame. 

***Update: There is a Forbes article on this study*** 

2.  The Guardian Life Index, which measures the things that matter to small business owners and their employees. 

All in all their research, data and analysis looks pretty interesting and well worth following. 

Inc. on Home-Based Businesses

Inc. Magazine has a special section on home-based businesses.  Several articles and lots of good stuff on the topic:

1.  9 Businesses You Can Start in Your Pajamas profiles 9 different home-based businesses.

2.  How to Make a Million in Your Pajamas covers the growing ranks of home-based entrepreneurs and discusses two very interesting home businesses.  One is a clothing company that has over 50 part-time and contract employees, the other creates digital maps. 

3.  Essential Tools for Every Home Office is a slide show of cool tools and equipment that make home offices more productive.  I'm definitely looking into Idea Paint (pictured below).  It turns walls into white boards.  

 
 
For more on home-based businesses, see our research report Homepreneurs:  A Vital Economic Force, which is referenced in the Inc. articles.

Employee Satisfaction, Boomer Retirement and Small Business Formation

Two trends we follow closely at Small Business Labs are employee satisfaction levels and information related to baby boomer retirement plans.  We follow these because they both relate to the decision to start a small or personal business.

Research consistently shows that the number 1 reason people start small businesses is to be their own boss.  So as folks become less satisfied at work, they are more likely to venture out on their own. 

According to a recent Conference Board survey, job satisfaction is at the lowest levels they've recorded in the survey's 22 year history.  The chart on the right is from their study and is pretty self-explanatory.   

On the baby boomer retirement front, MSN's Retirement? Good Luck with That presents a pretty dismal view of boomers' ability to retire. 

We've long forecasted that Boomers will stay in the workforce longer than the prior generation and will increasingly start and work for small businesses as they age.  The Great Recession has increased the need for Boomers to work longer and data sources are showing that start-up formation is increasing for people 55+.

VC Turned Hobbypreneur

Great interview on the I Want to Be Rich blog about a former VC associate and current Twitter employee's craft-based side business.  Well worth watching.

For those who don't want to watch, the bottom line is her part-time craft business earned her more income than her VC job.

Thanks to the New Entrepreneur blog for the link. 

Top 10 Small Business Trends for 2010

In what has become an annual tradition, below is our top 10 small business trends list for 2010 (click here for our 2009 list, here for 2008). 

The economy continues to be the key issue facing small business.  We expect a country & western song type of recovery in 2010 - we've been down so low, the bottom looks like up.  We anticipate moderate economic growth and stubbornly high unemployment.

Economic Trends 

1.  The Shift to Contingent Workers Turns Employees into Entrepreneurs:  Employers large and small are shifting from full-time employees to part-timers, freelancers, outsourced services, partnership arrangements and other forms of contingent workers.  They are doing this to save money and increase business flexibility.  Despite the economic recovery, 2010 will see the contingent workforce grow as companies continue to limit hiring of full time staff.  Many of these contingent workers will create or work for small businesses.

2.  Personal Businesses on the Rise:  Enabled by the Internet and low-cost information technology, the number of personal businesses (one employee businesses) has grown twice as fast as the overall economy over the last decade and exceeds 22 million.  With the unemployment rate remaining high and traditional employment options limited, 2010 will be another year of strong growth in the number of personal businesses.  The growth in personal businesses will also result in an increase in overall small business formation and numbers in 2010.

3.  Small Business Lending Returns to Pre-Bubble Levels:  The Great Recession was caused in large part by a decade long credit bubble.  The recession ended the bubble and small business borrowing was extremely difficult in 2009.  2010 will see a thawing of credit markets, but the easy credit environment of the last decade will not come back.  Instead, lending standards will return to pre-bubble levels and only highly credit worthy small businesses will be able to borrow.  Because of this, the availability and use of alternative credit sources - merchant advances, micro-lending, community lending, factoring, etc. - will grow as sub-prime small businesses seek funds. 

Social Trends

4.  The New Local Movement:  New localism is a long-term trend whose impact has been accelerated by the recession.  Driven by changing demographics, new technology, rising energy prices and growing concerns about the environment, more Americans are focusing on their families, friends and communities.  Small businesses tap into and benefit from this trend several ways.  Small businesses allow greater community focus for the owner and employees, and they benefit from market opportunities created by locally-oriented customers. 

5.  There is No Place Like Home for Small Business:  Fueled by technology and enabled by low costs, 2010 will see the continued growth of home-based businesses.  According to the SBA half of all small business are home-based. Our research shows that about 6.6 million home-based enterprises provide at least half of their owners' household income, and together employ more than one in 10 private sector workers.  See our Top 10 Hompreneur Trends for 2010 list for more on home-based businesses.

6.  Clean and Green Creating Small Business Opportunities:  Despite the current climategate controversy, the trends towards sustainability, clean technology and green energy continue to gain strength with consumers and businesses.  In many cases the shift to sustainable business practices, products and services is changing how industries operate and creating a wide range of new small business opportunities.

Technology Trends

7.  Social, Mobile and Cloud Computing Converge:  All three of these interrelated technologies have been on our top 10 list for several years.  Mobile and social computing entered the mainstream in 2009, and cloud computing will join them in 2010.  Individually, each of these technologies is having a major impact on small business.  But the increasing convergence of these technologies is amplifying their impact and fundamentally changing how business is done.

8.  Location Technology and Services:  With the near ubiquity of GPS systems in smartphones and cars, consumer and business use of location aware applications will grow dramatically in 2010.  Location information on businesses and consumers will become common and merge with online reviews and ratings.  The use of location-based marketing services will grow as location data makes the shift from offline to online marketing even more powerful and attractive.

9.  Analytical Tools Lead to Data-Driven Decisions:  Sophisticated yet easy-to-use tools are allowing small businesses to move from "gut level" decision making to evidence-based management.  Online marketing and customer relationship management systems in particular allow small businesses to develop data-driven marketing and support programs that even recently were available only to large corporations.

10.  Online Training Brings Professional Education to Small Business:  Low-cost yet highly professional online training courses and programs provide small business with the ability to improve productivity and employee engagement.  Often utilizing digital video and delivered just-in-time, online training provides small business with the ability to adapt and adjust to changing business conditions.  Negatively impacted by the recession, small business use of online training will accelerate in 2010. 

10 Emerging Technology Trends from 2020 Science

2020 Science is a blog focused on the future of science and technology.   It is one of my favorite science blogs. 

Their Emerging Technologies to Watch list is:

1. Geoengineering
2. Smartgrids
3. Radical materials
4. Synthetic biology (engineering DNA)
5. Personal genomics
6. Bio-interfaces
7. Data-interfaces
8. Solar power
9. Nootropics (drugs that enhance cognitive ability)
10. Cosmeceuticals (cosmetics that also deliver drugs)

The post also discusses convergence as a mega trend.  Key quote:

And one final word.  Many of the technologies I’ve highlighted reflect an overarching trend: convergence.  Although not a technology in itself, synergistic convergence between different areas of knowledge and expertise will likely dominate emerging technology trends over the next decade. 

For details on the 10 trends, or more on the future of science visit Science 2020. 

Business Week on the Local Food Movement

BusinessWeek's excellent article Entrepreneurs Keep the Local Food Movement Hot covers the growing trend towards local food.  Key quote:

"Just as consumers focus new attention on what we eat and where it comes from, farmers, foodmakers, restaurateurs, retailers, distributors, and processors are rethinking the business models behind it."

As a former Kansas farm boy and current suburban farmer, this is one of my favorite trends.  We cover it often in our Small Farms category. 

Part of a broader new localism trend, consumers are increasingly looking to goods and services produced locally with local food being a major interest category. 

Local food has become so trendy that according to New York Magazine local farmers are becoming cult heroes and "New Yorkers are beginning to fetishize farmers the way we once did chefs."  Fetishize farmers???

The article references Community Food Enterprise, a good source of information on the local food movement. 

Tablet Computing Trends - Lessons from OLPC

The rumor mill is abuzz about Apple releasing a tablet PC early next year. 

But I'm more excited about One-Laptop-Per-Child's (OLPC) planned release of a tablet in 2012. 

For those not familiar with OLPC, it is a non-profit founded years ago with the goal of creating a laptop computer that would be cheap and rugged enough to supply to millions of children in the developing world.

OLPC is not well known, but I consider them one of the most important technology companies of the last decade. 

I say this because their impact on the computer industry has been enormous.  OLPC effectively invented the netbook PC category and their relentless focus on costs spurred Intel and others to create cheaper PC componentry, laptops and desktops. 

Their design focus - very low costs, ease of use, portability, ruggedness and connectivity - has led to breakthrough ideas and designs that have been quickly copied by the rest of the computer industry. 

And along the way, millions of children who would not have had access to computers and the Internet have it due to OLPC.  Not bad for a small, under-funded non-profit. 

Their new tablet will be made of a single sheet of flexible plastic that will be unbreakable.  The hook on the corner will be used for carrying the PC and the price goal is less than $100.  Low cost components mean less power than a full sized PC, but plenty of juice for almost all PC users. 

Expect to see variations of this design from a variety of computer manufacturers over the next couple of years.