Innovation Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Innovation Business - Essay Example Energy: Global energy requirement is growing continuously notwithstanding the exhaustible nature of conventional sources like coal, oil and natural gas, or even in the face of growth of renewable sources like wind, solar, geothermal, tidal etc. This trend will get accentuated as mankind breaks the shackles of earthly existence, to routinely make interplanetary travel to colonize the outer space. In this scenario, conventional meaning of energy or its quantities will become obsolete. What could be the characteristics of such energy? The new form of energy may be something from within rather than without. For example, a person walks by the mere intention of walking, aided by muscular power. Can the intention or the mental power, which is limitless, be made more important than the limited muscular power? Mental power is inherent to living things and I forecast that we will discover something similar in non-living things as well, and follow it up by innovations to energize it in a limitl ess manner. Inner-city transport: Personal and public transport as we see today is unsustainable as a factor of growth. Millions of cars on the ever-expanding streets/highways, or rail-transport systems moving masses of humanity, cry for alternative solutions for people living in metropolitan cities like Los Angeles, New York, London, Tokyo and Shanghai. The expensive fuel that is being spent and the exhausting nature of travel just to get to somewhere is the rationale for innovative ideas for inner-city transport. I forecast that a system of point-to-point moving platforms will substantially reduce roads/vehicles in a way that will combine the convenience of private vehicles and sustainability of public transport. Water: Water in oceans and other saline waters make up for the bulk of global water constituting 97.5% while only 1% of all the water on earth is fit for use by humans, according to the US Geological Survey; of this 1%, groundwater is 99% balance being surface water in la kes and rivers (n.d. web, USGS). Thus potable water is one of the very scarce but vital resources of earth, seriously impacting millions of people. As pointed out by USGS, the earth is a practically closed system, neither losing nor gaining any matter including water (ibid.). This natural phenomenon makes me forecast innovative recycling of the entire quantity of water that we use, at individual household level rather than the present practice of wastewater treatment and discharge by municipalities. Q.2 Threat of substitution GE’s innovative diamonds from coal are substitutes for DeBeers natural diamonds who enjoyed virtual monopoly in diamond trade till now. This situation changes the industry competition to oligopoly. Pure oligopoly markets are characterized by a few players producing identical products while in differentiated oligopoly, product features, styling, service etc. differ. GE’s synthetic diamonds are more economical and as the CEO of DeBeers, I can only m eet this price challenge by significantly reducing/destroying the profitability of the industry. Further more, there is no guarantee that GE’s success is not repeated by another firm with equal technical and financial clout, although there are not likely to be too many competitors of GE’s stature. Hence, price is not the weapon of combat. In the normal course, a customer perceives value of his purchase in terms of