Idea Box

  • Introducing Sberbank

    Thank you to Dr. Mircea Mihaescu, Director, Sberbank Technology Research Center for being a Global Sponsor of the 2012 Startup Challenge supporting a Moscow Regional Startup Challenge later this year. 1.       In a few words, describe how Sberbank approaches innovation and your role in the big picture. The Sberbank Technology Research Center has been started in the [...]

  • The Edge Becomes The Core

    A couple of weeks ago, I had a discussion with colleague Joe on the program for one of our upcoming main Innotribe events. My colleague is not part of the innovation team, but has shown growing interest in what we are doing: great! Joe is known in the company as rather a conservative, cautious person, [...]

  • Leveling Up

    Six years ago I compared the way I viewed my life to Diablo II (ok, yes, I was a gamer at one time). I was going through some challenging things after kicking major ass at everything I had previously done....

  • The Innovation Sandbox – the place where “heads of innovation” meet

    It’s been a while that I have on my to do list to network with my peers – the people who have the same job as I have. The job I have (and love!) is “Head of Innovation” at SWIFT (www.swift.com), and co-founder of Innotribe (www.innotribe.com) – SWIFT’s innovation arm. In my particular case, I [...]

Innotribe Incubator – If you have ideas, read carefully!

In February 2011  Innotribe launched a new initiative, something we could compare to a big sandbox, called Innotribe Incubator.
We had already the Proof of Concepts (POC) in order to give some funding to ideas not really shaped yet, or to proof that a technology applied to a business issue could work. 

  • The ReXchange is Open

    With today’s kickoff of both Sibos and our Innotribe sessions, the ReXchange—the place to exchange currency for status, find out who’s got how many, and learn what you can spend it on in Thursday’s sessions—is open. Staffed by students from … Continue reading →

  • Please Microsoft, make a Windows 8 Kinetic

    I've never been a Microsoft fan. In fact I'm not big on anything that becomes omnipotent to the point of no longer being a choice (was an Apple fan until everything turned iPAD and closed eco-systems). Probably something to do with being Irish and having the history of our neighbours having the empire upon which the sun never set.That said I found myself rushing to the shop to buy a very cool Microsoft product not so long ago - the Xbox Kinetic. Now I have to add that I'm also not big on gaming mostly because I find the awkward and un-natural interfaces too much of a distraction from the game, but the Kinetic sounded too cool to resist. And it is pretty clever technology. It generated so much interest for developers that they offered an SDK for it (granted after numerous reverse engineering successes). Here was a real human interface device – it allows the Xbox to recognise me, track movements and recognise gestures.So here’s what puzzles me. Why on earth did they not follow that track instead of trying to incorporate the tablet UI. I don’t want smudges all over my 21" monitor; I’d much rather a second generation Kinetic sitting atop the screen providing a contactless interface to my device. No reason not to also build it into a tablet form factor. They have the patents, the relationship with manufacturers and the installed base, so what’s holding them back?Microsoft if you are listening, I don’t love you but I will call you if build Kinetic into the heart of Windows 8. Forget the current generation of tablets, they are just a distraction.