Changes to this journal are upon us, as we upgrade themes, re-organise content and generally make this a cool magazine.

Innovations from CeBIT, a wrap-up of analysis from CeBIT & some future Innovation Themes!

Trends & Predictions. Innovation Cities benchmark. Sharing & publishing ideas. All will be bigger & better in 2009, as we roll-out the final version of 2thinknow, after extensive testing in 2008.

If you’re new here at 2thinknow, and you’re interested in the latest ideas on trends, companies and innovation, subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for your visit!COMMENT. Melbourne — A colleague of mine, of mature age, a professional director, told me he does not understand one thing about Melbourne’s directors.
How so many directors keep getting roles with less than stellar performance.
As a competent, good Director, he is mystified.
Shhh…
Of course no-one in the community says this publicly. I am a member of peak body AICD, and never heard it …

COMMENT, Melbourne — The publisher of this journal, 2thinknow, is in the process of relocating from Wednesday 14th to Tuesday 21st February 2008.

We have a nice new office overlooking the skyline city of Melbourne, in the inner-city suburb of Southbank.
Of course the copier is not yet plugged in, servers not working, and the writers are not yet being edited.
The espresso machine is working though. Thankfully.

In Australia inevitably you end up being ‘hands on’ with any task (if you need it done right), so it was 3am the night before.
Talk to …

COMMENT, USA, Australia, UK– I look forward to a culture of ideas, dreams, art and individual creativity.Well I can hope! Many of you have said to me you dream of the same thing.
But first we have to get over this industrialist mass-produced thinking.
Here’s how the current global model goes:
Produce goods in a large a quantity as possible.
Ensure all production and pollution is outsourced to a developing country.
Ship goods all over the world.
Repeat until planet chokes.

ANALYSIS, Global – Satire has always been a weapon people use when they know most of the news they are watching is untrue or missing the point.
Whilst I applaud many fine Print Journalists, the fact is that the bias inherent in many publications and TV, means that media is increasingly untrusted.
The average person knows on some level that the mass media exists to propagate a message that is not about enlightening debate.They know Rupert’s media on some level is about Rupert…

ANALYSIS, Australia — The significance of Kevin Rudd beating substantively John Howard as Australia’s leader cannot be overstated in terms of global politics.
Background for our global readers: Rudd is from the Left, although a moderate. Howard was from the Right, and part of a NSW branches of the Right that are increasingly moving far-Right, by Australian standards (although not yet Neo-Conservative).
And Australia generally prefers moderates and punishes radicalism.
The true significance of this win, has been lost on some commentators. Here’s why…

COMMENT, Global – A couple of months ago I was in San Francisco at a business event. The topic was citizen journalism. The women next to me was writing paper notes.
However, every single person, almost in that room was writing on a laptop.
The wireless internet crashed in the first 15 minutes. A few people were asked to turn off ‘Bit-torrent’ a heavy duty file downloader/sharer. Napster-ish.
We’ll contrast that later with an event in Australia last week.

COMMENT, Global – Today we are coming into a world where the ability to yell loudest counts for more than the structuring of logic in an argument.

Australia is having an Election on November 24. The rhetoric is thick and fast.
The Australian televised political debate, and subsequent wrap-up; has been full of the usual political shenanigans.

COMMENT, Global: 2thinknow ® have identified Web 2.0 as one of the big trends sweeping the business world in a short to medium term.
If you feel Web 2.0 is a buzzword. it is. But then again unlike most, this one is useful.
What is Web 2.0?
In short Web 2.0 is the new new printing press, wireless and TV Tube.

COMMENT, Sydney – I was staying in the Crowne Plaza Parramatta again last night.
In the next room, someone was smoking drugs.

COMMENT, Global – 24/7 may be good for some individuals, but the majority of us still work some version of 9 to 5.
Our sleep and lives cannot help be impacted by the people around us who work night-shifts.
Society’s need some standards. Rampant individualism impacts the whole.
In last nights hotel I was woken by round-the-clock traffic not there 10 years ago.
At home, in the space of 3 years, there has been a rapid increase in the amount of traffic going to and from work at all hours. Our formerly quiet place …

TRAVEL COMMENT, Sydney — Having retired at a graceful hour last night, I was hoping for a good night’s sleep.Not possible.

The nice view I had of Darling Harbour, was interrupted (like everything in Sydney) by 24/7 traffic.

TRAVEL COMMENT, Sydney — Tonight I am in the glamorous Sydney, in the Four Points Sheraton at Darling Harbour (actually the old Hotel Nikko).
After having spent my day in the not so glamorous suburban Parramatta.

ANALYSIS, Global – We have a lot of goods. Cars, books, stereos, DVDs, printers, computers, Walkmans, toys, clothes, kitchenware, etc.
Even jeans (I don’t know about you, but I’ll never fit into them again!)

When we are finished with goods we throw them out. Doesn’t have to be that way…

COMMENT, Global – Which cities have the best espresso coffee in the world?
Well we may have some ideas about which have the worst… But the best?
Before we get to that let’s look at some interesting facts and insights about why coffee is important…

A vintage article on coffee and inspiration from our 2007 series. How do you tell if you’re getting great espresso? And why is coffee so essential to innovation?

COMMENT, Australia — Normally I don’t do this.
Make predictions, that is (in public, yet!).
However I am testing innovation models used for prediction. My innovation analysis though shows 3 likely outcomes for Australia.

(Photo by Ester Inbar )

ANALYSIS-IN-BRIEF, Global –Tim Berners-Lee is the father of the internet as a useful tool, in the form of the Web. He was there at the web’s birth, as the picture of the CERN web server following shows.

If you want to understand the future of the internet, as a communication medium then read Berners-Lee’s book, “Weaving the Web”.