On May 21 2013 Tim Cook stood before the US Senate. Apple had enjoyed unprecedented success over the last decade, and globally the brand’s popularity has soared with international revenues double those from local markets. He was asked whether Apple is still proud to be an American company. He emphatically replied yes, more than ever. Whilst the question was supposed to be about taxation, Cook replied with a bigger passion. Whilst iPhones and iPads are manufactured across the globe, the ideas behind their success – design and innovation – happens within one zipcode, 95014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHO-hiTQs_Y
At Cupertino, in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley where Steve Jobs grew up, then surrounded by orange orchards, and later by tech start-ups, Apple is building a new futuristic campus. Shortly before he died, Steve Jobs made one final public appearance, in front of Cupertino’s planning committee. He talked of his love of the place Apple calls home, and the people, “the brightest, most creative people on the planet” he called his team. He wanted to ensure he secured a great place for them to continue his work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyQfye4vAQ8
In the same month, Apple launched a huge marketing program with the slogan “Designed by Apple in California”. It’s a signature that has been enscribed on the back of every Apple device for decades, but it says more about Apple, and the business world now than ever. It reminds us that we live in an ideas world, that Apple is a creative business, working with the best technical partners across the globe, to create great products, with a brand that captures the world’s imagination. Whilst most businesses are now a mosaic of nationalities, heritage and iconic images are what inspire us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Q8ofD-s3E
The rest of Apple story has already been told. From the early days of 1976 when Jobs and Steve Wozniak launched Apple 1 at the Homebrew Computer Club, and made his first million that year, to Apple 2 two years later when his wealthy had grown to $100m. In 1984 the “Mac team” flies a pirate flag above their office, and launches the Mac at that years Superbowl. But soon after, they were gone, refusing to be slaves to conventional management.
Rejoining Apple in 1997, having made $1.5 billion at NeXT and Pixar, Jobs “thinks different” with his multi-coloured iMacs. iPod and iTunes, iPhone and iPad soon followed. Whilst people loved and hated Jobs, his passion was to make things people loved, to create a better life. This purpose, more than the pursuit of money or innovation, is what has inspired Apple, and inspired consumers, to build a great brand.
New muscle tissue, replacement arteries, livers and kidneys, even a heart transplant … Organova’s 3D printers are ready to play with nature, made to order in a lab. As millions of people sit waiting around the world for organ transplants, and alternative is rapidly emerging. Print the perfect replace now, ready in a few hours, rather than waiting years for a suitable match.
Co-founder and CEO of the San Diego-based innovator, Keith Murphy , says “Surgeons are very limited by what they have available today. If you can give them tissue to order, you can multiply, exponentially, the types of surgery that we can even envision doing. By uniquely using a patient’s own cells, surgeons can do even more remarkable things.”
Working in partnership with the University of Missouri, Organovo leads the way in bio-printing, or tissue engineering. The NovoGen MMX Bioprinter uses human cells and shapes them into real tissue, unlike other players who make the organs out of synthetic materials and then bond them to existing cells. The printer ejects a liquid filled with thousands of human cells, guided by lasers. The process repeats, creating hundreds of layers of cells, held together with a gel. The cells begin to grow, meshing themselves together, as they would in the body, and into actual tissue.
Organovo partners with commercial businesses like Pfizer, and academic institutions, including Harvard Medical School, to bring together the best research and expertise, and to test the emerging tissue samples. Hundreds of patents have been filed, and sample kidneys and livers already produced.
Here is an extract of an article from the Huffington Post:
Three-dimensional printing has been used to make everything from pizza and prosthesis and now researchers are working on using the emerging technology to fabricate hearts, kidneys, and other vital human organs.
That would be very big news, as the number of people who desperately need an organ transplant far outstrips the number of donor organs available. On average, about 21 Americans die every day because a needed organ was unavailable.
What exactly is the promise of 3D printing organs and tissues, or ‘bioprinting?” How does the technology work, and when might it start saving lives?
For answers to these and other questions, HuffPost Science reached out to Dr Antony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and a world-renowned expert in the field, to find out.
See below for a lightly edited version of the Q & A.
Can 3D printing end the shortage of organs?
3D printing is not magic. It is simply a way to scale up the current processes we use to engineer organs in the laboratory. Our team has successfully engineered bladders, cartilage, skin, urine tubes and vaginas that have been implanted in patients. Our goal is produce organ structures such as these with 3D printing to make the engineering process more precise and reproducible. The ultimate goal of regenerative medicine -– regardless of the way the organs are engineered — is to help solve the shortage of donor organs.
How might 3D-printed organs compare to donor organs?
Our goal is to engineer organs using a patient’s own cells. With this approach, there would be no issues with rejection, and patients wouldn’t have to take the powerful anti-rejection drugs that are now required. This is certainly one advantage of customized organs.
What’s the actual process by which organs would be “printed?”
A first step in organ engineering –- whether it involves 3D printing or other methods –- is to get a biopsy of the organ that needs to be replaced. From this biopsy, certain cells with regenerative potential are isolated and multiplied. These cells are then mixed with a liquid material that provides oxygen and other nutrients to keep them alive. This mixture is placed in a printer cartridge. A separate printer cartridge is filled with a biomaterial that will be printed into the organ- or tissue-shaped structure. The structure is designed on a computer using a patient’s medical scans.
When happens when you press the “print” button?
When the “print” button is pushed, the printer builds the structure layer by layer and embeds cells into each layer. When cells are provided the right mixture of nutrients and growth factors –- and placed in the right environment — they know what to do and perform their functions. For some structures, two or more types of cells may be required.
What challenges are you facing?
Scientists have successfully engineered three categories of organs: flat structures such as skin; tubular structures such as urine tubes and blood vessels; and hollow structures such as the bladder. The most complex organs are solid structures such as the kidney, liver, and pancreas. Some of the challenges we face with these organs are learning to grow the billions of cells required for these organs, as well as learning how to best supply the new organs with oxygen until they integrate with the body.
We are exploring a variety of options that include printing oxygen-generating materials into the structures; printing micro-channels that can maximize the diffusion of nutrients and oxygen from nearby tissues; and printing blood vessels into the structures.
How many years away are we from printing complex organs like the heart and kidney?
Science is unpredictable, so it is impossible to make predictions. But I think we can safely say that the timeframe required to routinely print and implant complex organs is decades, rather than years.
What are some recent breakthroughs that have brought us closer to making 3D printed organs a reality?
We are continuing to refine our printers to increase printing resolution and learning how to keep the printing process from damaging cells. In addition, we are making advances in identifying which biomaterials work best for specific structures. And, we are great making strides printing with multiple cells types and controlling placement of cells.
What are the next steps?
One relatively new bioprinting project, funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, aims to print mini hearts, livers, blood vessels, and lung on a chip system. Called a “Body on a Chip,” this project has the potential to test new drugs more accurately and perhaps eliminate the need for testing in animals. The immediate goal is to test effects on the body of biological weapons and to develop antidotes.
You lie on the hospital bed, wheeled along corridors towards a date with your heart surgeon. As the doors of the operating theatre swing open, you are met by the bright lights and gadgetry. Sedated, your eye scans the room for the cheery surgeon in his green gown, maybe putting on his mask and reassuring you that everything will be fine.
Instead you see a gleaming $2.5 million, multi-limbed machine. This is da Vinci, your robotic surgeon, now operating with more precision, speed and efficiency than is humanly possible, in over 2500 hospitals around the world. Relax. As the anaesthetic now kicks in, you are in safe hands, of sorts.
In fact the surgeon is (currently) still part of the procedure, sitting with a computer interface that shows a 3D image of your body’s interior, using a joystick instead of his forceps and scalpel.
The $50,000 endoscopic camera helps the surgeon navigate through the body, as if playing a computer game. An array of diagnostic and operating tools are available, either with manual or intuitive controls. Surgeons quickly learn to finesse the new instruments, although it could be argued that a game-playing teenager might be even better at handling the controls.
Intuitive Surgical develops and builds the robotic da Vinci systems from its base in Sunnyvale, California. It brings together experts experience as diverse as NASA’s ability to operate the space station from Earth, and more traditional hands-on surgeons. Innovations in components, and the software that supports it, are developing fast. A new fluorescent imaging system is able to quickly identify cancer, whilst a new portable da Vinci system can be placed on a table, and operated with the help of a Microsoft Kinect gaming set.
The benefits are huge – the procedure is better, because the surgeon combine his own skill and judgement, with the precise movements and instruments of the machine – but also faster and cheaper, with many operations possible by accessing the body through a small belly-button insertion which enables much faster procedures and patient recovery.
Having originally been developed under contract to the US Army for battlefield surgery, da Vinci is becoming available, and mostly preferred, by surgeons worldwide. With investments of almost £3 billion, Intuitive is now generating annual revenues over $500m and growing.
M-Pesa (M for mobile, pesa is Swahili for money) is a mobile-phone based money transfer system that grew out of “I owe you” text messages promising future payments in a region where banking is still primitive, and credit cards are rare. Developed by Kenya’s mobile operator, Safaricom and also licensed to Vodacom, it offers a fast and easy payment method across Africa.
Such has been its simple but successful development, with over 3 billion M-Pesa accounts registered (that’s almost half the world’s population?!), that it has become the most admired mobile payments system in the developing world, allowing users with an identity card to deposit, withdraw, and transfer money easily with a phone.
Having seen how markets without fixed-line telephones leapfrogged directly to mobile devices, what is interesting here, is how consumers embrace the added value services of their phones faster much more quickly and actively than in developed markets.
Launched in 2007 as part of a Kenyan high school technology project, M-Pesa initially focused on providing loans to local entrepreneurs from the Safaricom stores. However people quickly started paying back the loans immediately, or getting others to, in the form of payments and transfers. It has quickly been adopted for all kinds of transactions, from paying bills to accessing real bank accounts.
The service now allows users to deposit money into an account stored on their cell phones, to send balances using SMS to other users (individuals or businesses), and to redeem deposits for regular money at the nearest bank, post office, or Safaricom store. Users are charged a small fee for sending and withdrawing money.
Safaricom recently launched a second financial brand, M-Shwari in partnership with Commercial Bank of Africa, allowing M-Pesa customers to save and borrow money through their mobile phone, earning interest on the money saved. It includes an emergency loan facility at affordable interest rates, unusual for Africa. From a new payment currency, the business has become a liensed bank.
Making life smooth and easy … or “Lainisha maisha na M-Shwari”, as they say in Swahili.
The Acacia tree in the brand logo represents a bank with roots that run deep in South African society. FNB is the oldest bank in South Africa, originally the Eastern Province Bank founded in 1838, and today, a division of FirstRand Bank Limited.
“FNB lives and breathes innovation” says CEO Michael Jordaan. “Every employee can be an innovator and can change the way we work” based on what he calls bottom-up strategies, delivered by a bottom-up organisation hierarchy.
These innovations include FNB Africa’s “Bank in a bag” making joining a very tangible experience, online personal banking, a rewards program, digital apps and links to other retail loyalty programs. At the heart of these initiatives is a mobile “eWallet” from which customers can make cardless payments and cash withdrawals using SMS confirmations, Pay2Cell, and Facebook Vouchers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBuqrcdrZLI
The eWallet service allows customers to send money to anyone in South Africa with a valid mobile phone number. Funds can be transferred instantly, and the recipient receives a text message indicating that funds have been sent to their mobile phone.
The recipient is then able to withdraw cash at FNB ATMs, buy pre-paid airtime or electricity, send money to another phone, purchase and/or get cash at selected retailers, as well as make once-off payments.
To encourage and sustain this innovation drive, FNB has an annual innovations award, encouraging staff to creatively deliver solutions aligned to the company’s strategy, and contribute towards growth targets. Over 1000 initiatives contend for the award each year.
“It’s incredible to be part of an organisation where its people continuously come up with innovative ideas that are very often implemented. As a leader I encourage people to think out of the box and come up with an innovative set of ideas or solutions that will ultimately benefit our customers, so that our business evolves with new mindsets and visions of the future,” says Jordaan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8DkKEmkPeU
“We’re changing the way banking happens” says Andy Lark, CMO of Australia’s most innovative bank. Leading the way in using mobile and social media, CommBank is using technology to enable its customers to achieve more, as well as making transactions fast and easy. It sees the intimacy of social relationships between its customers as the best way to rebuild trust and transparency, whilst mobile apps seek to help people in their everyday lives, beyond money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRoeoduHKCU
With over 1100 branches, the 48000 employees work as one collaborative team, supported by Chatter, an internal social network. Externally, the bank uses Facebook as its platform to make each customers experience more personal and relevant. Apps then enhance this experience in different ways for different situations.
Take buying a new house, for example. CommBank forms relationships with real estate companies to transform the home buying experience. Bank customers get advance notice of new properties. Find the location on the smartphone map. Arrive and see the details with augmented reality. Check the asking price, and how much mortgage payments would be from CommBank. Click to buy, and the bank will bring together all the necessary people and paperwork to make it happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OztuiMoYX80
Rakuten Ichiba is one of the world’s largest online shopping mall. Founded in Tokyo in 1997, it has built a $5 billion global presence through the acquisitions of complementary busineses such as Buy.com in USA, Ikeda in Brazil, Tradoria in Germany and Play.com in the UK. Whereas other marketplaces may compete directly with sellers, Rakuten empowers merchants to deliver “Omotenashi”, a Japanese attitude to customer service and hospitality, intended to help sellers create lasting relationships with buyers
“Omotenashi” is about creating a non-dominant relationship between a person who’s offering the service and a person who is receiving it. It could be the CEO of a big company, a famous star or an ordinary person, but there’s only one simple relationship between host and guest. An example of the best Omotenashi is when the host anticipates the needs of the guest in advance and offers a pleasant service that guests don’t expect. They should not wait for instructions from their guests, as guests who make their requests directly are considered unsophisticated in Japan.
Rakuten is not like Amazon, more like a mainstream, Japanese version of Etsy. It’s an online mall in the sense that it creates a platform where 30,000 independent retailers set up their virtual shops selling over 1 million different products. Like Amazon builds up rich data-driven profiles of consumers, to anticipate needs and match them with relevant retailers. It has central warehouses from where the retailers goods a centrally collated and then distributed to consumers. Like eBay it has an auction facility. This business model is sometimes referred to as a B2B2B2C model, just like a physical shopping, where retailers are charged a site lease fee, but also commissions on sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtMsrTqKbzs
Tatsuya Abe is Japan’s crab-meat king. His Yamato seafood company based in Shiogama offers the best-quality seafood, in particular the local favourite Alaskan and Russian taraba crab. However his wealthy consumers are niche and dispersed, making the investment in stores unrealistic. Instead he set up a virtual store on Rakuten Ichiba and was able to deliver his premium crab meat overnight. From initial monthly sales of ¥130,000 ($1500) he has grown his business, with relentless blogging, and online brand building, to ¥40 million ($45,0000) per month. Abe could not believe the growth, that now makes him one of the world’s largest crab importers. “Japanese people love crab. And Rakuten is a huge market.”
The company’s intent is “to create the number-one internet services company in the world” through continuous innovation, building on the 77 million consumers, who are attracted by online shopping and banking, to investments and travel, entertainment tickets and golf-course reservations.
CEO Hiroshi Mikitani sees two big challenges for Japanese to become a global business – “Englishnization” or adoption of English as the practical language of the world, and “disgalapagosisation” by which he means an end to Japan’s sense national superiority, which he he believes in increasingly isolating many Japanese businesses. At the same time, Mikitani has made it his mission to give economic hope to small traders across Japan. “There are so many merchants who could have gone bankrupt without Rakuten Ichiba,” he says. “The kimono industry, for example, wouldn’t now exist without Rakuten.”
Le Pain was founded in Brussels in 1990 by Alain Coumont, and is now famed around the world for its organic breads, coffee bowls and long wooden communal tables. As a young chef, Coumont was unhappy with the quality of local bread, so he began making his own sourdough loaves. He furnished his cafes with pieces from antique stores and flea markets. The bakery became a restaurant, most famous for its tartines (traditional, open-faced sandwiches).
“Whenever we can, we source organic ingredients. This way, we not only do what is good for the Earth, but we also ensure our ingredients are of the highest quality. It’s about finding the very best, in a way that is good for all of us” says the Belgian entrepreneur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hjZQxf5Xp4
This philosophy influences every part of the way Le Pain works, “from the food we serve to the design of our stores to the materials we use” has says. “We use reclaimed wood and recycled gypsum in construction, energy-efficient lamps, and environmentally friendly cleaning supplies and packaging”.
Of course, the rustic look could easily be see as just another cosmetic branding device “To us, organic is not a marketing gag as it is for other businesses who only offer environment-friendly coffee and basically greenwash the rest. Our ingredients are expensive, and we invest a lot of time and effort in locating the right suppliers. Organic is a tough business.”
The “communal table” is the centre piece of each bakery-café-restaurant (it’s difficult to say which it really is). “Without this table we would not be where we are today,” says Coumont. Believing that food is only as good as the people who sare it, he adds “a big table is like a good movie; the setting is not the only criteria – the actors are also important.”
Whilst Starbucks has modernised and multiplied the Italian coffee experience, and McDonalds has tried to bring some humanity and goodness to its plastic formats, Le Pain is the real thing. Authenticity, a sense of goodness, a natural and human experience, pervade each of the 200 locations in 20 countries. Each serving big Belgian bowls of hot coffee without any handles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBjjCH0e8UA
Amancio Ortega likes to say “fashion is like selling fish”. Fresh fish, like a freshly cut jacket in the latest colour sells quickly at a high price. An old catch has to be discounted or thrown away. “Selling fish” has made Inditex one of the world’s largest clothing retailers. From the first Zara store in the Spanish fishing port of La Coruña, opened in 1975, Ortego has added almost a hundred companies designing, making, and distributing the latest fashions. It has made him the richest man in Spain, and third in the world. With 6200 stores worldwide, and brands ranging from Bershka to Pull and Bear, Mango and Zara.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6RcEsnGf8E
Zara achieves speed and efficiency through an integrated system of design, production, logistics and distribution which also keeps stock minimal, and store range evolves almost weekly. Employees also convey a continuous flow of shopper information, what they try and buy, and why they don’t. The 200 person creative team each have direct links to a store around the world to ensure insights are captured directly and quickly, and the brand anticipates and responds to the latest trend.
Whilst competitors make clothes in distant low-cost markets, Inditex values the speed and proximity of Spain, Portugal and Morocco. New designs arrive every three days in stores, often in the same week as similar designs appear in magazines or fashion shows. They sell out quickly, usually at full price, and consumers come back weekly to see what’s new.
However Inditex’s centralised structure, now controlled from The Cube head office in Arteixo, a small fishing town in northwest Spain, is both a strength in Europe and weakness in other parts of the world. Whilst a $324m Fifth Avenue flagship store has been successful in New York, Zara with its tight slim-fit has struggled in other parts of USA. China is now the second largest market with over 150 stores. Fast, yet standardised fashions, work less well around the world.
Etsy has brought the world of local artisans and handmade crafts, vintage collectors and bored websurfers to the wider online world. Everything you might find in a local market, independent stores or Turkish Bazaar, is now accessible on Etsy. Handmade jewellery is the top seller, followed by wedding goods and oil paintings were not far behind. Whilst most goods initially came from North America (in particular from Oregon and Utah, sold to consumers in Alaska and Massachucetts), Chinese and Indian goods are rising fastest.
Etsy is the marketplace we make together.
Our mission is to reimagine commerce in ways that build a more fulfilling and lasting world.
We are a mindful, transparent, and humane business.
We plan and build for the long term.
We value craftsmanship in all we make.
We believe fun should be part of everything we do.
We keep it real, always.
Etsy was founded in 2005 by Rob Kalin – a keen painter, carpenter, and photographer – finding no viable marketplace to exhibit and sell his creations online, and other sites like eBay fill of overstocked electronics and fake goods. The business charges $0.20 per listing and takes a 3.5% cut of the sales price. In 2012 membership doubled to 22 million, with 14 million people making 1000 million purchase, resulting in revenues of close to $1 billion for the online marketplace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA0g-LcKeSE
Etsy Labs are an educational and physical showcase for small artist communities in Brooklyn and Berlin. They include free events and workshops that focus on teaching people how to make things. From screenprinting and knitting, to photography and bike repair. In an online world, they help to build creative communities physically too, and also have pop-up labs in major cities.
The business model is built around a community of participants, brought together by a love of great products rather than cheap prices. Blogs and forums, apps for every platform, links to Facebook and Twitter, keep the market active 24×7. Reputations are crucial to bother sellers and buyers, with both able to rate and review the other. The Etsy brand defines a marketplace, a community that is local and global, a movement of people with shared values, and as Kalin himself says, “about we more than me”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYfA0xr1aRI
Members love Esty so much that they themselves created a niche social media site to support their community. etsylove.ning.com has over 11.400 members who love the brand, and being connected to each, driving more purchases, more livelihoods and more art.
Case Study: Breaking the mould. How Etsy and online craft marketplaces are changing the nature of business