Glowing orbs could change eco-behavior worldwide

Wired magazine has an interesting story about how manager Mark Martinez at Southern California Edison (SCE) got customers to reduce energy consumption by giving them Ambient Orbs. They’re small spheres that change colors in response to changing streams of data — first marketed to monitor the stock market (blue is good, red is panic). But Martinez configured the orbs to respond to data about electric rates for SCE customers. Normally the orbs emit a green glow, but when recipients see their orbs flashing red, they know it’s a good time to power down where possible (e.g., adjust the thermostat, turn off excess lights).

It’s an elegant way to make energy consumption visible. Without information overload. It’s in your peripheral vision. As the Wired article points out:

[T]he glowing sphere was less annoying and more persistent than a text alert. “It’s nonintrusive,” [Martinez] says. “It has a relatively benign effect. But when you suddenly see your ball flashing red, you notice.”

There’s already solid evidence that feedback mechanisms can change eco-behavior. Think about how hybrid-car owners become obsessed with the dashboard display showing an on-the-fly calculation of gas mileage. The result? They change the way they drive, specifically trying to maximize mileage. It becomes a game, an enjoyable challenge, complete with quantifiable personal bests.

Here’s an even wilder idea: How about making our energy use visible to everyone? Imagine if your daily consumption were part of your Facebook page — and broadcast to your friends by RSS feed. That would trigger what Ambient Devices CEO David Rose calls the sentinel effect: You’d work harder to conserve so you don’t look like a jackass in front of your peers.

This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. The design firm DIY Kyoto (as in Kyoto Protocol) recently began selling a device called the Wattson, which not only shows your energy usage but can also transmit the data to a Web site, letting you compare yourself with other Wattson users worldwide.

Imagine energy orbs glowing on desktops all over the world. It could make a difference.

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Related:
When your orb is glowing red, power down!
Ambient Orbs spark bright idea for cutting energy waste

The difference between futurists and regular consultants

Futurist Joe Coates has a chart on his Web site that compares futurists, internal staff planners and mainstream consultants for purposes of business planning. You can check out the chart yourself, but just to give you the flavor, I’ll post a few of the differences:

Futurists: Attention to wild cards and discontinuities
Internal business group: Continuity assumption dominates
Mainstream consultancy: Continuity assumption dominates

Futurists: Speak the unspeakable
Internal business group: Uncongenial thoughts/ideas are suppressed
Mainstream consultancy: May or may not explore the uncongenial

Futurists: Emphasize alternative futures
Internal business group: A single future often dominates
Mainstream consultancy: Weighted towards the experts’ most likely future

Futurists: The future dominates the recommended actions
Internal business group: Past experience and present concerns dominate
Mainstream consultancy: Historical industry data and case studies support the recommendations

Intelligence Briefs

An eclectic collection of discoveries:

Prediction: Someday loyalty rewards programs (analagous to frequent-flier miles, etc.) will come to the health care industry. But the industry will have to figure out who pays for it, and how to avoid creating incentives to overuse or abuse the health care system. — George Van Antwerp, “The Patient Advocate”

Most Americans (57%) say that restaurants serve portions that are too large. The percentage is even higher among women, highly educated people and people who try to make “healthy choices” when eating out. — Decision Analyst Inc.

U.S. legislators are worried about a TV “train wreck” : On Feb. 18, 2009, tens of millions of televisions that aren’t equipped to receive digital signals will become useless pieces of furniture. Members of Congress fear that consumers who don’t get the message will swamp them with angry calls. — Associated Press 

ExecRelate is a new online subscription service that provides intelligence on directors, executives and their relationships. The service displays linkages and commonalities such as board memberships, job history, educational background and association memberships. — LexisNexis

The “top road travelers” — defined as the 20% of U.S. adults who traveled the most miles in a vehicle in the past 7 days — also tend to be the heaviest users of home and personal technologies (e.g., PDAs, MP3 players, DVD players, HDTV, video games, Internet usage). — Scarborough Research

Study: Future-oriented CEOs set the stage for innovation

How much do CEOs matter to innovation? A study reported by the Marketing Science Institute (cited below) supports the notion that future-oriented, forward-thinking CEOs are the main drivers of successful innovation. How? If the CEO is the company’s “thought leader,” defines the company’s culture and places a high priority on innovation, then that becomes a guiding principle for the firm’s endeavors.

The study looked at CEOs at 176 U.S retail banks to see how successful they were at adopting online banking. How did the researchers know whether the CEOs were future-oriented? Their letters to shareholders were full of future words like will, might and tomorrow.

In essence, the study says that if CEOs pay attention to future innovation, it happens. The abstract says:

[A]uthors Yadav, Prabhu, and Chandy argue that CEOs have a positive, direct, and long-term impact on innovation outcomes. They propose an “attentional” perspective to studying innovation, suggesting that CEOs’ choice of what to focus on has significant implications for how firms detect, develop, and deploy new technologies over time. 

Unfortunately, the study suggests, most CEOs spend surprisingly little time looking ahead. Only 9% of the words in those shareholder letters related to the future.

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Source: “Managing the Future: CEO Attention and Innovation Outcomes,” by Manjit S. Yadav, Jaideep C. Prabhu and Rajesh K. Chandy, Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Report No. 07-110

In the future, employees will be fined for unhealthy habits

This may be the wave of the future for corporate wellness programs, according to Workforce Management (23 July 2007). Clarian Health (a hospital network) will “assess $5 per-paycheck fees on employees who don’t meet minimum standards for body mass index, cholesterol, blood glucose, blood pressure and nonuse of tobacco.” The goal is to encourage healthier behaviors and curb the organization’s rising health-care insurance costs. The article says:

While Clarian Health’s punitive approach may be an anomaly now, benefit experts predict it is the way wellness programs are headed.

Although it won’t be fully implemented until 2009, the effort was announced this year to give employees plenty of warning, says Steven Wantz, senior vice president for administration and human resources at Clarian, which has 13,000 employees working at five hospitals in the Indianapolis metropolitan area.

Wantz says the employer has an extensive wellness program including “health risk appraisals, health coaching and other resources to help people reduce their risk factors.”

Details:

Beginning in 2009, Indianapolis-based Clarian Health will charge employees a $5 per pay period fee for each of the following conditions or behaviors:

• Tobacco use
• Body mass index over 29.9
• Blood pressure over 140/90
• Blood glucose over 120
• LDL cholesterol over 130