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W hen Congress eliminated funding for The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) nineteen years ago it was described as Congress giving itself a lobotomy. Very few members of Congress are trained in science and consequently avoid the subject. One Congressman with serious science bona fides is urging that something like the OTA be reinstituted. Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey has a Ph.D in physics, taught physics at Swarthmore College, was assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and worked as an arms control expert at the State Department.
In an Op-Ed piece in Wired Science, Holt mentioned President Obama’s declaration during his inaugural address that we will “restore science to its rightful place.” He commented that the President has placed science and scientific process at the heart of his public policy and decision making.
“Every member of Congress,” Holt emphasized, “needs access to unbiased technical and scientific assessments finished in a time frame appropriate for Congress, written in a language that is understood by members of Congress, and crafted by those who are familiar with the functions of Congress.”
“The issues have grown more complex,” Holt pointed out, “but our tools to evaluate and understand them have not kept pace.”
“While members of Congress do not suffer from a lack of information,” he wrote, “we lack time and resources to assess the validity, credibility, and usefulness of the large amount of scientific information and advice we receive as it affects actual policy decisions.”
The OTA, while it existed, both provided an important long-term perspective and alerted Congress to scientific and technological components of policy that might not be obvious. Holt contends that no group or combination of groups has been able to assume OTA’s place as a provider of scientific and technical assessment and advice to Congress.
 A world famous investor, many would say the most successful, has joined the chorus advocating the theme of this website, “rethinking”. In this case he refers to rethinking the global economic crisis. Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. wrote to his investors “I made some errors of omission. When new facts came in, that should have caused me to reexamine my thinking and promptly take action.” He is referring to a 62 percent decline in his company’s profits.
In an article in the Christian Science Journal contributing editor Colleen Douglass credited Buffett’s honesty with being a refreshing alternative to the “blame game,” where everyone accuses someone else of being responsible for the financial challenges the world economies are facing.
Douglass notes that deep divisions exist between different economic theories, the Keynseian approach with government helping balance supply and demand, and the supply-side economists calling for tax cuts.
In a fit of frustration, Business Week Magazine headlined a cover story “what good are economists anyway.” Economists seem to have one thing in common, they are usually wrong.
In his book Rethinking the Corporation, Forler Massnick quotes William A. Sherden who wrote:
“The theories of chaos and complexity are revealing the future as fundamentally unpredictable. There are no clear historical patterns that carve well-marked trails into the future. History does not repeat itself. The future remains mostly unknowable.”
Buffett’s comment merits consideration. Reexamine your thinking and promptly take action.
 Blogs have been described as online diaries for anxiety-ridden teenagers. They are that, of course, but more recently they have gained respect as mainstream media. Essentially they are two-way conversations that occur on many fronts.
According to Internet trade sources, currently 27.9 million U.S. Internet users, representing 14% of the Internet population, have a blog they update at least once per month. Over 96 million Internet users are reading these blogs.
A senior analyst with the trade newsletter eMarketer stresses, ?Blogging activity presented new opportunities for marketers to monitor and influence conversations relevant to their businesses, opportunities no marketer should ignore.?
The analyst added. ?These conversations will continue to happen with or without paticipation from marketers, but those who join in?whether through their own sites or through a brand presence on independent ones?will have a place at the table.?
Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, points out, ?Packaged, filtered, controlled conversations are out. Open, two-way, authentic, communications with our customers and employees are in.?
Weil adds, ?We?re entering a new age of corporate communications, and blogs are a key enabler of a better way of talking with customers, employees, the media, and other key constituencies.?
It has long been a truism that the art of management is knowing the right questions to ask. The key question in today’s business environment is “do you know your company’s cash position every day, even every hour?”
In his new book Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty the highly regarded consultant Ram Charan states, “Your focus must shift from the income statement to the balance sheet. Protecting cash flow is the most important challenge almost all companies f ace today whether they realize it or not.”
In the early days when Control Data was experiencing explosive growth founder Bill Norris startled his executives in the midst of a planning session by slamming his fist on the table and declaring, “you guys are forgetting the most important rule of business, conserve the (bleep)ing cash!”
Charan explains, “Every sale must be weighed against not just how attractive the margin is but how much cash will be tied up in inventories and receivables and for how long. Projects that once were evaluated on the basis of their return on investment now must be judged in terms of how much cash they consume and how soon they can bring in the cash.”
Charan insists that given today’s information technology company’s should know their cash position every day. Since lack of liquidity is an ever-present lethal threat, Charan advocates lowering cash break-even point as rapidly as possible for the worst-case scenario. Citing the auto industry and credit rating problems at General Electric, Charan pointed out that a lack of liquidity can bring the mighty to their knees in less than two weeks.
Breakeven points calculated on a cash basis identify actions to be taken such as discontinuing a product line, closing a plant, or eliminating a distribution channel. Charan says that after careers in the pursuit of growth, business leaders will have to adjust their mentality.
 Companies hoping to capitalize on future advances in science and technology better learn how to leverage human intellect on multiple continents, according to a Silicon Valley CEO writing in Chief Executive Magazine. Michael Klayko, CEO of Brocade Communications Systems, a $1.2 billion data networking supplier, points out that R&D employment outside the U.S. by U.S. firms has increased by 76% while 25% of U.S. science and technology workers are foreign born.
“Engineering has become the great equalizer of our time,” Klayko advised. He explained that countries have become interdependent just as major inventions have permeated across boarders.
Klayko contends that the responsibility for training and developing the next generation of scientists is shared by parents, businesses, and governments. Parents, he writes, can influence children to think globally, without bias, in an environment that encourages problem solving.
He recommends these initiatives: as much training, time and money should go into raising awareness of math and science as is devoted to athletics and extracurricular activities: corporations and educational institutions should become partners by sharing real-life, timely problems with today’s university students.
Finally, Klayko cautions that these initiatives are especially important to the U.S. in order to maintain our technological edge.
Managing organizational change is deceptively easy to understand but frustratingly difficult to accomplish according to a consultant who specializes in the field.
 John Austin, Ph.D. Writing in HR Magazine, John Austin, Ph.D. states ?the disconnect between theory and practice is due to stakeholders? complex, seemingly irrational and often political reactions to new initiatives.?
The key to success, he claims, is anticipating stakeholder interactions and adjusting the actions and arguments to match stakeholder reactions. It helps when change can be linked to strong stakeholder values.
Austin contends that today?s human resource professionals cannot succeed without change management skills. They are in a position to sense employee concerns or disconnects between strategic visions and operations, a key perspective in managing change.
Austin cautions that successful implementation plans involve anticipating the unexpected and being ready to rapidly design a plan B. During change implementation, he cautions, count on something going wrong, or at least the unexpected.
 A scientist at the University of Akron in Ohio has applied for a patent on an idea that he and his colleagues believe could reduce the destructive power of hurricanes. The concept involves using jet airplanes to disrupt the complex airflows and other atmospheric activity that produces the power of hurricanes.
Arkadi Leonov says the balance of forces in a hurricane are surprisingly delicate. His proposal involves flying supersonic jet aircraft in concentric circles around a hurricane eye.
Leonov’s patent proposal describes the way in which the shock wave of sonic-booms would raise air pressure in the eye, disrupting the upward flow of warm air that drives the hurricane.
The contention is that even a small number of aircraft could do the job, specifically two F-4 jet fighters flying at approximately Mach 1.5 are sufficient to suppress, mitigate and/or destroy a typical sized hurricane/typhoon.
Flying in and out of hurricanes is nothing new. The first flight into a hurricane to measure its forces was in 1943. Prop planes have been performing this function ever since, although satellites have taken over many of the functions.
 As is often the case, researchers toiling in relative obscurity in a lab somewhere have a breakthrough that touches the lives of everyone on earth. That could well be what is happening at the University of Dayton, in Ohio, where an engineerig professor has made a discovery that could make fuel cells economical.
Hydrogen-powered fuel cells are believed to hold enormous promise as a power source for future generations. Think of a time when petroleum no longer dominates world affairs. Instead hydrogen is king. It is the most abundant gas in the universe and the simplest element known to humans.
Standing in the way has been platinum, an expensive catalyst needed to make fuel cells function. The eureka in Dayton has been the development of carbon nanotubes that could replace platinum and finally make fuel cells economical. In the future fuel cells generating electricity could power everything that presently requires gasoline.
Heading the work in Dayton is Liming Dai, a materials engineering professor. Dai and his colleagues make electrodes by depositing carbon-nanotube arrays on a composite film of polymer and carbon nanotubes. They claim that using the material as a cathode gives four times higher current densities than do conventional platinum-coated electrodes.
The auto industry has built a number of idea cars powered by fuel cells. They perform well but the obstacle to mass commercialization has been the cost of platinum. Hail hydrogen.
It has the highest energy content of any common fuel (about three times more than gasolne). It is safe and can be produced from a variety of sources, e.g. water, fossil fuels, and biomass, and, conveniently, is a byproduct of other chemical processes.
 There are exciting things happening in the field of artificial intelligence. One promising approach is reverse engineering of the brain in order to emulate biology.
Contrast this technological wonderland with the linear perspective of the driving forces in business and the economy, measurements such as energy costs, commodity prices, and capital investment.
The linear view and the projections that stem from it assume that the pace of change will continue at the current rate or adhere to historical patterns. There are other factors, often overlooked or set aside because they are difficult to measure, such as intellectual property, computational memory and bandwidth, and knowledge.
The history of the impact of innovation on business and the economy is cluttered with examples of companies that dominate their industry and then get blindsided by somebody with a bright idea working in a garage.
There lurks the possibility of entire industries being obsoleted by the exponential pace of science and technology, and the notion that even exponential is becoming exponential.
 Recognize that science and technology are advancing at stunning speed and can lead to a bright future for your company, or if ignored can put you out of business- Rethink all aspects of your business with a sense of urgency. Business as usual can very quickly become out of business
- Get rid of the all too common “not invented here” attitude that blocks important ideas, products and methods from outside.
- Stamp out the innovation-killing attitude that something being suggested was tried once before and didn’t work
- Acknowledge that great ideas can come from all levels of an organization, from factory floor to front office.
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