‘Inside Innovation’ launches at new Internet address

Please visit the new, improved “Inside Innovation with Colin Stewart” at its new location.

Toshiba’s copying success: Strategy for an innovative marketplace

If the ground is about to collapse beneath you, reach out your arms and grab onto something.
That strategy, which Toshiba America Business Solutions adopted 10-plus years ago, suggests lessons for any enterprise seeking to avoid becoming a victim of innovation.
Lesson 1 is to reach for something new. Toshiba made that strategic shift in response to [...]

MaMoCa turns people into animation

Start-up aims to improve on techniques of ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ‘King Kong’ and ‘Pirates.’
“Do I look like King Kong to you?”
With that question, Gene Alexander was on his way to attracting $750,000 from local investors intrigued by a technology that transforms people’s movements into the motions of animated characters.
That transformation is crucial to modern [...]

Solving problems in breast-cancer care

The olive was hidden deep in a hunk of steak.
To extract it, Paul Lubock turned to a state-of-the-art ultrasound scanner and breast biopsy probe.
That’s not because he’s an over-the-top fan of kitchen gadgets. The olive extraction simulated a new method for breast biopsies that Lubock and his team of engineers have developed at SenoRx Inc. [...]

Changing the world, one gallon at a time

Consumers with incomes of $1 to $2 a day aren’t an appealing market for most businesses.
“They’re struggling to put food on the table – if they have a table,” says Ashok Gadgil, vice president for scientific affairs at WaterHealth International in Lake Forest.
Yet the 100-person company believes it can make money by selling clean water [...]

Chip maker lacks single focus, and that’s how it wants to be

Jerry Fitch doesn’t like putting all his eggs in one basket.That’s why his company, Teridian Semiconductor in Irvine, doesn’t just make chips for televisions’ set-top boxes even though, as of last week, it had sold 100 million of them.
Teridian also makes chips for electric meters, digital video recorders, Ethernet networks, retailer credit card devices, and [...]

Incubator takes media startups under its wing

A startup business can fail for so many reasons. Maybe its prices are too high, its customer service is poor, or its marketing is lame. Maybe its founder is a brilliant inventor who turns out to be an overwhelmed and disorganized chief executive.
But the chance of such failures is reduced if the startup [...]

Pharmaceuticals CEO turns company’s focus to Plan B

“I’m not a softie,” says Rajesh Shrotriya, M.D., the chief executive officer of Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, known to his colleagues as “Dr. Raj.” He often contemplates the wall filled with framed pictures of the company’s 52 employees and each person’s signed pledge to pursue the company’s mission.But he’s not just basking in thoughts of [...]

Art via microfabrication

Worldwide, research into new techniques for microscopic manufacturing seeks to invent useful innovations, and already it is creating intriguing new images.
– COLUMN and SLIDE SHOW, with details about each photo
– VIDEO, with music by The Wayward Trio

Heart repair overhaul

Edwards Lifesciences in Irvine has been making artificial heart valves since 1960, so it thought it knew the ins and outs of treating valve disease.
But since 2004 it has run into many surprises — some encouraging, some upsetting — as it worked on a system for implanting valves without open-heart surgery.
One of the biggest discoveries [...]