Competitive intelligence is part of the knowledge you need to compete successfully. This is especially true when you’re in start-up mode – you need to know who’s selling similar products and services to the customers you’re after. In this workshop, we’ll discuss what competitive intelligence is, how you get it, and what you do with it. You will leave with specific tools and methods to collect information about specific competitors and their products and services, compare it to your offerings, decide how different (or not) you really are, and determine what you are going to do to be different and distinctive.    

Dave Cranmer is the President and Managing Director of Phase 3 Consulting LLC. The company provides management consulting, business-to-business marketing, and technology management and evaluation services. Clients include small technology-based companies (medical devices, fire safety) as well as Fortune 500 companies. Specific projects range from first-look market research for a new product to preparing a company to raise capital including financial projections, historical accounting statements and business plan review. Dave has worked for government, non-profit and for-profit companies in both technical and non-technical fields. He has a Ph.D. and S.M. from MIT, a B.S. from Penn State and an MBA from the Edinburgh Business School of Heriot-Watt University.

Volume 1: Issue 10  01/07/09

Google Engineer Develops Technology for Blind

T. Raman, an engineer working at Google lost his vision at 14. Since then, he has been working tirelessly at universities, home, and now Google to create technology for when “the user is not looking at the screen.” Although most of his developments are meant to be immediately useful to the blind, he hopes that his pioneering vision will create accesibility standards which help everyone.

Water Powered Glasses

Josh Silver, a professor at Oxford University, chanced upon the idea that one could make glasses easier to optically adjust by the user. His idea uses a liquid inside the lens to change its size and shape. He has already distributed the glasses to 30,000 people around the world and is beginning to step up the program in hopes of reaching 1 million people in India this coming year. Because half of all people require corrective lenses, he plans to soon distribute the glasses to 100 million people annually.

FBI Surveillance Technology Used in Stethoscope 

The FBI has created technology to localize sound using a set of two microphones in a room, thus allowing them to identify the speaker in a crowded room. Medical researchers have expanded this to allow them to localize sounds in the heart, thereby improving the diagnostic capabilities of physicians with quick, cheap, non-invasive procedures. Using 6 microphones arranged in a circle, the team of scientists are able to better diagnose heart disease and other congenital defects. The device is currently being tested in Dublin.

Volume 1: Issue 11  01/19/09

New Non-Destructive Imaging Mechanism

This new mechanism is similar to MRI, but it is a hundred million times more detailed. By measuring the response to alternating magnetic fields, scientists are now able to detect the presence of individual protons and electrons. Unlike similarly sensitive AFM, MRFM, as the new imaging technique is called, can resolve three-dimensional images and is non-destructive to biological samples.

Biopsy-free Skin Cancer Diagnosis

Vanderbilt researchers are using confocal spectroscopy to determine the nature of the cells. Light enters the legion, is modulated by individual biochemical agents, and the reflected light is unique to the cells. Melanoma kills 7,000 people annually and this is seen as a viable alternative to ensure rapid detection.

FBI Surveillance Technology Used in Stethoscope

Discover Magazine has an article explaining the basis of quantum mechanical processes in biological systems. Allowing more detail into processes such as photosynthesis and anesthesia, recent research into quantum mechanics has flourished. Although the Discover article is elementary, it does require some basic quantum theory understanding.

Volume 1: Issue 9  12/08/08

Injectable Synthetic Bone: Now Sans Necrosis!

Kevin Shakesheff, from Nottingham University has developed a synthetic bone with the consistency of toothpaste. While toothpaste doesn’t possess the structural capacity of bone, this paste hardens within minutes once in the body. Unlike previous bone cements, this is as strong as bone and hardens without releasing heat, thereby preventing local cell death. 

Model for Medical Device Design

Stanford University researchers have broken down the mechanism for medical device design into five (easy) steps. This mechanism for device introduction is increasingly important to companies by delineating the steps necessary, albeit not sufficient, to ensure success. 

Proteus Biomedical Selected as Technology Pioneer

The California-based company, Proteus has been selected as a technology pioneer by the World Technology Forum for their work in bioMEMS. They have been at the forefront of chips on a pill and are developing a permanent internal glucose monitor. 

Text Messages as Training Replacement?

In a very unusual case, a British doctor volunteering in Congo saved a boy’s life by amputating his entire arm. Although this procedure is increasingly rarely done, only 10 times a year in Britain, the vascular surgeon in Congo received instructions from a colleague in the UK to perform this unconventional surgery.

Volume 1: Issue 8  12/01/08

General Purpose Transdermal Drug Delivery

Piercing thousands of tiny holes in the skin to inject medicine may not seem like a great drug delivery method, but this is just what nanoBioSciences wants to do. While their name may imply “buzzword-filled-startup” their technology is viable and biologically sound. They have developed a method to make many tiny needles come out of a piece of standard metal foil to constantly develop drugs without pain or blood.

Higher resolution imaging system

Scientists have created a new method for molecular imaging. Using an ultra-highspeed laser and camera, they can prevent scattering of the light and obtain early imagining of fluourescent-tagged proteins. It is currently used in mice but may be used in thicker tissues in the near future.

Subcutaneous Internal Defibrillator Begins Trials

Cameron Health, a California based company, has begun New Zealand trials of their new defribillator. Unlike previous defribillators which relied on leads entering the heart, this works like an external defribillator by keeping the leads outside the rib cage. The leads also are less likely to fail when outside the heart. Although this would generally mean a decreased battery life, developers claim that they can get a 5-year lifespan, like the internal defribillators.