What Does 2,000-Times-Faster Broadband Look Like?

It ain't just about pink pixels. From innovation to infrastructure, a new breakthrough from across the pond could have far-reaching, super-fast implications.

How fast is 2,000 times faster? Is that, like, Michael Johnson-with-a-rocket-strapped-to-his-back-while-running-downhill fast?

An idea that researchers at a Welsh university are busy working on goes a long way toward illuminating this idea--and what it means for the future of, well, nearly everything.

The Bangor University scientists have successfully increased broadband speeds by this amount using very similar tech to that currently in use, with limited cost impact. Let's count the (super-high-speed) ways this could change our lives.

First, a lightening quick history of Net data rates

Remember the bad old days of dial-up Net and then the arrival of fast, wired broadband DSL? Download speeds went from a snails pace tens of kilobits per second to all the drama of galloping horse, with speeds of hundreds of kilobits per second.

On dial-up you could check your email, have a chat via AIM or surf an often text-based web. But live online gaming could only work for slower-paced strategy games due to low speeds and the latency between moves being updated, and downloading even a low-resolution movie took forever (a 700MB film would've taken about a day to download).

With DSL broadband, image-rich webpages could be glanced at and surfed past because they downloaded in seconds and then you would move on and play World of Warcraft with thousands of other people in near-real-time. At typical DSL speeds, a 700MB movie could be downloaded in just about the time taken to watch it. Skype, and other streaming video services like YouTube were enabled. Pink pixel websites (ahem) that cause such consternation to some began to be among the web's most popular destinations.

Now home fiber broadband systems are available, and they offer speeds of hundreds of megabits per second, thousands of times faster than dial-up speeds. Web pages on browsers thus download almost instantaneously, and acquiring a gigabyte sized update to your computer's operating system is something that can happen quickly and quietly in the background. A 700MB movie file downloads in minutes, while you simultaneously check your mail or FaceTime someone.

The ultrafast broadband home

But the Bangor team's effort, which involves some clever signal processing and a similar kind of laser-and-fiber optic setup to today's home fiber systems, can pump up to 20 gigabits of data per second down the fiber. That's roughly a million times faster than dial up speeds.

As the BBC points out this is speedy enough to download a full HD movie file (not just a compressed low-res 700MB version) in just 10 seconds. This is one of the first reasons you'll be wanting ultra-fast broadband in your home, but it's only partly about current generation TV.

An iPad screen already far outperforms HDTV in terms of sharpness and resolution. And this precedes the next wave in home entertainment--4k television. A 4k TV screen is 4000 pixels or so wide, versus the 1280 of an HDTV, and that means it can show cinema-quality video. But thanks to this size, each frame of the video needs so much more data that it'll push even fiber Internet tech. That's where next-gen broadband will come in.

Ultrafast broadband could also make video calling a reliable full-resolution process free of glitches, and that could transform habits like telepresence. Why commute to the office, when you could have a live big-screen video chat with your office mates? And, indeed, 3D video could work if you needed a more immersive telepresence system.

Also remember that in a few years many previously inanimate objects in your home will be connected online in the "internet of things." My home already has 14 networked devices, each supping data over broadband...but that's going to increase when we're able to Google to find our car keys. Indeed at an innovation conference this week a Philips representative said he expected 50 billion devices to be online by 2020--six times the global human population. Ultrafast broadband would enable more of these devices to share your home connection, and also for more data to be sent to and from each one at a faster rate.

Business as unusually fast

While some may quibble about the absolute details thanks to the source, there are many studies like the recent one by network equipment maker Ericsson that correlate broadband speed with economic boons. This particular study of 33 OECD countries suggested that for every doubling of broadband speed results in economic changes that boost GDP by at least 0.3%, which equates to roughly $126 billion right now.

The reasons for this are manifold, including faster and more efficient data moving within a company's corporate systems, better real-time access to consumers and clients, faster payment processing and so on, and all of these would be boosted by faster Net. Wall Street is already busy chasing toward millisecond-scale trading, and it's impossible to quantify what benefits would arise from 2,000 times faster networking--though they'd be large.

Infrastructure fixes in no time flat

Ultrafast broadband solutions like this can also have benefits in behind the scenes technology you'll rarely have to think of--the giant mess of wires and computers that your broadband supplier needs to get data across the world to your home, place of work or smartphone. By speeding up data transfers, the Bangor system could lower infrastructure costs and thus indirectly lower end-user costs. It could also future-proof the system against the burden of installing more conventional servers and fiber to cope with ever-increasing data consumption.

When you read news like AT&T's plans to spend $14 billion on broadband and wireless infrastructure for current-gen tech, spread over the next three years, you can see how important a large-scale infrastructure saving could be.

Best of all, systems like that proposed by Bangor can be more tolerant of errors and low quality fiber, which improves network resilience and again can lead to lower costs. And the capability for using less machinery to achieve faster data rates has an impact on energy consumption and thus the carbon footprint of a network.

Innovating at the speed of now

There's something of a push for faster broadband access across the world, and even government bodies from Scotland to New Zealand are playing their part. This interest comes from perceived benefits in terms of economic stimulus and perhaps even better government 2.0 services. Labor party spokesperson Richard Baker has even been quoted as saying that Scotland's current plan is not only about boosting small businesses and better use of cloud computing for big data, but that "high speed internet was all about having a socially inclusive society, in which no one is left out of the equation."

But governments will leap at ideas like Bangor's because ultra-fast broadband could lead to more innovation... in a sort of "if you build it, they will come" style. We may not even be able to imagine what these innovative new businesses and services will be like yet, in the same way a dial-up consumer in the 1990s would have a hard time imagining Instagram.

[Image: Flickr user jurvetson]

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Fostering Innovation Means Listening to Feedback & Learning From Failure

The Economist Intelligence Unit has a new report out that says don't be afraid to fail — great innovation can come of it.

The report: "Cultivating business-led innovation", is based on a survey of 226 senior executives conducted in April 2012. The execs were in a range of industries, geographies and businesses sizes. And as a note, the report is sponsored by Oracle.

The driver for this report stems from the desire to identify fundamental strategies and procedures that encourage and support business led innovation. The reality is that businesses find it hard to innovate and if the CEO isn't on board with new ideas and approaches to achieving innovation, you're kind of screwed (that may sound a bit harsh — but it is the reality organizations must accept).

What exactly is innovation? It's "fresh thinking that provides value people will pay for” (Economist definition in March 2012).

Research has shown that successful businesses have cultures and processes in place that foster good ideas and know how to implement them quickly. Not only that, these businesses monitor and manage how these ideas are developed, allowing them to spot trends and create new opportunities for innovation. This includes learning quickly from failed innovations. That's right, failure is an option — if you know how to leverage your lessons learned and apply them back into new ideas.

Here are the key takeaways from the report:

1. Put Away Innovation Silos

To be successful at innovation, you have to forget about department lines and pull together teams from across the organization. The survey shows that innovative ideas come from all different types of departments across the organization, including IT.

But the report also showed that IT is very underutilized in many circumstances. This is unfortunate because it's IT that often has its pulse on the newest tech trends that can support innovation. In the survey, 51% of IT departments are involved in implementing new ideas but not the actual generation of ideas.

The size of the company played a role in how innovation is done. Larger businesses tend to be more siloed in their innovation approaches. In addition, businesses with US$ 500 million or less in annual revenues take advantage of customer feedback to create innovation. But for orgs of this size, the approach used is mostly direct interviews. Large organizations use interviews but also leverage social networks and sentiment analysis.

2. The Right Technology Helps Innovation

Disruptive technology supports innovation. Big Data, Social Media — both are great examples of technology and along with mobile and cloud computing were mentioned by the companies surveyed.

But each technology doesn't not necessarily offer the same innovations. Big Data was recognized for its ability to create new pricing models (60%), improve business processes (38%) and develop new products or services (38%). There was concern noted, however, around the lack of Big Data talent available.

In terms of social media, innovation in customer service (43%) and new ways of selling (44%) were noted. Although interest in social data is high and growing, many businesses recognize that they still have a lot to learn about social media's potential.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

How Successful Companies Sustain Innovation

Innovation is widely regarded as the single most important ingredient in today’s economy. But innovation as a destination isn’t enough.

Sustained innovation is a high-productivity state in which an organization to innovate in all aspects of its business, including management, divisions, operations, customers and suppliers. It requires a seamless, structured management approach that begins with board- and CEO-level leadership and connects all the way through technology investment and implementation. Above all, sustained innovation is a journey, not a destination. The enterprise doesn’t stop innovating after attaining one goal; it’s engaged in a continual process of reinvention, invention and discovery.

Consider the following three examples:

• One Hit Wonder: The smartphone market is red hot, with Apple and Samsung engaged in the most fierce race for dominance via product innovation. But let’s not forget the once ubiquitous handheld of choice for most employers and business people: the BlackBerry. A mere five years ago, Research In Motion was one of the most celebrated technology companies in the world, as the BlackBerry, or “CrackBerry” as it became known, led the smartphone market. But the meteoric rise of the iPhone and Android devices has made R.I.M. and its big innovation a relic in a world of constant reinvention.

• Rising from Failure: In 1919, Cornelius Vander Starr was the first westerner to sell insurance to the Chinese, and he did so successfully until Communism drove him and American International Group back to the U.S. in 1949. AIG quickly grew it business globally, and in 1962 Starr gave management of the company's slowing U.S. holdings to Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg, who revitalized the company by moving from personal insurance to high-margin corporate coverage and selling through independent brokers rather than agents to slash those salaries. The company went public in 1969 and continued to thrive until 2005, when AIG became the high-profile subject of fraud investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S. Justice Department and New York State Attorney General's Office. Greenberg was booted amid an accounting scandal in February 2005 and the company was battered by a liquidity crisis when its credit ratings were downgraded below "AA" levels in September 2008. Thanks to government bailouts in 2008 and 2009, AIG has bounced back and regained its status as a vital American multinational corporate titan. AIG isn’t taking its rescue for granted. The insurer unveiled a new corporate logo as part of a major rebranding overhaul aimed at its continued growth and success.

• On-going Success: Pfizer, the world's biggest pharmaceutical company by revenues, constantly develops blockbuster medicines and vaccines with household names like Zithromax, Lipitor and Viagra. Founded in 1849 as a manufacturer of fine chemicals, Pfizer's discovery of Terramycin a year later launched its successful and ongoing expansion into a research-based pharmaceutical company. The drug maker has augmented its research by building its brands, pipeline and profile through a series of major acquisitions. The company continues to lead the market with treatments for myriad maladies. Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Pfizer’s Bosulif, which treats a rare type of leukemia that usually affects older adults.

3 Principles for Sustained Innovation

Sustained innovation is powered by people who come together to share ideas, compare observations and brainstorm solutions to complex problems. Enterprises with a strong focus on sustained innovation share three common principles that act as the glue binding people together in productive collaboration. They are:

1. Converged disciplines: Ideas aren’t isolated; they’re celebrated in groups that enable the entire organization to act as one entity. Of particular importance is the convergence of business and technology management to ensure that no one unit or division is missing the opportunity to capitalize on new ideas and possibilities.

2. Cross-boundary collaboration: No enterprise operates in a vacuum. Every manager, employee and contractor potentially has a piece of the puzzle to create a new breakthrough business opportunity. Suppliers, partners, distributors, and customers are an equally valuable source of information and ideas.

3. Innovative business structure: Not every organization can empower an unstructured development culture like the Lunatic Fringe who led innovation at ground-breaking tech pioneer Texas Instruments; most require structure that compels convergence of disciplines, management and operational units.

To bring these principles to life, enterprises operating with sustained innovation focus on three distinct, intimately related practices that require business/technology/management convergence to perform at a high level of organizational maturity.

Sustain Innovation Playbook

Designing and operating organizations capable of sustained innovation requires a playbook that demands a systemic process constructed around the following core steps:

• Listen broadly for ideas through vision, innovation and external networks. Listen to the customer. Listen to the front lines in your organization.
• Understand who your actual and potential customers are, what they want and need, what they will need and why those needs have not yet been met.
• Organize the innovation team to include those with a stake in the innovation, organize the innovation program and organize the resources and investments needed to address the problem.
• Create an environment and capability for innovation by giving the team the ability to fail. Create many alternative solutions by leveraging the cascaded innovation lifecycle.
• Experiment and learn from failure. Conduct many experiments in parallel, using prototyping and other iterative, feedback-driven techniques.
• Listen again to the customer to help them imagine. Use prototypes to elicit feedback. Listen to customer acceptance/buying criteria. Listen to what could go wrong, but don’t let the devil’s advocate take control.
• Design the concepts to address customer-centric values, such as cost, intuitive use, ease of change and sense of enhancement.
• Implement the final go/no-go decision. Consolidate or eliminate competing alternatives to a manageable number. Send concepts back for reinvention, retesting or redesign. Implement the second stage of the innovation lifecycle: manifestation.

Get out of the Garage

Sure, some people work better alone. But most people are more prolific as part of a team or extended community of ideas and talents that fosters some of the world’s most important inventions. Garage inventors can’t possibly compete with myriad breakthroughs born from sustained, systemic innovation. The first single chip microprocessor publicly introduced by Intel in 1971, the first car safety air bags offered in the 1973 model Chevrolet and the depression game changer drug Prozac in 1988, are all considered great innovations developed and perfected by teams, not individuals. Even Oppenheimer needed the Manhattan Project team to create the atomic bomb. The true test of sustained innovation isn’t the invention itself, but the ultimate and ongoing benefit produced by the innovation for the business.

Discipline and innovation are not opposites, but complements. Establishing an innovation culture consumes a great deal of organizational energy in overcoming the forces of inertia and entropy. But once an idea has been successfully commercialized, respected champions emerge to drive new sources of the energy, creativity, discipline and resources that sustain and grow an enduring culture of innovation. Successful organizations manage innovation from concept to commercialization so that good ideas not only get created, but also continually find their way into the products and services portfolio.

--Faisal Hoque is founder, chairman, and CEO at BTM Corporation and founder of research think-tank BTM Institute. His newest book is [i]The Power of Convergence. Follow him on twitter @faisal_hoque.
[/i]

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Optimizing Organizational Effectiveness Through Social Business

Many organizations today are seeking opportunities to be more responsive and effective. Typical goals are to improve sales efficiency, accelerate innovation and increase responsiveness to customers. As companies have leveraged the benefits of external communication using social networking, leading organizations have recognized the potential for similar impact through full transformation into a social business.

Collaboration in Demand 

IBM's 2012 CEO Study identified that collaboration is the number-one trait CEOs are seeking in their employees, with 75 percent of CEOs calling it critical. A new, unprecedented era of internal knowledge sharing, catalyzed by “digital natives” entering the workforce, brings expectations of connectedness and contributing to the overall organization. Becoming a social business drives both the cultural change as well as technology adoption required to meet the expectations of employees as well as customers, partners, and suppliers.

The largest potential for improved collaboration is insertion of social into business processes. Inside the organization, this can lead to measurable improvements in the responsiveness and close rate of salespeople, faster delivery of new products and shorter cycle time in providing customer service. There are efficiency benefits as well, as organizations turn from sending information in private channels such as email to sharing information through social file repositories, wikis, blogs or profiles.

Putting Social to Work at IBM

At IBM, we have proven the value of social business tools in several ways. Here are a few examples:

• Our inside sales organization has increased its successful conversion rate for leads and opportunities, based on utilization of internal social tools. Salespeople now have direct access to product expertise and information, which they can then utilize to address customer requirements and objections more quickly. We have measured a several percentage point improvement in results which can be directly correlated to the use of internal social networking.
• Project teams at IBM increasingly are comprised of talent clouds, where the best subject-matter experts and skilled leaders are assembled for a particular activity. To help identify and leverage expertise, employees create and maintain their own organizational profiles, including much richer data than the typical corporate directory. IBMers document their technical skills, spoken languages, customer affiliations, interests and previous employers, all of which feeds into an expertise location system.
• Unstructured activity tracking has replaced formal project management for group-oriented task management. The activity-centric model provides significant improvements versus email oriented approaches, which tend to focus on individual to-dos and keep most of the knowledge hidden in individual user mailboxes. 
  Shared activities store everything from meeting minutes to presentation material to document templates, all in a outline-oriented shared repository. Activity contributors typically can be added by anyone already involved, ensuring that new contributors are enabled organically.

In my own experience, the motivations for participating in internal collaboration through social business tools are clear. My daily email volume has decreased over the last three years, despite greater responsibilities. The constant inbox assault of requests for current presentations, attempts to locate me or determine the status of current projects or activities has all disappeared.

By providing all of that information through our use of social business tools, those IBMers who I normally interact with or influence can find useful information on their own, by utilizing tags, search tools or notifications. This has resulted in a transformation of email into a social mail experience, where only relevant content arrives in my inbox with a faster path to action.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

7 Key Activities For Getting Innovation Right

These days innovation is everything--and yet it’s nothing if it doesn’t succeed in the marketplace. Sure, innovation is about generating great ideas. But a great idea alone is not enough. It must have the legs to get over the obstacles that innovations inevitably confront.

The real trick is building something people are compelled to acquire, getting it into their hands in a form they can put to use, and generating the cash flow needed to grow. Getting innovation right means not just creating something new—it requires successful delivery of that new product or service.

Experience working on hundreds of projects in some 60 organizations has taught me that seven key activities will lead to successful innovation. Putting any one of these into practice will put you ahead of the competition. Bring them all to bear and you will systematically uncover potential, capitalize on opportunity, and generate traction that drives success in the marketplace.

1. Discover Inflection Points
A positive inflection point is a game changer that has the power to propel you forward. Expert innovators are able to sense the potential in inflection points before they take place, and then ride these dramatic shifts toward four strategic targets: growing your base, increasing the offerings your customers buy, generating loyalty, and moving you up-market.

2. Build Capacity
Systematic innovation relies on the ability to contain and the three inherent stresses of a successful innovation environment. Strong innovation leaders recognize this and intentionally cultivate the people and the environment that provide a strong foundation. The three stresses are:

A. Pressures of everyday operations – just keeping the doors open brings its own special set of challenges that include everything from suppliers dropping the ball to irate customers to unplanned successes that require your attention.

B. Movement and stress that comes with new ideas, products and services – although necessary for sustainable growth and profit, innovation is by definition not business-as-usual. When it courses through your organization it demands attention and creates counter-forces that can wreak havoc if you are not ready for it.

C. Market forces: sometimes rapid, always unpredictable - every business owner knows the market can shift on a dime or a headline. Positive inflection points are sometimes generated in response to these changes in market conditions. For innovation to thrive, you must have the capacity to provide both the stability required to weather change as well as the flexibility to jump at sudden advantage.

3. Gather Business Intelligence
The best innovation rises from a sea of information about products, services, customers, competitors, market conditions and internal capabilities. Business intelligence is the data that supports your ability to make strategic decisions. It could be information about products, customers, competitors, the market or internal capabilities—or all of the above. Effective innovation requires intelligence to make smart choices that take into account each of these areas.

I have been conducting business intelligence for my executive clients since 2000. I find it surprising that so many have little or no intelligence efforts in-house, let alone the ability to exploit this resource. It’s a stark absence. They cannot act on their information because they have none or what they have is haphazard, built upon conversation and hunches only. It is a sad state considering that much of this valuable input is readily available for a negligible cost.

4. Shift Perspective
In order to see new opportunity you must be able to get out of your own box. Successful innovators question their own assumptions and try on alternative and helpful points of view.

Shifting perspective is essential if you are going to get innovation right. Your current assumptions are constraining your thinking, whether you’re aware of that fact or not. In this chapter I will show you how to challenge those assumptions by applying four techniques for shifting perspective that should put you in a new relationship to everything you thought you knew. From this new perspective, you’ll find it easier to get innovation right.

Your clients, competitors, strategic partners, and industry observers each have a sense of the value your organization provides. But is it the same value proposition you and your marketing team have worked so hard to create and articulate? Maybe not!

5. Exploit Disruption
Successful leaders learn to identify the opportunity embedded in adverse conditions. It can come from anywhere. If ignored or mismanaged, it throws business into disarray. But what if you could take the forces behind these intrusions and turn them to your advantage? That’s what the masters do. Instead of being waylaid by adverse conditions, they use them to get the upper hand. You can and you must become an expert in exploiting disruptions. Don’t fight change but use it to your advantage.

Market fluctuations are normal, including fast, painful declines and long, confusing morasses. Rapid fluctuations are particularly disruptive. The market plunges, a sexy new competitor moves into your space, technology changes too fast to keep pace, customer expectations slam you. We've all been there. Welcome to life in the 21st Century. Learn how to put disruption on your side.

6. Generate Value
Value is what causes people to reach in their pockets and spend. Skillful innovators understand what drives value and how to generate it. Value is at the center of everything. With it, you can hobble along in other areas and still score a goal. Without it, you are doomed to eventual failure regardless of your other accomplishments.

Value has been at the basis of commerce since the beginning when we first went beyond producing goods for our own use and began to use them for trade. Value is what we want, what compels us to pay or barter. Value is what drives all the activity tallied daily in the world’s markets. Value is the holy grail of business – you must keep your eye on it 24/7.

7. Drive Uptake
Every stage of the innovation process holds opportunity to engage the community of people who will be most interested in your offerings. Innovation leaders intentionally drive this uptake, or market acceptance, for maximum effect. There is nothing more gratifying or necessary than seeing your offerings purchased and put to use. Uptake is customer acceptance of a new product or service. Without it innovation is an empty shell, a wasted effort. With it, new ideas come into their own as they are taken up and applied by the people who most desire them – your customers.

Innovation is the successful introduction of a market offering that profits everybody involved, both you and your customers. Innovation happens when a new product or service creates a return in the market that far exceeds the time and money it takes to develop and execute. When a new offering is accepted and embraced, generating the resources that make it possible to support and grow its place in the market – that is innovation.

Seth Kahan is a change specialist who has consulted with CEOs and senior managers at over 60 organizations including World Bank, Shell, Peace Corps, and 30+ associations. This is an excerpt from Seth Kahan’s forthcoming book, Getting Innovation Right: How Leaders Create Inflection Points that Drive Success in the Marketplace to be published by Jossey-Bass in early 2013.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Innovation From Outer Space! Exploring NASA's Mars Effect

When NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars, the world was watching. Here's a look at two companies who received an innovation bump from working on the rover.

When the Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars, it was the culmination of years of fevered NASA planning. Curiosity was NASA's first large-scale public space exploration mission since the Space Shuttle program ended, and the SUV-sized rover's dramatic landing made headlines around the world. NASA, however, isn't a one-stop shop. Getting Curiosity to Mars and sending pictures back to earth required extensive collaboration with hundreds of private firms. The extensive R&D programs required to get the Curiosity rover going spurred technical development around the world, creating benefits that will return to the consumer goods market.

Curiosity's technological development included world-class power, software engineering, telecommunications, and aerospace technology. Innovations that researchers have worked on for years can also be leveraged for more earth-bound use. Just think of it as the Mars Effect.

Amazon and JPL collaborated on a massive cloud video streaming service that hooked directly into NASA's satellite feed

Siemens PLM, a division of the massive multinational dedicated to product lifecycle management software, helped develop many of the software tools used to develop Curiosity. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) used the company's software suite to simulate the Martian environment in stress tests over the past few years. “Almost ten years ago, JPL engineers needed to meet rigid deadlines and needed a software suite. We put together a high quality, almost unprecedented product for them,” Siemens' Tim Nichols tells Fast Company.

The PLM software gave the space agency the CAD, computer aided manufacturing (CAM), and computer aided engineering (CAE) tools necessary to design Curiosity. Using the software suite, NASA was able to both design Curiosity's mechanical parts and to run it through extensive simulations of Martian conditions.

When Curiosity arrived on Mars, NASA turned to Amazon's cloud to transmit images to Earth. Scientists at JPL used Amazon Web Services (AWS) to store and capture images and metadata from the rover. By using cloud servers, the space agency was able to cope with the massive worldwide demand for images from Mars. In the course of a few weeks leading up to Curiosity's landing, Amazon and JPL collaborated on a massive cloud video streaming service that hooked directly into NASA's satellite feed.

According to Khawaja Shams, a software engineer at the JPL, the laboratory began using cloud services approximately four years ago. Amazon's solution offered the JPL a rapid way of getting video and pictures from Mars to millions of viewers on Earth. NASA procured extra equipment for the big burst in viewing as Curiosity landed on Mars and coordinated closely with Amazon to make sure they'd be able to get video to worldwide audiences. In order to get video off Curiosity, NASA used a variety of backend systems that performed admirably during the global news spectacle.

The JPL has an entire department, the Mars Science Laboratory, that is dedicated to working with the private sector to create innovative technology for Martian exploration. Large aerospace and defense firms such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics created parts for Curiosity, as did a host of smaller firms.

NASA already has another Martian mission planned. The InSight lander is scheduled to land in 2016 with high-tech seismic equipment to examine the planet's core. Lockheed Martin has won the contract to build the InSight Lander.

[i]For more stories like this, follow @fastcompany on Twitter. Find Neal Ungerleider, the author of this article, on Twitter and Google+.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com