Tech Tuesday: Responsible Energy Consumption, Augemented Reality & Untreatable Diseases

This week (and every week until Davos!) we have another global batch of Technology Pioneers tackling wicked problems. On-Ramp Wireless, who helps consumers consume less energy hails from sunny San Diego, California. From the Netherlands we have Layar, a company committed to changing the way you see the world. And finally, from the wonderful land of chocolate, Molecular Partners is working towards a future without disease.

Tech Tuesday is an on-going series profiling the Forum’s Technology Pioneers. The Tech Pioneers are companies that have been recognized by the Forum for ground-breaking and innovative approaches in tackling some of the world’s most wicked problems. Each week leading up to the Annual Meeting in Davos, we will be showcasing some of the 2011 Tech Pioneers. You can learn more about the Technology Pioneer Program on the Forum's website.

 

1.    Energy and Environment: Responsible Energy Consumption

The Wicked Problem:

As the world of an "Internet of things" becomes a likely reality, we will need to balance our need for connected with responsible energy consumption. 

 

The Tech Pioneer: On-Ramp Wireless

Location: San Diego, CA, USA

Number of employees: 53

Year Founded: 2008

Origins: Entrepreneurial start-up

 

The Wicked Solution: 

On-Ramp Wireless’s Ultra-Link Processing (ULP) System enables the low-power monitoring and control
applications used in smart grids, industrial sensing and location tracking.

Its wireless communication technology can monitor billions of distributed end-point devices to measure and provide critical information for controlling consumption of energy and other scarce resources. Applications include the smart grid, water distribution systems, environmental monitoring and energy-optimizing infrastructure systems.

A key advantage of the system is its ability to pick up even the weakest signals. A study developed with a major utility in the US concluded that On-Ramp’s ULP System can reach over 97% of utility end-points such as meters, sensors and fault indicators with as little as 30 access points covering an area of 10,000 square kilometres. The deployment cost of such a system is US$ 1 million, several orders of magnitude lower than competing systems.

 

 

2.    Information Technologies and New Media: Augmented Reality

The Wicked Problem: 

The importance of smartphones continues to rise, along with our depence on using these mobile platforms to interact with the world around us. How can we create a bridge between the online and offline in order to maximize knowledge exchange?

The Tech Pioneer: Layar

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Number of employees: 36

Year Founded: 2009

Origins: Entrepreneurial start-up

 

The Wicked Solution: 

Layar helps people better understand context through an emerging mass medium called augmented reality.

Layar works by using a mobile phone’s camera, compass and GPS data to identify the user’s location and field of view. Based on these geographical coordinates, data retrieved from a content database and overlaid over the camera’s view in so called “layers”. As of 1 July 2010 more than 1,000 layers have been published on Layar’s platform with more than 3,000 in development. These layers are developed by a global community of over 4,000 brands, agencies and developers. Content includes museum art,
recreation of history and a whole new industry of augmented reality games.

Layar’s reality browser has been installed 2.5 million times, and the service has 800,000 active users. It is expected to be pre-installed on tens of millions of phones from handset manufacturers and carriers by the end of the year. In April it launched a payment platform, allowing publishers on the Layar platform to price augmented reality experiences.

3.   Health & Life Sciences:Treating Untreatable Diseases

The Wicked Solution

Our health is our most important asset, yet there are many diseases existing today that are simply untreatable.

The Tech Pioneer: Molecular Partners

Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Number of employees: 40

Year Founded: 2004

Origins: Entrepreneurial start-up

The Wicked Solution

Molecular Partners is working on novel medicines based on designed ankyrin repeat proteins (DARPins),
a promising class of non-immunoglobulin proteins that can offer advantages over antibodies in drug discovery and drug development.

DARPins are based on natural proteins, called repeat proteins, which are abundant in nature as blockers or binders. The DARPin technology allows the engineering of these natural repeat proteins to bind and block any target protein, such as tumour cell markers. That means DARPins can be used to localize a target within the human body, such as a tumour cell, and block its activity.

DARPin technology delivers molecules with significantly higher potency and selectivity than monoclonal antibodies, the most established class of therapeutic proteins used in medicines today. As DARPins are 10 times smaller, they also reach sites in the body that are inaccessible to antibodies, penetrating, for example, deeply inside tumours. And, unlike antibodies, which are complicated to manufacture, DARPins
can be produced in bacterial cells with a simpler, cheaper and more stable process.

 

Know an innovative start-up that’s solving a wicked problem? Nominate them.