New Florence. New Renaissance.

Bald = Big Business

The global market is projected to hit $2.7 billion in 2017, a 35 percent rise since 2010, according to the research company Statista. Breaking this down, hair-restoration surgical operations rose 57 percent from 2010 to 2014, and more than 3 percent of all U.S. households use a hair-loss product.

With all that money on the table, more than 55 labs around the globe are experimenting with solutions that range from stem cells and bioprinting to hair cloning and robotic transplants. The San Diego–based biotech company Samumed has been getting a lot of attention for its hair-loss drug, the evocatively named SM04554, a topical solution that targets the same genes that control fetal growth. Zap the right gene the right way, and you feasibly can regrow hair. Since 2008, the firm has raised $220 million and has set its sights on a valuation of $12 billion. (Its market cap currently is $6 billion.) Hong Kong–based Pineworld Capital has invested $6 million in Histogen, another regenerative medical company based in San Diego. It markets an injectable neonatal-cell scalp treatment that is slated to go on the market in China next year. The Japanese cosmetics giant Shiseido has invested an undisclosed amount since 2013 in a partnership with RepliCel Life Sciences, a stem-cell research outfit (see video below) RepliCel Life Sciences plans to launch a $1,000 treatment by 2018, most likely in the form of topical dermal injectors.

Oxy

 

Cash Flow based Corporate Tax

From the craziness that is Washington, DC these days comes an innovation may affect global business for years

From Time

When it comes to the state of the tax code, there’s a surprising amount of consensus in Washington: liberals, conservatives and every President from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump agree that the corporate tax is broken, ineffective and needs to be fixed.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that the 35% corporate tax rate is among the highest in the developed world. But because of loopholes, it produces less federal revenue, as a percentage of GDP, than most other countries’. The current system also creates an incentive for companies to perform feats of legal acrobatics, like relocating corporate headquarters and shuffling intellectual property to far-flung foreign locales, to shield their balance sheets from the IRS.

That’s where the BAT comes in. In theory, this little tax will fix those big problems. Instead of taxing corporate profits, the BAT taxes corporate cash flow. That means it doesn’t matter where a company’s headquarters are located or where its intellectual property is housed. All that matters is where it sells its products. If it sells its products in America, it pays 20% on what it makes. If it sells its products abroad, it pays no U.S. corporate tax at all. (Foreign taxes would still apply.)

3D printing and autos

But it’s not this blistering performance that has attracted a strategic partnership with France’s PSA Group. It’s the drastic drop in manufacturing cost and complexity that Divergent Manufacturing Platform promises. Here’s what Czinger reckons it will cost to set up a factory for annual production of 10,000 units: 16 3-D printers, 10 flexible robots, 50 technicians, 20 additional staff, and a 100,000-square-foot building. That’s $42 million for the factory and $30 million in tooling.

Those numbers compare with $250 million to build a traditional factory plus $250 million for comparable conventional manufacturing tool-and-die equipment. By his accounting, the rolling chassis unit cost also comes in $500 cheaper (at $3,500), which brings the fully amortized per-vehicle savings of about $3,900. Imagine PSA’s savings on the mainstream Peugeot or Citroën it plans to build this way within three years at 180,000 to 200,000 units annually. Much of that cost and emissions reduction comes by eliminating the paint shop. The aluminum and carbon-fiber chassis doesn’t need it, and the unstressed composite body panels get molded in color or wrapped.

When it only takes a small fortune to get into the car business, Divergent envisions many 10,000-unit microfactories springing up around the country, which would create local jobs and promote local entrepreneurship—just like at the dawn of the automotive age when 1,800 automakers dotted the U.S. landscape.

Motor Trend

 

A Big Tobacco startup

To use an IQOS, you push a flavored packet of tobacco called a heatstick into the mouth of a tubular, pipelike holder, which is a bit smaller than a kazoo. When you press a button on the holder, it heats up a metal blade inside, which cooks the tobacco to roughly a third of the temperature of a traditional cigarette. Then you puff away. The tobacco is warmed without combusting, so it doesn’t release any fire, smoke, or ash. This, in theory, makes it healthier to inhale when using heat-not-burn gadgets than when smoking, for instance, a run-of-the-mill Parliament.

In between heatsticks, you holster the cyberpipe in a mobile charger, a smooth, palm-size contraption that calls to mind a cigarette pack mated with a smartphone and designed by Apple’s Jony Ive.

Bloomberg

 

High-tech Domino’s

But whereas pizzamaking remains high-touch and traditional, pizza marketing is anything but. There, Domino’s Pizza Inc. has decided that modern works better than authentic, and fun is best of all. For the past five years, the company has been emphasizing all the ways you can order pizza with minimal human and maximal digital contact. It’s introduced more ordering methods—Facebook, Twitter, Twitter with emojis, Apple Watch, voice-activated, “zero click,” wedding registry —than new items on its menu. Customers can track their pizzas online, starting as they’re being made, and in San Diego (for now; likely nationwide soon) they can track their drivers. If an Australian wants to pick up her order, a GPS system can monitor her approach so the pizza is hot on arrival.

Domino’s has spent millions to trick out a fleet featuring “the ultimate pizza delivery vehicle”—the DXP, a Chevrolet Spark subcompact with special side doors and warming ovens. An independent franchisee in New Zealand is testing delivery by drone and robot. In 2015, for the first time, more than half of Domino’s orders were placed online, and half of those came via mobile.

Bloomberg

Libratus: Poker Prodigy

Libratus defeated its four human opponents with an average daily win of $206,061 and a grand total win on a hefty $1,766,250 in virtual funds.

But don’t let Libratus scare you — it was only created to play Heads-Up, No-Limit Texas Hold’em poker. It’s the brainchild of Professor Tuomas Sandholm and Ph.D. student Noam Brown from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science and uses the Bridges computer at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center for its computation needs. It doesn’t rely on the experience of expert human players but instead, consists of algorithms that create a strategy based on an analysis of the rules and the opponents.

 DigitalTrends

 

 

Drone Drama

It’s probably the first time you’ve seen 300 drones flying in formation, but it’s almost certainly not the last. The technology underpinning the Intel Shooting Star drone system is fascinating in and of itself, but its potential applications are even more so. The same drones that accompanied Lady Gaga will one day revolutionize search-and-rescue, agriculture, halftime shows, and more.

Wired

 

A St. Patrick’s innovation from McDonald’s

Of all the tech innovations coming out of McDonald's, we never would have expected the humble drinking straw needed a redesign. But that's exactly what a team of robotic and aerospace engineers did as part of a marketing push for the burger chain's new Chocolate Shamrock Shake.

For those who aren't familiar: the new menu item is a layered fifty-fifty combination of McDonald's standard chocolate milkshake with the minty seasonal favorite on top.

The redesigned STRAW -- short for "Suction Tube for Reverse Axial Withdrawal," of course -- is meant to alleviate the most basic of problems: having to wait for your shake to melt a bit before you can get the perfect mix of chocolate and mint flavors. While a conventional straw will only slurp up one part of the shake at a time, engineers from JACE Engineering and NK Labs carefully engineered the STRAW's J-shaped snorkel design and side openings to suck in both layers at once. According to McDonald's, their new tubular sipping device required some fairly complex computational fluid dynamics simulations to get the flow right and make sure it works just as well at the bottom of your shake as it did on the first sip.

Engagdet

OK, now that we have got you excited, McDonald’s may not have it today or at your location. It was in limited quantities this year, but the STRAW may change straws everywhere going forward.

 

The secret to rapid implementations–starts at the factory

Must be spring – in the last couple of weeks I have noticed neighbors getting new sod, redoing their HVAC, their roof and their driveway. In each case I have stopped at talked to the contractors – amazingly they can do all their projects in a day or two.

Each one benefits from efficiencies at the “factories” designed to make the implementation at our homes so much more efficient than 10-30-50 years ago – from the squares the sod is cut into and the palettes they are delivered on, the dense packs the insulation comes in and expands as it is blown in, the design of the shingles to work with modern guns designed to staple them and survive hurricane strength winds, the cement designed to be mixed in small lots at our houses.

Watch the four videos below if it interests you on how sod, insulation, shingles and cement are manufactured. BTW, none of these factories are the biggest or most efficient for each product class, but I can spend hours watching such videos.

Forbes 30 under 30

600 (across 20 industries) of the brightest young entrepreneurs, innovators and game changers.

Forbes