karl critz blog

How Far Can (and Should) "Convergence" Go?

2012-03-04T12:09:00.002-05:00

As electrification hit the world, we started to see more and more powered home appliances replace their hand-cranked equivalents. Motors were expensive, and a few manufacturers tried to popularize the idea of the modular "home motor" which could be moved from vacuum to blender to as needed. Motor prices quickly dropped, and today my immersion blender/food processor/smoothie mixer/hand blender all contain their own inefficiently-deployed integrated electric drive. The trend lives on today in the dizzying array of KitchenAid accessories that will happily repurpose your blender's motor into an ice cream maker or a bread kneader. But we've basically moved away from the shared motor vision.

It is with this context in mind that I look to the recently-announced padfone as well as more established category players like the atrix lapdock and the asus transformer. As mobile phones become increasingly powerful, the major value-add of a desktop/tablet/notebook/tv is in its greater output (big screen) or input (mouse/keyboard) possibilities. It's a natural geek response to be horrified at the inefficiency of duplicating multiple processors and storage arrays when all you want is a different i/o set.

As one of those geeks, I find the combination-dock concept tremendously appealing. Start with a powerful mobile phone, which accompanies me everywhere except while swimming laps. When I'm on the couch or the subway, slide that same phone into a bigger screen to create a tablet. When I need to work, tack on a keyboard and trackpad. Heck, Ubuntu even wants to let you turn your phone into a full-on linux desktop! Re-use the radio, data plan, processor, memory, and gps instead of paying for the same core components again and again. Voila, efficiency and modularity!

Tidy as the idea is, I wonder if it will have staying power. The shared components are not the major cost drivers of our electronics; the IHS estimate for the iPad 2 shows that the processor, radios, cameras and memory account for only about 1/3 of its bill of materials. (It's mostly the screen and enclosure.) Price is not announced for the upcoming padfone accessories, but the Atrix lapdock costs about the same as the netbook that it subsumes. If consumers move to such modular, configurable devices it won't be to save money.

So what are these convertible accessory-packs good for? Will the future resemble the traveler's briefcase with a phone, laptop, e-reader, and camera? Or my work station with its laptop and K/V/M docking station? I'm not sure, but it will be fun to watch this play out.

Know Thyself, With Data (Will Analytics Save us All?)

2012-02-19T13:46:00.000-05:00

While it's tempting to focus on technology and economics, privacy and cybersecurity are probably the major blocking issuesin the way of mass smart grid adoption today. These are serious issues and must be addressed, but let's remember that the flip side of privacy is data. From properly-anonymized data, we can progress through analysis, insight, and action. EnergyHub just released a fascinating report of state-by-state winter heating thermostat setpoints. It's easy to explain freezing New Englanders with "flinty reserve" or "Yankee frugality", but the greater savings realizable with a lower setpoint areprobably a stronger explanation. (I'm most interested in why neighbors Iowa and Nebraska have a 4 degree differential.)

Fun as this trivial example is, it points to a heretofore nonexistent link in energy management.Any campaign for energy efficiency is going to find it hard to establish metrics and efficacy if the only feedback mechanism is monthly bills.As we move toward a (privacy-respecting, aggregate) view of energy use patterns, we will have the ability to know what works and what doesn't.That's ultimately much more interesting than just knowing that Vermonters own a lot of flannel.

Instant Photo Uploading: Using the Cloud the Right Way

2012-02-04T09:01:00.000-05:00

Dropbox has announced anexperimental buildof their Android client that represents exactly how I want to share photos off my phone.I store all my photos locally on my computer and only share a small subset through flickr.Most phone-based easy sharing systems want to send your photos directly to the cloud.Dropbox's new feature will sync my photos with my dropbox folder, so I can easily move them over to my photo repository.(Or, I suppose, set up a cron job to do it automatically.)Thanks, Dropbox, for honoring my use case.

(Don't have Dropbox yet? Get a sign-up bonus here.)

Large-Format Phone Comparison: Galaxy Nexus (2011) vs Handspring Visor Edge (2001)

2012-01-10T10:05:00.002-05:00

When the Galaxy Nexus was first announced, tech wags speculated that its 118mm screen would just be too big and clumsy to handle. As a recent owner I can report that it is large but certainly not unwieldy. In a fit of house cleaning, I dug up my very first smartphone and thought it would be fun to post some pointless back-to-back size comparison shots.

The Samsung is just a bit narrower and shorter than the Handspring, but some of that width is accounted for by the Visor's elegant stylus. The big difference is in usable space: the Nexus is all screen, and a beautiful 720p HD screen with black blacker than blackest night at that. The Visor has a tiny monochrome screen with the rest of its face taken up by hard buttons and the graffiti writing area. (Hey - don't dis graffiti. One of the first things I did with my Nexus was to install a virtual graffiti keyboard.)

Flip them on their side and the contrast becomes more stark. Handspring was founded on the idea of "springboard modules", little hardware accessories that gave you an mp3 player or a camera or any of the other million things that our phones just take for granted these days. The Edge was meant to be the slimmest, sexiest of the Visor line so its springboard modules required an ungainly "shoe" that more than doubled the thickness of the device. The one and only springboard module I ever purchased was the phone add-on, which further had its own battery pack. From the side, this assemblage was a real porker. Still, it was kind of nice to be able to ditch the phone bulk when at the office and still walk around with a svelte little metal PDA.

It was my dream that someday I could have a phone with the form factor of the unadorned Visor Edge. There you go: 10 years later my Nexus is almost exactly the same size as that device. Progress!

The 2.1285e+10 pixels of 2011 (so far)

2011-11-28T18:00:00.000-05:00

How do you visualize an entire year of photography in a single graphic? The following is a geeky art project I indulged myself in. It measures every pixel I have taken so far this year, showing the prevalent hues and volume of photos throughout the year. Each bar represents a week of images - there would be 52 if the year were over. The length of the bar represents the number of pixels of photography done in that week. The colors in the bar show the hues captured during that week.

The quantity trends are pretty obvious. The first bump in January is indoor shots from my signature annual party. I took relatively few photos in the spring when I was locked in the thesis cave. Photo quantity grew in the summer as I embarked on weekly kayaking and hiking trips. Peak pixel was September as I took a week to bike through France, capturing hundreds of images along the way.

Hue trends are also present. Winter times have a lot of brown and white. Green appears more as summer approaches. I might be fooling myself but I think I can even see autumn foliage. You might notice the appearance of a red kayak and a red backpack if you look carefully. I had hoped that my brilliant yellow kayak would show up in the summer photos, but the boat's colors get spread out among too many different hues to be noticeable.

How did I make this? MATLAB of course!

Sort a 512-color RGB colormap with RGB2NTSC
Load an image with IMREAD
Reduce JPEG's truecolor space down to a tractable 512 colorspace with RGB2IND
Bin all pixels into groups with IMHIST
Lather, rinse, repeat. Sum all photo histograms, binned by date.

The trickiest part was figuring out how to sort the 3-dimensional RGB color space into a pleasing 1-d continuum. It turns out that I'm not the first to have this problem; the folks over at Visualmotive already investigated this and I agree with their preference for the YIQ colorspace.

In the histogram above, you can see blue peaks for the sky, green for the trees, and orange for the hiker's shirt. Black is prevalent since shadows are dark and some objects (the dog, the shirt) are also black. The most heuristically "wrong" thing about the 512-color reduction is that purple/magenta hues show up more often than you'd expect. There's a bit of lilac in the sky, and the same color often also shows up in wood and stone.

This was a fun project. I like using computation to come up with new ways to understand the world.

No, You Can't Have A (Fully-) Solar Car

2011-11-22T10:44:00.000-05:00

Do the Math is a quantitative blog that looks at current issues in a back-of-the envelope fashion. The latest entry is a calculation of exactly what it would take to make a production solar car run. I once delivered much the same calculation to a bunch of undergrads in a policy course during my solar car building days. They were kind of bummed by the numbers.

As far as I can tell, the only real application for on-vehicle solar cells is powering a fan in the car to keep it cool during hot days. This reduces air conditioning load when returning to the vehicle after it has been parked for a while, ultimately saving fuel or battery charge. PV is just too expensive and low-power for anything else. If you want a real solar car, charge your EV from the roof array on your house instead of hauling around a bunch of fragile cells.

Thanks to Ned Gulley for the reference.

Image by the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team. I wish they had a good photo of my beloved Manta.

Smart Grid Assists Wind Integration: A Non-Scary Thesis Talk

2011-11-10T23:09:00.000-05:00

Want to know how Hawai'i can run its grid more efficiently, harvest more wind, and be more reliable all while not actually using many demand resources? Want a low-jargon to learn about what I have been doing for my thesis, with a promise to use zero equations and only one incidence of the word "stochastic?" Now is your chance, my friends. I will be the featured speaker at SDM's Monday 14 November web seminar. Register here for free and don't forget to throw a few difficult questions my way.

Most Innovation Is Invisible

2011-10-04T13:57:00.000-04:00

Neal Stephenson's recent talk on "Innovation Starvation" strikes a nerve in every engineer: we don't build anything anymore. With the end of high-visibility mega-projects like the space shuttle, it's an understandable notion. Another way to look at it is that the innovation of our era is incremental and invisible.

The telcos have invested billions to create a worldwide high-speed mobile data network. The only manifestation of this gigantic project is the occasional poorly-hidden tower disguised as a tree. In exchange, we are never lost, can always meet our friends at an event with no planning, are always informed, record or reference any memory, and can travel in unfamiliar places like a local.

Our electricity system is undergoing a seismic shift away from coal and toward natural gas. For the last decade, 90% of the new generation capacity in ISO New England has been highly-efficient, relatively low-carbon combined cycle gas turbines. If each of these replaced a coal plant, you're talking an avoided-carbon equivalent equivalent to a few hundred wind turbines. Cape Wind is a big, visible project with a high feel-good factor. But the invisible innovations in natural gas exploration that have made this cleaner fuel relatively cheap have had much more impact.

Even the military (which used to spontaneously generate battleships and bombers like aristotelian flies) is assembling its toys from loose networks of small parts. The drone that just executed Anwar al-Awlaki is a fragile model airplane connected to a bunch of satellites, a guy in a trailer in Nevada, and world-class intelligence gathering.

To a generation that grew up on glossy books showing us the Future in its flying-car glory, this is all unsatisfying stuff. Sure, practical supersonic transport would cut my flight duration to Europe by a few hours. But the ability to rent a bike in Boston and return it in Cambridge saves more time per year. There is plenty of innovation happening, Neal. You just need to look with different eyes.

Special Project: NREL

2011-08-23T15:10:00.000-04:00

I've been waiting for a while to announce this one. Last fall I applied for an Innovative Research Analysis Award Program grant from the National Renewable Energy Lab. It took a while to get the paperwork squared away, but the award is now official. From the NREL website:

Power System Balancing with High Renewable Penetration: the Potential of Demand Response in Hawai'i
The State of Hawai'i has adopted an aggressive renewable portfolio standard of 40% renewable energy by 2030. Most system balance studies in Hawai'i have focused on grid assets such as spinning reserve or energy storage to provide electricity when generation from renewable resources changes unexpectedly. Demand Response (DR) is an alternate strategy in which the grid operator ensures system stability by managing select consumers' loads, such as changing air conditioner set points or turning off non-essential loads within the service area according to a pre-approved prioritization plan. Demand Response may provide a lower-cost solution to balancing intermittent supplies, enabling the State to achieve its goals for reduced energy dependence. This research will use time series data for demand, wind speed, and wind speed forecasts to identify the potential grid-value of Demand Response, as well as DR program design to meet the needs of both the electric utility and electricity customers. A unit commitment model will simulate the relative production of wind, thermal, and demand response resources, then predict the frequency, duration, and scope of curtailment events necessary to maintain a balanced grid. Lessons learned in Hawai'i can be applied in other regions.
Collaborators: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Estimated completion is September, with publications and conferences to follow. This project is the reason why I delayed my graduation from Summer to Fall. It's exciting to see it come together.

Meta: Plus

2011-07-29T12:18:00.002-04:00

I now have a g+ identity. Use my profile to add me to your circles and I'll return the favor. Postings there (and still on facebook) will mostly be mirrors of what you see here.

It's Your (Grid) Weather Forecast

2011-07-22T17:36:00.000-04:00

I'm a bit of a grid geek. We are having a hot day here in New England and my facebook/google+ stream is drowning in people talking about 100+ degree temperatures. That's the obvious result of the weather. The less obvious result is that electricity demand is currently surging as everyone cranks the air conditioning to stay comfortable. Almost every generation asset in the region is probably running near maximum right now. Since taking Ignacio's grid regulation class, I have recreationally checked the marginal price map from ISO New England. Today is the worst I have ever seen it. LMPs are in the $200/MWh range right now. During last week's mild summer temperatures the region was about $30/MWh.

What does this mean behind the scenes? Suppliers of base load power are cleaning up right now. If you run a cheap coal plant, you get paid the same as the near-decommissioned fuel oil plant that they crash fired yesterday. If they didn't have long-term power supply hedges, utilities would be losing money like crazy. As a residential customer, NSTAR charges me 7.7 cents/kWh to buy electricity and they could be paying 20 cents right now. Our independent system operator is no doubt going crazy to make sure that all the reliability constraints are being met. EnerNOC is probably calling industrial consumers all over the region and asking them to curtail their electrical load. This is all heroic effort to make sure that we all stay comfortable and cool on an otherwise ugly day.

What does this mean for me, the consumer? Very little. I pay the same rate regardless of heroic effort. Who cares about power balancing, marginal prices, or what the generators had to do in order to get me the electricity? Turn it up and let it rip!

This is an insane way to run a market. Would you act any differently if you knew that your electricity cost was going to be 4x higher today? Personally, I'd be swimming in a lake.

My Mobile App: BostonBikeLane

2011-05-17T17:33:00.001-04:00

A while ago, I asked for your help in developing a smartphone app for cyclists. The 6.083 mobile app development class is now over and I proudly present the completed app. BostonBikeLane reports cars blocking bike lanes to the city so that these areas can be targeted for additional enforcement. This short video explains it all:
Next step: present to the city!

Strategic Consulting in Cleantech

2011-03-29T16:03:00.000-04:00

One of the best things about the SDM program is that it gives you some powerful tools, then encourages you to go out and use them. The Systems Leadership and Management (SLaM) Lab pairs teams of students with companies that want a fresh approach to a business challenge. My team worked with local information-driven energy management firm EnerNOC. We came up with some unexpected solutions and everyone benefitted greatly from the engagement. Check my recent SDM blog article on how we provided strategic cleantech consulting:

Throughout the course, the topics included leadership, teamwork, and group dynamics. Team members were able to apply these concepts immediately and improve their critical soft skills. Swope Fleming (SDM'10) summarized the experience well: "I thought it was an excellent project and EnerNOC's support was fantastic. Being able to work with 'live ammo' is something that just cannot be replicated in the classroom alone, and it was an invaluable experience."

Thesis Update: Wind Power and Demand Response in Denmark and Hawaii

2011-03-28T11:44:00.000-04:00

Today I signed up 500 MW of demand response customers in Denmark.

Well, simulated customers.

My thesis, you may recall, is on integration of wind resources in Hawaii. Denmark is a pretty good analogue for Hawaii since it has lots of wind and a similar number of thermal generators. There is also a really good stochastic unit commitment model for the nordic countries called WILMAR. I am in the process of modifying WILMAR so that it can simulate Hawaii, but before that I wanted to see how Denmark would behave if it had a lot of responsive demand and 20% wind.

Rather than treating responsive demand as actual curtailment, I model it as another type of generator and leave the demand function unchanged. On the graph above, you see coal/oil/gas powerplants in grey, wind in green, and demand response in red. The x-axis represents about two weeks of operations. To model demand response, I am considering it (to first approximation) to have instantaneous spin-up time, an infinite ramp rate, and no startup/shutdown cost. Its marginal cost is higher than all other generators in the market.

Given these characteristics, I expected DR to be used relatively infrequently when the wind came in less strong than predicted. Not so - the optimization seems to like the flexibility of demand response and dispatches it all the time. I need to look deeper into my assumptions about DR having zero startup cost. (Furthermore, HECO rules promise that DR won't be called for longer than 2 hours at a time. Obviously that still needs to be coded into the constraint set.)

Other interesting observation: that large dark grey band is coal. For all of its world-class wind penetration, the country is still running a lot of dirty coal. You see the cleaner natural gas plants (light grey) kick in mostly when the wind dies down such as on 7/3. Running coal and wind feels to me like eating chocolate cake and diet coke to balance it out. I'd be interested in calculating the carbon-intensity of denmark's dirty/clean hybrid and comparing it to New England's pretty-clean natural gas sector. (Also: 100% wind on the night of 7/12! Go Denmark!)

Patent Hat Trick

2011-03-15T09:09:00.000-04:00

After 5 years in the USPTO caverns, the third karl critz patent has been issued. This relates to my time back at the MathWorks as product lead for the Report Generator. Users had been asking for some easy way to package up Simulink and Stateflow models, then send them to colleagues for review. Interviews showed that people were willing to install a special program or plug-in, but preferred not to. I built a tool that would export these models to then-rare Scalable Vector Graphics so that models could be viewed and navigated in any modern web browser. There was even a neat "overview" mode that anticipated Apple's "Expose" feature by a few years. This feature is what made us jump to version 3.0, and it helped sales tidily. My career has progressed onward from this sort of work, but it's still cool to get the recognition.

(It is a bit embarrassing that the lawyers captured the figures using internet explorer, and "provided by compaq" no less.)

Business Logic 2x2

2011-03-14T11:08:00.002-04:00

Following my recent realization that for business theory "if it can't be decomposed into a 2x2 matrix, it's not worth knowing", I hereby present my meta 2x2 matrix to describe all 2x2 business matrices:

can it be expressed as a 2x2 matrix?	yes	simplify until it hurts	great! tenure awaits.
can it be expressed as a 2x2 matrix?	no	go back to physics, pointdexter	you're overthinking it
Karl's Business Logic		no	yes
Karl's Business Logic		should it be expressed as a 2x2 matrix?

Note to anyone seeing this through facebook: Mark Zuckerberg hates the <table> tag, so you'll have to click the link to see this on my blog karlcritz.com with original formatting intact.

Marketing Advice for Career Switchers

2011-03-12T15:18:00.001-05:00

This week my Harvard Business School class ("Business Marketing") covered the topic of "what is your message when selling stuff?" In the model, there is one particular trap that I have fallen into, as may many of my SDM colleagues. Here is a short warning for those thinking of switching careers.

It seems like there's a truism in business literature that "if it can't be decomposed into a 2x2 matrix, it's not worth knowing." The latest bit of wisdom from Business Marketing concerns itself with how to sell a product based on its benefits. You have to consider your ability to deliver the benefit (low/high) as well as the importance of that benefit to the buyer (low/high). The strategy matrix looks like this:

importance to customer	high	deflect	hook
importance to customer	low	ignore	resist!
		low	high
		ability to provide

If you do something well and the customer values it, lead with it. It's your hook. If you don't do something well and the customer doesn't care, ignore it and don't even talk about it. Who cares? If you don't do something well and the customer does care, you are in the realm of objection handling. Deflect and move on; there are dozens of books to help you do this with grace.

Career-switchers get trapped by the lower-right quadrant. We're looking to go into a new area and the bulk of our accomplishments are in a different area. It takes a tremendous amount of strength to resist and NOT play up areas of strength when the customer (a hiring manager) doesn't care. Imagine if someone wants to sell you a car and tells you how great it is at closed-course auto racing. Your thoughts are going to be "I don't want to do auto racing, why are you wasting my time?" and "Am I going to have to pay more for this?" In the best circumstance, the sales message might link that auto racing prowess to things you do care about such as acceleration or cornering. In the worst case, this quadrant will just bother or confuse the buyer.

Prior to SDM, my resume contained a lot of detail about software projects, languages, libraries, and skills. It's been painful to pare this away. I still see myself entering a world of managing software developers or at least working with them to develop specifications. Therefore, my software experience on the resume now focuses much more on leadership and real-world results. How many people did I manage? How did I develop and implement a product vision? None of the jobs I want will care whether or not I can finesse XML XSLT engines to output elegant SVG images, so that line had to go. Keep it relevant to the audience, and be careful what you're selling.

(On a personal note, removing OASIS DocBook skill may have hurt. That pain was nothing compared to removing "Eagle Scout, BSA" from the "awards" section. Darn you, relevance.)

(Image via Wenger, makers of knives both practical and... not.)

SDM Explained: A Transcript

2011-03-10T17:55:00.000-05:00

What follows is an organized list of my coursework as part of SDM. The concept of "Systems Design and Management" can be hard to encapsulate in a simple sentence, so this exhaustive list can give you a better feel for how I have been applying myself for the last year and a half. The high-level themes provide the best feel for the SDM approach: leadership, the business of technology, and large-scale systems analysis. My personal area of interest is in the integration of renewable energy, visible both in the explicitly energy-related classes as well as the courses in which I performed substantial project work on energy issues. (Energy-focused courses are noted in bold.)

Technology Strategy
- 15.965 Technology Strategy - Creating and capturing value
- 15.969 User-Centered Innovation - Listening to lead users for product design
- ESD.945 SLaM Praxis - How decisions are made, frameworks for competitive analysis
- ESD.58 Disruptive Technologies - How technologies evolve
  - Project: market evaluation of 3rd generation solar cells
- ESD.945 SLaM Lab - Applied technology strategy
  - Project: New market penetration for an energy efficiency firm
Management
- 15.381 The Human Side of Technology - leadership theory as applied to tech
- ESD.930 Leadership - leadership frameworks and personal reflection
- ESD.38 Enterprise Architecture - an engineering approach to organizational transformation
- 15.514 Managerial Accounting - how to think about costs and income
- ESD.763 Supply Chain Management - treating a supply chain as an optimizable design
- 15.281 Advanced Leadership Communication - running effective teams
- HBS1929 Business Marketing - how to manage a team for b2b sales
  - Project on how to sell to electrical utilities
Energy
- 15.366 Energy Ventures - Practical lab in how to launch an energy-industry startup
- ESD.940 Wind Turbine Design - manufacturing, meteorology, and the NREL FAST suite
- ESD.934 Engineering, Economics, and Regulation of the Power Sector - grid operations
  - Project: future outlook for demand response
- ESD.865 Modeling Electric Power Systems - numerical optimization with GAMS
- Thesis - Demand Response for Grid Balance with High Renewable Penetration
System Engineering
- ESD.33 System Engineering - analyzed the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative as a large-scale systems problem
- ESD.34 System Architecture - applied architectural principles to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
- ESD.36 Project Management - how to bring in a project on time and on budget, using system dynamics to avoid the traps
- ESD.344 Real Options - mathematical tools for when and how to build flexibility into product design
Misc
- ESD.301 Statistics - Emphasis on hypothesis testing
- 21F.415 Deutschland im Europäischen Kontext - Deutsche Literatur auf Deutsch
- 6.083 Mobile Application Development - Wrote 5 deployable Android applications

This portfolio of classes has positioned me for a role in product management, project management, corporate strategy, or engineering management.

Product Camp Boston: Register Today

2011-03-08T12:09:00.002-05:00

Registration just opened for Product Camp Boston. The focus is on product management, the difficult and under-appreciated art of figuring out "what to build", not just "how to build it." It's an O'Reilly-style "un-conference", which means that the content will be organized on the spot according to interest. It also has the advantage of being free. I attended the 2009 camp and learned a lot. Let me know if you'll be there.

MIT Energy Conference - Visit the Free Showcase on Friday

2011-03-03T19:15:00.002-05:00

I'm on the organizing team for the MIT Energy Conference Showcase. Tickets for the conference itself sold out long ago, but the Friday (4 March) Showcase is free and open to the public. We have put together a great collection of academics and companies doing cutting-edge work in the energy field. I'm particularly excited by some of the unconventional wind and hydro generators we'll have on the floor. Stop by the Westin from 5 to 8pm and say hi.

Dev Project: Boston Bicycling Mobile App

2011-02-26T13:23:00.002-05:00

Your smartphone is a sophisticated, connected sensor platform. The City of Boston is rolling out apps to improve quality of life through its "new urban mechanic" initiative. Through apps like Citizens Connect, we can report graffiti, get streetlamps fixed, and (maybe) even automatically detect potholes. I am working on a project with Nigel Jacob, owner of the mechanic project. As a cyclist, I'm prototyping a mobile app that will make life better for bikers in Boston. If it looks good, his department may invest the time to release it as a production-quality system. This would be a great and low-cost way for the Mayor to follow through on his promise to make the city a "cyclist's dream."

Here's my question for you: What do you want? How can we help? What cycling frustrations could be solved with a mobile app? A few ideas to start the conversation:

Need: finding bike lanes. Help with route planning.
Frustration: cars parked in bike lanes. Submit photos of offenders? Automatically detect swerving into traffic when in a bike lane?
Need: automatic dispatch of police/ambulance after an accident. Detect sudden deceleration followed by extended immobility, message 911 with current location.

How can we use technology and the support of the city to make this a great place for cyclists?

Image licensed Creative Commons by abbyladybug.

Strategy and Stupidity

2011-02-17T17:02:00.003-05:00

Corporate strategy is often presented as being like a game of chess. (Better yet, "go" or "pente".) You make your plan, seek to outwit the competition, and emerge victorious through superior execution. The dumber your competitor, the more likely you are to win.

I first became aware that this view was incomplete during my startup days. Our product category represented a tiny but disruptive opportunity to a much larger market. Arguing with or belittling competitors wouldn't just be childish, it could shake confidence in the entire nascent industry.

I am taking a B2B marketing class at Harvard this semester and we just saw a video of an executive who stated this wisdom concisely (I paraphrase):

It's terrible to compete against someone stupid, especially if they don't understand their own cost structure. They'll send themselves into bankruptcy and may drag you with them.

Well-said.

It's easy to recall industries poisoned by unethical competitors; energy trading will live under the shadow of Enron for a generation. I can't think offhand of any industries or markets that were destroyed by a stupid competitor, but imagine that it wouldn't be too hard to find one after some research. Are there any on your mind?

Language: Gendered Address

2011-02-08T09:04:00.005-05:00

I am taking a German class this term in preparation for potential post-graduation employment through the MIT-Germany program. It's been fun to reacquaint myself with the language and I'm looking forward to it. There's one unusual wrinkle, though: our professor is a visiting scholar from Wellesley (a women's school). Some Germans have a verbal tick in which they insert "meine Damen und Herren" (ladies and gentlemen) into their speech for emphasis or to pause.

Our professor, on the other hand, repeatedly asks questions like, "Wo denken sie, meine Damen, dass Europa beginnt?" Or, "Ladies, where do you think Europe begins?"

Fortunately, the three Herren in the class think that it's more funny than bothersome.

Note: Photo courtesy of Brown University showing an anatomy class for women in 1900.

Product Review: Agloves

2011-02-02T02:02:00.000-05:00

I never imagined that on a tech-centric blog I would be doing fashion reviews, but Agloves sit somewhere between "garment" and "tool." When I found myself on a walk manipulating my touchscreen with my nose, I knew something needed to change. Agloves are a liner-thickness glove threaded through with capacitative silver so that every part of the hand registers on the touchscreen. The fit is a bit strange, but they work as advertised.

Because the gloves are thin, I can do precision targeting like typing. Even hitting small countries in Lux DLX is pretty easy. I'm not sure that the full 10-finger response is all that necessary. I'd probably be happy with an index and middle finger. The real advantage to the sewn-in conductivity is that the lack of a conductive pad means that the gloves can be accurate and have a natural feel. Though not as warm as my nice Black Diamond skiing gloves, they seem insulative enough for most urban applications. They're not stylish, but I'll call them attractive enough that they don't embarrass me.

Unfortunately, these gloves are hard to find at brick-and-mortar stores so you may have to iterate to find your right size. I used the company's online sizing tool (which measures only the width of your palm) to order a M/L pair and had to exchange them for an XL. These gloves have very short-cut fingers, so the M/L pair left me with uncomfortable webs of fabric almost behind my knuckles. Even with the XL gloves, I wish the fingers were longer. Their customer service rep was helpful and friendly, replacing my gloves quickly and without fuss. I was a bit bothered that I had to pay for return postage. Given how personal glove sizing is, I would feel more confident buying with a Zappos-style prepaid shipping return label.

If you want to check your mail during the winter, these will get the job done. I wonder if this will start to become an expected feature in most gloves by next year.

Wind Week @ MIT

2011-01-25T13:25:00.002-05:00

Wind Week at MIT just wrapped up. I learned a lot in the special-topics class ESD.930, and particularly enjoyed that the visit from Steve Nolet of TPI Composites enabled me to geek out about prepreg laminates and honeycomb cores. The most thought-provoking talks came during the all-day Friday workshop in which we focused on grid integration. Most of the serious work in wind theory these days is on bidding strategies/market design, as well as in figuring out cost allocations for transmission upgrades and standby generation. These all assume that storage is expensive and we have to think about the grid in a different way.

Eric Ingersoll from General Compression raised a different idea: cheap storage can turn wind from an intermittent resource to a baseload generator. He estimates that 200-300 hours of storage will enable any given facility to be fully dispatchable at a combined cost below that of coal. (And that wind + storage is cheaper than wind + peaker plant.) This raises a lot of interesting questions, like "why not use less storage and call yourself a peaker unit" or "why not chuck the wind and do intra-day arbitrage?" But that's not the point of this post; I'm more interested in the general idea of technical breakthroughs making complex hacks unnecessary.

Remember the beginning of the previous decade? In 2000 we knew that the broadcast model for video would be supplanted by something else, but not what. We knew that the TV of the future would be customizable, timeshiftable, and able to access an infinite array of content. The form of the solution was a huge unknown given the tiny pipes available at the time. TiVo connected a hard drive to the cable box. BitTorrent hooked your hard drive to a world of pirated content via your crappy ISDN line. AppleTV 1.0 did the same thing, but wrapped the juicy content in a razorwire shell of DRM. Deep thinkers imagined legal peer-to-peer multipoint distribution systems and even freely shareable files with embedded advertising. We even briefly flirted with the notion that low-quality YouTube clips of teenagers injuring themselves with fire would replace professional media. Broadband is now a reality and we now pretty much just stream studio TV or movies through Hulu, AppleTV 2.0, or Netflix. The infrastructure necessary to engage in broad realtime streaming of video is quite complex with its Akamai nodes and high-speed backbone, but the user model is radically simplified. We have more or less jettisoned those crazy workarounds and now I can watch old episodes of "Arrested Development" on my phone as I walk to the (T).

System limitations necessitate complex hacks that sometimes have shorter lives than the limitations that spawned them. Will cheap storage turn wind integration into a no-brainer before we implement the perfect intermittent wholesale electricity market? I have my doubts in the short run, but wouldn't be surprised if some day in the distant future we look back on Fred Schweppe's revolutionary power system market designs as a transitional hack.

Liberate Your Data

2010-12-07T16:08:00.005-05:00

I discovered a cool tool today which might interest my SDM colleagues: Liberate your Google Groups site! Many of us use Google Groups to coordinate our ad-hoc teams. But how do you preserve your team's work for posterity? The liberation tool exports the entire site to a local directory on your machine. Finally - my entire education on a (surprisingly small) flash drive.

I still have most of my course bibles from my undergrad days. It's a real relief to transform these into a more-portable form.

Pitching Fits

2010-10-30T10:23:00.003-04:00

The good news: I filtered through almost 400 of the MIT100k Elevator Pitch Competition entries to the top 60, then placed into the top 12. This let me pitch my clean energy idea to 500 people live and I hear that the video will be seen by a few thousand. Unfortunately, I didn't place in the top 3, so I won no money. At the time, it felt like crushing defeat but I'm trying to look on the positive side and call a top-12 placement an accomplishment.

Here's what I think brought my team to the top:

Our low-cost/high-effectiveness desalination idea is easy to understand
It has a clear, profitable business model
The judges rated me as top 5% in "connects with the audience" and "charisma".

I walked out of the opening round feeling good about the pitch and its delivery.

Then came the finals night, which didn't go as well. What I'd do differently next time:

I reworked the pitch based on feedback from the judges in the preliminaries. Their feedback was useful, but the pitch became overstuffed with an "all things to all people" problem.
I did not connect with the audience. My delivery was uncharacteristically nervous and stilted. I need to reach deeper into that theatrical background and force myself to be ON regardless of whatever else is happening.

We'll be back at the Executive Summary contest in a few weeks. Until then, it's time to get back to interviewing potential customers.

Take Me To Your Leader

2010-10-26T10:26:00.001-04:00

After ridiculing CareerLeader, it's time to post about a self-assessment which really works. One of my classes this term is ESD.945 "Systems Leadership and Management". It's a project-based class which looks explicitly at effective teamwork, decision-making, leadership style, and management theory. I have always found it strange that much of being a manager is about leadership, but that business school focuses so much on the nuts and bolts of strategy/economics/accounting. One of our early exercises in this class was to take the "Belbin Team Roles" test. I have to say that I was surprised at the results.

"Know Thyself, Algorithmically": The test prioritizes your teamwork style into a variety of iconic roles. I had always seen myself as a dispassionate, technocratic "coordinator": the one who doesn't care much about the direction of the team as long as everything is humming along efficiently. As it turns out, I'm more of a "shaper", a description which fits over 80% of business school graduates. I have a vision, and dang it if we're not moving in that direction. It's either time that I own up to this tendency, or explicitly walk away from it. Denial helps nobody.

I at least have one trait which is rare among MBA-types. My second-highest score is as an "implementer". Though the name sounds like an individual contributor, this role actually shows strengths in delegation, leading the team towards its goals, and generally making sure that Stuff Gets Done. Implementers are apparently rare in business school, so I do have an edge here.

My team for this class contains another strong "shaper" personality. We're already talking about how to best make sure that we work constructively. This is a conversation which probably wouldn't have happened without the test. Call it an early win.

Electricity Grid: System Balance and Renewable Integration in Hawai'i

2010-10-21T10:21:00.003-04:00

The following is reprint of an article I wrote for the Fall 2010 edition of the SDM Pulse. Read it in all its PDFy glory there, or enjoy the web form here. This project inspired what has become my thesis topic, so you'll be seeing much more about Hawai'i here. The project team consists of Kacy Gerst (SDM ’09), Matt Harper, (SDM'10), and myself Karl Critz (SDM ’10).

The state of Hawaii has great incentive to pursue renewable energy projects. The Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative (HCEI) has provided top-down pressure for change by setting targets of 40 percent renewable energy and a 30 percent increase in energy efficiency by 2030. Electricity costs triple the national average, and gas at the pump is 50 percent more expensive than on the mainland. This combination of political and economic drivers encourages Hawaii to test new systems for energy efficiency and sustainability significantly before such systems are explored on a national scale. For this summer’s course in systems engineering, SDM students undertook to find ways to help Hawaii reach its targets in these two areas: increased transportation efficiency and stable renewable electricity production.

Much economic and policy research has already focused on how to structure incentives in order to meet a 40 percent renewable portfolio standard. Team Grid therefore chose to focus on the less-studied systems issues and incentives involved in integrating intermittent sources of energy, such as wind and solar power, into the electrical grid. While some renewable energy sources, such as biomass or biofuel, act like the status quo fossil fuels and can be ramped up or down as needed, others do not. Geothermal energy installations usually have a fixed maximum capacity and have limited ability to respond to demand variation. Worse, wind and solar sources are entirely at the mercy of nature. A grid supplied by these intermittent sources must work harder to meet demand when the wind stops blowing.

The SDM team deployed a rich set of systems engineering tools to address the problem. Characterizing the proposed electricity grid for 2030 exposed the scope of the problem on the minute and hour timescale. A model of the grid from today until 2030 revealed the connections between generation, demand, investment, equipment retirement, transmission, and stabilization. The team also developed a model of stakeholders to put hard economic values on the cost of blackouts, not-in-my-backyard attitudes, habitat destruction, and behavior change. By using experimental design, the team evaluated a set of portfolios for its economic and social costs. This analysis revealed an optimal set of stabilizers for assuring an adequate energy supply with intermittent resources.

The best portfolios focused on simple solutions that use existing infrastructure. It is not, strictly speaking, economical to maintain oil-fired power plants when they will only be used infrequently. However, compared to other storage technologies it is much less expensive (economically and socially) to keep these plants maintained and ready to step in when the sun and wind cannot provide. The team therefore recommended that the Public Utilities Commission guarantee that low- utilization oil plants be compensated by ratepayers.

Unfortunately, such plants are unable to take extra energy when the wind is blowing strong and demand is low (“down-regulate”). To react quickly to unexpected changes and stabilize the grid, the team also recommended the use of chemical energy storage devices such as batteries or fuel cells. Since the storage would supply broad grid benefits, it makes sense that it be controlled by the electric company and not by individual wind/solar developers. The general benefits of storage should also qualify investments for public subsidies similar to the producer tax credit offered for wind and solar developers.

In addition to these two themes, the team also found benefit in (1) dynamic billing policies to shave demand during peak times and (2) streamlined siting for transmission lines and geographically distributed intermittent sources. Each of these policies will create the strong grid Hawaii needs to reduce its fossil fuel imports and assure the continued services upon which its economy depends.

These projects were developed in close collaboration with Michael Duffy at the National Renewable Energy Lab, who provided continuous feedback and guidance to SDM students throughout the course. The teams thank Duffy (who received a master’s from MIT and a PhD from Ohio State University) for his mentorship.

Your Opinion, While Interesting, Is Irrelevant*

2010-09-29T10:54:00.002-04:00

With the recent introduction iPhone OS 4.1, Apple is creeping forward in functionality. Much like iOS4, this latest release mostly contains enhancements which I can't use (HDR photography is iPhone4-only) or don't care about (GameCenter/Ping). One welcome and less-publicized feature is full Bluetooth AVRCP support, which means that I can finally use "forward" and "back" controls when the phone pairs with my car.

The iOS platform now represents about 1/3 of Apple's revenue, so it's hard to argue with success. There are dark corners of the user experience on this device which haven't received much attention since launch. As a product manager, these would annoy me like a sore tooth. There is a truism of product development which states "If you're not embarrassed by your v1.0 product, you waited too long to release." All products, no matter how mature, will always have some sort of deficiency. Deciding which ones are important to your customers and which ones just irritate a niche subset is a critical skill.

* Title inspired by Pragmatic Marketing, taking the ego out of product management one framework at a time.

Entrepreneurship: The Flip

2010-09-11T11:46:00.006-04:00

I'm at Startup Bootcamp listening to Mick Mountz of Kiva Systems talk about his early experiences with the company. (They make a way-cool automated material handling system which turns warehouses and distribution centers into a robotic ballet.) His step 1 in a startup is (of course) "get a whiteboard and a business card." With a good idea and some customer-funded development, this eventually lets you change the world.

Step zero, though, is something I had never heard before. He calls it "The Flip". It's the moment when you decide "fuck it, I'm doing this." After the flip, he answered his phone "kiva systems". He had no product, no customers, no staff, and hadn't even incorporated. But it became real in his head.

I have heard talks on every detail of entrepreneurship from inception to funding to exit. But this is the first time anyone has talked about something like The Flip. I like the intentionality of this concept. It feels like there needs to be a ceremony for this.

karlcritz.mit.edu

2010-09-11T09:24:00.001-04:00

My colleague Rafael told me about the MIT scripts service, which means that I now own karlcritz.mit.edu. It simply redirects to this blog, but it's a cool URL to own. To my other classmates, this takes about 5 minutes to set up. (Though it helps to know a thing or two about MIT's athena unix environment.) Thanks, Rafael!

CareerLeader - This Much We Know

2010-09-09T15:08:00.002-04:00

It's hard to provide recruiting support for SDM students. We have 5-7 years of experience and a rather novel degree which combines management with a hard-to-explain corner of engineering. On-campus recruiting and career fairs are targeted at more entry-level positions or (at Sloan) investment banking/management consulting. SDM-appropriate jobs are often not advertised; companies may not even realize that our expertise exists. One service offered by our career services department is the "CareerLeader" assessment. It is supposed to help you sharpen your focus and figure out what kind of job to look for. Having taken the test, I'm not sure it told me anything I didn't already know.

The results are near-tautological. One section asks the test-taker to perform a series of binary rankings: "Would you rather be recognized as brilliant or would you rather make a social contribution with your work?" After a near-comprehensive search of the trade space, we are presented (voila!) with a ranking of our preferences. In another section, we are asked to rank our interest in such areas as "managing technical projects." Indicating high interest in this area means that the summary will tell you "you are interested in managing technical projects!". Again, the insight is stunning. I am not sure what I expected out of this assessment, but I was hoping for some emergent insight into my interests rather than a regurgitation of my answers.

For what it's worth, here's what the test told me:

You have a strong interest in Application of Technology. You take a systematic, engineering-like approach to solving problems and understanding systems and processes.
You also have a notable level of interest in Theory Development and Conceptual Thinking. You enjoy solving business problems by taking a conceptual "big picture" approach, exploring abstract ideas and the "what ifs" of a business or industry, and considering broad economic and social trends.

This is pretty spot-on, if obvious. Furthermore, the test tells me that careers I should consider are:

R&D Management
Product Management
Management of New Product Development
Entrepreneurship

Again, it's just what I told the assessment but at least it's accurate.

Thanks to the hard-working SDM career office for trying on this one. I'd be interested in hearing from you if you extracted value from this assessment. Did it tell you something you didn't already know?

Dirty Power / Shift the Baseline

2010-08-24T16:55:00.004-04:00

At an MIT Energy Initiative talk last week, a representative from China"s electric company told us about China's aggressive green energy goals for the next few decades. On one slide, he talked about reducing carbon emissions by 45% per unit of GDP. This sounds great, until you realize that China expects to grow its economy 6x in the same period, so you are looking at a 3x increase in carbon. Putting the two slides together, I felt a bit hoodwinked.

This has been a constant point of contention between the developed and the developing world. Our post-industrial economies hum along efficiently and provide us with a standard of living unimaginable to our grandparents. Meanwhile, 5 billion people are struggling to lift themselves out of a pre-industrial existence. Instituting a nation-by-nation carbon cap freezes the status quo in a manner that probably should be unacceptable to a group of people who largely don't even have indoor plumbing.

In a static, closed system it shouldn't matter much whether you auction off a quantity-limited set of carbon allowances or impose a carbon tax. The magic of price/supply elasticity dictates that the outcome should be the same either way. But that magic only applies within one nation. How do you decide ahead of time the allowable carbon output for each nation? Can you? Should you?

Would you set caps or targets normalized to GDP as implied by the Chinese representative? Could such a system kick an economy while it is down? (A local depression would reduce your relative carbon allowances, making it harder to recover.) Is is verifiable?

There is a simplicity in taxing emissions rather than auctioning quantity limits. A roughly consistent worldwide price on carbon would automatically and dynamically adjust emissions as economies develop and become more or less energy intensive. It is much more transparent and implementable than a single global allowance auction. It would enable developing nations to grow and increase their absolute and relative output while still recognizing the cost of that growth.

Nobody wants to mire developing nations in poverty. Nobody wants them to have a free ride either. We need a regulatory framework which recognizes that 1/3 of the world is growing faster than laws or treaties can adapt.

SDM Summer 2010 review

2010-08-13T13:53:00.004-04:00

Another semester, another chunk of knowledge. Summer term is a bit accelerated at MIT since it tries to pack a full semester of content into fewer weeks. Classes meet for more hours each week and the workload per unit time is higher. Fortunately, the institute is air conditioned.

ESD.763 covered supply chain logistics from a very high level. I didn't walk out of this class feeling like I could design and run a supply chain on my own, but I now feel that I have a solid grounding in the issues and the fundamentals. We started with some good mathematical grounding in Markov chains and queue theory. Then we covered a rich set of cases to see how these theories are applied in the real world. Learning about 7-11 Japan was mind-blowing. Hourly resupply with shifting stock throughout the day? Insane. This class only ran for the first half of the semester; having its workload disappear just as other classes ramped up was scheduling genius. I appreciated that Professor Martinez-de-Albeniz would challenge poorly-thought-out answers with harsh and well-deserved reality.

15.514 Financial and Managerial Accounting should have been painful. Who wants to spend three evenings per week learning about accounting in the summer? It turned out to be much more engaging than I thought it would be. I viewed the class as "defense against the dark arts." I never plan to do any accounting myself, but I feel that I should now be able to spot and understand a severe irregularity if someone tries to sneak it by me. Professor Scott Keating was committed to both our understanding and keeping the material as engaging as it realistically can be.

ESD.33 Systems Engineering reminded me of my employee training on the "Design V" back at Ford. This was mostly familiar material, and it suffers a bit by being so loose and heuristic-based. It's necessary material but I don't see a systematic way to teach it. This class, however, was responsible for my favorite project of the summer: an examination of the electrical grid in Hawaii. (Separate article on this to come.)

ESD.945 SLaM Lab Praxis was the first formal "leadership" training we have yet had. In this class we covered decision making, setting strategic directions, how to disagree productively, and how to respond to changes in the external environment. This was good material and Professor Michael Davies delivers it with passion. There is a good chance that I will be taking the followup class this Fall.

And now, three weeks off for some backpacking/kayaking/thesis-writing.

Wave Goodbye

2010-08-05T13:26:00.001-04:00

Google has stabilized Wave. The occasional miss should not be a surprise in a company with a freewheeling, beta-oriented culture. There is something to be said for the argument that Wave was poorly communicated. If you have a new product and can't describe what it is in a paragraph of text, you have a problem. Who is it for? What do you do with it? How does this make your life better?

My theory is that Wave failed because of its invitation strategy. Wave is a communications platform. If you can't use it to communicate with anyone, it's useless. In school, we frequently form fast ad-hoc groups for projects and problem sets. Wave would have been perfect perfect for this since email is too unstructured and Google Groups is too heavyweight. I tried early on to sell a few of my teams on Wave, but quickly gave up when we ran into invitation/registration problems. When you only have a week to get your team moving, tool overhead is something you can't afford.

Google's Buzz has been maligned for lacking any meaningful functionality, but it did the right thing in becoming available for everyone, everywhere, immediately. I appreciate Google's caution in wanting to ramp Wave in a controlled fashion, but a slow rollout can be death for a social product.

Lines, Spirals, and Product Development

2010-07-01T10:41:00.008-04:00

A talk this week on product development included this diagram about the "product requirements death spiral". As befits NASA, it casts iteration in development as a black hole which can only be escaped by finalizing a design and achieving escape velocity. A different part of the same talk covered "Death, Taxes, and Change Requests." When working in heavy iron industries like aerospace or automotive, I can understand a certain weariness about design changes.

The telling comparison is to look at the agile software iterative development spiral. It assumes and even celebrates changes, viewing development as an experimental process. Lessons learned from one prototype are applied to the next version. Changes aren't the exception, they are part of the process.

Once upon a time, I got frustrated when a broad-consensus group design decision was reversed later in development. It seemed inefficient to backtrack. Eventually, I learned that paper prototyping and whiteboard sketching can only take you so far. Stakeholders will always change their minds. In fact, they should. We learn so much by seeing an implementation in the flesh that the product can become markedly better if we listen to those lessons.

Lately I have been wondering how to port this more nimble and experimental software model back into the physical world. I enjoy working on software precisely because of this level of freedom. But there is a lot of appeal to building something out of atoms instead of bits. I wonder if someday 3D printing and rapid manufacturing will enable true iterative development on heavy iron.

Disrupting Photons

2010-07-01T07:46:00.009-04:00

Technology-watchers have been predicting that cell phone cameras will replace single-function cameras since the first featurephones were released. The serious photographers who write on the subject have now embraced the digital SLR over chemical film, but still laugh at the idea that the tiny optics of a phonecam could ever subsume a dedicated device. Today, I saw evidence that the laughing is over and that phone manufacturers have moved on to the next phase in the tech transfer attitude chain. ("first they mock you, then they fight you, then you win")

There is a billboard just outside Logan airport which says "If it has a ringtone, it's not a camera." This is obviously a defensive move from a threatened incumbent. I am writing this from MIT's Killian Court where hundreds of tourists pour forth from buses each day to photograph each other in front of the great dome. An informal survey shows that about half are using cellphone cameras. Personally, I take more pictures with my blurry iPhone 3GS camera than with my fancy Canon s90 or my rugged Pentax w80. The iPhone 4's camera is even better and will probably represent even more of my picture-taking when I purchase its successor. The idea of a cell camera replacing a single-purpose device is already here for the majority of consumers and is just around the corner for everybody but the most serious artiste.

My tech strategy classes last semester covered many such turning points. We have seen the signs and they are all here. I am imagining the New England lake-ice industry with a billboard in 1920 saying "If it came from a machine, it isn't ice." Sailboat makers could claim "If it has propellers, it isn't a ship." Gas lighting manufacturers might try, "If there is no flame, there is no illumination." This campaign comes off just as desperate, and just as doomed.

Semester 1 in the rearview mirror

2010-06-08T14:08:00.003-04:00

My first semester is now done. Some thoughts on my classes:

Disruptive Technologies: We learned a lot about the Clay Christensen innovation model during IAP. It was presented as a well-packaged, clear, consistent model for understanding the dynamics of the marketplace. This class is an extended series of footnotes, caveats, and counterexamples which show that the simple model isn't the end of the discussion. Group project: understanding the impact of low-cost 3rd generation PV solar technologies. We predicted that Balance of System costs will keep 3G solar out of the utility-scale market indefinitely, but that opportunities posed by BIPV (Building Integrated Photovoltaic) to lower BoS costs will create a viable market once the technology's durability issues are resolved.
Engineering, Economics, and Regulation of the Electricity Grid. My favorite class this term. A detailed, real-world look at exactly how the magic of always-available power actually works. I had no idea that the system was this complicated and how the incentive structures really work in the industry. Fascinating to learn what "deregulation" really means.
Technology Strategy: Heavy overlap with Disruptive Technologies. (same instructor) It was cool to read some seminal books of the field and then have the opportunity to interview the authors at length in class.
Real Options: "How to introduce a stochastic distribution function to your business plan". Really useful content burdened by an unwieldy class organization. Downright painful use of inappropriate tools to the problem. Unpleasant for structural issues, but the material is compelling enough to save the class.
User-Centered Innovation - discused earlier
Thesis Seminar - I may have a thesis topic soon. Yay.
Enterprise Architecture - A not-yet-rigorous approach to enterprise transformation. I had hoped for an engineering approach to management, which is not really what this class is about. Good to know, though, especially if I ever need to roll out an IT system in a large company.

Of course, the most valuable stuff at MIT comes outside of classes. I volunteered with the Clean Energy Prize, which deserves a post all of its own. Stay tuned.

A Dynamic Pricing Thought Experiment

2010-05-09T13:34:00.005-04:00

Imagine that all residential electricity customers experience real-time pricing. We all have smart meters and smart appliances which enable customers to register a spot price beyond which the user is willing to automatically curtail use. Imagine that a popular air conditioner manufacturer ships its unit with a default curtailment price of $.25/kWh. What is your ideal bid?

You certainly don't want to leave it set at the user default. Your bid will be lost amid the others. If you value your comfort, a bid of $.26 will clear out the vast mass of people who just leave their appliance set at the default while still preserving the lowest possible bid. I'm not sure what a $.24 bid says about you, though. Maybe that you're cheap and want to capitalize on savings before everyone else?

ERCOT (in Texas) already limits the pool of demand resources because they can react so fast to an event call that the system goes into overvoltage. I wonder if device manufacturers will be required to ship their smart appliances with a randomized default bid to prevent a sudden shutoff of half the air conditioners at a substation.

The world of real-time pricing is going to be a fascinating place in ways the academics haven't even begun to consider.

What I Like About Grad School

2010-04-20T14:01:00.004-04:00

As the usual end-of-term crunch sets in and forces me inside on perfectly nice spring days, it is important to remember why I am doing this and what I like about it. Basically, it comes down to "no bullshit". The undergrad experience (especially at MIT) often relies on frequent testing in order to filter out the ones who don't belong in the program. Grad school assumes that you want to be there and treats you like an adult.

few textbooks I have had a few professors require expensive textbooks, often of their own books. But most of our reading is in the form of journal articles or other papers. Throw in a few eBooks and I like that few trees had to die for my degree. Most of the books I have purchased so far have been inexpensive business mass-market paperbacks, so that annoying nickeled-and-dimed feeling doesn't set in at the beginning of every semester.

no tests, no finals Grading has so far been based entirely upon papers, presentations, projects, and participation. With no final exams at all, I can relax during exam week and actually get some thesis work done. I'm learning quite a bit on my project work, whereas tests tend to be about demonstrating mastery instead of learning anything new.

educators as equals I can't break the habit of calling my professors "Professor Lastname", even though several have told me that it's ok to be on a first name basis. The honorifics are there because I feel they deserve it. But this time around I see my professors as (more-knowledgeable) peers, rather than unimpeachable wise men. This means that I'm more likely to challenge them, wouldn't feel as awkward having a beer with them, and understand that their role as lecturer/teacher is actually a rather small part of their life.

Education for education's sake My mental model failure as an undergrad was to consider the program as a series of hoops to be jumped through in order to get a degree. This time around, I figure that nobody is going to care about what degree I have. My future prospects are almost entirely a function of what I learn, who I meet, and how I acquit myself in the process. Classes and grades matter, but they are not arbitrary obstacles. (I particularly like that the SDM program director is pretty open to waiving class requirements if you can make a good argument.)

There's more, but final projects call. Let's see if I'm still this chipper in 3 weeks.

User-Centered Doneness

2010-03-30T09:00:00.003-04:00

Spring break* is over, we're halfway done with the semester, and my time in SDM is already 1/8 completed. If I'm 8x more knowledgeable next May, I'll be unstoppable. (Sadly, diminishing returns means that this is unlikely.)

I'm already done with one class, "User-Centered Design in the Internet Age" taught by Eric von Hippel. It consists mostly of ideas you could get by reading Slashdot for a few years, but backed by academic rigor instead of uninformed speculation. It's good to see that open platforms, user-driven innovation, and free sharing do have a place in a world of hard-headed analysis, ROI, and NPV. Open source: it's not just for ideologs anymore. (I liked that von hippel believes his own talk: he released his book creative commons!)

It was good to see corporate/military types who thought that open source is for unwashed hippie hackers realize that the spirit of open innovation could work for them. But if I had to improve the content of the class, I would suggest that we look more at where the user-centered approach fails and why. These techniques are great in some places, disastrous in others, and hard to quantify elsewhere. How deep should an organization go?

(*Honduras, if you're wondering. Scuba diving, mayan ruins, and refried beans.)

MIT Energy Conference 2010

2010-03-07T10:53:00.003-05:00

This weekend is the MIT Energy Conference. There are more interesting lectures than I can possibly attend, and that's even including skipping one of my favorite classes. (Sorry, professor von hippel.) I won't summarize every talk, but a few deserve mention:

The provocatively titled "Is green energy the next bubble?" panel talk provided some good fodder for thought. The consensus was that since the market for green energy is mostly provided by government policy, it is unlikely to overheat and bubble. But there was some good criticism of ethanol, which one panelist artfully described as a "bridge to nowhere." If incentives create powerful constituencies for other uneconomic policies, could we get into a similar bizzaroland? Another panelist, though, mounted an interesting defense of ethanol. Her argument was that the first generation food-based feedstocks created a market into which more-reasonable second-generation feedstocks (like cellulosic) could enter. I'm still not holding my breath.

The panel on electric vehicles asked a particularly incisive question: "If EVs are the solution, what is the problem?" Tellingly, the justifications were all over the place. One speaker mentioned "carbon", which is great (assuming you're not powered from a coal plant) but I don't see the incentive mechanism which will make drivers WANT an electric car. Another mentioned "energy security", which at least has a price mechanism (oil futures internalize uncertainty). The CEO of Fisker hit closer to the truth - driving enjoyment and ability to travel in emission-free european city hubs. Like all new technologies, EVs will continue to disappoint when compared to to internal combustion in the traditional metrics of range, weight, and cost. Without a price on carbon, the drivers which will bring us EVs will be noise, avoiding gas stations, acceleration, and other new metrics.

A few annoyances:

There were a disturbing number of speakers whose presentation consisted of reading numbers verbatim from a paper statement. Boring.
The panel discussion on solar had a strange format, with each speaker beginning with a long statement addressing the same 3 issues. I would have preferred that each speaker address a single question in series so as to promote more interplay of ideas.

This was a good conference, very well-run. Perhaps I'll help organize it next year.

Industrial Relations

2010-02-23T18:44:00.004-05:00

Because a crushing courseload is not enough, I have committed myself to chair the "industrial engagement" team of SDM's Industrial Relations Committee. Today I finally found out what I have gotten myself into and it seems better-defined than initially feared. The outreach chair figures out ways for companies to partner with SDM. Some companies sponsor students to attend SDM with full salary, which is a pretty maximal level of engagement. But there are plenty of other ways for a company to benefit from a relationship with the program. Here are a few we have identified:

Be speaker. SDM sponsors regular events with real-world speakers reflecting on their experiences. Share your wisdom and make contact with talented students.
Be a class project. Most of our class work involves longform team projects in product development, market research, and business strategy. Students like solving real-world problems; put a team to work for you.
Be a judge. Many of our projects and presentations are judged by industry experts. See what we have done and evaluate it.
Be a visit. Schedule a tour of your facility and show off what you are most proud of. Ask us tough questions about what we see.
Hire an SDM. Our business skills, engineering understanding, and industrial experience make us a strong fit for any organization.
Sponsor a thesis or a research project. Develop a relationship with an SDM student and solve your toughest problems.
Request a research summary. With 20 years of SDM thesis work, chances are that there is already a strong body of research in your area. We can consolidate previous work in a compact, targeted format.

My next trick: find companies who are interested in these relationships. There is much to look forward to in the next few months.

10 Years of Educational Change and Stagnation

2010-02-08T18:20:00.006-05:00

I wondered how being a student would be different now from 10 years ago. The basics lecturing are still the same. Good instructors are still good instructors. My approach to education has definitely changed, but that's a topic for a different post. I was more concerned about technology. Would pervasive WiFi kill my ability to concentrate in class? Would I check my RSS feeds every time a lecture got boring?

By and large, not as much as I had feared. I do slip occasionally, but my method for handling a boring lecture is about the same now as it was back then: parallel process by doing problem sets in class. I can get more done in class now because the range of projects I can take on from the chair is larger. But I have so much to do that I can't really imagine firing up google reader just because I can't afford the time hit.

I have developed one technique to ensure focus in class, though. When I need to edit text (either by writing a paper at home or taking notes in class), I use OmmWriter. It's an idiosyncratic little text editor with almost no features. There isn't even search and replace. What it does do very well is to present an unbroken full-screen editing surface with no interface elements. You can't really do anything BUT write. If you try to alt-tab over to Firefox to check email the entire text editor disappears, taking with it any pretense that one is "multitasking". This may be the best program ever for dealing with the pervasive distractions which kill creativity and focus.

When I want to crank the text-editing focus up to 11, I'll disable WiFi. This is hard, but it does extend battery life.

Some professors have a different approach to the problem, which is to ban all laptop use during class. I can see where they are coming from. They want us paying attention and not updating our Twitter status. It's understandable, but also completely barbaric. I type 90WPM and can do it heads-up without even thinking. My written word requires looking at the page, is 4x slower, near-illegible, not searchable, and rather difficult to back up. Which would you rather use for taking notes in class? I find it puzzling that I am forcibly relegated to using pre-Gutenberg technology while simultaneously learning about innovation.

So there it is: less has changed than I imagined.

IAP: Done. Spring: bring it on.

2010-02-01T21:22:00.005-05:00

Ask any SDM about January and they'll tell you that it's intense.

Week 1 is dominated by the LEGO design challenge, with only a small amount of homework distracting from robot-building. In the beginning I left school around 11:30 in order to make the last (T). As the competition drew closer, I stayed until the wee hours and then gave up and brought in my sleeping bag for an overnighter. Following the competition, I was feeling pretty worn-out and slept for 14 hours straight.

Weeks 2 and 3 are shared between design challenge 2 and a bevy of homework assignments. Classes and lectures were scheduled from 8:30am until 9:30pm. The hardest part was scheduling all of my teams for our group work assignments. Usually the only time everyone could meet was during meals or after our late-night lectures. With some serious frontloading of problem sets onto the weekends, I managed to avoid staying up too late and usually made it home around 11.

Somewhere in here I organized a dim sum run to introduce my colleagues to chinatown. Consider that a small victory that a dozen SDMs were able to take a morning off right before the DC2 presentations were due.

By week 4, we were done with most of our classes and only working on design challenge 3. Again, heavy frontloading saved me from doing much problem set work here. I was able to relax, enjoy the scavenger hunt, and even make dinner for my wife.

3 weeks of nonstop activity is not too bad. I have a theory that a human being can endure just about anything for 6 weeks. This first drink from the firehose in a decade reminded me how to be a MIT student in a way which will make spring term seem like cake.

I hope.

Among My People

2010-01-22T12:59:00.002-05:00

One of my first sources of worry about the SDM program was "Opportunity Sets". Not their existence, but their name. The kind of individual who would name a "problem set" an "opportunity set" seemed to me infected by the worst elements of contemporary managerese doublespeak. When I took a break from the corporate world for the academic, I thought I was leaving "learnings" and "incent" behind. Did this mean that I would be surrounded by suit-wearing phonies who actually believed in their golf-themed Successories posters?

Turns out that it's not a problem. My colleagues are My People, engineers and scientists with a leadership-oriented bent. They are honestly interested in solving real technical problems. They have accomplishments from aerospace, civil engineering, IT, consumer electronics, the military, and even the food industry. They have all seen Star Wars. (Except one. We're working on him.)

That said, we all learn the most from people who are different from us. It's comfortable to be surrounded by people Like Me, but I may have to stretch myself a bit to try new things. Does this mean that I may end up in the Sales Club? Stay tuned.

But no Successories posters, please.

Design Challenge - LEGO vs Sleep

2010-01-12T13:07:00.002-05:00

I had an ambitious idea that I would be posting regular interpretations of my MIT SDM experience on this blog.

Ha.

The january program is intense enough that there isn't enough time for sleep, much less regular writing. Heck, I'm writing this during a lecture right now.

Week 1 was dominated by Design Challenge 1, the goal of which was to build a robot which would perform a variety of different tasks. I have been burned by similar challenges before (2.70!) and learned then that the most important thing is to test, test, test. Our team agreed to physical and code freeze by thursday night, then spend all Friday testing. We also had an idealistic vision that we would not work too late any given night. We didn't meet either of these goals totally, but we did manage to spend most of Friday testing. Unfortunately, we tested in the wrong lighting conditions. At the competition, our robot kept seeing its own shadow and confusing it with the lines on the field. Because we tested in a dimly-lit room without shadows, we thought that our robot was 80-95% reliable depending on the event.

Instead, we ended up failing miserably. We scored NEGATIVE points on 3 of the 5 challenges and came in last place. Given how much time we sunk into the challenge and the strength of our test runs, this was a crushing result. I went home Saturday night sleepdep'd and numb.

Once again, the lesson is test, test, test. Except that if your tests don't reflect field conditions accurately, you're not really testing.

MIT Global Operations Conference 2009

2009-12-29T16:46:00.005-05:00

I'm jumping back into academic life by attending the MIT Global Operations Conference. This is run by SDM (my program)/LGO (nee LFM) and focuses mostly on managing global supply chains. My manufacturing background focuses almost entirely on the factory floor, so this is an illuminating new way to think about a much bigger system.

The corporate types deliver slick talks with a message of "we did X and it had Y result." Of course, the speakers only discuss success so Y is a parade of victory and growth. There is little discussion of how they did X and why they rejected the alternatives. I can see why so many business discussions take the form of "What is our cloud/social networking/outsourcing strategy?". Some executive heard that X is a path to success. And it may very well be, but these talks have little support for why that is.

The academic talks are more nitty-gritty. Many take the form of comparisons across companies or industries for a pragmatic look at what works, when it works, and why it works. Or, more interestingly, why things fail. We learn about global compliance regimes for labor standards. We learn about open vs closed corporate architectures and what kind of markets they work in. We learn about creating products versus creating platforms. We learn about why logistics costs have increased from 9% to 10% of GDP since 2003. We boggle at the increased materials consumption of our economy and wonder what to do about it. I'm engaged and digging it. (It's also a reunion of my favorite MechE professors. Harry West and David Wallace are both here. Cool.)

The academics and corporate types all agree on a few things:

The US is not an exciting market. It is saturated, static, stable, and old. US and EU sales merely provide a comfortable source of cash to enable entry into China, India, and Brazil. The middle class is exploding there. It's where all of the meaningful growth is going to be for the next generation.
GM is dead. Everyone talks about it in the past tense. "Detroit" as a concept is synonymous with decay, decline, and a bottomless hole of debt. The most interesting idea here came from Charles Fine, which is that post-buyout GM had the opportunity to recast itself to be an integrated enterprise like Airbus: publicly owned, cozy with the unions, having collaborative supplier relationships. Airbus is sick, but Fine suggests that this architecture may be the right way to survive in a mature market. But they're not going that way, depriving us of a good case study.
There is a casual dismissiveness about six-sigma manufacturing methodologies. Yes, they say, it's important. But if you apply robust methods to a wasteful process, all you get is a more reliable wasteful process.
There is a new vocabulary I'm going to have to learn. ERP, SCM, BRIC, SCOR, GSCF, Keiretsu. I'll get it all soon enough, but I'll never be able to unselfconsciously say things like "We're going to uniquely advantage our integration."

Introduction

2009-12-29T16:42:00.002-05:00

I am Karl Critz, a new student at MIT's SDM program. I am returning to school after a decade in the software business. This journal will document my experiences in the classroom. Classes begin soon. Wish me luck.

This is a Test

2009-12-29T16:30:00.000-05:00

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