The IdeaConnection Blog

Toyota is of course very well known for making cars, but not really for making robots - this is Honda domain. That being said, Toyota has been working on this robot for 3 years, and has now decided that it is ready for public viewing.

The Toyota violin robot is performing daily at the Japanese Pavilion, at the The Shanghai World Expo. Here’s a short video of the robot performing a distinctly Chinese tune at the Expo:

While I don’t think that the robot will be putting orchestra players out of work anytime soon, the technology involved in manipulating the violin bow and fretting the strings is quite amazing.

At first look, it appears that Innovation Intermediaries, with their access to tens of thousands of brilliant experts, would scare consultants.

The fact is that most companies, perhaps 80%, greatly need help in articulating their pain points, their bottlenecks, their innovation needs, their innovation opportunities.

Only an astute few companies go straight to sites like http://www.innovationorderform.com to get access to brilliance.

Consultants will be around for a while.

This week Peter Lloyd looks into the debate of Communal Creativity and explores both sides of the argument. In so doing, he himself quotes famous authors and musician on their perspective of plagiarism, originality, authenticity, or what have you.

Les Paul, the great musician and inventor of the electric guitar, said it best; “to this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren’t any.”

Recent prize-winning German novelist, Helene Hegemann, uses sizable chunks of another writer’s original material. Hegemann, in reply to charges of unoriginality, not only admits appropriation, she defends her cutting and pasting. “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.”

Read more Right Brain Workouts by Peter Lloyd.