Aviation challenge

Sunny side up and away

Solar-powered planes first took off in the 1970s, when the first affordable photovoltaic cells went on sale. Their most notable milestone came on a bright day in 1981, when the Solar Challenger crossed the English Channel. But until now, solar aviation's ambitions have always been sent crashing to earth by an inescapable and rather obvious fact: it gets dark at night.

Swiss-based Solar Impulse has solved that problem with a single-seater prototype as light as a family saloon but with the 63m wingspan of an Airbus A340. During the day, the pilot flies high above the clouds to 9,000 metres, ensuring that its 11,628 solar cells (concentrated, for the most part, on those very wide wings) soak up as much sun as possible. With the batteries full, the plane drops to 1,500 metres, using stored energy to keep the four propellers spinning until sunrise. Last July the plane managed to stay airborne for 26 hours, shattering solar-aviation records. Now the project is aiming even higher by putting a second prototype, capable of transatlantic flights, into production this year. A round- the-world flight, in several stages, is planned for 2013.

If this all works, air travel might eventually be transformed into a clean activity involving no fossil fuels whatsoever. The potential rewards may explain why companies such as Deutsche Bank, watch brand Omega and chemicals firm Solvay have agreed to be partners. That said, Solar Impulse is unlikely to trouble Boeing.

For starters, the cruising speed of the current prototype – made largely from carbon fibre – is 70km/h. The psychiatrist and adventurer Bertrand Piccard, who conceived Solar Impulse after fuel ran low during his successful attempt at the first non-stop balloon trip round the globe, says: “Our goal is to carry messages.”

To date, Piccard and his business partner André Borschberg, the engineer and fighter pilot who made the 26-hour flight in July, have raised $80m towards the 10-year project, which started in 2003. They are on the look-out for another $35m.

Health network

Skilled operators

The world keeps getting older. Population estimates show the 65-plus population tripling by mid-century, rising to more than 1.5 billion in the next 40 years as mortality rates drop across the globe. In the US, where the baby-boomer generation is starting to enjoy the golfing years, the number of seniors will soar to a projected 89 million by 2050. Quite apart from all the socio-political implications, this profound shift puts a considerable strain on healthcare providers everywhere. It also opens up new business opportunities.

Step forward AmSurg Corporation. From its headquarters in Nashville, AmSurg operates the largest network of outpatient surgery centres in the US. Spanning 32 states, its 200 centres offer hospital- quality care but at a lower cost. By focusing heavily on gastroenterology (intestines), orthopaedics (hip replacements) and ophthalmology (eyes) – high-volume, low-risk specialities that happen to affect higher proportions of senior patients – AmSurg is ideally suited to capitalise on the population bubble to come.

AmSurg has grown quickly over the past decade in what is still a very fragmented market of more than 5,000 certified surgery centres affiliated to half a dozen groups. “Our business model is pretty unique,” says Todd Lunsford, vice president of strategy and marketing. “All of our surgery centres are partnerships with local physicians or physician groups. We typically own 51% and in return we assume the responsibility of managing the centres. That’s the value proposition to our doctors: they get to have a financial interest in their surgeries without all the administrative burdens.”

Assuring consistent quality control across such a dispersed network of semi-autonomous centres, governed as they are by so many local and regional differences, is a particular challenge for this and indeed any other 'distributed' workforce. It's a challenge that's been amplified by persistent innovations in medical procedures and the pending overhaul of the US's medical infrastructure as a result of President Obama’s healthcare reforms. There are still no nationwide standards for electronic health records, for example, making data-sharing a nightmare. “Life was much simpler six or seven years ago,” reflects Lunsford. “Now we are bombarded with so much new information and technologies that it is very hard for our operations to be expert in every field.”

AmSurg’s newly introduced solution is one that will be very familiar to users of social media: a web-based portal that allows physicians to share privileged information and methodologies. “Doctors value interacting with one another," explains Lunsford. Called Partner Connect, the proprietary password-protected system was designed and implemented by California-based offshoring specialist Nagarro. “The challenge was finding a way to integrate so many different software systems in order to achieve a uniform experience,” notes Nagarro president Vishal Gauri. “We needed to make sure that physicians are able to talk to one another. In the end, the system was based around Sharepoint but with a lot of customisation.”

Next, AmSurg has its sights on Europe, the most elderly continent in the world, where 29 %of the population is projected to be 65 and older by 2050. If the US presented integration issues, Europe surely presents a whole new set of conundrums.

Marketing

Arabia finds its real voice

Despite the constraints on freedom and social mobility that have brought turmoil to the Middle East of late, young Arabs have shown a growing entrepreneurial streak in recent years. Indeed, they are more business savvy than their Western peers. Last year's Gallup study Voices of Arab Youth showed at least a fifth of young people in countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, the UAE and Saudi Arabia plan to start their own business in the next 12 months. That compares to just 4% in the US. The significance of this becomes apparent when you realise too that two- thirds of the Middle East and North Africa’s population is below the age of 24.

But how do you market to an increasingly potent demographic that's 100 million strong? One band of high-spirited branding specialists believe they have the key, using irreverent design, digitally savvy communication channels and publishing skills that smash the stereotype of cultural conservatism. “Our secret is intriguing content with a fresh journalistic point of view, executed with strong art direction,” declares the brochure for MAD Solutions, a Cairo-based start-up that is reinventing the way that artistic endeavours, media and entertainment are being positioned to Arab consumers and businesses.

The trio who spearhead MAD are emblematic of the expatriate mix found in many of the Arab hotspots. Founder Alaa Karkouti, an analytic journalist, hails from Syria; marketing chief Dina Ezzat is an Egyptian-American with dual nationality who also works as a planning consultant for JWT; and creative director Maher Diab is a Lebanese visual artist whose other home is Toronto. MAD’s early coups have been in the film world, where targeted multimedia campaigns are still a novelty. When it created an online presence for United Motion Pictures, the sole agent for both the Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox film studios, it was the first interactive website for any Hollywood distributor in Egypt.

“Before MAD, many of the companies we dealt with never even put out press releases,” says Karkouti. “Our approach is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to make a strong campaign. We understand that today the consumer is in total control of what happens in and to the marketplace. We are witnessing the internet as the fastest-growing platform for youth in the Arab world to express views, debate issues and meet people. We create media buzz through the use of the web, ads on taxis, standees, Facebook and publicity drives in schools and universities.”

From the outset, the primary focus has been on the Arab world's entertainment industry, “an area that has lacked strategic direction both on a local and international level,” says Karkouti. But other creative sectors, including Arab art, design and fashion are targets. “The hard part for us, at the beginning, was that most companies didn’t have a marketing budget at all,” says Ezzat. “Since many of our clients are also suppliers, they had a hard time accepting advice from us about the need for new logos and other branding materials.”

Maher adds: “One company insisted on a star being the central element of a poster when we knew the movie was about a group of actors and that their preferred image just didn’t fit the identity.” Festival awards for their client projects, including films that tackle sexual harassment and look at Alexandria's hip-hop scene, have helped shift some of the entrenched thinking.

Whether it likes it or not, this ancient corner of the world is having to deal with a new madding crowd.

Biofuels breakthrough

Waste not, want not

We've all heard of 'friendly' bacteria, usually in relation to probiotic yoghurt. A company in New Zealand, however, has developed and patented what may be the most benevolent microbe in years – one that gobbles up waste gases and turns them into fuel for your car.

LanzaTech, based in Auckland, captures flue gases from industrial sites – in particular steel mills, which produce carbon monoxide (CO) in abundance – then scrubs them, cools them and sends them through a bioreactor. In the process of being consumed by the microbes, the CO is converted into ethanol for biofuel, which until now has been overwhelmingly derived from corn crops.

This summer, the company – which also has offices in Roselle, Illinois – will open a research facility at a Bao Steel plant in Shanghai with the aim of producing ethanol commercially by 2013. In January, this was touted as a key element of US-China commercial relations by the White House, which lauded its contribution to a $45bn rise in exports. Among the more familiar names on the list were Boeing, General Electric and Caterpillar.

Meanwhile LanzaTech and IndianOil have agreed to collaborate on an initiative that, if successful, will enable the petroleum giant to produce fuel-grade ethanol. The deal means IndianOil will evaluate LanzaTech’s gas-fermentation technology in one of its refineries as part of its efforts to meet the growing demands of the Indian economy.

LanzaTech is confident that it can convert any waste gas – including gasified municipal waste, wood and tyres – into ethanol. It has also expanded the range of products produced by its bacteria to include 2,3-Butanediol, a vital building block in polymers, plastics and hydrocarbon fuels.

Founded in 2005, the company was run on a shoestring for two years until US venture-capital fund Khosla Ventures invested $3.5m. In 2008 the New Zealand government contributed an $8.7m grant and last July, Chinese fund Qimming Ventures invested a further $18m.

A major selling point, says CEO Jennifer Holmgren, is that LanzaTech’s technology enables carbon capture without expending masses of additional energy. “The world uses 85 million barrels of petroleum a day and that's expected to double over the next 30 to 40 years. There's [potentially] 30 billion gallons of ethanol a year just using waste from steel mills," she says.