Celebrating Innovation at the Consumer Electronics Show

Celebrating Innovation at the Consumer Electronics Show
Posted by Aneesh Chopra on January 08, 2010 at 08:29 PM EST
Ed. Note: Get a firsthand account of Aneesh’s experience at CES as he walked the floor with the Washington Post’s Cecilia Kang; his conversation on innovation with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo and our efforts to promote open government with Fox Business’ Shibani Joshi.

Yesterday, I joined over 100,000 tech enthusiasts to celebrate the next wave of consumer electronics innovations at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show. The energy level throughout the convention was high and firms reflected confidence that economic growth will return to the sector in 2010. I thought to share a few summary notes on what I’ve learned during my visit:

1.Open Government a Global Movement: During my remarks at CES Government, I was joined by London Mayor Boris Johnson live via weblink who announced the “London Datastore." He kindly acknowledged President Obama for inspiring this movement through our Open Government Initiative and more specifically, our data.gov portal that today includes 118,000 publicly-available data sets for free public use. A great deal of the new consumer products showcased at CES featured apps that would improve our quality of life through the television, mobile phone, car, and a growing number of Internet-enabled devices. We are hopeful entrepreneurs will develop new apps built with government data for use across all of these exciting new products. For example, the “Innovations for Healthy Kids Game Challenge” is an opportunity for gamers to build apps targeting “tweens” to inspire healthier eating habits and help to address our growing childhood obesity problem.
2.Innovation at the Center of Consumer Electronics: Touring the Show floor was a particularly exciting endeavor as rows upon rows of new technologies that have the potential to dramatically lower the costs of innovations for national priorities like healthcare, education and energy efficiency. For example, one of the television manufacturers demonstrated a Skype application that could simplify how a patient might communicate with a physician from the comfort of their own living room, without the need to purchase additional equipment. Similarly, a number of home networking devices, when informed by energy usage made available th hrough the smart grid, could send alerts when it might be advantageous to turn down the thermostat.
3.University Innovators Meet Consumer Product Developers: One of the more exciting stops on the show floor was my visit with Carnegie Mellon’s affiliated “Quality of Life Technology Center," a National Science Foundation “Engineering Research Center”. Students, staff and faculty demonstrated early prototypes of some incredible inventions that were available for companies to license and commercialize. We held a vest that was designed to help those with hearing disabilities still enjoy the joys of music by translating the sounds into pulses one could feel. We walked through a prototype living room designed for disabled veterans capable of connecting them with physicians and adjusting their room experiences based on programmable conditions.


Overall, my trip served as a reminder that a great deal of our nation’s innovation capacity begins with basic research & development we fund across our world-class universities and federal labs, continues through the hard work of entrepreneurs toiling away to design the “next big thing”, and leads to break-through innovations to address our nation’s most pressing challenges in bending the healthcare cost curve and improving energy efficiency. These concepts are more fully explored in the President’s Strategy for American Innovation. We welcome your comments and feedback as we work towards a more innovative economy in the months and years ahead.

Aneesh Chopra is U.S. Chief Technology Officer