New and Noteworthy

• SRIC-BI's CEO Interviewed for USA Today Article
  USA Today recently interviewed Bill Guns, president and CEO of SRIC-BI, for an article about climate change. Guns based his comments on research from SRIC-BI's VALS™ program. In this research, VALS explains and predicts what will motivate people to make personal and lifestyle changes that will positively affect the environment.
  Read the full article on USA Today's web site  >>
• Virtual-Worlds and Collaborative-Work Survey Report
  A wide range of applications and uses of virtual worlds (VWs) by consumers and enterprises have emerged in the past couple of years. The survey that this report describes focuses on one broad use category: collaborative work. The survey gained views and perspectives from a wide range of users of VWs on a number of issues and developments relating to the current and future role of VWs in collaborative work. The survey was recently designed and conducted by SRIC-BI's Virtual-Worlds Consortium for Innovation and Learning (VWC) in collaboration with three other organizations that focus on virtual worlds. The report contains summary findings and comments and observations by SRIC-BI's VWC team as well as answers to the questions in the survey.
    Download the free report: Virtual Worlds and Collaborative Work: Survey Results
• Six Disruptive Technologies of the Future
  In work for the National Intelligence Council's (NIC's) Global Trends 2025, analysts from SRIC-BI's Scan™ and Explorer services conducted an intensive analysis of 102 technologies likely to enhance or degrade U.S. national power between now and 2025. Through a sophisticated winnowing process, the analysts identified 6 technologies with the greatest disruptive potential: biogerontology, energy-storage materials, biofuels and bio-based chemicals, clean coal technologies, service robotics, and the Internet of Things. Read more on the NIC's web site: Disruptive Civil Technologies: Six Technologies with Potential Impacts on U.S. Interests out to 2025
• VALS™ Study of Shoppers
  In the wake of discouraging economic news in the first quarter of 2008, retail sales have slowed to the extent that some economic-policy advisors acknowledge that the government stimulus package may be too little, too late. In an effort to pinpoint consumers' buying patterns, VALS™ analyzed data from the period leading into the economic downturn, putting together snapshots of representative couples within each VALS group and listing the purchases that the couples have made in the past year. The results show that some consumer groups reduced their retail spending well in advance of policy makers' acknowledgment of a softening economy. Read more in the VALS report Let's Go Shopping.

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