Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Things I've Learned Recently: The Remix



  • Comparative cost of woolly mammoths
  • The going rate for fake SAT/ACT test-taking
  • JC Penney turnaround strategy
  • General retail (apparel) pricing strategy
Let's get started. Due to the demand for elephant tusk (mostly from Asia, where it is seen as a critical ingredient in medicine and health supplements), elephant tusk is currently averaging about $900/kg in China's wholesale market. Which is interesting. More interesting?  A cheaper type of tusk comes from extinct woolly mammoths, which are periodically excavated from Siberia's tundra. Who would have ever thought that extinct animals would be cheaper than existing animals?
Ahhh, and then there's standardized testing. After a slew of fraud cases recently, the SAT and the ACT have decided to crack down on the security around testing to ensure that students aren't paying other students to sit for tests for them. In the Nassau County district last fall, 5 students were charging $500 to $3600 to test for 15 other students. What this tells me is that kids these days have wayyy too much discretionary spending. Just sayin'. Getting some prep books would probably be cheaper. To heighten security, SAT and ACT will be requiring that students upload photos of themselves when registering, scores will be automatically sent to their high schools afterward, they will eliminate the option for standby or "same-day" testing which doesn't require pre-registration and are even considering potentially giving these photos to colleges as well (this last one is under discussion as there is concern that pictures might unduly sway the admissions process). My response is, if the kids are paying that much to fake it, I'm sure they're going to find ways to get around this process too. It's really only a matter of when and how.
Finally, in a world where "showrooming" has become commonplace in the discussion of things we use our mobile phones for (not as scandalous as "sexting" I know, but when you live in the nerd world I do, "showrooming" is just as bad), the consumer has become king. Showrooming occurs when a consumer walks into a store and performs price comparison on their mobile phone while in the store. Because of the competitive prices that eBay and Amazon.com offer, this usually results in the consumer walking out after trying out the product (touching, feeling, weighing, testing) in the store and then buying it online. This has inspired some retailers like JC Penney to try kind of radical ideas in terms of straight-forward pricing, or "everyday low prices", including extending their "deals" to be monthly instead of weekly and introducing clearance items on the first and third Friday of every month (conveniently matching up with paychecks). Good in theory, but it seems to be confusing customers and sales associates are struggling to explain it. When American Airlines attempted a similar system in 1992, they abandoned it after 6 months because competitors were savagely undercutting their pricing.
The average markup for apparel at a department store begins at around 65%. Over 10 weeks, the stores will go to 25-30% off, then 50, 60 and 70% or more, which results in (sometimes) discounts so deep that the stores will sometimes sell below cost. I can't help but wonder, for large department retailers like Macy's or JC Penney how they can survive. Granted, they probably can distribute their loss and risk over the number of stores they have (since they have so many) but for every one Herald's Square Macy's, you have three Macy's in Chicago that are struggling. How much longer can they survive?

Monday, March 26, 2012

Jessica Simpson + The Future?




Here's my theory: as technology evolves and globalization continues, our world will continually get smaller. Innovation, although still capable of making giant leaps forward (touch screens, green energy, etc.), will also become more nuanced. Think about it this way-- back in the day, they had horse and buggies and then when the car came along, the combustible engine and the diesel engine revolutionized transportation, industrial manufacturing and agriculture. Comparing the engine to touch screens seems kind of crazy I know, but this is the world that we live in. 

I don't want to imply that some of the innovations that we're coming up with nowadays are not amazing in their own way-- I'm constantly impressed by the things that the human mind comes up with, from octopus robots and augmented reality surgery to sequestering pollution in cement. So any way. Back to my rant.
Similarly to the general evolution of technological innovation, I think that businesses (however intangible and murky in comparison) will also begin to struggle in this environment to differentiate themselves and identify demand and subsequent revenue streams. And that's where "Fashion Star" comes in. (Ha! Bet you didn't see that one coming, did ya?)

So "Fashion Star" has the headliners of Jessica Simpson and Nicole Richie (that should throw up a red flag right away), and the premise of the show is that competing designers come on the show to create "wearable" designs. Buyers from Macy's, Saks Fifth and H&M (along with JS and Nicole) critique the designs and the buyers can either offer a dollar amount for the designs or, if the design is particularly bad, give "No Offer". The interesting thing here is that the winning buyer is able to have the designs in stores the following day for purchase and online for purchase immediately.  But am I really going to write a post about just fashion? Pfft. Please. 

Disregarding my initial reactions of "Wow we really do live in a right-here, right-now demand society", I have to say that this is actually a smart move. In a cultural atmosphere where being Joe Everyday is much more popular than High Society Sam (I really like personifying my intangibles), this show is kind of a nice break from the snobbery that we see on the "Project Runway" shows. Gone are the days of "Well, I mean he's choosing to work with taffeta" and now we actually are beginning to hear things that make sense (and actually mean something to us normal people). Things like, "That fabric is probably too heavy for spring" or "That's not flattering... on anyone" which makes me feel better. 

From a business perspective, I like that they have potential buyers judging the designs. A Macy's buyer is not going to buy an outfit that consists of a clear shower curtain and rubber duckies as nipple tassles (hopefully), which lends more credibility to the show and also shows a little more about "the other stuff" that goes into procurement and ordering on a massive scale. These things are crazy things like, return on investment, mainstream sensibility, marketability, demographic targeting, sourcing, etc. From a consumer's perspective, it's exciting to see something go from design to store (from my perspective) in less than 24 hours. Overall, this show could be the perfect social experiment to see the appetite for made-to-order, semi-instantaneous consumer goods.... I'm intrigued to see what will happen when they roll this out to food products. Food Network just got a whole lot more interesting.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Good Things That Sound Bad-- MOOCs: Not Diseases




I came across an interesting link the other day around "MOOCs". Think Khan Academy on 'roids. I'm embarrassed to say that when I was reading this article, I was excited in quite possibly the nerdiest way possible-- complete with shaky hands and semi hyperventilating-type breathing (this is how us nerds show excitement, apparently, since it's kind of unacceptable to throw papers up in the air and frankly hard to do when you're buried under old D&D cards, articles about the new Avengers vs. X-Men comic release and your friends on the WoW chat set won't stop harassing you). But I digress. 

MOOC stands for "Massive Online Open Courses" and has been catching like a fever (for which the only cure is more cowbell) across the country. All the big names are in on it-- Stanford, MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology. But there are also a lot of new players-- with fun start-up-y names like Udemy, Udacity and Change11. Some are proprietary (Change11 for example is the in-house sourcer for GIT's classes). The concept seems almost too good to be true. Stanford, for example, hosted a class called "Building a Search Engine", but unlike normal online courses that are usually a scam, and taught by the guy that looks suspiciously like the homeless guy on your corner that talks to half-eaten hamburgers like they were his lost puppy called "Toto", these classes are taught by some super impressive people. (Though, I guess that any guy who can have a 10 minute conversation with a half-eaten hamburger, thinking it's his long- lost pet and then eat it, is also kind of impressive. I shouldn't even attempt to define what is impressive and what is not... who am I to decide?!)  So, in my opinion, impressive people. You know, people like Sebastian Thrun and David Evans-- a Google fellow and a professor on leave from the University of Virginia.
Hosted by Udacity, a for-profit startup who is hosting the course, this course opened for registration on January 23rd. Since then, more than 90,000 students have enrolled in this course. I'm sure that some people are interested in learning how to build a search engine, but I bet they really just want to know more about creating a self driving car...which, oh wait, Mr. Thrun developed while he was at Google. (Again, not trying to push my beliefs on what's impressive here... I'm just saying.)

I for one, tried out some classes at MIT's OCW (Open Courseware, which is soon going to become MITx), most notably the "Global Strategy and Organization" and it was actually pretty easy to use. Some of the courses come with just lecture notes and assignments (sometimes with solutions and sometimes without) and others come with lecture notes, assignments and an audio/video component. I also tried "Creating 'Breakthrough' Products and Services", which had an audio/video component, and I found that it was much easier to get into, if a little annoying to keep going back to the audio/video stuff posted online.

This new method of learning is super exciting to me for several reasons. A.) Now I can pretend to be smart and educated like all those other kids who got into smart schools like MIT and Stanford, B.) There's a whole new world of opportunity now for people who want to be pretentious and say they went to Stanford when what they really meant to say was "Stanford online courses" and that possibility makes me wish that I went on blind dates and finally, C.) I really like the idea that by creating these massive courses, we as a society are making a strong movement in levelling the educational playing field (I can't really preach here, because I went to Notre Dame, but I have to be honest that if it weren't for a scholarship, I would never have been able to afford higher education). For a really long time, it has always been an equation of more money=good education, no money= community college if you're lucky, and with the emergence of this type of learning system, we could really be on the brink of changing that equation for good. If people are more educated, we could begin to see a big change in social mobility, which would lead to more perspectives at the higher levels of business and technology, which I think is probably pretty critical to making innovation happen. On the flip side, when we realize that education should really be measured more qualitatively than quantitatively, I think the inflation of tuition will decrease and less emphasis will be placed on the big brand names when hiring. Fast Company has already noticed that this may be happening with gaming company IGN, who has begun to look outside of the major coding hubs for their next generation of game developers. Just sayin'. So yay for us. Go team!

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Clash of the (Tech) Titans




Things are getting contentious in the emerging technologies space. Yahoo followed up on its threat of suing Facebook (initially issued last month) and has filed papers on patent infringement on a number of things including social networking, customization, privacy, advertising and messaging. The advertising bit is probably one of the more interesting ones, because there were four alleged patent infringements, three of which are related to "Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage" and one that is related to the "System and method to determine the validity of an interaction on a network". Considering that Facebook generates a ton of revenue off of their super-targeted mini ads, these allegations could severely impact their advertising business. 

In a statement, Facebook said, "We're disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation. Once again, we learned of Yahoo's decision simultaneously with the media. We will defend ourselves vigorously against these puzzling actions."

So let me translate.

In a statement, Facebook said, "We think that Yahoo is resorting to suing us because they are having issues internally and are grasping at straws to revive their company by resorting to petty litigation such as this to draw publicity to their cause and propel themselves as a victim against the big bad Facebook. We would like the public to disregard the embarrassing fiasco that they faced earlier this year when they fired their CEO in the worst way possible and basically admitted that they were in deep trouble in terms of strategy and vision for future products. Instead, we would like to remind the public at this time that they used us to drive up their click through volume by 300% since partnering with us, and that we think it's ridiculous that they don't have the decency to tell us about their crazy announcements ahead of time like everyone else in this industry. Now that they have made Facebook angry, we will crush them under lawyers and legal clauses. We spit on them. Thank you."

In other news, Nokia also decided to axe its Mobile Financial Services unit. As one of the first admissions that late-comers are not welcome in the fast-paced mobile payments space, Yankee Group's senior analysts have commented that, "While the rewards are potentially high for a well-timed mobile money initiative in developing markets, as witnessed by the phenomenal success of M-Pesa in Kenya, the time for new entrants may have passed and certainly some countries, such as India where Nokia chose to place their interests, are already well served by existing money services..... It may be that Nokia is simply cutting back to core interests that are more central to its position as a handset manufacturer, but its mobile money backpedalling goes to show that even a name as internationally recognized as Nokia cannot immediately guarantee success in the fiercely competitive mobile payment landscape."

Initially, the MFS unit was established to manage their Nokia Money product that was launched in mid-2009 with a focus on emerging economies. The service promised P2P transfers, basic transactions, merchant/utility payments and prepaid SIM card top-ups (very, very similarly to M-Pesa). Nokia introduced this service with Obopay, which is invested $70M in early 2009 and things were looking good while they were forging partnerships with India's Yes Bank and Union Bank, but the company struggled to expand past the land of the great "I" (that's India for all the people not in the know). 

Oh yeah, and Paypal is going to launch a competing dongle (in your face, Square!). This is interesting because it goes in line with PayPal's disdain of the NFC hype. They recently announced their pilot with over 2,000 Home Depots across the U.S. where users can check out with PIN/mobile device or special PayPal card. I actually think this is the right move for PayPal, as a company that was founded in intangible payment/commerce services, it makes sense for them to balance their portfolio by simultaneously developing more tangible solutions. (Especially when all of their competitors are flocking to the NFC silver bullet.) Oh PayPal, one day we will be together again.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Hotel Points. Actually...Just Hotel Points Please




When I'm not sitting around wishing I was a cool hacker informant like this guy (who subsequently is in a lot of trouble for being kind of irresponsible, wreckless and generally kind of a jerk for no reason), and I'm taking a break from practicing how to sing my name in that perfect way (a la Jason Derulo, known more as Jayyyysoon Da-Ruuulllooo), I'm busy being obsessed about thinking how my generation has affected the current ecosystem that we now enjoy in this "society". I also like randomly putting things in quotes because it makes everything I write seem more provocative. Follow "me" on this. 

In a topic that is particularly close to my heart since I spend almost my entire life in hotels and planes, the New York Times recently published an article on how the hotel industry is trying to cater to the growing market of millenials. Although I think that I'm a little too old to be considered a millennial (Right? Can someone please publish a standard of where the "millennial generation" begins and ends please?), Millenials are expected to be a big influencer in the travel industry. American Express Business Insights (or AEBI since cool kids use "acronyms") estimates that although the baby boom generation is still shakin' it up in terms of overall spending, travel spending for younger travellers rose 20% in 2010, making them one of the fastest growing age segments. 

Hotels have introduced new lines (Starwood's Aloft line for example, an offshoot of the swanky W Hotels), and others are simply re-habbing the ones they already have. A few years ago, hotels were concerned with catering to the baby boomer generation. What did this mean? Larger work spaces, bigger beds, better lighting, more space in the rooms themselves for "accessibility". But with the new youngins' storming in, it seems that there is a perception that we prefer design over comfort, we like to have multiple options in bars/restaurants (they estimate Millenials socialize at 3-4 restaurants/bars a night when travelling) and that high-tech gadgets help us to be 'socially isolated' (aka texting someone who's in the same room as you... which I've done. Don't hate). So this is mostly true, but I just want to point out that there are probably a lot of Millenials out there that are in their first job, most likely a job at a large consulting group, where they have to travel. When they travel, yes, they're going to want to eat out and probably have a couple drinks.
But I beg you hotel chains, for the sake of all that is holy, please don't take away my work space. I know you'll be putting in more power outlets for my 1800 gadgets that I bring with me (it'd be helpful if you could install more of those USB wall chargers too, thanks!) but if you take away my workspace, every night will be like living at the W. For those of you who don't really know what that entails, it means you enter a room that looks like a Trekkie's wet dream. You stumble around and hit your shins on various low-hanging, uber-cool, spotless white furniture for five to ten minutes until you find the light switch, and then you throw your stuff all over the high tech room and pull out your laptop, your 18 power cords and get to work. By "get to work" I mean that you sit in a dimly lit room, with approximately 1-2 square feet of desk space. You'll never find the lamp switch on the first try (I've had frustrated nights where I finally give up and call the front desk. Silly me, I didn't look on the bottom of the black lamp for a tiny press button that is also black), so you fumble around some more and then you spend the next 3-4 hours working from your hotel room being angry that your laptop and papers can't fit on your desk at the same time. On the upside, the food is always pretty good at the W. 

So on behalf of all the poor consultants that travel 3-4 days a week ( a 4-1 or 5-0 in industry terms, which means you fly Monday-Thursday or Monday-Friday), please don't take away form for pure design purposes. A big desk space where I can lay out all of my stuff is really the highlight of my hotel room.
On one last note, I just want to say that Sabu (the internet hacker guy) also released grand declarations before he was caught. And I find this one particularly apt because I think it could easily be applied to the way consultants think about themselves-- it is the perfect mixture of narcissistic egotism, sprinkled with a little bit of doesn't-actually-make -sense, with a dash of over-exaggeration and melodrama and finished off with a lot of God complex. It's perfect.

"Give us liberty or give us death-- and there's billions of us around the world. You can't stop us. Because without us you won't exist."

Friday, March 16, 2012

Exploratory or Exploitative?


We sure live in a crazy world nowadays. I'm going to blame it (at least a large part of it) on The Jersey Shore. I don't even know if that show is really on any more, considering that everyone that was on their original show is cashing in and selling out as fast as humanly possible, but I'm pretty sure we can blame that show for everything that is wrong with the world today. Just sayin'.  (I mean, c'mon. Snookie wrote a book? The guy who looks on steroids is trying to be some sort of talking head for Italian cooking? Why are they constantly guests on daytime television? Everyone knows they didn't actually do anything, right?... I'm not counting getting falling down drunk and being promiscuous as "doing" anything. No pun intended.)
So, once again, I've failed to properly plan my life around attending SXSW. Every year, I promise myself that I'm going to go and delight in the hipster-y mix of silicon valley-ites and indie-band-loving youths, and every year I fail. (I even have feather earrings and flowing, flowery dresses ready!) Either way though, a marketing firm called BBH Labs is getting a lot of flak this year at the festival because they've decided to use homeless people as hot spots. Yup. You heard that right.
They argue that this project is legitimate charity work, where the homeless would get paid $20 a day and get to keep any additional donations that festival-go-ers decide to give. Their job is to walk around and offer wireless to people in exchange for a donation (much like the Streetwise model that we see in cities like Chicago). BBH justifies this idea because, as the ever-connected crowd tweets, Facebooks and streams information, the surrounding cell towers get overwhelmed, often resulting in poor network quality for users. They argue that providing wireless not only improves the festival experience, but also provides a legitimate way for the homeless to make some money.
Unfortunately, not everyone agrees. Tim Carmody, a blogger at Wired, described the situation as "completely problematic" and sounding like "something out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia". The actual participants though don't seem to have a problem with it-- in an interview, Clarence Jones said "I love talking to people and it's a job. An honest day of work and pay".
It's hard to disagree with that. Having been displaced after Katrina, I can understand that a job's a job. However, I think that there could a little more sensitivity. The shirts (see above), are provocative sure, but if this truly is a "charitable experiment", I feel like there could be a higher base pay (I mean $20? Really? That's not really living wages for a day's work.) and there should be some copy (er.... marketing language) around how BBH will additionally provide educational/housing/job placement services after the festival. If the argument is that they want to draw attention to the homeless issue (apparently this project was based off of another project where they gave homeless people cell phones to tweet about their daily lives), then there really should be more education wrapped up in this. Otherwise, unfortunately, I would agree that it seems to be a little more exploitative than exploratory or progressive.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Rosie the Robot and the MWC




And let's see here, MWC. For those of us who were not cool enough to go on a sweet vacation and hang out with other nerdy mobile people for fun, let me sum it up for you. Big findings include:
·          
Carrier OTT services trump pricing innovations
  • Carriers are feeling the squeeze (and the wrath of consumers) because, as consumers stream more and more data through their phones, they secretly curse the telecoms when they begin to get charged for their love of "Burn Notice" by the byte. Additionally, MNOs are beginning to worry about the (estimated) loss of ~$13.9B of potential SMS revenues in 2011 due to IP-based messaging like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, iMessage, etc.
  • Solution? More value added service to justify the charges, or find a way to block the cannibalizers

Small cells eclipse interest in macrocell offerings
  • People are into the little things. Femto Forum believes that small cells will outnumber "macrocells" by year-end, growing from 3.2M to 59M by 2016. I personally love my EVO, but hate the fact that it's the size of a small car (and can someone PLEASE fix the battery issue?), so it's not a surprise that small is in. Unfortunately, some players who bet on the phablet (phone tablet, like the Samsung Galaxy Note), may be seriously reconsidering their investments now. Now my fantasies of having cool mini phones in my head like the Star Trek movies can really come to life...
  • Solution? Diversification. Samsung will live, since they also produce the Galaxy Nexus and has inked exclusive deals with some big players like Google.
Interest in native OS development replaced by HTML5
  •  Something something something. Developer stuff. Blah blah blah. Rich user experience, etc.... Okay seriously, HTML5 is really wrecking stuff, and if I was iOS or Android I'd be a little nervous. HTML5 is a web standard that basically gives the opportunity for rich software development that is major-OS-agnostic (or a direct major-OS-challenge, depending on how you see things) 
  • Solution? Telefonica and Mozilla have already announced they're going on their own web-based mobile operating system called "Boot to Gecko"...It seems like Google and Apple either need to get with the program and be more flexible, or pray that this huge influx of web volume (web-based enablement of core device APIs) crashes the interwebs system and renders it useless. Likelihood of that is about zero. Just sayin'.
M2M rises while tablets fall
  • Machine to Machine stuff fascinates me. Currently, I've really only heard about it in context of home management. On your way home you can tell your house through your mobile phone that you'll be there in 10 minutes. 7 minutes later, your house turns on the lights, sets the temperature to what you like, and opens the garage door. When you arrive and disable the security, it can unlock the doors in the rest of your house or even automatically open patio/porch doors, turn on your TV and begin playing your favourite show you previously recorded.  In a creepier sense, it can also allow you to track your kids and block types of wireless streaming in your house
  • Solution? None really, and I don't know if this really warrants a solution. This seems like something that will definitely grow in popularity as we get more lazy and more dependent on technology. I'm for it, but I do miss the days of Rosie the robot. Her smart-talkin' ways and sassy attitude always made me want a robot. But only if she'll wear an old-timey maid uniform.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

My Guilty Pleasure: The MBA Comparison Game




Just going through the backlog of random b-school information that I have lying around my computer, and thought I would share some of the statistics that have come through.
The recession has been blamed for a lot of things. One of the biggest complaints for a b-school candidate is that, because the recession has severely limited the supply of jobs, a lot of the unemployed a.) want to improve their chances at getting a job, which usually entails going back for higher education and b.) the unemployed search for something to do, which also pushes them toward more education. 

Poets & Quants released some figures that indicated that for Stanford, one of the top business schools in the nation, applications overall are actually down 8.9% between 2008 and 2011. Other interesting facts include that (for Stanford), they have increased the percentage of U.S. minorities in the student body (from a low of 21% in 2009) to an all-time high of 29% for the class of 2013. Average GMAT scores across the board increased by 1 point to an average of 731 (Seriously, the testing madness really needs to stop. When the average for top schools is staying in the 90th percentile or higher, it becomes pretty clear that people are really just cramming for these tests, spending way too much money--I'm guilty of this-- in hopes that these numbers will give them the edge they need. /Rant over.)

Though, the worry about the influx of application volume isn't without some grounds. We've seen that applicants in 2008 had a work experience range of 0-11 years, increased dramatically in 2009 to 0-21. Dropped again in 2010 to 0-13, and seems to have ticked up again to 0-18 for the class of 2013. 

Veritas Prep also released the results of their survey of 2011 MBA applicants, where they asked questions about motivations for an MBA, aspirations and b-school selection. 70% of the applicants hoped to use an MBA to switch careers (no surprise there), and a lot of people lied on the survey-- 71% stated their motivations to be an interest in the way business shapes society, whereas 54% admitted that they hoped to attain a prestigious, high paying job as their main motivator. I assume that multiple options were allowed, and that hopefully there was a lot of overlap, because if people honestly are just interested in the way business shapes society, they should probably just become consultants and save themselves about 120 grand. Just sayin'.

Ironically, 25% of applicants claim that consulting is their area of focus upon graduation.
I have to admit that I am addicted to the handicap MBA game that they're playing on Poets & Quants right now, because they take profiles of real people and then assess the likelihood of them getting into the schools that they want. The logic is fascinating, the profiles are interesting and it's fun to know what you're up against. It's all of my guilty interests all in one place! Enjoy!

One MILLION EEE-VIL Dollars


I read an article recently in Popular Science about the future of energy. One of the more interesting ideas was the possibility for space-based solar power. Here's the reasoning: solar power has limitations because solar cells right now are still being developed and the efficiency of these cells has not reached optimal levels yet. Not only are they not as efficient as possible, they also have physical limits-- they can't be charged at night, sometimes it's cloudy or it rains. In 2007, a study by the National Space Society estimates that a half-mile wide band of photovoltaics could be used in geosynchronous orbit (read: will orbit in a way so that is never has to be on the dark side of the planet) could generate the energy equivalent of all the oil remaining on the planet over the course of one year.

Let me repeat that because that statistic boggled my mind a little bit. All the oil on the planet. Add it all up. Would be generated in a single year if we used these space-based photovoltaic cells.
Of course though, there are some questions. How do we  get the power that is generated in space back down to earth? How do we store it? Is it safe? (I have mental images of Dr. Evil's  EEEE-vil space laser right now, not going to lie.) Initial plans indicate that satellites outfitted with solar panels would gather sun's energy 24 hours a day, and then convert that energy into an infrared laser beam (some energy would be lost-- the prediction says that the laser will be able to convert about 80% of the energy to ground-based receivers).  What's more, the DoD estimates that there could be military applications of being able to beam energy into the battlefield, since transporting fuel can reach $400/gallon in those delivery situations.

For those who have concerns about how beaming a giant infrared laser through our atmosphere to a giant receiver (9700 square foot receiving stations) might affect our environment or the safety of the living organisms on the planet, no worries! Because of the wavelength of the laser, the beam should not damage any animals that might stray into the path of the giant (EEE-VIL) laser. 

More fun facts:
  • Project annual global energy consumption by 2030: 220 billion kilowatts
  • Amount of solar energy available from a single orbiting satellite: 1 to 2 gigawatts
  • Width of a power transmission beam: 60 feet
  • Potential size of satellite: 500 square feet
  • Initial pilots: In 2008, physicists beamed 20 watts at microwave frequencies from a mountain on Maui to the island of Hawaii (a distance of 92 miles)