The global demand for consumer technology is helping to change consumer "tastes and preferences," wrote Shawn DuBravac, CEA's chief economist and senior director of research. DuBravac, who discusses a wide range of technology and economic issues on his blog, writes that to succeed today, new products must be designed with the global market in mind. The world is truly becoming flat when it comes to consumer tech and that has had (and is having) profound ramifications...

  Earlier this week, Dock-n-Lock, whose flagship product the Surge’ON™ Safe Driving System, exhibited at CES on the Hill in Washington, D.C., an event sponsored by CEA. The Innovation Movement caught up with Jeff Pothul, the company's COO, to discuss startup life and the future of automotive technology. I define innovation as every new idea that takes us one step closer to an answer. Everything from medical innovations to cure illness and disease to the...

New research from CEA shows the overall growth of the home technology market remained consistent from 2011 to 2012: Technology installations in new homes reached or exceeded 2008 levels, providing more evidence that the market for built-in home technologies is well on the road to recovery. Structured wiring remains the most common installed technology (70 percent), followed by monitored security (44 percent) and home theater pre-wire systems (27 percent). “These installed...

  Researchers from Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs and MIT are investigating whether using new algorithms for copying files like video could save energy in data centers by 35 percent, the MIT Technology Review reported this week. So-called storage area networks within data center servers rely on a tremendous amount of redundancy to make sure that downloading videos and other content is a smooth, unbroken experience for consumers. Portions of a given video are stored on...

Nearly eight years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is hard at work establishing itself as a center of innovation, where new businesses, especially in the technology sector, are born. This week, The Atlantic shared how The Big Easy is aiming to grow its economy through entrepreneurship and tech startups focusing on issues like education. While the city faces challenges competing with bigger tech regions like San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas, it does have...