Use #Mindcandy as a strategic sensing engine to help leadership teams identify the signals they are missing. It fuels the strategic conversation about what is next. DM “SESSION” if you want to find out more.
What happens when robots stop being machines?
We are beginning to blur the boundaries between machine, biology, and engineered life. Instead of building machines from motors, gears, and batteries, we can increasingly grow parts of them. MIT engineers have created a paper-thin swimming robot powered by living muscle cells. The tiny biohybrid robot can navigate through water using muscle tissue as its actuator.
Robotics is becoming biological. Biology is becoming programmable. The interesting territory is where they meet. Imagine microscopic biological robots moving through the human body, delivering drugs. Living machines monitoring water systems. Self-powered environmental sensors. Soft robots that repair themselves. Eventually, engineered organisms will be designed to perform specific industrial tasks.
- https://news.mit.edu/2026/powered-by-muscle-cells-paper-thin-robot-swims-through-watery-maze-0929
The leadership question
If living tissue becomes an engineering material, which products, industries, and assumptions suddenly become obsolete?
The other prompts:
If you don’t have the factories, you lose the expertise
The future is making.
https://lemire.me/blog/2026/09/24/if-you-dont-have-the-factories-you-lose-the-expertise/
Scientists Unveil Underwater Solar Panels
China’s green energy boom has seen solar panels plastered on the side of rainy mountains, on floating coastal platforms, and above bustling highways — and now, they’re even generating energy underwater. Scientists successfully generated electricity from sunlight at a depth of 10 meters, or nearly 33 feet, a new record for photovoltaic research.
https://futurism.com/future-society/scientists-underwater-solar-panels-china-pervoskite
The Year AI Came For Us: Teaching Entrepreneurship Will Never Be The Same
In past years, students would get of the building and spend time trying to deeply understand customers’ problems. AI made that process fail. Students used AI instead of customers for insights and validation. And because this information came from AI, they assumed it was correct.
Source-stamped trust: Building verification into the source.
Synthetic images, counterfeit products and account takeovers are becoming harder to identify after they circulate. Apple, Diageo and Google are moving verification closer to the point of capture, manufacture or identity confirmation. A camera signature, bottle seal or biometric check creates evidence earlier in the process.
https://app.trendwatching.com/daily/source-stamped-trust-building-verification-into-the-source
Star Catcher Is About to Beam Power Between Two Satellites for the First Time
Orbital data centers and factories will need a lot of energy. A Florida startup hopes to deliver it with lasers.
NTU Researchers 3D Print a Bone Scaffold Timed to How Injuries Heal
NTU researchers have 3D-printed a small bone scaffold that fights infection in the days after surgery and keeps supporting new blood vessels and new bone for weeks after that.
https://3dprinting.com/news/ntu-researchers-3d-print-a-bone-scaffold-timed-to-how-injuries-heal/
Scientists Connected 3 Human Mini-Brains in a Dish. They Learned Something The Others Couldn’t.
A team has grown several such organoids, joined them up in a network, and watched as they ‘learned’ to distinguish which of their fellows was sending them signals. Together, these results demonstrate that repeated input to an organized modular network can rewire organoids generated under identical conditions into functionally differentiated modules
Nuclear diamond batteries could power 150 million sensors, from deep mines to bridges
A US technology company has just unveiled a new nuclear diamond battery that could power remote sensors for years and support over 150 million connected devices across the world.
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/nuclear-batteries-power-million-sensors
