Daily Archives: May 22, 2014

Her office is situated right down the hall from her Coca-Cola and Lowe's counterparts on the university's campus; the bulk of their days are spent brainstorming with the best and brightest in the valley. It's an attempt to sniff out what exactly perdisruptors in technology are doing, so that their company doesn't get disrupted.

Hershey maintains that it's on track for a 5 percent to 7 percent growth in sales this year, despite the fact that first-quarter earnings fell short of expectations. The confectionery giant's biggest competitor, Mondelez, is nipping at its heels as it continues to have success with growth in emerging markets. So it's no surprise that Hershey is taking an aggressive approach when it comes to innovation.

The company has begun testing 3-D printing for the production of its chocolate line, recently partnering with 3D Systems. The 3-D printing leader has an official partnership with Singularity University.

But Hershey is thinking outside the box, going beyond new methods of manufacturingsuch as looking into the rapid growth of wearable biometric technology.

The chocolate giant is exploring what the relationship between food and body will look like in the future. Yang sees our view of food consumption radically changing, and it's prompting her to figure out how Hershey can best operate in a world where individuals will monitor everything going into their bodies.

This is the type of innovation and brainstorming that the other companies at Singularity's campus are also likely to be doing.

Read More3-D printed Hershey chocolate is coming

This new experiment of big business flirting with Silicon Valley likely means that at some point the bulk of Fortune 500 companies will soon follow suit, in order to stay ahead of disruptive changes. Yang predicts, "Every organization is going to be affected by exponential technology. It's a matter of, Do you want to play with it so you can make an opportunity of it, or do you want to be playing catch-up and reacting to it," she said.

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Why Hershey rolled in to Silicon Valley

hide captionSun Ra's music sounds like it was intercepted from another world.

Sun Ra's music sounds like it was intercepted from another world.

Records show that 100 years ago today, a boy named Herman Poole Blount was born in Birmingham, Ala. Between that moment and his passing in 1993, the man nicknamed "Sonny" developed huge musical talent, synthesized an all-encompassing Afro-futurist worldview and grew into the name Le Sony'r Ra Sun Ra for short. And he lives on as a cultural hero at the intersection of flamboyant outsider and self-made genius.

For a man for whom outer space was a guiding metaphor, he was a lot of different things on Earth. Here's a short list:

Behind his esoteric parables, contradictions and mythologies, there's at least one constant. Sun Ra was often recognized as one of the hardest-working musicians anywhere he went and surely one of the most original.

His is a huge oeuvre that people spend lifetimes exploring. In fact, the Sun Ra Archives are re-releasing 21 major albums remastered for iTunes for his centennial arrival date just a fraction of a discography which some historians estimate at over 180 records. Here's a quick introduction to that catalog in five essential tracks.

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Act Like You Know: Sun Ra