“Trade” shows aren’t always the best place to get detailed information about the specifics of a company or a technology, but they’re a great place to get an overall impression of an industry. So it was with this year’s mid-May IVA show, coming after the traumatic financial events that have rocked the world in recent months. No doubt about it – Israeli hi-tech is limping as a result of those events, which have resulted in layoffs and company closures. Venture capital funds, meanwhile have become much more conservative in disbursing their largesse on startups; the performance bar has been set higher, so only ideas with the most merit – as in moneymaking potential – are going to get funded. It makes sense.

In the past, shows have been great places to score fun fan fare – T-shirts, hats, keychains, etc – all those little “status symbols” that show you “know someone” in the business (don’t try to deny you think those trinkets are cool!). But as usually happens in a downturn, the giveaways are the first to go; I was lucky to get business cards out of some people! Clearly, if we are to judge by the “freebie index,” Israeli hi-tech is in a major funk.

Without freebies to pursue at the show, I was forced to pay attention to the presentations and the technology of the companies attending; for balance, I sought out some investors as well (these were far more reluctant to speak than the tech people, of course, and demanded absolute anonymity). Thus I was able to gage the opinions of several people on the investing side of things, including one (very) heavy-hitter.

To tie these diverse observations together: It’s possible that next year’s freebie index will be somewhat improved, as investors are itching (at least one told me) to get back in the game, and if the recent good news on the stock markets continues, investors will feel more confident to invest in some of the technologies that clearly are going to have a major impact on the way we live, when they finally come to market. And those technologies are definitely worth investing in!

First, the technologies: At the show, I spent a lot of time in the area called the “Startup Pavilion,” where the real bootstrap companies hang out (as opposed to the more established startups that were presenting in the show’s sessions). Among the very cool companies I came across were: InphoDrive (http://inphodrive.com/), which is developing a voice-driven “infotainment” system for vehicles that will make driving safer; MobileRL (http://www.mobilerl.com/), which has a product that lets advertisers and media researchers determine with much greater accuracy the effectiveness of their campaigns; Leviathan Energy (http://www.leviathanenergyinc.com/), which believes that wind is a much better bet for alternative energy production than are solar photovaltic systems; and BioSpiral (http://www.biospiral.com/), with a technology that uses cooling & heating technologies to destroy prostate cancer, without need to resort to a knife.

I may have summed up their ideas in a line (because of space considerations), but rest assured that all four of these companies – plus numerous others – are doing unique stuff; VC’s would already have pumped millions into these and other technologies if this were 2007 (I intend to profile many of these companies in future articles). But 2009 isn’t 2007, as so many of us have found out in recent months (it should be noted that a number of these companies have products and services that are ready for market, and some are even working on ‘big deals’).

While trying to secure funding for a great technology nowadays is perhaps harder than it’s ever been, being an investor in times like these is no picnic either. VC’s are in business to make money, not lose it – hence their conservatism in matters fiduciary at this juncture. The investors just aren’t handing over the money the way they used to. But what are their alternatives? Sticking the money in the bank for a grand 1% return? It works for awhile, several investors have told me, but banking investment money is not a long-term strategy; they didn’t get where they are today by avoiding risk. Just the opposite.

This is where the strategy being pursued by many governments around the world, which are pumping money into the local economies, comes in handy, one major investor told me. “A trillion dollars is big money,” he said, referring to the potential deficit in this year’s U.S. budget, “and there’s certainly a risk of inflation. But it’s helping to build confidence, without which investors are just going to be too scared to invest in hi-tech. And we do want to invest in hi-tech, especially Israeli hi-tech, because Israel has traditionally had some of the most important startup technologies anywhere.” Among the people I spoke with were representatives of the New York Stock Exchange/EuroNext, who told me there were four IPOs so far this year on their global exchange. Considering where we were last October, it’s a good sign – and hopefully augurs a change for the better.

When things turn sour, it’s customary for pundits to push the “grim slide” theory – that things are bound to get worse. But keep in mind that some of the greatest innovations were actually first sold or marketed during recessions and depressions (http://tinyurl.com/cuwt8m). Sooner or later things bounce back – and no doubt some of the technologies that are going to be poised to help turn things around were right there at the IVA show. And I expect some cool freebies when those companies do start making it big.

And in 2009, it appears those shocks are hitting home, as businesses begin the business of laying off workers in earnest. If you’re a victim, I feel your pain; it’s a hi-tech road I’ve been down before. And as many of us learned in the last downturn in 2002-3, things change after a major industry crackup; new companies demand skill sets you may not have, and while retraining is always an option, you don’t want to spend months learning some new skill only to find out that it has a limited shelf life. While there might be many jobs in requiring X skill right now, the question you have to ask is – what happens in five years, when you’re of a “certain age” – the age where computer industry bosses think you’re “overqualified” (i.e., too old and too expensive) for their business?

Even if you do do have the option of remaining in the same industry, you’ll still want to choose the right employer, one who will be around for the near and mid-term, at least; you may get a job now, but if you find yourself having to look again a year from now, you’ll be a year old, and a year more “overqualified.”

For many people right now, the immediate question is how to pay next month’s mortgage, and hopefully most of us will figure out how to keep going in “survival mode” for as long as it takes. But you still need a long-term plan that takes into consideration the day after tomorrow. Where do you see yourself – where would you like to be – in five years? Maybe a better question to ask is, will the industry you decide to get involved in still be there in five years? It’s probably a question that in a million years would not have registered on the radar of the 2004 MBA grad crowd, but as they – and the rest of us – have so painfully learned, anything, even the impossible, can happen.

There are no shortage of sites that claim to tell you what the “hot” areas of the economy are going to be – which is probably where you would want to be, if you can get there. I’m not talking about general predictions, like how people are going to be scared of real estate or stock market investments for a long time to come, but professionally researched predictions that claim to have a fix on the up and coming business and industry trends. In the computer business, for example, the best-known “industry prophet” is the Gartner Group (http://www.gartner.com/), which watches trends in all areas of the computer industry. At http://xrl.us/beemod, for example, you can see Gartner’s predictions for the Eight Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2009 and 2010, and at http://xrl.us/beemrv, you’ll find Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009. Gartner makes its money by producing reports that predict trends for companies and industries (reports that cost a lot of money), so the Gartner “top tens” are pretty general.

Besides Gartner’s professional predictive systems, there are many sites that rely on “the wisdom of crowds” (www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/) to give you a clue on what’s in store, the theory being that the many are wiser than the few. Ziitrend (http://www.ziitrend.com/), for example, is a site where anyone can make a prediction on anything, with site users voting on the likelihood of the event happening.

For most of us, both these approaches are a bit thin; they may be useful as water cooler talk, but we need something a bit more solid on which to build a future. If you’re being pushed into a career shift, you want to make sure you pick the right career to shift to, after all. We need a little more insight on where things are going.

If you thought I was building up to introducing a site that can predict the future – well, I apologize; nobody knows what is “really” going to happen. But: I can help point you to sites that will give you ideas on how to make those predictions for yourself – the potential areas you should be looking at, based on your skills and interests. Assuming you are in touch with your own experience, background, skills, etc. (if you’re out of practice on how to write a resume, interview, etc., by all means check out http://www.jobhuntersbible.com/), the ideas here will hopefully give you some insight about how to think about the future, thereby making it easier for you to make a decision on investing your time, helping you to figure out what stable industries and businesses are out there that you qualify for.

If we’re in a new era, it’s time to think differently, and one way to learn how to do this is to check out different “thinking methodologies” – like Triz, a Russian acronym for the “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.” The system was developed in the former Soviet Union between 1946 and 1985, by Soviet engineer and researcher Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues. Boiled down to its basic core, Triz has two general principles: “1. Somebody, someplace, has already solved your problem or one similar to it. Creativity means finding that solution and adapting it to the current problem”; and, 2. “Don’t accept compromises. Eliminate them” (http://xrl.us/beemve). There are all sorts of Triz success stories out there (http://xrl.us/beemvp), with companies employing the 40 principles of Triz (http://triz40.com/aff_Principles.htm) to solve industrial and business problems. At (http://triz40.com/), you’ll find the “Interactive TRIZ Contradiction Matrix,” which demonstrates the system as applied to real problems.

Triz certainly qualifies as “thinking differently,” but can it help you figure out where you’re going? I believe it can. First of all, just getting exposure to different approaches to problem solving helps jog the brain, and pushes you to get more creative about solving your problem. Problem solving is what Triz is all about, and there’s no reason Triz problem solving methodology can’t be used to figure out employment and career problems, not just industrial production problems. That, in fact, is the theme of an article (http://xrl.us/beemxn), on the Triz Journal site (http://www.triz-journal.com/), probably the best resource online for insights into how to think Triz (note that there are many “professional” Triz sites that charge money for their services; the Triz Journal is completely free, and has at least as much information as the others, from what I could see).

Remember, we’re taking a long view here, so it stands to reason you’ll have a better chance of getting to where you need to go – and figuring out where that should be – using a scientific approach. Finding a job – one that you can be reasonably sure you’ll still have next month, much less next year – is a “job” during normal times, but in today’s economy, it’s more akin to rocket science. Actually, maybe we should make that “Triz science!”