The problem As I described in an earlier post, some elementary students in Ontario were suspended for incomplete immunization records. This series of posts is an effort to come up with ideas using each of the 40 Principles. Remember the cardinal rule: there are no stupid ideas, only ideas that may serve to inspire the…
The Rutan VariEze I first saw this unique and ground breaking airplane announced in a Popular Mechanics magazine when I was a kid. It’s most striking feature is its canard, the stubby wing at the front. Whereas most airplanes use a tailplane (horizontal fins at the rear of the plane) a canard airplane has a…
One. Billion. Dollars! Smart doorbell maker Ring just got acquired by Amazon for over $1 billion. This is after Shark Tank turned down the deal on their show in 2013. “Why cry over spilled milk when you know there’s another great idea coming through the Shark Tank?” Kevin O’Leary. Amazon’s new milk run Amazon is…
Better denim through chemistry Levi Strauss has announced that it will soon use lasers to give its jeans that lived in look that makes jeans look so good. Denim makers the world over currently use potassium permanganate to distress jeans. This acts like bleach but has a shorter effective life, making it easier to control.…
Sell on Amazon I think most buyers who select items on Amazon are scarcely aware that most of the product listed there is not owned by Amazon, but rather by third parties. Amazon has built an entire ecosystem around listing third party products and even storing and shipping third party products under its Fulfilled by…
Disposable Montreal’s “Big O” stadium built for the 1976 Olympic games stands as an object lesson for cities that are contemplating spending billions of dollars on their Olympic dreams. The Montreal stadium costs taxpayers over $30 million to maintain every year and yet the cost to tear it down would be prohibitive, no less than…
Lee-Anne McAlear is Program Director at The Centre of Excellence in Innovation Management at Schulich School of Business at York University. In her presentation at IdeaCity 2017, she made a compelling case for innovation in the workplace. High priority, low satisfaction McAlear quotes the McKinsey Global Innovation Survey which reveals that while 84% of leaders…
The musket: “Brown Bess” The British Army’s Land Pattern Musket, nicknamed the “Brown Bess” was a smoothbore muzzle-loader. Smoothbore Smoothbore refers to the finish of the inside of the barrel of the musket. A smooth bore does not impart any rotational forces to the fired projectile. Muzzle-loader Loading a musket was an involved process. First,…
A simple idea This project merges (Principle 5 – Merging) the do-anything screen (Principle 6 – Universality) with a watch band, making a smartwatch the year before the release of the Apple Watch. It’s another example of a Kickstarter project that met with great success with $942,578, pledged of $15,000 goal and 13,512 backers. What else? One of the…
Patent application Apple has applied for a patent for a vital signs monitoring system that is likely to provide sensor data to the company’s HealthKit and ResearchKit products that reside on iPhones. Principle 23 – Feedback Whereas typical vital signs monitoring involves attaching sensors directly to a patient and only being able to monitor that…