In one simple sentence – It made it possible for one to go around the world with just one click.
by Ogechi Oyem
(Lagos, Nigeria)
In one simple sentence – It made it possible for one to go around the world with just one click.
by Ogechi Oyem
(Lagos, Nigeria)
Because without the light bulb then we would still be using candles and candles are dangerous around young kids also they could start fires which are highly dangerous.
by Jemma Marie Gallon Puhara
(Masterton, New Zealand)
The alphabet game is a popular game with many kids. It requires two or more players. Someone picks a theme such as famous celebrities or countries and then each player takes turns in naming something of that theme that begins with each letter of the alphabet.
So for example, if the theme is animals the first player might say antelope for the letter A, then the next player might say bear for the letter B and then the next player could say cat for the letter C, and so on.
Play continues until a player cannot think of a theme-related word that starts with the letter assigned to them.
A variation of this game is where each player takes turns in naming some item, object, person, or thing within sight of all the players and that begins with the stated letter. So you start with the letter A and each player names something that begins with ‘A’ that they can see.
Each player takes turns at naming and scores one point for each item that they name beginning with the letter ‘A’. When a player can no longer name something beginning with the letter ‘A’, the turn moves to the next player who must attempt to name an item beginning with the letter ‘B’.
Play continues until you have gone through the entire alphabet.
The 1968 Olympic high jump innovation of Dick Fosbury revolutionized this particular event.
It may be a relatively minor example but, nevertheless, it demonstrated a totally unique development that led the competing world athletes to 100% adoption of a technique; it rendered the previous “Western roll” approach obsolete; it raised the standard of performance via world records. It was, indeed, a creation that can be used as a pivotal example of what innovation truly is.
It served as a clear indication that innovative thinking cannot be “pre-set” by preconditional expectations.
Many innovators may utilize a spectrum that ranges from “development” to “revolution”.
Most of your examples reflect technology developments rather than true innovation, especially the later examples.
Truly innovative thinkers utilize lateral approaches that can be as unpredictable yet as impactful as the wind.
The success of an innovation tends to run parallel with its “element of newness and surprise”; it is future-facing and has the much-needed quality of longevity.
It is a birth process that defies immediate logic, convention, and, of course, opposition. However, it may include invention and single-mindedness.
The “development” mindset tends to restrict the scope of innovation as a concept. Take art as an example, where creativity abounds through minds and hearts that are free of such restrictions.
Surrealism, philosophy, poetry, music – all of these serve to capture something that is, ultimately, unattainable but indicates a higher form of creativity and something to strive for.
Linear, mechanistic thinking is the enemy of true unfettered innovation. CFOs naturally fear innovation and its implications at some level.
Most innovations will be technologically determined over the coming years, but does the fact that we can utilize voice instruction, or “Kindle” or “The Internet of Everything” serve to confirm the full potential of innovation? Or do they reflect merely expanding industries?
Feeling, reason, intuition, and sensation are the foundations of imagination.
Historically, humankind achieves its dreams – speaking to someone from across the world; landing on the moon; flying, and mass production.
Keep thinking, imagining, conceptualizing, dreaming, and personifying your innovation(s).
April 1963…
Phones that dial a spoken number, typewriters that print out whatever you say to them, underwater ears that identify a hostile submarine – these are just a few of the uses foreseen for a new signal-recognizing “brain.”
In a recent demonstration of its talents, an engineer talked into a microphone connected to a tabletop version of the device.
The instrument had been set up to respond to the word “five.” Whenever he uttered this word, the brain instantly flashed a telltale light. It ignored every other word he said.
As easily, the device can be adapted to recognize any word whatever – or any signal, audible or visible, that can be translated into electrical pulses.
A composite “brain”, made up of a number of units, could recognize many spoken commands and respond in appropriately different ways to each one.
Called the Sceptron (for Spectral comparative pattern recognizer), the device is being readied for both civilian and military uses by the Sperry Gyroscope Company, which considers its novel principle an advance as fundamental and versatile as the transistor.
Invented by Robert Hawkins, Sceptron combines vibrating optical fibers that analyze sounds or other signals, and a photographic memory cell to recognize them.
Within a Sceptron is a tuft of 700 or more transparent quartz fibers, of varying length, supported at one end like bristles in a shaving brush. An incoming signal jiggles the fibers’ mounting, by means of a driver unit such as a loudspeaker coil or a piezoelectric transducer. Some fibers vibrate, others don’t, depending on their individual responses to the various frequencies blended in a signal.
Meanwhile, light from a lamp bulb travels lengthwise through the fibers – and emerges from their quivering or motionless tips.
All that needed to be added to put Sceptron in business is a “memory” mask, which transmits the emerging light only when the fibers are vibrating in a particular pattern – and, beyond the mask, a light-detecting photocell.
Variations in mask-making technique give a mask that recognizes a certain word, whoever speaks it; or a certain person’s voice, whatever he says.
In the demonstration model, Sceptron’s quartz-fiber array takes up a cubic inch of space, but Sperry has already made a miniaturized version as small as 1/300 of a cubic inch. Thus, it says, it’s approaching the point where a composite “brain” as complex as the human brain could be put in a desk size console.
Image one: Table-top Sceptron hookup, listening to a talk by its demonstrator, lights up indicator (right of center) whenever he says “five” and ignores every other word. Assembling enough Sceptron units to obey many verbal commands might yield voice-operated phone dials and cash registers, and typewriters that take dictation by directly transcribing spoken words.
Image two: At the heart of Sceptron is a tuft of quartz fibers, like the one held in the forceps. Fibers vary in length, and different frequencies, blended in an incoming signal, make different ones vibrate.
Image three: Photo-plate mask, being inserted, is “memory” that recognizes a certain word. Interchangeable masks, each with a different pattern, make Sceptron responsive to various cues
Create a clock using a paper plate for the clock face and cardboard for the hands. Decorate it with bright colors and then practice telling the time with your child.
See if your child can show someone at home how to tell the time to o’clock and half past.
Supply chain innovation can make a difference in gaining or losing customers.
Supply chain operations are often behind-the-scenes activities but they have a big influence on an organization’s overall competitiveness.
To remain competitive companies are always striving to reduce defects in products and processes, reduce cycle times, reduce wait times, improve customer service, increase product availability, etc.
The global marketplace that we now operate in has further increased the competitive pressures that organizations face. As a result, it is more important than ever to take advantage of technological innovations, best practices, and process innovations, particularly with reference to improving your supply chain.
Supply chain innovation is about applying best practices and technological innovations to your own supply chain in order to reduce such cycle and wait times and other waste (to use a Lean term) in your in-house processes. This should have the ultimate goal of improving the customer experience. Give your customer more choice, more accuracy, faster order fulfilment, increased visibility, and better service by looking at areas in your supply chain where you can develop new practices / better ways of working.
In order to know that the best practices, new methods, and technological / process innovations that you apply have had a positive effect on your supply chain you first need to begin with a baseline of your current process.
Map out the “as is” process and use operational (including headcounts) and financial data (if applicable) to formulate a set of metrics related to your process. If you follow the Lean production practice in your organization then you might consider performing a value stream map of your supply chain process.
Document all the steps in the process map that you create and get domain experts for each stage in the process to comment on the effectiveness of each particular step.
Incorporating another Lean tool you might want to ask the “five why’s?” This is simply where you successively ask why a particular process step is done that way.
Try and focus on any waste in the process such as bottleneck and also closely analyze inputs and outputs, particularly with reference to outputs that act as inputs to the next stage in the process.
Time all the steps within the process and total these times to get a total start-to-finish time of the entire process.
Benchmarking gives you a chance to determine where you currently are with your process in relation to others.
Get your hands on published data where possible but also consider asking suppliers, customers, and other partners – they may have similar processes to yourself which you can benchmark against.
Obviously what is of utmost importance here is ensuring that you are in fact comparing like with like. There is no value in benchmarking against a process with many differences from your own.
It can be possible to benchmark processes with completely different non-competitive industries. Although your markets are different you might have similar supply chain processes.
This is the part where you create your “to be” process map.
Here too it can be wise to contact non-competitive organizations, businesses that have no relation to your own may have best practices for a particular process that you are trying to enhance. For example to improve the interface with your end customer you might want to look at the hospitality industry’s best practices for interfacing with their hotel guests.
When designing try and use a modular approach that keeps interfaces and other linkages to a minimum. Complexity results in a difficulty to change further down the line. You want your design to be simple enough to be able to accommodate future products, future product changes, and any other beneficial changes.
Have your growth forecasts readily available and ensure that your design can cope with future demand. Scalability and flexibility are extremely important during the design of your supply chain innovation.
Be realistic about your design, and ensure all proposals are workable. To assist with the acceptance of the changes get the people who work with the process to be involved / part of the design. i.e. ask them for their advice, feedback, and ideas. People are much more likely to accept a process change if they feel that they were involved in the creation of the solution. For further information, please refer to the resistance to change article.
This is where you put all of your hard work into action. In an attempt to reduce risk try an agile-type phased approach if possible – making small well defined process changes that you can immediately test for success. Or alternatively, try piloting for just one product group or within one business unit before rolling the changes out to the wider group. This again can help in reducing the risk element and can also give you the ability to make some final tweaks and small improvements to your process prior to implementing on a wider scale.
Record metrics from your new process changes and use the metrics that you collected in the baseline and benchmark phases for comparison. There will be a lot of visibility on you in this stage of your supply chain innovation and therefore it is important that you get the buy-in from key stakeholders via demonstration of small positive quick wins/improvements (particularly to gain early confidence).
Once again it is important to refer to the earlier-mentioned change management article. You could have designed the most perfect process in the world but if you have every man and his dog against you it is never going to be implemented successfully.
Once you have implemented your supply chain innovation your job is still not complete. In order to ensure its continued effectiveness you should continue to measure and monitor the key metrics that you defined in your analysis.
To demonstrate that improvements are within or better than defined targets consider using statistical run charts. If possible look for ways to get this data automatically so that you can demonstrate effectiveness via real-time computerized dashboards.
You should also continue to look for further areas of improvement. Continuous improvement or kaizen to use the Japanese term is essential if you are to continue to stay ahead of your competitors.
May 1963…
Never worry about not having enough space in your suitcase again with this suitcase that grows with the load.
Add-on sides that could be carried folded inside this suitcase would let you increase luggage capacity as you needed it.
Zipper tracks around the main case would engage tracks on the add-on units. Long loops on the side sections would slip through the main carrying case handle.
Make your target some lovely chocolate candies. Buy some chocolate, and some chocolate moulds. If it’s Christmas then maybe get some snowman or Christmas tree moulds. For valentines day, consider a nice heart-shaped mould. Or just get square, circular, or triangle moulds.
Melt the chocolate down in a pan on low heat then pour it into the moulds so that they are only half full. Now for the interesting bit, add to the mould some tuna or other food item that you think your target will particularly hate.
Then finish the candy with a further layer of chocolate. Send to your target in a well-presented gift box.
You can purchase chocolate moulds from Amazon…
This idea was submitted by Ali
October 1963…
About half the thickness of human hair, the strip of the tin plate is basically the same kind that protects your tomato juice. U.S. Steel scientists turned out this sample using a new rolling process. It can also be made opaque and may one day become commonplace for tin cans.
But how practical it would be to be able to distinguish peas from beans on the pantry shelf after your baby strips off the labels!
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