Friday 9 October 2009

The Idea this Week


Yesterday, All about the Idea did a presentation to a room full of Marketing and PR people. The aim of the presentation was to educate them on exactly what we do. Which, in a very quick summary, is; we tailor our service to your needs. We find out exactly where a company’s problem or worry is and come up with a Big Idea to fix it.

I am going to kick things off with a few bite-size Ideas to keepthings clean and simple. So after having a little internet dig for inspiration we have produced a list of some of the best ideas of this century below.

Bite-sizes Ideas that have been a success:

www.ebay.com: an online auction site where people buy and sell their own goods and services directly to the mass global market.


www.streetcar.co.uk: The self service pay as you go street car that’s perfect for people who live in cities. No congestion charge, car tax, insurance…..etc.

Post-it notes: A piece of stationary that was designed to temporarily attach notes to any surface.


Oyster Cards: invented by Ken Livingstone it allows commuter to pre-pay for all their London travel needs. But this invention leads the way for lots of other uses, such as voting!

Micro-wave: it was invented by Dr Percy Spencer by accident when a candy bar melted in his pocket.


Screw-top wine: A great Idea suggestion from The Independent. It manages to keep the wine’s rich flavours for as long as it needs to be stored. No more ‘corked’ excuses.


We want to know which ideas float your boat. We are looking for everyday ideas, something that may come to you in a split second. For example, one of our favourites is the food conveyer belt through the office. We will pick the best of the bunch and name it on our blog as the Idea of the Week.

If you have any instant ideas please tweet us on Twitter or leave us a message on Facebook

Friday 2 October 2009

Success is often a hack


A while ago, the word hack had lots of bad connotations. You thought of shady people in darkened rooms taping away at computers trying to steal credit card details. Or slightly mad geeks probing the Pentagon to see if aliens really do exist and who shot JFK.

Now a hack can be a positive thing. The big idea being that you take something that is already out there and use it in a different way. It is people who have the foresight and vision to do this that make a difference. Ikea have made many breakthroughs, not least of which was looking at the equipment in their factories and asking what they could make, rather than only making doors in a door factory. This lead to huge cost reductions, busier factories and a big difference on the bottom line. We are doing a hack at the moment. We are using Survey Monkey : a site designed to run surveys online. Our Big Idea hack is to use this for delegate care for people to reply to an invitation. They click the link, fill in relevant details and let us know if they can come. Simple, but effective.

So what can you hack today? Look at processes in a different light and it could make a big difference.

Related links:

http://www.surveymonkey.com

http://www.ikea.com