RANDOM IDEAS FROM @a_nice_IDEA
Toothbrushes come in one size only, yet we all have different sized teeth (and mouths) - when is someone going to create a S, M, L, and XL version of the toothbrush?
Last year, Tesla took pre-orders for its Model 3 car and had 180,000 orders within 24 hours. This is genius for two reasons, Tesla quickly found out how many cars they needed to build and they got a deposit upfront to help cover production costs. Why bother trying to guess demand? Kickstarter campaigns also provide inspiration here, nothing is produced until a certain target is reached (or oversubscribed) and money is paid upfront. Most consumer goods companies could adopt this approach. It helps cut out the middleman – the product goes straight from the factory to the consumer, and it reduces waste – you only produce as much as there is demand for.
Some movies are really expensive to make, others not so much. Yet the price of seeing a movie is always the same. Why can’t we have more variable pricing so that audiences pay less to see a cheaper production, and more to see an expensive production? Seems fair to me…
For all the technology available in cars these days, I can’t believe we are still limited to one horn option. Can’t we at least get two options? A happy horn to give people a nudge if they didn’t see that the lights had changed to green, and an angry horn for when a bad driver cuts in front of you dangerously. C’mon car industry, honk if you’re happy!
Postal services around the world are struggling for their very survival. A lot of time is used going from house to house, letterbox to letterbox. In suburbs full of houses this is inefficient. Why can't we group letter boxes together so that postmen and women can cover twice or three times the area in the same amount of time?
Driving at night I noticed that you can never see the car logo on the back of the car... just blackness. Isn’t it great promotion for your brand if your logo was lit up a bit and visible?
It would be great if Lego created a specially designed Prototype Kit for start ups and companies to muck around with when developing new ideas, concepts, services, or products.
How many people take a photo like this out the window of a plane and then post it to social media? A lot! Why don’t airlines add their logo at the end of the wing to get in the shot and get some free exposure?
At the same time as we see dwindling use of public local libraries, we seeing an increasing use of supermarkets or kiosks for package collection points. Why not redirect that traffic towards public libraries? They have the space and personal to handle people coming to collect packages, and hopefully it will encourage those people to make use of the vast offerings their local library has on offer.
So many great artworks are hidden inside crates in the basement of museums or in tax haven airport hangers. It could be cool if there was a type of ‘Loaner Museum’ that had no collection of their own but simply displayed works that are otherwise hidden from the public… on loan of course.
The process of boarding a plane is always slow and chaotic. People are stuck in the aisle waiting to get past other passengers. Why the free-for-all? Why not be more strict about who boards when to avoid aisle chaos. Fill the back window seats first, followed by the back aisle seats. Then fill the front window seats, followed by the front aisle seats. Bingo.
I went swimming today with my kids and there were some hand railings in the middle of the pool – I guess for aqua aerobics or rehabilitation training. But either way, they were damn fun to play on under the water. It got me thinking… why aren’t there any underwater playgrounds? Poles to climb down, hoops to swim through… whatever. Would make swimming pretty damn fun – for kids and adults.
With facebook struggling on multiple fronts, is it time for them to change their business model? From the “Senator, we run ads” approach to a subcription-based model like Spotify... Maybe then Facebook would feel less inclined/able to misuse people’s data.
Shops are wasteful by nature. They need a lot of space. They need to be fully stocked with all sizes. But what if a shop only had one of each product, in one of each size, so that people came, tried on or tested the product, and then made their purchase - which would then be delivered to their home the next day from a large logistics center. Could this be a more efficient solution? Smaller stores. Less product wastage. No shopping bags to carry. This may also combat the battle between online and brick and mortar stores by combining the best of both worlds!
Your manager has a massive impact on whether you are happy in your job. More often than not, good managers have happy employees, and bad managers don’t. This makes changing job a big risk as you never know how good your manager actually is. It would be nice to see a platform (or a feature on LinkedIn) where employees could rate their managers. It would help applicants and it would also weed out the bad managers. Win-win!
The Kindle is great. But I don’t understand the generic images it puts on the screen during sleep mode. Why can’t the cover of the book you are currently reading appear there instead?
Having worked in the charity industry, I know that a lot of the donations goes to ‘just’ covering the overheads of running the organization. Often, only 40% of actual donations gets to the end beneficiary. It would be great to see a charity that could promise 100% of donations would go directly to the cause. This would of course require a larger back (corporate or individual) to cover the over heads, but then at least the smaller donors would feel better about giving!
If the maximum speed limit in a country is, for example 120 kmh, then why not make that the maximum speed a car in that country can drive at? Why are car companies allowed to produce cars that can go 250+ kmh?
Architects put a lot of effort into designing their buildings and making them as unique as possible. The more beautiful architecture the better. But, it seems a shame that all that effort only gets used once. Then they move on to the next project and start from scratch. Why can’t architects (or whoever owns the designs) re-sell the design to others around the world? Bjarke Ingels designed this great apartment complex in Copenhagen, but why couldn’t it be built in Melbourne and Cape Town for example? Isn’t this a more efficient use of resources?
Online purchasing is increasing every year with goods being sent all over the world. What if you could offset the carbon footprint of the shipping/transportation of your goods at the point of purchase? Online retailers big and small could add the feature and either make it optional or obligatory.