$25,000 For Your IdeaGet named a Modern Marvel of 2006 and a big fat grant for 25-Grand to boot! http://www.historychannel.com/invent/index.jsp?page=homeFrom the official site...(https://www.inventnow.org/InventNow/do/homepage) Presented by The History Channel and Invent Now, Inc., a division of the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, the Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge is an extraordinary opportunity for independent inventors to influence the ever-changing face of invention. Twenty-five semi-finalists will exhibit their invention ideas at a national exposition and will participate in a full day seminar with renowned invention experts. Four finalists will additionally win cash grants and be featured on The History Channel. The 2006 Modern Marvel of the Year winner will receive all the Challenge benefits as well as a $25,000 grant toward making their invention idea a reality.So go ahead and take your shot at becoming a part of history! Submit your accidental discoveries, eureka moments and triumphant breakthroughs to the Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge by December 31, 2005.
Interesting Stat:
Under The RADAR And Untapped I'm a big fan of the MMORP game (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing) called World of Warcraft. I like just about everything in the game -- endless selections of stories/quests, interesting characters to develop, and absolutely gorgeous images and landscapes to experience. For the most part, people seem to conduct themselves in the game far better than we've come to expect from our fellow citizens in the real world. (Could the game be good practice for practicing goodwill?) I ran across this stat in Iconowatch (a trendwatching newsletter) and thought I'd post it here for your imaginations to develop into blossoming business ideas. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games have spawned economies that would rival those of a small country but fly largely under the radar of economists, government statisticians, and people beyond the 12- to 35-year-old demographic.
KNOWLEDGE@WHARTON 11.2.05 What business or services could you develop (in real life or in the game) to better serve this community? Another game (EverQuest) has developed the ability to allow characters to order a Pizza Hut pizza from within the game itelf -- having a real pie delivered to the door without interrupting the game play until the door rings. Some entreprenurial souls have developed gold 'farming' (farming is the term used for massive collection efforts of any valuable resource; gold, leather, herbs, etc.) and character leveling and sell them through websites and eBay. Game creators, Blizzard Entertainment, are taking steps to defeat these out-of-character businesses, but you can't actually foolproof anything (the fools are too creative!) See if you can come up with an idea or two that could both benefit and capitalize on this dedicated group of game players. Submit any concepts to 'wowideas@dontheideaguy.com' , and I'll post the best ones here in a future blog entry.
Building a Daily
Habit of InnovationI conducted an interview with Jim Canterucci, author of Personal Brilliance. The interview appeared in yesterday's FORTUNE Magazine Business Innovation blog.
I asked Jim to reveal some insight into building a daily habit of innovation. Canterucci shares specifics on some simple (and not-so simple) daily steps everyone can take to ensure that when they need to call upon their creativity, there will be some brilliance there on which to capitalize.
Think of daily innovation as the heat and pressure required to created diamonds -- they don't appear overnight, but when you uncover them they are bright and brilliant to behold. Speaking of 'bright and brilliant' --
There will be all sorts of those bright and brilliant minds present at FORTUNE's Innovation Forum in NYC on November 30 - December 1. Attend the Innovation Forum and you'll get to hear from Fred Smith, the guy who turned (the now legendary) 'C' college term paper into the best branded delivery service in the world. You'll get to see Ken Lombard who helped change the way people buy music -- with cream and sugar -- at their local Starbucks.
A long list of illuminaries...
A short trip to the registration page. ;)
Libraries Speak Volumes of ValuePut your tax (money) where your mouth is.Where I live in Ohio, we'll be voting on a levy to increase funding to public libraries -- I'll be voting in favor of it. I hope if there's an opportunity to cast a vote for spending a few more dollars in support YOUR local library, that you'll make the right (FOR!) choice when you're in the voting booth.Here are a few statistics* you may not know about libraries...Research shows the highest achieving students attend schools with good library media centers.
Americans spend seven times as much money on home video games ($7 billion) as they do on school library materials for their children($1 billion).School library media centers spend an average of $7 per child for books – less than half the average cost of one hardcover school library book.Students visit school library media centers almost 1.5 billion times during the school year – about one-and-a-half times the visits to state and national parks.95% of public libraries provide public access to the Internet.
Academic librarians answer 97 million reference questions each year – almost three times the attendance at college football games.College libraries receive less than three cents of every dollar spent on higher education.
If the cost of gas had risen as fast as the cost of academic library periodicals since 1990, it would cost $3.00 a gallon to put fuel in your car. (This stat is from 2002!)There are more public libraries than McDonald's – a total of 16,220, including branches.Americans spend more than three times as much on salty snacks as they do on public libraries.Americans check out an average of more than six books a year. They spend $25.25 a year for the public library – much less than the average cost of a single hardcover book.
Public libraries are the number one point of online access for people without Internet connections at home, school or work.Americans go to school, public and academic libraries more than twice as often as they go to the movies.Reference librarians in the nation’s public and academic libraries answer more than seven million questions weekly. Standing single file, the line of questioners would stretch from Boston to San Francisco.Federal spending on libraries annually is only 54 cents per person.A 2002 poll conducted for the American Library Association found that 91% of respondents expect libraries to be needed in the future, despite the increased availability of information via the Internet.Don't be "shelf"ish.Spend a few bucks to keep libraries alive...VOTE YES for LIBRARY FUNDING!*All stats taken from "Quotable Facts About America's Libraries: 2002", published by the American Library Association with statistics provided by: ALA Office for Research & Statistics, ALA Washington Office, Library Research Service, and Colorado State Library.
WOMM:
Word of Monster MarketingGood analogy from my new buddy, Ron, over at the Buzzoodle.com blog. Ron spotted a great commonality between costumed kids trick-or-treating at the "good houses" and consumers doing business with the "good companies."Buzzoodle says:- Porch light out:
They don't care about me.
- One Tootsie Roll:
They are doing the minimum to get by.
- Take a couple of things, sweetie:
Generous and care about me.
- Full size candy bar:
I will remember to come back to this house next year,
along with 50 of my friends.
Ideally, businesses like to think their service is akin to handing out the full-size candy bar, but personal experience shows that far too many have burnt out bulbs on their porches.
A 'Snow Globe' of IdeasA new blog to shake things up and see bright ideas swirl around inside.I received a recent request to link from the folks promoting Fortune Magazine's Innovation Forum in New York from November 30th - December 1. They created a blog to spotlight big thinkers and their ideas: http://www.businessinnovation2005.com/. Folks like Chuck Frey, Dave Pollard, Jim Carroll, Frans Johansson are all covered and given voice under this single banner.It reminds me of one of those snow globes that you shake to see the contents swirl around and make new landscapes from all the swirling pieces of snow inside. There's an analogy here, so bear with me...Each innovator is like a snowflake (no two are exactly alike and creative people tend to be viewed as a bit 'flakey'!), they've all been added to the globe that is the Business Innovation blog, and everytime you visit the site, you'll discover ideas that can be used to shake things up.Perhaps a long way to go a snow globe comparison -- but an extremely quick trip for exposure to some big ideas. Just click here!
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