Archives for "June, 2010"
Ideas wanted: New X Prize offers $10 million for innovative oil spill cleanup solutions
Have an idea for how to clean up the massive amounts of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico? The X Prize Foundation (known for spurring technological advances through the offering of large sums of prize money) has announced a new challenge. The goal: innovative solutions for cleaning up the catastrophic oil spill in the [...]
AMR Research spotlights supply chain standouts in 2010 Supply Chain Top 25 report
AMR Research has just released its 2010 Supply Chain Top 25 list, and for the third year in a row, Apple is in the #1 spot. The annual report’s goal is “to raise awareness of the supply chain discipline and how it impacts business” by recognizing companies that deliver both operational excellence and innovation excellence. [...]
Letting nature inspire your product design
If you’re facing a tough design challenge you may want to look to nature to see how millions of years of evolution have addressed a similar problem. Biomimicry (which Marc mentioned in a blog post about tools to help design more environmentally responsible products) is the mimicking of nature to solve engineering or other human [...]
The SawStop: Product design with a purpose
If you’ve never seen the SawStop table saw in action, it’s worth watching this video for the sheer engineering vision it took to pull this off…. This is magical product design that changes lives. P.S. The story of SawStop is another one for the build-it-yourself annals — the inventor of the technology originally planned to [...]
How to ensure clean water in Ghana: Build filters locally
According to UNICEF, in Ghana 25% of deaths in children under 5 are caused by diarrhea. In Northern Ghana, where more than half the population gets its water from wells, ponds and streams, this percentage is even higher. These water sources often contain disease-causing microorganisms because they’re too remote for centralized filtration and sanitation systems [...]
The old ways are sometimes best (or at least really cool)
Most umbrellas today are cheap – literally and figuratively. They turn inside out at the slightest of winds. They are given away to advertise everything from tequila to the World Wildlife Fund. The handles are molded plastic, the spokes are pliable pot metal and the mechanisms seem to stick more often than not. They seem [...]
Manufacturing success strategies: Treat suppliers like valued partners
A recent article in Entrepreneur magazine discusses a number of areas where suppliers can impact a business’s performance. These include many of the attributes on which manufacturers compete, like quality, timeliness, competitiveness and innovation. Given the important role suppliers play, it makes smart business sense to build good relationships with the key ones. The article [...]
Follow up: The Adidas perfectly round soccer ball—do sports and business mix?
Earlier this year, I posted a video of the production process for the revolutionary Adidas Jabulani soccer ball to be introduced at the upcoming FIFA World Cup. Now, on the eve of the tournament, several players have begun voicing strong concerns about how difficult the ball is to control and how unpredictable it is in [...]
A story in every surface – Vetrazzo countertops
Anyone connected to the construction industry has been hit hard by the economy in the past few years. And now, unless a company is part of the green revolution, the construction industry is going to rebound without it. Vetrazzo recycled glass and concrete countertops are a green product—that’s what led me to select one for [...]
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