Randice-Lisa Altshul was a housewife with a big idea. One day, she was tempted to throw her cell phone out the window of her car as a result of a bad connection. After realizing that cell phones were too expensive to lose or throw away, she was struck by the possibility of a disposable phone.
We've all used cell phones and phone cards, but Altschul looked at these two objects and thought, how else can these two items be used? How can I combine these two things to create something new? Altshul combined the cell phone with the phone card to create the Phone-Card-Phone, a paper phone with an integrated circuit on the paper. The minutes are pre-programmed onto the circuit, and once the minutes are used up, the phone is thrown away.
Altshul took two things that already existed and created an entirely new product. She wrote a proposal to Motorola asking if she could do a pilot test of her product and they funded her project. How's that for creativity?
Wendy Si! lver, a stay-at-home mother of two, stumbled upon another popular invention. Silver's inspiration stemmed from the frustration she experienced while trying to recreate a chopped salad that she'd eaten in a restaurant. As she painstakingly chopped each ingredient, she thought, "There has to be a better way." Silver wanted to create a tool that would allow her to chop and mix her ingredients simultaneously, without the hassle of cutting boards and knives.
Silver took utensils that already existed: a spoon, a knife, and a pair of scissors, and combined them together to create the Toss and Chop. Her invention was nothing new. The Toss and Chop is merely a combination of things that already existed, yet she sold everything she had in inventory on the first day the product was sold on QVC.
The Reebok Pump, a popular line of athletic shoes popular in the early 1990s, is another example of combination creativity. Reebok was trying to come up with a new product line, so ! they went completely out of their industry for inspiration. In! their s earch for innovation, someone explored the medical industry and found an IV bag.
The IV (short for intravenous) bag was inserted in the sole of the shoe, and they called their new creation the pump shoe. The prototype and the first shoes off the production line were actually made with real IV bags, like the ones you'd find in any hospital. The pump has since been modified, but the origins of the concept remain rooted in a product that was already in existence but used for an entirely different purpose.
What do you already have in your portfolio of products and services that you could change the application? Could you change the primary use of the product without redesigning a thing and open up a whole new revenue stream?
Mark L. Fox
http://www.davinciandthe40answers.com,
http://www.slyasafox.com,
info@slyasafox.com,
801-779-0603
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий