Rumi Shivaz Innovation Blog

Innovation Opportunity : Semi-Permanent Toilets

First of all, my heart goes out to everyone who lost a loved one, had serious injury or had their homes lost or damaged by the recent Christchurch earthquake. It can't be an easy time to get through. 

Nothing is permanent. I'm a great believer that the time you enter this world and the time you leave this world is pre-defined; so there is not a lot you can do to change it. We have to learn how to make the best out of the little time we got in-between these two events. 

While there is a lot of havoc and mayhem that happens as a result of a natural disaster, they also provide a vast number of opportunities for innovation. Watching the news clips and documentaries over the last 10 days about the severe shortage of Toilet facilities made me think of the following need.  

At the moment, what we have is either a permanent toilet (inside a building or public place) or a Port-a-Loo.  

The Port-a-Loo is not the ideal solution for a situation like Christchurch; since it is designed for a different purpose where the requirement is short-term (ie days) & low-usage rather than medium-term (ie weeks or months) with heavy usage. 

Rather than just importing Port-a-Loo's from China, we shoud use this opportunity to do some lateral thinking to find a better solution.

I would like to start an Innovation Challange to re-design a semi-permanent toilet to meet the constraints and demands of a Natural Disaster situation. It must be low-cost, can be assembled by the community using basic material & tools, can be plugged into the underground services (where available) etc. 

If you know of anyone who will be keen to help develop this idea further, then I would love to hear from them ASAP. This could be a great Social Innovation project not only for Christchurch, but for any other city around the world that could face a similar situation. 

 

 

Fast Track Ideas; Let go of Control

 

The last few weeks have been dedicated to eating my own dog food about getting ideas off the ground. 

Around September 2010, I realised that my innovation consulting practice can no longer be a 'Solo-Show'; to build the kind of company that I knew possible, I had to muster a great team around me. 

A lot of people worry about 'How' to get an idea off the ground.  In my view, the question to focus on is 'Who" are the right people you need to make the idea a huge success.  Once the "Who" question is answered, the "How" part will emerge. 

It took me a while gather a team who could see what I was talking about. Tim Brown from IDEO talks about T-Shaped People ... a group of people who have a broad set of complimentary skills and one deep area of Specialisation.  

Collaboration is easy to talk about but really hard to practice. Most ideas won't get off the ground because the Entrepreneur wants to keep full control of the implementation. By sharing this idea with my new team, I had to let go of control, and trust the collective intelligence of the team will transition the idea to a whole new level that I could not possibly have achieved on my own.  

I'm really proud of this team; It has got the right mix of Applied Research, Business Management & Entrepreneurship to tackle the kind of "Hard-To-Crack Problems" and "Hard-To-See Opportunities" that our clients will throw at us.  

During the last 8 weeks, we have managed to complete the first phase of this new enterprise; the most important items being Company Structure, Shareholder Agreement, Branding & Identity.  I'm really glad about deciding to use CrowdSPRING to find a company name & identity design.

The next phase is designing and market testing our service offerings. The link to the new company website is www.visionaro.com

Over the next three months, I'm looking forward to working with few selected customers for market validation and refining the Visionaro value proposition. 

Google Takes Street View To An Awesome New Level

SInce actively starting to use Twitter, it's being quite hard to keep this blog up-to-date. I'm sure Twitter must have caused a rapid decline on personal blog posts. 

I came across this idea from a Tweet, and thought of posting it here for the benefit of Non-Twitter people. 

This is such an amazing tool, can't wait until it is fully deployed world wide enriched with "user generated images". 

Watch this Video to see an overview of the problem and the solution Google team has come up with. 

You can get more information about this tool from the Google Earth/Maps Team Blog.  

 

Cost Cutting vs Increasing Revenue

It's amazing how much talk is happing on doom and gloom, cost cutting, losing jobs and so on.  

I guess cutting costs is the easy thing to do ... being creative about how to increase revenue is not so easy to do.  Because ...

a,  Cost cutting requires "Doing" mindset ... there are plenty of doers out there. 

b,  Increasing revenue requires "Thinking" mindset ... and trying stuff that others in your industry are too scared to even think about.  Most people don't have the courage to do this, especially in tough economic times. 

Recession is a great opportunity ... pick-up the courage and do something different.  It's lot more rewarding in the long term than the easy option. 

 

Robots Inspired By Nature - A Really Cool 2 Minute Video

I came across this great video about how scientists are observing animals/insects and innovating new robots by cross-pollinating/combining ideas between Biology and Technology. 

Great Idea - iBasket - Washing Machine/Laundry Basket

I love this new design that combines the functionality of Laundry Basket and Washing Machine.

A Chinese Industrial Design Student (Guopeng Liang) designed the iBasket for the Electrolux 2008 Design Lab Competition. Hamper-shaped, the machine will automatically wash once there is enough weight in it. (or you can schedule & control the wash from your PC or Mobile Device).  The machine will send a text message once the washing is done.  

This is a great example of a "Generation Y" thinking and innovation.  I'm sure it will be a huge hit when it comes to market. 

Click here for more details. 

A Great Banking Innovation

   

I recently stumbled upon an article about a Web Based banking company called Zopa. 

It is an marketplace for Social Lending where people lend and borrow money from each other.  I have seen this concept few times but Zopa looks like the first serious player that can spread this concept on a global scale. 

It is like borrowing and lending money with your friends and family - except there are thousands of people you can lend and borrow with. 

Both lenders and borrowers get better rates, because Social Lending is hugely efficient than the traditional banking model.  

Currently they are operating in USA, UK, Italy and Japan.  Wonder how long it will take for this concept to start operating in New Zealand. 

Click here  for more information on this great idea.

A Great New Concept - Car Sharing

Came across this great concept operational in Toronto call TCC (The Company Car). 

They have created a car fleet, which is a great money and time-saving alternative to taxis, a car service, employee car reimbursement, or company fleet. 

Click here to find out more.  

One-Litre 283 mpg Car from VW

This looks like a great Innovation which will be launched in 2010.  It's called the One-Litre because it can travel 100km/litre (283mpg), has two seats and powered by a 330cc single-cylinder diesel engine. 

Hope VW can keep the price point down so it will be affordable to majority of people. Otherwise it will become one of those expensive nice to have toys. 

Click here if you would like to find out more information.

Great To See An Idea Come To Life Over a Weekend

Jeremy Blandford, Bernie White & myself had a conversation over a Vino last Friday. One of the ideas sprung out of the conversation was Jeremy to start a Dilbet Style Cartoon series.  

Over the weekend, Jeremy has sprung to action and propelled the idea into life. Great start Jeremy !!!

http://gimblettandpillock.blogspot.com/

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Wishbone and Snapper

I took thins picture from my IPhone while having lunch at Wishbone Mercer Street.  

Both are great innovative companies from Wellington.  Great to see Wishbone becoming one of the first to take up Snapper payment method. 

Micro Loan Management System - Great way to help a needy Entrepreneur

For a while, I have been thinking about a way to help people in developing countries to start or improve their enterprises. Thanks to a blog post from James Fleet, I came across this website called Kiwa.

This looks like a great way to connect the lender with an entrepreneur.

Sustainable Transport Research - Electric Scooter

As part of my research on trying to find a better way for short trips from by home in Belmont Hills to in and around Lower Hutt City, I came across an Auckland company selling an Electric Scooter called Kero. This looks like a really great option and I found the Product Reviews written by two customers to be really informative & thought provoking.

These kind of products should be promoted by Local Authorities as part of Sustainable transport planning. Research shows that, in New Zealand, we do a huge percentage of short trips (less than 10kms roundtrip) with just one person in the car or even worse, like me lug around a huge 4WD. It just doesn't make sense.

While an Electric Scooter is not a good option if you have to use the State Highways, but it's definetely an option to consider if you are looking for a "Little Runner Around".

Innovation in Government - Transit Takes The Plunge

As we all know, most government agencies hold valuable data (non-personal) that could be very useful for us as individuals or organisations. However, its not easy to get access to this data for various reasons. It's great to see Transit New Zealand embarking on an Innovation project to break some barriers down between the data & road users. The vision for this project is "Provide third parties and the developer community with tools to create innovative ways for customers to access traveller information from Transit".

This project is at very early stages so I will keep you posted on the progress. I can already see massive benefits to big & small organisations in both private & private sector as a result of this Innovative project. (ie Police, Fire Service, Transport companies like Stagecoach, GPS related companies like Navman, Telcos like Vodafone, one man bands with crazy web 2.0/mash up ideas etc etc.) These organisations will be able to access Transit held data and build wrap around services to public which will reduce congestion, make day to day travel more effective and therefore save time, money, stress, reduce CO2 emissions etc, etc, etc.

It will be great to see other government agencies following Transit's approach to "Take the Plunge on Innovation", rather than just talking about it.

PS. If you guys know of any other government agencies in New Zealand doing great innovation projects, please feel free to respond to this post.

e-Bike kit - Looks like a great product

During the last 6 months, I have been working on a project called 4 Million Dreams (4MD). As a result of participating in a number of 4MD project meetings, my awareness on environmental issues and sustainability has gone through thee roof.

I own a Toyota Prado 4WD and begining to realise that I'm doing lots of small trips to the Lower Hutt City centre from my home in Western Hills in Belmont. (ie going to the Gym, Library, Shops etc). Driving the Prado is hell of a waste for small trips like this and wondering what the best sustainable option would be.

While I was doing some research on buying a scooter, I came across this company that is selling a Innovative product. While e-bike concept is not new, most of the e-bike kits I have come across looks crappy, from design & usability point of view. Check out this website when you get a chance. I'm looking forward to trying out a bike in a couple of weeks. Link is http://www.electricbikes.co.nz