Food Cart Design That Doesn’t Block Airplane Aisles

The Orbit Aircraft Food Delivery System by Heather Dunne is a space-saving solution that solves a common and annoying problem on airlines.

 Orbit is a concept system for delivering food on commercial aircraft by UK designer Heather Dunne. The space-saving solution improves upon the traditional airline food cart by making it slimmer and longer, so passengers can get around flight attendants. The design also allows food to be easily loaded and unloaded and can hold more than the current cart.

At 8 inches wide, Orbit is 4 inches thinner than traditional carts, which allows passengers to move past it in the aisle. It is able to hold up to 60 meals as it is longer than the current design, which holds around 35-40. Bio-pac food packages can be taken from the top using a pressure shelf system. Once one layer of packages is removed, the ones underneath move up, allowing flight attendants to deliver food to passengers without having to bend down. Orbit locks into sunken tracks in the aisles, with a motor that propels the wheels forwards or backwards. They can also be locked into the tracks during turbulence so it doesn’t lift off the floor.

Orbit

via psfk.com

 

Subscription service offers organic baby food direct from local farms

Farm to Baby NYC is targeting parents with a subscription-based service offering organic baby food.

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Subscription service offers organic baby food direct from local farms

There’s no shortage of efforts bringing more sustainable and transparent food alternatives to consumers. Now, New York-based Farm to Baby NYC is specifically targeting parents with a subscription-based service offering organic baby food.

To begin using the service, parents based in New York can log onto the Farm to Baby NYC website and order a range of seasonal produce – from hubbard squash to parsnips and spinach – sourced from farms in the local area. Customers can sign up for either Half Membership, which offers four 10-ounce pots per week for USD 55, or Full Membership, which includes eight 10-ounce pots per week for USD 99. The glass pots are collected by Farm to Baby NYC for re-use. The service currently uses Gorzynski Ornery Farm and W. Rogowski Farm in New York and Phillips Farms in New Jersey, ensuring a low carbon footprint and supporting these local businesses.

An idea ripe for exporting to other parts of the world? via springwise

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Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a global innovation, growth and hypercompetition consultancy. He is an author and speaker on strategic innovation, education and competitive advantage. To hire Jim to speak to your organization - Call 719- 649- 4118 or email us for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.

Fashion brand offers discounts based on a shopper’s social influence

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Volga Verdi is a California-based fashion brand that offers its customers discounts depending on the number of friends, followers or fans they have on popular social networks.

Marketers have long known that consumers vary widely in terms of their influence over others, but today’s social networks are making those differences plain for all to see. Aiming to zero in on the shoppers with the widest social clout, Volga Verdi is a California-based fashion brand that offers its customers discounts depending on the number of friends, followers or fans they have on popular social networks.

To participate in Volga Verdi’s Exchange program, shoppers begin by referring to a chart on the site listing the size of the discount it offers for the number of friends or followers they have on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, tumblr, Kohtakte or Lookbook.nu. Twitter users, for example, get a discount of USD 7 if they have between 20 and 200 followers, or USD 15 if they have more. To get the discount, they must follow Volga Verdi on Twitter, tweet a prespecified message about the brand, and then email Volga Verdi to confirm they have taken part. Those on other social networks would need to perform similar actions tailored to the social network they are using. Volga Verdi then proceeds to issue a unique voucher code for the corresponding discount.

We’ve already seen sites that “sell” online content for just a tweet or a Facebook mention — namely, Pay with a Tweet and Social Whispers — but offering discounts based on the shopper’s social clout takes such efforts onto new ground. Other retailers around the globe: how about you? via springwise.com 

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Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a global innovation, growth and hypercompetition consultancy. He is an author and speaker on strategic innovation, education and competitive advantage. To hire Jim to speak to your organization - Call 719- 649- 4118 or email us for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.

Why You Should Work With Your Innovating Users

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Using a GPS system and small tags to create a way to find things that get lost in a house. Creating a coat that’s easy to put on and take off while in a wheelchair. Coloring the two halves of a clock different colors to teach children the concepts of “past the hour” and “before the hour.”

Those are some of the consumer innovations that were found by Eric von Hippel, Susumu Ogawa and Jeroen P.J. de Jong in their research into the scope and frequency of how consumers modify existing products and create new ones. “The Age of the Consumer-Innovator,” their report on the first-ever national surveys on consumer innovation in the U.S., Japan and the United Kingdom, is the cover story of the new Fall 2011 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.

How can companies best work with these “casual entrepreneurs”? Here are five steps, drawn from the article:

• Understand that “lead users” are key. “Some users — termed “lead users” — are much more likely to develop commercially promising innovations than the average consumer,” write von Hippel, Ogawa and de Jong. “Lead users are those who are both ahead of the majority of users with respect to an important market trend and have a high incentive to innovate.”
• ID those lead users. Co-author von Hippel, a professor of technological innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management, offers at his website free training materials to find lead users, including a lead user project handbook and videos.
• “Stop attacking your innovating users, whether intentionally or by mistake!” The authors are emphatic about this. It is counterproductive, they note, for companies to deter through criminal threat users who might simply be trying to inspect and alter a product to make it better. Ditto for consumer innovators who are using products in new ways that could lead to new markets.
• Actively support consumer innovation. “Create documented, open interfaces to support modifications to your products,” suggest the authors. Create “developers’ toolkits.” Create websites where users can share information and innovate together. Consider even providing special access to in-house developers.

And about those in-house developers: Get them on board. The authors write: “Companies will have to help their own product developers look at consumer-developed innovations with new eyes — not just as poorly engineered amateurish efforts. Product engineering is not the value companies should look for in the consumer-developed prototype product and related usage. The consumer is showing a product prototype that performs a novel function that people have actually demonstrated that they want. That is the priceless information your companies must take on board.” via sloanreview.mit.edu  

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Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a global innovation, growth and hypercompetition consultancy. He is an author and speaker on strategic innovation, education and competitive advantage. To hire Jim to speak to your organization - Call 719-649-4118 or email us for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.