neon repair idea

i have a peeve about broken neon signs. put business cases together about how much money is lost because of broken signs. build a taslforce that repairs neon signs within 24 hours for a reasonable price.

research idea

do wacky research projects that people find funny irreverant, offbeat, silly whatever. present the findings as psuedoscientific. make them things people really might like to learn about anyway but just because they are silly or fun. examples:

which can run faster cats or dogs?
will picking your nose make you fat?
are some people afraid of beach balls?

certainly there are some better topics as well which i will post as comments if i think of them.

business research study idea

so people talk about how most acquisitions of businesses fail. maybe however, they are getting judged unfairly. a study could be done to quantify the full benefits of having made the aquisition. this would be similar to finding the option value of an opportunity rather than the DCF value, or looking at inaction as a steady decline of revenues rather than a steady state. competitive issues and future positions must be factored in. i beleive it is very likely that many of these acquistions has more value than people will admit.

cool trick to catch a fly

ok so i just did this and it worked so i figure i'd post it. a fly was in my bathroom flying around and hitting the window. i wanted to get it out without killing it or squishing it on the window so i took a clear plastic disposable cup and wham put it over the fly as it was flying against the window. it was in there but now how to get it outside? if i just took it off the window the fly would fly out, so, instead, i turned the cup around slowly so that the fly kept flying into the window but first the wall of the cup was in the way then the bottom of the cup was in the way. when the fly was flying into the bottom of the cup, it's like there was a top on the cup since it didn't know it could fly out the other way. ok so maybe a convoluted description but cool!

health idea

i dont know if this will work but it came to me in a dream last night. a way to cure/relieve asthma symptoms. 1. bring a toothbrush with you 2. do strenuous activites, brush the inside of your mouth and use this to help spit out all the gross stuff. 3. take a break for a couple minutes 4. do these steps 2 more times. 5. breathe easier a few minutes later because the airway is clean. overall this will strengthen the lungs as well reducing asthma symptoms. this came to me in a dream so there is a good chance itis crazy and will not work, but maybe there's something to it.

entrepreneurship idea

start an entrepreneur training center, that is like an mba program but all experience based. the students will be tasked with starting up to 10 businesses. the first business they will start with no guidance but some assistance, then new businesses are started with more and more direct guidance and specific learning objectives. at the end of the project they are tasked with starting another project, again with no guidance, and there they can express all the skills they have learned. if any business really takes off, the business people are free to leave at any time, and in fact encouraged to do so. payment for this training will be minimal to cover base salaries and costs only but the school will own part of every business started and so will the professors. as the businesses pay off the school will become well funded and the teachers will get paid well, directly in line with the performance of the students. this place will give people a free time away from work to start a business, and allow them to take advantage of student loans. it will also become a place where funders can go to find good investment opportunities, and companies can go for acquisition targets.

funny word idea

with the amont of play that collaboration gets and how can be a buzzword, i think a new word can be created: collabortation
this is when collaboration goes wrong, or when it is forced in the wrong situation and to ill effect. example: that group meeting wasn't helpful, it was just a collabortation session.

environmental idea

find a way to quantify the benefits of all things green, organic etc. i know i do not shop at the health food store/food co-op because stuff is too expensive and even a bit snooty. if there were a way to see that the total cost of ownership of this food were cheaper for me (for medical reasons etc.) or cheaper in general (because the real cost of environmental impact is priced into the non-organic stuff) then i would probably buy it, and so would a lot of people. fact of the matter is though that organic food may not be healthier and in many cases it may not be less of an environmental impact either. without this real quantification, its difficult to tell.

sales idea

start a distribution company in a market with stuff i think is cool that finds the smaller players (esp those w innovative products) and pushes them into the stores. develop a reputation for always having the first and the best new technology in this area available. this idea came from the thought that i could distribute personal floatation devices and other watersports gear. make a catalog and a websitel

energy idea

make smart grid control devices. try to make something that people will like to standardize on since this will be crucial for a smart power grid to work.

another business services idea

patent commercialization services. we don't work the market segment that just has an idea but needs a patent (general consensus seems that this is worked by a bunch of scam artists now anyway so that would not be good to be associated with that). we will work with the technical or creative side of the market that wants to spend more time making ideas and less time commercializing them. target: many patents, 0-3 commercialized already. this might just mean something like an agressive extension of a university's tech transfer office.

business services idea

sell business planning services over the internet at low cost to small business owners who need help with getting set up. this could mean making a plan that is acceptable to the bank or the government immigration authorities.

business strategy idea

if ever faced with a situation where industry regulation seems onerous to all companies involved but also seems inevitable in the long run, start ramping up for compliance immediately and switch lobbying dollars from fighting the measure to supporting the measure publically. this will allow you to gain an advantage over your competition.

Example: auto industry and fighting environmental regulations. if one of the US manufacturers supported regulation and lobbyied agressivly for it, they could have crushed competitors both foreign and domestic by being ready with the required capabilities more quickly and at low cost.

taxes idea

increase us tax revenues by keeping us companies from moving their headquarters abroad by doing things that help encourage real love of the US in people like CEOs who might make that decision. if this winds up being based on fear tactics i won't like the idea, ie fear of losing something they love.

archival idea

create a book, dvd or other static information item (a book works so well because no other tech is needed for it to work) that is a year in review of wikipedia. this would make a great christmas present, and can be made by pulling content out at a certain time, making sure it is clean, and publishing it. the articles that have recieved the most activity (hits and edits) over the year would be top candidates for inclusion. revenue issue not clear now - name could be licensed and project operated at a profit, or it could be done by volunteer workers and sold at cost. anyway it would be interesting to have annual benchmarks of how the world is changing according to the grand mind of wikipedia.

lots of ideas

so, back to the ideas, see link below I can't claim these as my own, but there are some that are quite interesting. Some associates and I are investigating the Hydration Personal Floatation Device right now. Old skool website but some good thoughts... Enjoy em!

question about our global future

ok so no proposed answer to this one, its a question that boggles my mind: how can the world's population be controlled without being inhuman, immoral, inequal, restrictive, or otherwise not nice?

i am reading a book by Thomas Friedman Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America At times he's saying that we need to control the population on the earth' especially as people begin to consume at american levels, but at other times he is calling for an end to energy poverty, to increase the standard of living worldwide.

if we need to fight population growth
to preserve the environment, why would we fight poverty at all? this is the old malthusian dilemma - except that Malthus was a cold unfeeling dude who didn't care about human suffering. the answer is obvious, we fight poverty to fight human suffering. also its important to note that developed countries have lower birth rates, so that could help with overpopulation, but so far they still consume more!

now again though, how do we keep our world livable for ourselves and the other species without doing something like this though, or enforcing a strict one child policy like they do in china? technology is certainly one idea. actively reducing the standard of living of people across the globe (retrogression) is also one idea, and if you look around it has a surprising number of proponents already. still this goes against all human history so far.

I think part of our species essence is to grow change and catalyse things. this philosophy of constant growth and improvement has been with us for a long time and doesn't seem to be going anywhere. this view however means that we must be willing to kill off our species and many others in the process at some point. is this creative destruction or calamity? from one perspective we are accomplishing in thousands of years something that has taken nature millions of years before. as humans we have a tremendous fear of death and change. We also must not forget that we are natural too, and thus our actions are as well.

i hope you realize i am just being provocative to get us thinking about this tremendously difficult issue so that we can hopefully solve it in a way we can all agree on. we are intelligent and concious of these issues so we should be able to do better and realize we don't need to kill things off and cause pain. nonetheless a solution is needed to humanely limit the human impact on the earth. the hope is that we can do this without abandoning our growth.

I think the premise of Friedman's book is that we can do this. I'm not sure I agree though. how can we both continue to increase people's standard of living, not limit population and not impact the environment? we may need to give up our love of growth at some point to keep ourselves alive. I love creativity and new things, so I hope not though. My view, which I share with scientist Steven Hawking, is that we need to prepare now to colonize other planets. That may be one of the only hopes we have to continue humanity's grand dream of universal knowledge.

video idea

i just watched a air battle between a hawk and three crows. the crows were faster and more manuverable but the hawk had more endurance. it really seemed like it was more of the hawk evading the crows. i once saw a hawk kill a bluejay that was going after it in the air though.
here's the idea: make a documentary of air battles between birds.