Ideas Inspire Innovation

Named the No 1. CEO under thirty by Inc. magazine in 2006 for his innovative approach to fertilizer and recycled goods, in the two years that followed (2007-2009) Tom Szaky went on to write about 30 blogitles for Inc. and a book that surely has more than 30 pages – Revolution in a Bottle . Now it’s 2011 and he’s still under 30 but he’s worth at least 30 times 30 more than he was at the start of 2006. Tom, a Princeton drop-out, is a man on a mission to run a fully sustainable company. While he was still in his dorm room he was dreaming up TerraCycle, one of the fastest growing private companies named by Inc. magazine in 2009. TerraCycle started with an idea, 5th place in the Princeton Business Plan Contest, and a venture capitalist who believed in the organic fertilizer Tom stumbled upon while working on a “better tomato” project (worm poop packaged in used soda bottles). Canadian Home Depot and Wal-Mart were the first bites in the major retailer business but that is all history now...

What does Ideas Inspire Innovation mean? Below is a graphic created to show the flow and definitions of the message: If we interchange some of these definitions we come up with more tangible yet flexible combinations: Opinions influence introductions. Beliefs produce new methods. Thoughts bring about change . It’s easier to provide examples of these new translations, examples that are less reaching and more elementary, more everyday in their nature. Opinions influence introductions. I give presentations at work. Usually these presentations involve interpretation of data or research. Of course any information presented has a slice of opinion in it. After presenting to a large group it’s typical that I encounter a face I do not recognize but that recognizes me and has an opinion about what I presented. Another example could be regarding any organization, volunteer effort, or other group you have joined or wanted to join. Usually an opinion -- whether it’s a political affil...

I've been thinking about evolution and innovation lately.  What is the line that separates one from the other?  Dictionary.com tells us that evolution is any process of formation or growth; development; a process of gradual, peaceful, progressive growth or development; whereas, innovation is defined as something new or different introduced.  To me this means that innovation  IS evolution because it's a process of growth.  But then again if you rely on the second definition of evolution it must be gradual or peaceful growth.  If innovation occurs abruptly or disruptively, it is only innovative and not evolved.  So is it better to be peacefully evolved or disruptively innovative?  Oh, but how many sides of this coin exist!  How many people get to vote on the idea being new? Who gets to make the judgment that it's a peaceful progression.  A beaver builds a dam. That's peaceful to the beaver but could be dis...

The Morrow Plots are corn fields located on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus.  During my freshman orientation campus tour in 1995 our group was told these cornfields are the oldest in the U.S. (first grown in 1876) and have been preserved as such an important part of the University's history that the undergraduate library was built three stories underground as to not cast a shadow on the cornfields, risking inadequate sunlight conditions. Wikipedia says that the University master plan at the time (1966) required a large open plaza at that end of the campus, thus also demanding the library be built underground.  Whatever the true reason for building an underground library, the innovation seed was planted and architects had to find their inspiration.  I finally made it back to UIUC in September and here are a few photos of the library and Morrow Plots: You can find more photos and information from the UI Histories Project...

An article in the March issue of Forbes detailed how a Reno man makes a living by basically playing the saranwrap game you played on your college buddies but on a much larger scale.  On a hunt to find a way to protect his boat from the elements, Michael Enos, couldn't find what he wanted so he ordered some plastic and some heat guns and figured it out by himself in just three days. Nearly fifteen years later, he sold off his rent-a-potty business that supplied the Burning Man festival and moved on to co-found FastWrap -- a shrink-wrapping business that advertises "weatherization through innovation" From wrapping boats to patio furniture to casinos, and providing shelter in disasters to shelter from sun damage, the shrink wrapping business has been around much longer than 2007.  Fast Wrap's competitor, Global Wrap, has been around since 1981 and the ideas was said to have been first developed by the Swedes ...

Okay so I had heard all about biodiesel and using corn as an energy source, and seriously how many of our food products have corn syrup or other corn products in them?  Corn nearly makes our world go round. But here's a new one for you...  Samsung recently came out with the Reclaim phone which is made of 40% corn-derived bio-plastic.  cnet gave it 3.5 stars out of 5 and I think cnet is fairly reliable. The links I looked at show the phone costs about $50 with a 2 year contract with Sprint.  They also have it in a fitting green color.  I'm a fan of blue though so I'm showing the blue version below, since even the blue version is "green."  More on the phone here: http://www.switched.com/2009/08/06/samsungs-eco-friendly-reclaim-phone-is-made-of-corn/ http://reviews.cnet.com/cell-phones/samsung-reclaim-sph-m560/4505-6454_7-33743841.html http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ariel-schwartz/sustainability/sprints-biodegredable-phone-really-gr...