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6 Easy-to-Steal Rituals of Extremely Successful People

We ultimately become what we repeatedly do.

Over the years Marc and I have studied the lives of numerous successful people.  We’ve read their books, watched their interviews, interviewed them ourselves, worked with them, and researched them extensively.  We’ve truly learned a lot from their stories.  But above all, we’ve learned that most of these people were not born into success.  They simply did, and continue to do, things that help them realize their full potential.  In other words, they follow a set of prolific rituals.

 

1.  Do the work… practice, practice, practice your craft!

Sure you can be good with a little effort.  You can be really good with a little more effort.  But you can’t be great, at anything, unless you put in an incredible amount of focused effort for a set amount of time every day.  It’s as simple as that.  Scratch the surface of any successful person with incredible skills and you’ll find someone who has put thousands of hours of effort into developing those skills.  There are no shortcuts in life.  There are no overnight successes.  Almost everyone has heard about the 10,000 hours principle, which states that it takes roughly 10,000 hours to completely master a complex skill, yet despite sound evidence, so few follow it… except extremely successful people of course.

Whatever you decide to do, do it well.  Do it so well that when others see you do it, they enjoy it so much that they want to come back and see you do it again… and they also want to bring their friends along so they can show them how incredible you are at doing what you do.

2.  Build trust by standing behind every one of your promises.

If you say you’re going to do something, DO IT!  If you say you’re going to be somewhere, BE THERE!  If you say you feel something, MEAN IT!  If you can’t, won’t, and don’t, then DON’T LIE.  It’s always better to tell people the truth up front.  Don’t play games with people’s heads and hearts.  Don’t tell half-truths and expect people to trust you when the full truth comes out; half-truths are no better than lies.

Regardless of the business you’re in – selling products to consumers, or selling hours for dollars – the only question you have to ask yourself is:  “Do they trust me enough to believe what I’m promising to deliver?”  Without this trust, you have zero, zilch, nada.  If your target market knows you and they’re still not buying what you’re offering, they simply don’t trust you as much as you would hope.  Earn their trust, and the rest of the puzzle pieces will be easy to arrange.  (Read The Impact Equation.)

3.  Focus more on less.

Having too many choices interferes with decision-making.  Here in the 21st century, where information moves at the speed of light and opportunities for innovation seem endless, we have an abundant array of choices when it comes to designing our lives and careers.  But sadly, an abundance of choice often leads to indecision, confusion, and inaction.

Several business and marketing studies have shown that the more product choices a consumer is faced with, the less products they typically buy.  After all, narrowing down the best product from a pool of three choices is certainly a lot easier than narrowing down the best product from a pool of three hundred.  If the purchasing decision is tough to make, most people will just give up.

So if you’re selling a product line, keep it simple.  And if you’re trying to make a decision about something in your life, don’t waste all your time evaluating every last detail of every possible option.  Choose something you think will work and give it a shot.  If it doesn’t work out, choose something else and keep pressing forward.  Focus more on less, and do your very best.

4.  Only use quality tools.

While we’re on the topic of focusing more on less, make sure the only tools you’re using are the only ones you truly need.  There’s no point in keeping low quality tools around.  For instance, trying to cut through a thick piece of fresh lumber with an old, dull handsaw would be a pretty foolish endeavour.  You would have to work extremely hard to make the even the slightest impact.  This very same principle applies to everything in life.

Don’t let inefficiency defeat you.  If the tools in your toolbox don’t fit the requirements of the job, find someone who has the right tools and barter with them, hire them, invite them into the process of what you’re trying to achieve.  Possessing the right tools (and skills) can easily shrink a mountainous task into a miniscule molehill.  With a good idea, determination, and the right tools, almost anything is possible.

5.  Spend quality time with quality people.

You are the average of the people you spend the most time with.  And that’s why it’s not always where you are in life, but who you have by your side that matters most.  Some people drain you and others provide soul food.  So be sure to get in the company of those who feed your spirit, and give the gift of your absence to those who do not appreciate your presence.  There’s no need to rush into a relationship you are unsure of, or socialize with those who hold you back.

Spend more time with nice people who are smart, driven and open-minded about personal growth and opportunity.  Use websites like meetup.com to search for local community groups of people with similar passions and goals.  These people are out there.

The bottom line is that relationships should help you, not hurt you.  Surround yourself with people who reflect the person you want to be.  Choose friends who you are proud to know, people you admire, people who care about you and respect you – people who make your day a little brighter simply by being in it.  Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the energy and hope out of you.  (Marc and I discuss this in detail in the “Relationships” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)

6.  Study, rehearse, and get super comfortable with the art of selling.

About a year ago Marc and I interviewed ten extremely successful business owners and CEOs for a side-project we were working on.  We asked them to name the one skill they felt contributed the most to their success.  Every one of them, in there own words, said: the ability to sell themselves, their ideas, and what they had to offer.

Keep in mind “selling” in its truest sense isn’t an act of manipulating, pressuring, or being deceitful.  Selling is explaining the logic and benefits of a decision or point of view.  Selling is convincing other people to work directly with YOU.  Selling is overcoming concerns and roadblocks, and calming other people’s unwarranted fears.  Selling is one of the principal foundations of both business and personal success.  It’s about knowing how to negotiate, how to deal with a  “no” when you receive one, how to maintain confidence and self-esteem in the face of rejection, and how to communicate openly, honestly, and effectively with a wide range of people so that you can build long-term relationships that garner long-term trust.

When you truly believe in your idea, or your business, or yourself, then you don’t need to have an enormous ego or an overly extroverted personality.  You don’t need to “sell” in the traditional sense.  You just need to communicate your point of view clearly, cordially, and confidently.

The floor is yours…

So there you have it, six rituals we’ve seen repeated over and over in the lives of some of the most successful people we’ve studied and interacted with over the years.

And today we challenge you to implement one new positive ritual in your own life.  It’s all about breaking up your overarching goals into tiny, repeatable, daily actions.  So let’s take the idea of mastering a particular complex skill, for instance.  Obviously this can’t be accomplished in a day.  It’s about choosing a set time every day to practice diligently, and perhaps even tying your practice time to a recurring trigger, like:  Every time you walk into your office you will immediately spend 30 minutes doing XYZ.

 

Melissa Pierard | Design | FPG
p: +64 6 843 3149 I f: +64 6 843 2466 I www.fpgworld.com
Au: 1800 041 649 I Asia: 0086 21 3351 3390 | | NZ: 0800 367 374 | UK: 0044 845 485 9300

 

Owlet, The Smart Baby Bootie

Owlet, The Smart Baby Bootie, Raises $1.85 Million

 

Owlet, a smart baby bootie that measures your child’s heart rate, launched on our Hardware Battlefield last January and has just raised $1.85 million from multiple firms including ff Venture Capital and Eniac Ventures. Also in participation of the round was Azimuth Ventures, Life Sciences Angel Network, Peak Ventures, and Brand Project. The company also completed the RGA Connected Devices Accelerator through Tech Stars.

“We are excited to have the right partners onboard to change the world with this product,” said Owlet CEO Kurt Workman. “We see the wearable future will include every single baby coming home from the hospital with a health monitor. Owlet is perfectly poised to be that monitor.”

The monitor is shipping this summer for $250 and comes in blue and pink. They are currently accepting pre-orders for the first units.

The company aims to be the only wireless baby monitor that will come home with almost every child at birth. Because it is engineered to be light, easily washable, and comfortable, the bootie will allow parents to ensure their kids are still breathing and, more importantly, offer important insight to researchers on the first few months of life.

 

Ooho!

oct 26, 2013

Ooho! by Rodrigo García GonzálezGuillaume CouchePierre Yves from spain

 

designer's own words:

"

Curiosity leads us to appreciate the most simple and beauty form that nature offer us, a drop. It is the smallest quantity of liquid heavy enough to fall in a spherical mass. Liquid forms drops because the liquid exhibits surface tension, bounded completely or almost completely by free surfaces. "Ooho!" replicates this behavior, encircle the water in a eatable membrane of algae. It is new way of packaging that propose an alternative to the plastic bottle. Using the culinary technique of sphereification, the water is encapsulated in a double gelatinous membrane. The technique consist into apply sodium alginate (E-401) from the brown algae and calcium chloride (E-509) in a concrete proportions in order to generate a gelification on the exterior of the liquid. The final package is simple, cheap (2ct/unit), resistant, hygienic, biodegradable and even eatable.

The most clear inspiration is the way nature encapsulate liquids using membranes. Made of lipids and proteins the membrane enclose, limit and give a shape keeping the balance between the interior and the exterior. As example the egg yolk. As structural element a membrane works almost exclusively with traction forces. The technique of spherification, of shaping a liquid into spheres which visually and texturally resemble caviar born in 1946. (US Pat. 2,403,547). In the 90s the Spanish chef Ferràn Adria brought the technique to the modern cuisine at his restaurant elBulli. "Ooho!" apply an evolve version of the spherification to one of the most basic and essential elements for life, the water.

After experimenting the spherification technique with different ingredients, proportions and dimensions, a "recipe" was found to create "Ooho!" with a double gelatinous membrane and in different sizes. The double membrane protects hygienically the inside and allows to locate between the two layers identification labels with out any adhesive. Other of the technical innovations is to manipulate the water as solid (ice) during the encapsulation so is possible to get bigger spheres and allows to the calcium and algae to stay exclusively in the membrane. The exploration of how other disciplines can solve design problems, generates interesting states as "how to design in the kitchen" or "how to cook the design" . Nowadays only big companies have the infrastructure to manufacture packaging. The main idea of "Ooho!" is that everyone could make them at their kitchen, modifying and innovating the "recipe". From DIY to CIY (Cook It Yourself).

Ooho! 1

Ooho! 2

video

Ooho! 3

Drinking Ooho!

BIG OohO!

video

DIY Impossible Light Bulb, Plus 6 More Ways to Repurpose Burned Out Bulbs

DIY Impossible Light Bulb, Plus 6 More Ways to Repurpose Burned Out Bulbs

The next time a light bulb burns out in your house, don't throw it out. Believe it or not, burned out light bulbs aren't entirely useless. Besides creating an extra task on your to-do list, they can be hollowed out and used for a variety of different things from home decorations to miniature indoor gardens.

Interested in turning your own junk light bulbs into something creative and useful? First, a quick tutorial on how to safely hollow out a light bulb.

Now, here are some of the most innovative things you can do.

Gardening

You can grow a variety of small plants in a light bulb, almost like a mini greenhouse. If you don't have a green thumb, just use it as a vase.

Photos by LinuxH4x0r, James Hobson, arte.sano, Readymade

Fish Tanks

You can use a regular size light bulb to make a home for a tiny fish, or bigger one for a mini aquarium. Or maybe a bunch of hanging ones.

Photos by Sgt.Waffles, StarRedesigns

Terrariums

A larger one also makes a great DIY terrarium for a small reptile.

Photo by TheHipsterHome

Or without a reptile...

Photo by Monica Bogliolo

Salt and Pepper Shakers

Poke holes in the cap from a soda bottle to make your own salt and pepper shakers; a 16 oz. bottle cap is the perfect size for a standard light bulb.

Photo by Readymade

Or you can make a whole spice rack with cork stoppers...

Photo by Inhabitat

Lamps

This one may not be very far off from the original use, but you can make tons of cool lamps and light fixtures with light bulbs, like a simple DIY oil lamp.

Photos by Magnelectrostatic

Or, if you have more bulbs than you know what to do with...

Photos by Bulbs Unlimited

Ship in a Bottle

Okay, so it's not a bottle, but close enough. You could also try something a little different like a submarine or tiny scuba divers if you're feeling creative. If you want to make your own, here's a ship in a light bulb tutorial. What other "impossible light bulb" scenarios can you come up with?

Photo by White's Nautical Antiques

Concrete Wall Hooks

Tired of using the same old hooks for hanging your coats and hats? Try pouring some concrete in the old bulbs and turn them into sturdy wall hooks.

Photos by whamodyne

As you can see, the possibilities for old light bulbs are nearly endless. Do you have any other ideas? If you've done a similar project, show us how you did it!

 

Verlan 3D printed dress built with Replicator 2 and new MakerBot Flexible Filament

Verlan 3D printed dress built with Replicator 2 and new MakerBot Flexible Filament

Sep.6, 2013

It's Fashion Week in New York this week. Francis Bitonti, a multidisciplinary designer from New York City, organized a three-week workshop at the Pratt Institute's DAHRC that resulted in the creation of a 3D-printed dress.

The Verlan Dress, designed in the New Skins: Computational Design for Fashion workshop led by designer Francis Bitonti of the famed Dita Dress, is the first creation to ever use MakerBot Flexible Filament, a new adaptable filament material made out of polyester.

According to MakerBot, this 1.75mm Flexible Filament, which will launch to the public soon, is more flexible than PLA. It has a soft, flexible feel, and is even pliable when exposed to hot water (it can be reshaped and form-fitted). The material was commonly used for sutures in the medical field, mouth guards, prosthetics and non-woven fabrics.

It is so versatile that it can be repurposed from its origin. Non-toxic and fully biodegradable, the MakerBot Flexible Filament provides a smooth finished surface and works well for form-fitted or personalized 3D prints. "MakerBot Flexible Filament is different than traditional 3D printing filaments that are solid and stiff after extrusion; with its flexibility and suppleness, this could revolutionize 3D printing." said Bre Pettis, MakerBot's CEO.

Bionti's designers built this dress with two MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D Printers. The MakerBot Replicator 2s printed continually for close to 24 hours a day for two weeks -- a total of 400 hours of printing -- to create the dress.

The dress was made of 59 3D-printed pieces: 20 from PLA (for the harder, more skeleton-like sections), and 39 from MakerBot Flexible Filament (for the more dynamic, muscle-like parts). The pieces were glued together with Loctite Two Part Professional Heavy Duty 5 Minute Epoxy.

All the parts of the dress took 24 hours to assemble. The MakerBot Flexible Filament was tied up the sides with leather straps, and the top was snapped into place with a plastic button.

Photo credit: Christrini.

Bitonti's students used Autodesk's Maya software, along with Rhino and ZBrush, to create their designs. The resulting Verlan Dress is featured in a documentary video (below) on the New Skins workshop design process and will be showcased at a Bitonti exhibit later this fall at the Pratt Institute in New York City. The dress' design is posted on Thingiverse.

The current dimensions are for a 5'10" woman in a size 4, but you can tailor the dress to your own dimensions using the Blender file.

Skin-Frame structure could save up to 70% of 3D printing material

Skin-Frame structure could save up to 70% of 3D printing material

Sep.23, 2013

Material costs are still one of the reasons why 3D printing might not be the best method for production. When you get your 3D model printed at 3D printing companies, the price is calculated based on which 3D printing material is chosen and how much this material is used.

To minimize the cost of material you can either hollow out your designs, or uniformly hollow the 3D object by extruding the outer surface and creating a scaled-down version on its inside, as the most commercial printers do.

Researchers at University of Science and Technology of China have designed an automatic and practical method to generate a skin-frame structure for a given 3D model for minimizing the material used in printing and the number of struts in the structure. The frame structure generated by their algorithm, which is geometrically approximate to the shape of input model, is guaranteed to be physically stable, geometrically approximate, and 3D printable.

Teaser: Given an input Horse model (a), our method generates a skin-frame structure (b). The frame structure is designed to meet various constraints by an optimization scheme. In (b) we remove the front part of the skin in order to show the internal structure of frame. (c) is the photo of an printed model by removing part of its skin to see the internal struts. (d) is the photo of the printed model generated by our method. A small red drawing pin is put under the object as a size reference in (c) and (d) respectively. The material usage in (d) is only 15.0% of that of a solid object.

Frame structure is a typical light weight structure which is widely employed in architecture, engineering, and building construction. The key idea is to 'hollow' the object by creating a lightweight frame structure, made of a mesh of nodes and thin cylindrical struts with large voids among them inside the object. And the frame is also expected to have simple topology structure with minimal number of struts.

Frame structures benefit 3D printing in two aspects. First, the mass of object could be significantly reduced through the use of frame structures while maintaining its strength and stiffness, which is cost-effective for 3D printing. Second, frame structures provide sufficient flexibility and variability, which make them possible to meet a variety of constraints in 3D printing.

Researchers develop an optimization scheme to minimize the frame volume subject to various constraints such as stiffness, stability, geometrical approximation, self-balance, and printability.

Check out the following examples:

Overview of our algorithm. Given an input model (a), an initial frame structure (b) is generated. Our algorithm runs alternatively the topology optimization (c) and the geometry optimization (d). The struts in (b), (c), and (d) are shown with color visualizations of their radii. Note that the frame in (c) is much sparser than that in (b). The frame volumes of (b) and (d) are 3.790e4 and 2.875e4 mm3 respectively. The saving ratio of the frame volume is about 24%. In this example, an external force of 5N is loaded vertically downside on top of the model.

The Hanging-Ball model in the lower row has a smaller base than the one in the upper row. For the model with a smaller base, our algorithm produces thicker struts on the vertical pillar in the right part than the counterparts in the upper row due to the balancing constraint. Photos of the printed naked frame and the printed objects using the power-type printer are shown in (b) and (c), respectively.

Printed objects using powder-type printers produced by our algorithm. From left to right: Fighter, TV-Alien, Fishing-Frog, and Buddha-Head. The upper row shows the rendering results with half skin and half frame. The lower row shows photos of the printed objects. The largest edge length of the bounding box of each object is 200mm. A small red drawing pin is put beside each object as a size reference.

Smart Design of Support Material

In addition, the researchers have also studied the design of support material and proposed a scheme to design the structure of support by adding some extra struts to make the frame printable with minimal use of support material. Check out the examples below:

FDM 3D printers need to add extra supporting structures to print the objects. Left: the printed result with supporting structure generated by commercial software; Right: the printed result with supporting structure generated by researchers' algorithm.

Researchers' paper, "Cost-effective Printing of 3D Objects with Skin-Frame Structures" was accepted by SIGGRAPH Asia 2013 Conference which will be held in Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 19 to 22 November 2013.

According to Zhouwang Yang, Associate Professor in Mathematics and also co-author of the paper, this method reduces the weight of the design and creates material saving of up to 70%.

I know we have already read this but...

6 Ways To Create A Culture Of Innovation

Reward employees with time to think, while providing them with the structure they need.

Written By Soren Kaplan

Every organization is designed to get the results it gets. Poor performance comes from a poorly designed organization. Superior results emerge when strategies, business models, structure, processes, technologies, tools, and reward systems fire on all cylinders in symphonic unison.

Savvy leaders shape the culture of their company to drive innovation. They know that it’s culture--the values, norms, unconscious messages, and subtle behaviours of leaders and employees--that often limits performance. These invisible forces are responsible for the fact that 70% of all organizational change efforts fail. The trick? Design the interplay between the company’s explicit strategies with the ways people actually relate to one another and to the organization.

Here’s how to influence the soft stuff.

1. Be intentional with your innovation intent

Most corporate visions and missions sound alarmingly alike: Become the #1 provider of blah, blah, blah. These generic, broad-based goals might rev up sales teams, but they do little to spark ingenuity. Perhaps the worst thing a company can do is give “innovation marching orders” without any guide posts. That’s when the focus gets lost and teams spin their wheels.

The goal: Frame the way you want to change the world, and make it about the customer. For example, the software company Intuit--the developer of Quicken, Quick Books, and TurboTax--makes its mission abundantly clear: "To improve our customers’ financial lives so profoundly they can’t imagine going back to the old way."

2. Create a structure for unstructured time

Innovation needs time to develop. No one ever feels like they have time to spare. People get so consumed with putting out fires and chasing short-term targets that most can’t even think about the future.

Giving up control when the pressure is greatest is the ultimate innovation paradox. That’s why iconic brands like 3M and Google give their employees about 10% “free time” to experiment with new ideas. The software company Atlassian encourages employees to take “FedEx Days”--paid days off to work on any problem they want. But there’s a catch: Just like FedEx, they must deliver something of value 24 hours later.

Companies such as Intuit use time as a reward because they believe it’s the biggest motivator of corporate intrapreneurs. Intuit gives its best business innovators three months of “unstructured” time that can be used in one big chunk or spread out over six months for part-time exploration of new opportunities. So using time wisely creates a major incentive to get more time to play with (hopefully wisely).

3. Step in, then step back

Providing “free” time for employees to experiment with new technologies, products, or processes can catalyse the next big thing. But too many companies--and the consultants they hire--attempt to over-engineer the innovation process. A better option: Give just enough structure and support to help people navigate uncertainty and tap into the creative process without stifling it.

There are some pretty good off-the-shelf tools that can help build employee skill sets. Some of the best are freely available, such as the Stanford Design School’s Boot Camp Bootleg. Intuit applied the design thinking underlying Stanford’s model to create its Catalyst Toolkit, a guide that was made available to all employees and the public and which includes self-serve ingredients for cooking up innovation.

People as diverse as software engineers to human-resources managers have used the toolkit to innovate internal work processes or create new products, including SnapTax, which lets customers file their taxes in less than 15 minutes on their mobile phones. Promoting these types of toolkits help convince employees that leaders care about their development while they also promote best practices that can be adapted to the needs of the individual or team.

4. Measure what’s meaningful

Management guru Peter Drucker once said, “What’s measured improves.” Said another way, You get what you measure. For many companies, coming up with ideas often isn’t the problem. The challenge is turning them into something real that delivers an impact. So what metrics should you use?

First, you have to figure out what to measure. In its early days, Facebook measured how often its users returned to its site. Everything they did focused on blowing out this single metric. OpenTable, the restaurant reservation service, focused on two metrics that allowed it to become the dominant player: growing the numbers of restaurants in its network and increasing the number of consumers making reservations.

Customer-oriented numbers are clearly essential. But other indicators can drive internal innovation, too. After Proctor & Gamble realized the importance of outside partnerships in driving market breakthroughs, the company decided to measure (and increase) the percentage of new products that used breakthrough technologies from partners. Externally driven innovation jumped from 10% to more than 50% and resulted in new products, including Mr. Clean Magic Erasers and Tide Pods.

Other metrics that promote organizational innovation include:

• Percent of revenue from products or services introduced within a given period of time (say, the last fiscal year).
• A pipeline of new ideas that includes a set ratio of short-term products or services and longer-term game changers (say, 75%-25%).
• Percent of employees who have been trained and given tools for innovation.
• Percent of time dedicated to discovering, prototyping, and testing revenue-generating new products, services, or business models (say, 10-20%).

5. Give "worthless" rewards

Recognizing success is critical, but most companies stop there. An annual innovation award is just not enough to catalyze a culture of innovation. Sure, formal rewards are good for the short term--but they don’t keep people truly engaged.

The most powerful and robust type of recognition--the kind that shapes organizational values--often occurs more informally. Several members of Colgate-Palmolive’s Global R&D group initiated a “recognition economy” by distributing symbolic wooden nickels to colleagues who had made noteworthy contributions to their projects. The fortunate recipients didn’t hoard their winnings. They passed them on to others who had chipped in on projects that they themselves had led.

Nickels are now distributed in meetings, but it’s not uncommon for employees to return from lunch and find a few nickels anonymously placed on their desks. It’s a fun and validating idea; such informal acknowledgments encourage a collective spirit and help promote the free flow of ideas.

6. Get symbolic

Symbols represent the underlying values of an organization, and they come in many forms--values statements, awards, success stories, posters in the hallways, catch phrases, acronyms, and, yes, those wooden nickels. Those who intentionally curate the innovation symbols of their companies essentially curate their innovation cultures.

Intuit installed the kitchen table where Scott Cook dreamed up the company with his wife in its innovation center--and employees are encouraged to sit around it for idea jams. Netflix names its corporate conference rooms after blockbuster movies (for one, King Kong) as a reminder of the continuous breakthroughs its employees are creating and promoting.

But symbols can be more than just physical objects. Poignant experiences, for example, live on as stories and folklore--and shape the mindsets and behaviors of new and existing employees. At Google, the story of the time Sheryl Sandberg made a bad decision that cost the company millions lives on--not because of the error itself but because of co-founder Larry Page’s response: “I’m so glad you made this mistake,” he said, “Because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don’t have any of these mistakes, we’re just not taking enough risk.”

Rather than let stories naturally unfold from leaders’ unconscious behaviour--which may or may not support innovation--some companies explicitly shape stories to convey key values. The trendy fast-food chain Noodles & Company created a kind of corporate folklore when it invited local marching bands to show up and spontaneously play at nearly 100 locations around the country. Finding differentiation in the fiercely competitive fast-food field is a tough and ongoing effort, and the story remains a constant reminder that everyone needs to consistently “march to the beat of a different drummer.”

No Rubber Stamps

Every company’s culture is inherently different. So when you’re cultivating innovation, you’re cultivating a unique system. Which means you have to be thoughtful about your approach. Whatever you do, it should align with the values of the company and with the company’s goals. And in each case, you have to make it easy and rewarding for the people whose roles and dynamics influence the very innovation culture you’re trying to cultivate.

3D Food Printer

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/456763017/designed-for-healthy-eating-foodini-a-3d-food-prin?ref=category

 

Todd Kelsen | Engineering Support | FPG

m: +64 21 369 239 | p: +64 6 843 3149 I f: +64 6 843 2466 I www.fpgworld.com
Au: 1800 041 649 I Asia: 0086 21 3351 3390 | NZ: 0800 367 374 | UK: 0044 845 485 9300

 

 

3D printed tape measure

This guy has some interesting projects on his web site including a 3D printed measuring tape and Dial Calipers.

http://thecornercase.blogspot.co.nz/

Modular makeover: The gadgets we’d love to see get upgradeable parts

 

Google’s ongoing project to build a completely modular smartphone sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but there’s some pretty sound reasoning behind the concept. Like the ability to save money when buying new bits, and saving the planet because you’re not throwing old phones away.
The concept seems to be catching on – PC accessory maker Razer is working on making a modular gaming PC you can upgrade on subscription, dubbed Project Christine. But just imagine if other gadgets around the home were modular too. You’d be able to upgrade the specs on devices when it gets to payday, you could switch to new colours or fancier designs, and each time you make a change it’d be a lot cheaper than buying a whole new gadget.
The first truly upgradeable TV anyone? The tablet you never, ever need to replace? The ever-growing fridge? Here’s the must have incremental tech we want in our homes:

The infinitely improving TV
TVs are often one of the most expensive gadgets we’ll buy for the house, and we keep them for years, through many phone upgrades – which makes it all the more infuriating when you’ve just unpacked it, stuck it nicely in the corner and then realised next year’s model has just been released, with yet more bells and whistles!
That wouldn’t be an issue with the modular TV though – add a bigger screen at a fraction of the cost, upgrade those ratty old speakers by clipping on something that can shake the neighbourhood, or switch to a new coloured bezel for pennies, giving your TV a new look without having to splash out thousands. This sounds far fetched, but we’re very nearly there, with software updates delivered over the web. And, unlike a phone, it wouldn’t even matter if the design was more bulky than standard – not if you could give your TV a few extra inches in time for the football season.

The new super high res tablet!
Granted, your tablet may look pretty crisp right now, but in two years we’ll have even more pixels squeezed into the same space: it’d be great if you could upgrade the screen to something more 2016 without having to shove your old model in the drawer. Screens are just one area where tablets are getting better though, and we’d love to be able to swap out the processor, memory and storage for new, cooler modules, along with better camera modules (just like Google’s Modular phone). If Asus can fit a phone inside a tablet, we don’t see any reason why this couldn’t be done.

The ever-growing fridge
Why restrict yourself to exciting modular gadgets like phones, TVs and tablets, when you could also save money and shake up things in the kitchen? How about a fridge that could increase in size along with your household? Once your girlfriend moves in simply add on the new healthy module, increasing the size of your fridge by 30 litres – for all the salad you’ll be eating now, of course. Moving in with your mates? Check out the new beer module, adding additional holders for beer cans, crates or bottles. We’ll drink to that!

One BIG round of toast
There’s nothing more infuriating than trying to make toast for yourself and friends, and running out of slots for the bread. The new modular toaster means that’s an issue of the past, as you’d be able to add on new toasting modules whenever you want. Each module could let you toast another two slices, with connectors to add another module to the side. Things could get a little silly by the time you’ve added five or six modules though – sure, you’ll be able to toast 12 slices simultaneously, but it’ll be one strange looking toaster!

Don’t forget the kitchen sink…
We’re seeing a lot more smart, connected devices these days too, so it makes sense if everything in the home could be modular! How about easily being able to unplug taps for new, smart taps that can turn themselves off if you forget? No need to call a plumber when anything goes wrong; a simple modular design could make changing parts of the sink as simple as changing the battery in a smartphone (granted, not the iPhone..).

Dovetail Key

One for the wood enthusiasts.

 

http://www.core77.com/blog/furniture_design/the_hoffman_dovetail_key_a_little_bowtie_that_can_revolutionize_your_production_time_26706.asp

 

Todd Kelsen | Engineering Support | FPG

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