In through the outfield

31 October 2007

Turn your water-tap into a fire-hose in under 10 seconds

This is the rather remarkable claim form Edward van Noord another of the exhibitors at The British International Innovation & Technology Conference and Exhibition. He has patented a way of attaching a very compact hose pipe to a normal household cold water tap. This is yet another case of what I would consider to be a really obvious solution to a problem which I’m sure many of you would already have thought about (I know I have).

Amazingly the particular solution Edward van Noord came up with hadn’t already been patented. Even more impressive is the way he has developed both the product and marketing all on his own. He had even paid for the stand at the show out of his own money.

The good news is that his perseverance (an essential component for any entrepreneur) is now being rewarded with sales increasing across Europe at a rapid rate.

The product is called 1-2-3 stop fire and you can see what you think of it below.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=IgtK5irM8xU]

31 October 2007

Prime Thinkers – Developing creative ideas for business, charities and the voluntary sector

At the recent The British International Innovation & Technology Conference and Exhibition at Alexandra Palace I came across a stand for Prime Thinkers. They are a group of 20 experienced business owners, managers in large corporations, academics and senior government officials, many of whom have now retired. The idea is that someone with a business idea or invention presents to and participates in a brainstorming session with a group of 8 or 10 of the Prime Thinkers team.

Together they will spend an hour focussed on solving anything from brand names, raising finance, finding customers, sourcing manufacturers and anything else relevant to the business idea.

The cost is £75 per session, but with all of the money going directly to the charity Kith and Kids.

If you are interested contact mauricecollins@msn.com or 07796991140

31 October 200717 November 2012

Business & IP Centre wins BIBA award

On Friday evening I attended the European Federation of Black Women Business Owners – Black Women in Business Awards 2007. It was a fun event, but made more enjoyable because the Business & IP Centre won the Corporate Award award.

The award was in recognition of our help and support for support both women and ethnic minority groups in the sphere of business such as our Inspiring Entrepreneurs event Winners 1: The Rise and Rise of Black British Entrepreneurs. Winners 1: The Rise and Rise of Black British Entrepreneurs (in association with The Black Enterprise Awards) held in May 2006.

23 October 2007

Redefining the Library for the 21st Century – The British Library Experience

In the unlikely event that you want to hear my recent talk, plus question and answer session to the previously mentioned 2007 ADLG seminar Library Information Service Survival Guide, it has been put on the ADLG website alongside my PowerPoint slides.

18 October 2007

A packet of crisps in a bar

Today was my second annual visit to the The British International Innovation & Technology Conference and Exhibition (of which more anon). As someone with a relatively limited imagination I have to confess I just can’t understand where inventors get their ideas from.

For instance I would never have thought up the idea for Crisp Bars. In fact everything about it just sounds wrong to me. But, as is so often the way with inventions (and this one is patented) the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Or in this case in the crunching. I approached the product with great cynicism but was proved wrong once again. The ‘bars’ not only taste like standard crisps but somehow manage to maintain the crispiness of a crisp.
As with almost all inventors I come across, the idea sprang from seeking a solution to a problem. In this case, how to continue to consume crisps when you have a babe in arms, and so only have one hand to spare for eating purposes.

Their website doesn’t seem to be working at the moment but you can watch a video where Richard Hammond of Top Gear fame tests them out on the 5 o’clock show.

Watch this space to where this product goes…

9 October 200730 October 2012

The importance of having 99 straights and 1 weirdo

I have just been watching one of the Inspiring Entrepreneurs videos we have recently posted onto YouTube.

The charismatic James Brown (founder of Loaded Magazine) talks about how he created a team of weirdos who would have been unemployable elsewhere to create a completely new kind of magazine. He describes a talk by business guru Tom Peters where he pronounced on the importance of employing weirdos to introduce change to a business. Brown reversed the process and had one straight guy for every 99 weirdos.

5 October 2007

Grey entrepreneurs are the ‘new black’

Entrepreneurship includes all classes, creeds and ages but one of the biggest growth areas are what have been dubbed ‘Grey entrepreneurs‘.

One might naively assume that these would consist of retired business professionals. But a group of Swiss grannies would prove you wrong according to the latest issue of Springwise.

Netgranny is a collective of 15 grannies who knit socks on demand and sell them online. Customers can choose their favourite granny from a gallery of ‘Grosis’, which includes information on why the women knit (‘not for money, just to pass the time’) or about their professional credentials (‘at age 6, I taught my 4 year-old sister to knit’).

Customers can pick the colour of their socks, or opt for a surprise design. After placing an order, their personal sock-knitting granny will take approximately two weeks to knit the pair of socks.

As you can see below, the grannies vary from the funky, to the cuddly, to the slightly scary.

Netgranny 1 Netgranny 2 Netgranny 3

1 October 2007

slideshare and my presentation

Last Thursday I gave a presentation during the Aerospace & Defence Librarians Group seminar organised by Ben Chan at the Cilip HQ

The title of the day was the Library Information Survival Guide and there were some interesting sessions.

I was starting to panic the day before as half of my PowerPoint slides seem to have got damaged between home and work. So as well as using multiple memory sticks I also posted a copy of the presentation onto slideshare. This free service is like YouTube for presentations and includes my least favourite word of the Web 2.0 era ‘favorited’. The currently most favorited presentation on the site has had over 800,000 views which is impressive by any standards.

However what I liked about the service is that you can not only download presentations from the site as well as view them in medium size on the web, you can also run them in full screen mode. So all you need is a decent internet connection to provide a backup to the presenters worst nightmare of their memory stick failing.

Here is the link to my presentation about the Business & IP Centre.