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By benjaminchristopher, November 30, 2009 11:23 am

A couple weeks ago, I covered the story of Mark Konjevod and his WIN Sports detergent.

In a nutshell, Konjevod, a marathon runner, realized that regular detergents did little to curb the smell from dirty high-performance sporting clothes. So he started WIN Products.

Well, a recent article on WIN at Crain’s New York Business brought to light a few new details that I thought I’d share with you.

First off, something I never mentioned in my blog post: In 2006, WIN became the official detergent of the U.S. Olympic Team.

“Having those ’six rings’ gives a product a lot of credibility,” Mr. Konjevod reveals in the article.

Also of note: WIN will become the official detergent of FIFA for the 2010 World Cup. That’s a big deal, and a big break for Konjevod.

Read the full article for more.

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By benjaminchristopher, November 24, 2009 3:34 pm

A few more inventions from Time’s “50 Best Inventions of 2009.”

The last invention I covered yesterday was a microchip that would allow the blind to regain partial sight. Here’s a similar one:

The $20 Knee Losing a knee joint is no fun, I’m sure. Neither is the $10,000+ price-tag of a titanium knee replacement. And when it comes to replacing parts of your body, you don’t exactly want to go with the cheap stuff. But a lot of people don’t have a choice. Well, now “a team of Stanford engineering students has designed a knee that’s not only dirt cheap — just $20 — but also mimics the natural joint’s movements.”

This self-lubricating, fully functioning knee replacement is being tested in India right now. Over 300 people are utilizing “the twenty dollar knee,” and assuming all goes well, that number should be increasing shortly. Isn’t it nice when technology is cheap and useful?

The Human Powered Vending Machine Just how badly do you want those potato chips? Are you willing to work for them? Inventor Pep Torres is hoping that you are. His new “human powered vending machine” requires patrons to ride a certain distance on a bike attached to the vending machine before they can get their greasy reward. Whether or not this radical idea will catch on remains to be seen, but Torres is hoping to see it “in subway stations and schools… That way, people can eat their potato chips and still get in shape.”

We’ll see about that…

The Foldable Speaker As a bit of an audiophile, I’m already suspicious when a pair of speakers cost under 20 dollars. When the speakers are made out of cardboard and are collapsible, I’m even more dubious. And yet… I just might buy a pair.  Invented by the Chicago-based OrigAudio, these self-powered, 16 dollar speakers are basically encased in three-inch boxes made from recycled paper. Let’s say you’re moving, and you just don’t have room for a three-inch cube. Simply collapse the speakers into a flat sheet and slide them in your briefcase. Weird, intriguing, questionable… All the things a novelty invention should be. If anyone’s tried these, let me know how they sound. You can get your own pair at origaudio.com.

The 3-D Camera With 3-D films making a comeback, and 3-D televisions set to become the consumer must-have of 2010, it’s no surprise that Fujifilm has made a 3-D camera. Much like the 3-D technology James Cameron helped develop for his upcoming blockbuster “Avatar,” this 3-dimensional still-camera uses two lenses, then combines the images to create the illusion of depth. The best part? You can view the images on the camera’s LCD screen without wearing any 3-D glasses.

And of course, there’s more. Edible race cars, levitating mouses, even a new type of cloud:

(No, a new cloud is not technically an invention. But gee whiz, doesn’t that look awesome?)

Anyway, they’re all there, along with many more inventions, useful and useless alike, at Time.com.

Thanks for reading, and if I don’t talk to you before Thursday, have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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By benjaminchristopher, November 23, 2009 9:43 am

Alright all you invention junkies. Time Magazine recently released their list of the 50 Best Inventions of 2009.

A lot of these are just radically new technologies that have yet to be practically applied or monetized.

But I’ve provided here a few of my favorites from the list.

Microsoft’s Project Natal —  Forget the Wii-mote. This multi-camera, voice-sensitive system is designed to do away with the one element of video games that has been there since the beginning: the controller.  With Microsoft’s new technology, all you need is your body and your voice. The system interprets your movements and noises, and your video-game avatar moves, grunts, in kind.

I recently had a long conversation with a friend about “Virtual Reality.”  If the conversation had been a song, it would have been called “What happened to Virtual Reality?”  For any of you who remember the 90’s– Virtual Reality was supposed to be a total sensory immersion, a fabricated computer world so convincing that it would nearly fool your brain into believing it was real. For most of the decade, and part of this last decade, Virtual Reality was always “just around the corner.”  And of course, it never came. The technology was never really there.

So Microsoft’s Project Natal, while it very well might turn out to be clunky, awkward proprietary technology, still just might be a step in the right direction. It’s not sensory immersion. But there’s definitely something immersive about using your body–and your body alone– to control a game.

“USING EEG TO TWEET” — “Mr. Watson, come here. I need you.”  That was the first thing Alexander Graham Bell ever shouted into a telephone. Maybe “Using EEG to Tweet” will become equally infamous. EEG, by the way, refers to Electroencephalography, which according to Wikipedia is “is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp produced by the firing of neurons within the brain.”

If that doesn’t mean anything to you, this might: that tweet wasn’t sent by using a keyboard. It was sent by a man who was thinking about the individual letters of the tweet while hooked up to a special machine which interpreted his changes in brain activity and punched out the characters.

Cool stuff. Though I wouldn’t get too excited- this sort of technology is still so primitive, it could be decades before a practical application became available to consumers. For heaven’s sake, Voice Activation hasn’t even caught on with the main stream yet.  (If I seem overly cynical about all of this, I might point you to this book, entitled “Where’s My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived.” It’s not that I’m not constantly amazed by technology. Every day I’m impressed. But I’m still waiting for my jet-pack, and solid-state hard drives just don’t provide the same thrill.)

The Electric Eye Here’s one that even I can’t be cynical about.  Brought to you by the blindingly bright folks at MIT, this is a microchip that would be implanted on a patient’s eyeball. It is supposed to help the blind regain partial sight.  Human trials, they hope, are only a few years away.

Alright- I’ll be going over a few more of the inventions tomorrow. But if you just can’t wait, check out the TIME slideshow for yourself.  Oh yeah- and disagree with me? Find an invention you like better than the ones I’ve mentioned so far?  Leave a comment! There’s nothing I like better than an open discussion.

Check out my NEXT POST on Time’s Best Inventions.

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By benjaminchristopher, November 19, 2009 10:26 am

I was trying to decide which invention to cover in today’s blog post.  Honestly, I was blanking.

So I started poking around the Why Didn’t I Think of That? site, and I ended up in the Inspiration Hall of Fame. If you didn’t know already, Bob and Greg are big history fans. So, for the Inspiration Hall of Fame, they’ve assembled some great historical anecdotes about the creation of household inventions, appliances, and other things that have become so common place today that we take them for granted.

Like this story:

How did an accident-prone wife inspire one of the most popular first aid products?

Her name was Josephine Dickson, the wife of Earle Dickson, a Johnson & Johnson employee. She was repeatedly cutting and burning herself while cooking. Her husband Earle brought home gauze and tape, which his company manufactured in sterilized form. But Earle found that Josephine’s dressings fell off regularly after they were applied. To help her treat her own wounds unassisted — while he was at work — Earle unrolled some surgical tape added squares of gauze to the tape at intervals, and then covered it with a thin fabric. Then rolled the tape and gauze back up. That way, Josephine could unwind the bandage and scissor off what she needed. When Dickson mentioned his creation to co-workers at Johnson & Johnson, they liked the idea and the BAND-AID® was born. It led to a successful career for Earle, who eventually became a vice president at Johnson & Johnson. Band-Aids were introduced in 1921, were pre-cut in 1924, sterilized by 1930, and manufactured in sheer vinyl by 1958.

If you like that story, poke around the Inspiration Hall of Fame.  There’s plenty more like it.

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By benjaminchristopher, November 17, 2009 9:53 am

I was at the gym last night, and something reminded me of a brief story I read in Fortune Small Business a while back.

Since it fits in with the whole “inventor” theme we’re in the midst of, I thought I’d share it with you.

It goes something like this: Mark Konjevod was a business developer in Atlanta. He was also a marathon runner.

Mark had a problem. He used moisture-wicking running clothes — clothes designed to channel perspiration away from the skin, reducing irritation — but when it came to odor, the clothes seemed insusceptible to the charms of washing machines and even the most liberal doses of detergent.

Now that would be troublesome to anybody, especially if you’re a marathon runner. You could always just keep buying new clothes and then throw them away when they started smelling.

Or, you could start a company.

The smell is what started it, but what convinced Mark to create WIN Products was realizing that he wasn’t alone. When discussing the odor issue with his peers, it became clear that it was common. In fact, nearly everyone he spoke to shared the problem.

So, Mark “used his connections to find an experienced chemist who mixed up a special concoction to fight lingering bacteria that get caught inside the high-tech fibers used in performance sporting apparel,” goes the story.  ”In 2005, Konjevod sent the detergent to friends at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs. The athletes loved it.”

Olympic athletes loving your high performance sport detergent is a good sign.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Konjevod met a man named Jeff Crow at an International House of Pancakes that same year. Konjevod was looking for someone to run his company, and Crow seemed to fit the bill. In fact, Crow’s resume was so good, Konjevod said he “thought it was a joke.”

Crow had worked on the Wisk laundry detergent and Lever 2000 brands while working as a brand manager at Unilever.  From there, he’d gone on to become Senior Brand Manager at Coca-Cola, managing some of their biggest brands, including Coca-Cola Classic. And now, Mark Konjevod wanted him to run his new company.

Crow agreed. Today, he’s still President, GM, and Chief Operating Officer at WIN Products.

How is the high-performance sports laundry detergent business treating them? Last year they made 5 million dollars in sales.

What can we learn from Mark? Which axiom can we apply? Well there are several that relate. But personally, I think the moral of the story is: it’s great to have a new product idea, but the excitement of your great idea shouldn’t be what drives you to go ahead and start a business. What should really get any entrepreneur fired up is knowing they have a market for their product. Konjevod confirmed this when speaking with fellow marathon runners about the odor problem. And then, he tested his product with some of the best athletes in the world.

I mentioned in my first post on inventions the dangers of starting a company without finding out what your potential customers want. This lesson is no different. Make sure you have something people would like to have, and then make sure it’s a good product.

Tune in Thursday for the continuing stories of entrepreneurs whose original product ideas put them on the path to success.

Resources

CNN Money

Atlantic Journal Constitution (Article Preview)

WIN Products Website

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By benjaminchristopher, November 13, 2009 1:16 pm

They say necessity is the mother of invention. But sometimes… it’s really not.

That’s why I love this story. Ehud Nagler was an Israeli engineer, and he could invent some pretty impressive stuff, no question. But finding a purpose or application for what he was inventing? Not necessarily his strong suit.

See, in 2001, Nagler invented a water-powered engine, rather unlike anything on the market. The thing was, he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with it.

So he brought the idea to Zvika Yemini, a local business titan who’d had success with everything from shower heads to plastic tool boxes that he’d designed for Home Depot. Yemini looked at nagler’s water-powered engine, and he had an idea.

Attach the engine to a garden hose reel, creating a self-retracting hose, powered by the very water already coursing through it.

A pretty smart idea. Of course, Israel isn’t exactly known for its Lawn Care Enthusiasts. So Yemini and Nagler took their product to the US and Europe.

Turns out that their product, Reel Smart, was just the right balance of novelty and function. Consumers ate it up, and Yemini and Nagler, along with their newly formed Hydro-Industries, were reeling in the dough. Sales quickly jumped from two million to ten million… and within six years, to 23 million.

Today, there are more than a dozen models of the Reel-Smart “no-crank” contraption. And, despite my lack of a garden or a hose, I’m almost tempted to get one. You can pick up some of the simpler models for around 50 bucks. Not a bad deal.

But what I really appreciate about all of this is the partnership involved. Neither Ehud Nagler nor Zvika Yemini could have made this product–or made a fortune from it–on their own. It was their unique talents and skills combined that created the possibility for success. Furthermore, Nagler had the wisdom to know both his strengths and weaknesses. You’d have to ask him yourself, but I’d bet that taking his idea to Mr. Yemini was one of the smartest things he’s ever done.

On that note- if anybody out there has recently invented a seemingly useless but revolutionary technology which they don’t know how to apply, I know a guy…

RESOURCES

http://www.no-crank.com/

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By benjaminchristopher, November 11, 2009 9:38 am

It seems to me like Steve Luhr has stumbled upon a fool-proof strategy:

Take a timeless children’s activity, update it, make it significantly more exciting/dangerous, and market it as a must-have for any extreme sports enthusiast.

It started when Steve left his job. Steve had been working for BioTek, a medical equipment sales firm, for 18 years. When the company was bought up in 2002, Steve was faced with a dilemma. If he wanted to continue working for the company, he would have to move from Vermont, where he’d lived for over thirty years, to Nevada. Quite a change. And one Luhr wasn’t willing to make. So he decided to formulate a game plan.

He knew he wanted to run his own company and be his own boss. He just wasn’t sure what sort of company he wanted to run.

He threw around all sorts of ideas- from opening a diving-equipment store to starting an airport.

Of all the ideas he played with, one stuck out to him as a winner: Sleds for adults.

So started Hammerhead Sleds.

Anyone who grew up anywhere near snow has probably gone sledding at least once. It’s pretty intuitive. You hop on a toboggan at the top of a snow-covered hill, and then you ride it down to the bottom of the hill. Pretty simple, and–if done right–pretty fun.

What Steve decided to do was make a high-end, designer sled. The Hammerhead Pro

“Rip turns with blazing speed and total control, bust freestyle moves that’ll make jaws drop, dust the competition, or tire out your dog,” boasts the company’s website. It is, by all counts, a faster, riskier, and more expensive version of the 15 dollar K-Mart sled you might be more familiar with.

After finally making a successful prototype (it took about a year and a half before Luhr turned his idea into a tangible product) he still needed one thing: funding.

What started as a downhill joyride quickly became an uphill battle. Investors are often wary of an unproven product idea, and the Hammerhead’s $200+ price tag didn’t help lower any of the raised eyebrows he was getting.

But Steve did eventually manage to get enough funding to produce and sell the sleds, at least on a local scale.

And it seems to have been a pretty decent success so far. In 2008, Hammerhead made about a quarter of a million dollars, more than half of what Luhr estimated he’d need for a full-scale national roll-out of his product.

While Hammerheads haven’t exactly become a staple of the American household, they’re off to a solid start. To date, he’s shipped about 4,000 units, with designs for new sleds in the works. The Hammerhead Pro is currently available for purchase from R.E.I., L.L. Bean, the Discovery Store… Even Amazon.com.

And what some might see as an impediment–his company’s generally small size–Luhr sees as an asset.

“Bigger companies…can’t do this,” Luhr says. “They can’t come down to our level and create something this exciting and new – they’re just too burdened. We just keep moving.”

And with that, he hopped on a Hammerhead sled and jettisoned down a large, snow-covered slope.

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By benjaminchristopher, November 9, 2009 8:00 am

If you haven’t looked around our site at all, I urge you to. Why Didn’t I Think of That? is a collection of stories about businesses that inspire a sense of, “What a great idea! I wish it was mine!”  These ideas can be anything from a unique service, to a brilliant product idea. Some of our best stories, I think, are those unique products and inventions that people have come up with out of the blue. And almost as interesting are the reasons they came up with these products. Some of them were created from a place of frustration, some from a place of inspiration, and some were created because of the inventor’s insatiable curiosity and a penchant for tinkering.

This week, and part of next, we’re going to be looking at many such inventions, as well as the inspiration that led to them.  Extreme Snow Sleds for Adults.  A Self-Retracting Garden Hose.  These aren’t all products that people couldn’t live without.  But you don’t need to be in the business of necessity to make a profit.

So check back soon, as I’ll be presenting you with several such stories, stories which I hope will engage and interest you, and maybe… just maybe… get your inner-inventor all worked up. And, if you really want to “get in the mood,” then check out this extended WDITOT story about “Utilikilts.” What’s a Utilikilt, you ask? Simple- it’s like a kilt and a tool belt combined. Bizarre? Sure. Too bizarre to succeed with your average handyman? You’d be surprised…

Oh- I almost forgot to ask. Have you ever invented a product? Or tried to? Shoot me an email at bc@thinkofthat.net and tell me your story.

And if you do have an idea/invention, I encourage you to get your idea out there. Don’t keep your idea all to yourself, terrified that someone will steal it. Enter some competitions or “idea hunts.” If you are interested, there are plenty of competitions and groups out there for fellow inventors. Get active, and make sure you have something that people will actually want, or could use.  In show business, they tell you not to guard your story ideas jealously, but instead share them with everyone you know. Pitch it to strangers at coffee shops, the comatose guy at the bus stop. Get feedback. I think that’s probably good advice for inventors as well. Which isn’t to say you should put the blueprints for your patent-pending product all over the internet, naturally. But still, you might want to look at this article, “Got Customers? How We Almost Sunk Our Startup Before it Started.” In it, Ryan Waggoner, co-founder of MightyBrand, describes what he considers one of the most important things to creating a business, something he almost completely neglected to do:

Talk to potential customers before you build a product.

Something to think about, if nothing else.

Well, that’s all for now.  Happy Monday everybody. See you tomorrow.

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By benjaminchristopher, November 5, 2009 8:45 am

In my post earlier this week, I described small businesses as a vital part of our economy, and integral to innovation. I also presented some startling facts demonstrating small businesses’ role in innovation.

Well, I’ve got one or two more startling facts, if you’re interested.

This comes from an August entry on the New York Times’ Economix blog, entitled, “America’s (Very Small) Small-Business Sector,” written by Catherine Rampell:

The Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal research organization in Washington, recently published a study looking at the rates of small business employment around the world.

The finding: “By every measure of small-business employment, the United States has among the world’s smallest small-business sectors.”

Rampell explores a number of potential reasons for this, everything from Health Care to Income Taxes.

Could be, could be.  It could also be, as I’ve suggested before, that people are reluctant to start businesses simply because they’re afraid to fail.

Then again, maybe people who are afraid to fail shouldn’t be going into the self-employment game in the first place. From the research I’ve done for Why Didn’t I Think of That?, I’ve found that true entrepreneurs, while they can vary in almost every other way, have at least one thing in common: Their willingness to endure failure, and to “keep on keeping on” until they find success.

And failure does come. Most of you are probably aware of the astonishing failure rate for startups.

I’ll admit, I’m curious– Any of you who have ever owned a small business and had it fail, how do you feel when you see the government stepping in to prop up some of these incredibly bloated, “too-big-to-fail” corporations?

Here are a few more (not necessarily rhetorical) questions:

If small businesses account for more than 90 percent of innovation in so many industries, and if America has such a pathetic looking small-business sector, at least compared to the rest of the world, what does that mean for us as a country? Would growth in the small business sector equate to an increase in innovation? Would it have any effect on the failure rate of start-ups?

Also- Is the government doing enough to help small businesses? Or are they just doing too much to help big businesses? Both? Come on guys, I want to hear what you think. Post a comment below letting me know what you think. And feel free to email me anytime at bc@thinkofthat.net.

I’ll leave you with this thought, from Mike Clough’s blog entry, “America Runs on Small Businesses.”

I believe it is small business and innovation that will breath new life into our economy; not businesses that are too big to fail. The big question is what kind of impact it would have on the American economy if the billions of dollars given to the automobile manufacturers that are too big to fail were made available to our small businesses. Sure there might be a lot more business that start and fail. But, there would also be a lot more innovation.

Until next time…

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By benjaminchristopher, November 3, 2009 10:58 am

A lot of the businesses we cover here at Why Didn’t I Think of That? have become huge successes, with millions and millions of dollars in profit, hundreds upon hundreds of employees, and thousands of customers the world over. And yet- almost none of these businesses started this way.

And many of them will never end up that way. Giant corporations have been taking up a lot of news lately. It’s easy to forget how dependent the economy actually is on small businesses.

So just how big is small business?

This last July, Mike Clough wrote a post on his America’s Best Business Practices blog entitled, “America Runs on Small Businesses.” In the post, Clough presents some startling facts about American small businesses.

According to a study by the U.S. Small Business Administration, there are 26.9 million businesses in the USA. Of those, 99.9% have fewer than 500 employees and are considered small businesses.

And, according to the US Census Bureau:

98% of companies patenting telecommunications technology employ fewer than 500 people
97% of companies patenting software employ less than 500 people
92% of companies patenting aerospace products employ less than 500 people
90% of companies patenting pharmaceuticals employ less than 500 people
87% of companies patenting semiconductor technology employ less than 500 people

“It appears self-evident,” writes Clough, “that small business carries most of the weight when it comes to American innovation and job creation.”

Clough’s fantastic article has gotten me thinking. In the next few days, I’ll be addressing several important issues concerning small businesses. For instance: What does it mean to have a successful small business? Why do so many small businesses fail? And, with so many small businesses propping up industry and driving innovation, why is it that America has one of the world’s smallest small-business sectors?

Stay tuned, and thanks for reading.

-BC