Weekend Slices: How to build a community from scratch<>12 innovations that changed road cycling<>Guinness taps into 12,000 more outlets with an innovation<>Kolkata scientist invents pocket ventilator
I have always admired brands that manage to build communities. This piece from the Entrepreneur is a very practical guide to approaching this seemingly impossible tasks for many brands. This is what got me hooked into reading more;
First off, let’s make one thing clear: I’m not simply talking about building a Facebook page/group or a Slack channel where you post regularly, and...that’s it because very few people actually engage with your posts. You can do all that on your own with ads.
I’m talking about an actual community, where people know each other, interact with each other (not just with your brand), and where valuable ideas are born. The following is a roadmap after which we can say that the community has reached maturity and the opportunities it offers are endless.
Innovations usually come out of personal experiences, observations, or accidents. The fact that a top racer couldn’t open the nuts of his wheel with his numb fingers led to one of the biggest innovations.
From one slice of misfortune, an empire was built. When Italian racing cyclist Tullio Campagnolo found himself struggling in a race in the cold back in 1927 after being unable to remove his rear wheel due to numb hands, he vowed to come up with a better system than wingnuts for holding the wheel in place.
Three years later he had designed the quick-release skewer. The original design was not much different to the ones we use today: a steel skewer through a hollow axle with a nut at one end and a cam lever at the other.
Just like today, flipping the lever allowed the wheel to be removed and replaced in a fraction of the time it had previously taken. For the pros, this meant speedy mid-race changes. For the rest of us, quicker and easier roadside repairs, even if thru-axles are now becoming commonplace on road bikes with disc brakes.
Read about 11 more such innovations in this fascinating article.
Guinness is looking to tap into new markets with the launch of a world-first “micro draught” dispenser.
The Diageo-owned stout brand said the pioneering dispense technology was the biggest innovation for the firm since the development of the can widget in 1988.
It is seen as a solution to pour Guinness in places such as restaurants, where previously it would be impossible to serve on tap due to the lack of keg system, beer lines and cooling system complexities.
Read more here from The Scotsman
In another story where a personal experience drove innovation, a Kolkata scientist invents a pocket ventilator.
Mukherjee says the idea for such a device came to his mind when his own Oxygen saturation level went down drastically while suffering from Covid-19 recently. “There was a point when my SpO2 level went down to 88. At that time my family wanted me to get admitted to a hospital. Though I came out of the crisis, I was struck by the idea of a portable device to help patients breathe easy,” he says.
Soon after recovering, he began working on the plan, arranged necessary components, and giving shape to his latest innovation, the pocket ventilator. The final prototype, he says was ready in just 20 days.
Read the full India Today article here.
And finally, read about how Ghana is emerging as a hot spot for blockchain innovation.
Yellow Card’s founder Chris Maurice added to this, saying, “We are excited to see the massive growth in Bitcoin and blockchain adoption within Ghana, and we are looking forward to a bright future within the tech-hungry nation.” The recent encouragement from the state, the growth in P2P Bitcoin transactions, and the overwhelming support from companies like Yellow Card make it clear that Ghana will continue to be a hotspot for blockchain development. Entrepreneurs, investors, and personal users of Bitcoin and other alternative currencies all have a perfect opportunity to get in early on a technological turn that could be as big or bigger than the creation of the internet. Only time will tell how soon the people of Ghana will adopt this technology.
That’s it for this weekend. Hope you have a good one.
Cheers!
Suprio