Article 51. Examples of Innovation
Innovation comes from people who think outside the box this can best be explained by example. But first you must perceive that there is a problem. A lady missionary when first arriving in a Southeast Asian country found that the native women swept out their houses with a broom with a short handle. This was back breaking work and they had been doing it this way for hundreds of years. The missionary began sweeping out her house with the long handled broom and in a few months the entire village was using the new long handled broom. It is important to note that western men had been coming to this area for hundreds of years yet none of them thought to introduce the long handled broom. People who own the problem and are innovative are more likely to solve the problem.
Example one. The Department of Transportation finds it’s construction inspectors arrive at a highway construction site that has been shut down due to rain 10% of the time. If there were some way of knowing in advance that it had rained enough to shut down the site the inspectors could be diverted to an alternate site where it didn’t rain. The solution is installing a portable weather station on the site that puts weather conditions on the Internet. The Davis company has one that reports rainfall and also collects and reports soil moisture content the critical determiner if work can proceed. Inspectors merely query the weather station’s site before departing for work.
Example two. A government office building with a computer workstation on each desk indicates that the office computer center is entangled in hundreds of wires. Each computer workstation connects through different hubs terminating at the computer center. The answer is a fiberglass broadband network. Broadband automatically assigns each computer a transmission signal and a single broadband wire can carry hundreds of computers. So the office is wired with broadband just like it is wired with electricity. When you hookup a computer you simply plug it into the electric and the broadband connections.
Example three. A major Telecommunications Company now advertises that one of the automotive giants no longer uses desk phones all conversations between employees is by cell phone. No one is ever out of the office.
Example four. In the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster the high schools along the gulf coast should be rebuilt as super hurricane shelters. By this I mean that classrooms should all be above the highest storm surge with gymnasium and other play areas on the ground floor. But here is where the innovation is besides all the generators and roll down window protection the roof should be built like a giant bath tub able to collect hundreds of gallons of rain water enough to operate the toilets and filtered water showers for a month.
Example five. Car chases by police kill hundreds of innocent people every year. It takes time to scramble a helicopter leaving the cops in hot pursuit of the culprit. The solution is in using pilot-less drone airplanes that can circle for hours over a large city and can be called upon to spot the escaping criminal both day and night and follow the car to where it stops. If you think it costs too much think again the Israeli Air force has for years used off the shelf radio controlled planes with infrared cameras.
Example six. I like this one. Put employment offices at the Mexican border crossings. Aliens should not be in this country without a work permit or some other reason. Americans could be given preference over foreigners if they are willing to do the work.
Example seven. When Highway Patrol Troopers pull a car over they are more frequently being killed by speeding motorists. The French have put up cameras in the most dangerous areas to remotely video tape the offending driver’s plate numbers resulting in dramatic slow downs of traffic.
The challenge is to encourage employees to throw open all the possibilities and question everything it will surprise you what they can come up with.
