Keys to Success

1- Do what you say you are going to do
2- Finish what you start
3- Show up on time
4- Say please and thank you (alot)

Up and Down the Value Chain

For a Fresh Eyes approach to your work, consider expanding your view (by going higher) so that your see most if not all of the value chain. The complete picture if you will.

You may or may not serve the final user of the value chain directly. For example, many employees and vendors have a lot of pieces and parts and input into a car, but only the dealer hands the keys to the ultimate end user. There are a lot of links in this value chain.

In your work, you are a link in a value chain. And possibly in many many value chains. Imagine the value chain in its entirety and each of the steps of this chain. Each thing that must happen for a customers problem to be solved. Look to see if there aren't more opportunities to add more value by moving up or down (or both) the value chain or by expanding your offering with this new perspective. To be a "bigger link" in the chain instead of the weaker link.

Combining Touch Points to achieve something new.

Here is a Fresh Eyes concept to create something remarkable. Look for an existing touch point and add something to it to accomplish a different goal.

What is a touch point? It is a place in a chain of steps where something touches something else as part of the process to accomplish a goal.

For example, in moving freight around the world, most items that we consume get moved to or from another country. It is a pretty sure bet that the commodity probably spent some time in a sea container. These are the 20 foot and 40 foot boxes that revolutionized sea freight and created the world of intermodalism.

Every container that goes on a ship at a foreign port and arrives in a US port is handled by a container crane. This is a large gantry style crane that lifts the container on and off the ship and places it on a truck or train.

The actual "touch point" is called a spreader. This is the device that latches on to the container and holds it in place until the container crane operator places it where he want's it. The spreader works efficiently because all containers are made to the same standard and they all have the same latch points at the upper and lower corners.

The primary purpose of the spreader and the container crane is to get a container on and off a ship as quickly as possible.

But how can we use a Fresh Eyes approach to use this touch point to accomplish another objective?

A big issue in the USA since 9/11 is port security. To accomplish this, the Department of Homeland Security and US Customs hav spent millions on X ray scanners and other sensors that scan a few containers. These, however, are extra steps in the process of getting a container from point a to point b. The result is they slow down the system. And because of this, this leads to just a few "high risk" containers out of a hundred being scanned.

But what if we used our existing touch point to accomplish our ultimate goal of scanning all the containers for radioactive "dirty bombs" or other nasty substances.

The one touch point in close contact with every container is the container crane spreader. So, for a Fresh Eyes idea, let's attach a scanner to every container spreader and without extra effort, wasted time,, we can scan 100% of all the containers coming into our ports. Just by using an existing touch point.

Using an existing touch point in a process you are involved in, what other goals could you accomplish by using this Fresh Eyes perspective?

The Best is Yet to Come!

As product developers and inventors, we sometimes get discouraged because there is so much stuff out there it is getting increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd. But the best of anything has yet to be created.

What? Regardless of the product or idea, the best version of it has yet to be created. The best house hasn't been designed, the best car hasn't been built, the best cell phone is still waiting to be designed. When you look at the world through this lens, you see that the opportunities for creating something remarkable is limitless.

Using this Fresh Eyes perspective, what ordinary product can you best and make remarkable?

Will it Vend?

There is a viral series on You Tube called will it it blend. It is basically a blender manufacturers fun attempt to show how powerful their blenders are by throwing a bunch of weird stuff into the blender to see what happens.

In this Fresh Eyes blog, we are going to see if something will Vend....as in, what can we sell or provide through a vending machine that is not normally sold that way.

A quick glance around your world will show that more and more "stuff" if being delivered in an automated way. And the beauty of the vending concept is that items can be sold at non-traditional outlets.

An example of this is DVD movie vending at the grocery store. In our area, there are now large boxes that vend bulk ice. And of course, there are condom vending machines in the bathrooms of many gas stations.

So what unusual items can we think of to vend?

One item I would love to see vended are all the nuts and bolts at a typical home improvement store like Home Depot or Lowes. If you ever go into one of these places looking for a nut or bolt of a certain size, you know the the current model is clumsy at best. The nuts and bolts are in bins and you have to fend for yourself in finding the right nut or bolt, of the right grade, and made from the right material.

A computer kiosk attached to an automated dispenser would be cool here. Basically you enter what you are looking for on the computer screen, enter how many you want, and the dispenser would dump them in a little bag and attach a barcode you can give to the nice lady at the register to scan.

This would solve so many problems for the stores- faster checkout, better inventory control, happier customers.

Using this Fresh Eyes approach, what could you vend?

A Different Way to Look At Poo

Sometimes looking at national products from a local perspective can be a Fresh Eyes approach to innovation in an industry where it seems every niche is taken.

Take for example, shampoo. This is a crowded and segregated market. There is shampoo for men, women, babies, dogs, cats and horses (Mane and Tails anyone). There is PH balanced shampoo, shampoo with botanical s, shampoo with conditioner, shampoo that has never been tested on animals, etc.

So what could we possibly do to shampoo to make it stand out from a very crowded market?

If you travel a bunch, it becomes pretty apparent that water in different parts of the country is, well, different. For example, water in Chicago seems to clean my hair better than water in Houston. (Is Chicago water "dryer"?)

So our Fresh Eyes idea for today is to localize a national product. Instead of selling shampoo as a one type fits all, let's make shampoo that has been formulated to work well with the water in different cities. Shampoo for Chicago, Shampoo for Charlotte, Shampoo for Los Angelos, etc. That way, your customers can be assured they are getting the best cleaning possible regardless of where they live!

Using this Fresh Eyes tool, what products, currently sold nationally to the mass market, could you "localize"?

Military Action

Here is a way to get a Fresh Eyes approach to innovation. Let the military be your inspiration.

The military has one of the biggest research and development budgets of any institution on earth. As a result, they and their contractors come up with some pretty cool stuff.

Some of these ideas, even older ones, can be transferred to civilian life. Here is one idea.

Landing craft are ships that can be beached to offload troops, tanks and cargo. These craft were very important during D day.


So how could you adapt this idea to the civilian world? How about creating a "personal landing" craft. This smaller version of the military models could be used to move researchers and their equipment to remote islands. Or to let sportsmen take their 4 wheelers to places previously unavailable.

Using this Fresh Eye's approach, what other types of military hardware could you adapt to civilian use?