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?

Inspired by Nature

A lot of innovation can be inspired by nature. To use this tool to help you develop Fresh Eyes, take something from nature and see how its "design" could be used to create something new.

Here is an example. Take a vegetable like an onion and examine it with all of your senses. Sight, smell, touch, etc.

An onion is typically made up of layers. Each layer is built on top of the other to make a solid onion. Peel back each layer, and lying beneath is a perfect, albeit smaller, version of the whole.

How can we use this insight to create something with "fresh eyes"?

Have you ever chopped an onion on a cutting board? These devices (cutting boards) are made from plastic, glass or wood. The surface gets damaged over time from knife marks, and they need to be thoroughly cleaned to avoid cross contamination and potential food poisoning.

Using our onion for Fresh Eyes inspiration, what if you made a cutting board out of multiple layers of plastic sheets instead of just a sold? That way, after each use, you simply peel off the top layer revealing a pristine and clean cutting surface just below.

No knife marks, no cleaning, no contamination. What product ideas can nature inspire in you?

Share the Wealth

I am not active in the social networking world with the exception of LinkedIn which
I use occasionally. However, I believe it is important for creative professionals to embrace social networking to a point, provided it is used as a tool to help further your real objective, to get your ideas out into the world.

One thing that has bothered me a bit about sites like Facebook and MySpace is the valuations the owners are getting for these sites. All the content and contacts are not, in my opinion (legal claims notwithstanding), the property of anyone except for the members.

Fresh Eyes Idea: If I were to start a new social networking site, I would issue a share of stock to every member that joined. It would be a corporation owned and managed by the shareholders, who are also the members. They are both the creators and consumers of the value lying within the site and should be rewarded for all the value created.

Now, let it be known that I am a capitalist at heart, but I do believe in value exchange. The current social networking business model seems skewed and it is one of the reasons the members tend to revolt whenever a new scheme to monetize a site is proposed. By sharing the wealth, I think there would be more tolerance of income generating ideas for the sites.

What business models could you create that shared the wealth?

Put Wheels On It

Here is a Fresh Eyes Idea - What would happen if you put wheels on it?

Years ago I was in the boat building business and one of our vendors (William F. Miller & Associates) had a rolling trade show called the Gypsy Jamboree

The reason they started this was due to a big recession in the boat industry years back when no one would travel to the big trade show. If the folks won't come to your show, take your show to them. It was such a big success that they continued it during the boom years.

I liked this idea so much, I created this company, PolyClean.

Fresh Eyes Idea - If you were a developer of a brand new neighborhood, what if you built a big temporary factory in the middle of the development using a large tent. Inside the tent factory you built all the homes in a controlled environment.

No delays for rain, comfortable for the workers, no theft, organized like a factory, productive and efficient. Homes on an assembly line. When the house was done, it would be wheeled out (on a big trailer contraption) onto the lot it was designed for and installed in less than a day.

When the neighborhood was built out and completed, you take down the tent factory and convert the space to a beautiful park.

What could you put on wheels?

Point of View

One way to be more creative is to come at something from a different perspective. Imagine what you would see if you were experiencing something for the first time.

Fresh Eye Perspective - Imagine that you are in an emergency room after having been involved in an accident. You are laying flat on your back and have been immobilized to prevent further injury.

How would you feel? Frightened, hurt, anxious and apprehensive?

What smells would you be experiencing? Antiseptic? Pleasant?

What sounds would you be hearing? Beeps? Urgent voices? Unusual words?

What would you be staring at if your eyes were open? The ceiling, with an occasional glimpse of scary machinery and nurses and doctors.

How could this be a better experience for the client (ie patient)?

One Idea - In hospital emergency rooms, have a TV monitor mounted to the ceiling directly over the patient showing tranquil scenes so patients have something soothing to look at other than ceiling tiles. (A similar screen could be mounted in the ambulance to flash pictures that would calm the patient during the stressful and scary ride).

In addition to soothing scenes, subliminal messages could be flashed onto the screen to further reassure and calm the patient.

How to use this idea? When we do something over and over again, we tend to come at it from the same perspective. To come up with a fresh idea using fresh eyes, try role playing. That's right. Pretend you are the client and seeing everything for the first time.

One way to do this is to hold a video camera at your eye level and go through the steps you would go through as a client. Then, watch the video with others and see if you don't "see" something you missed while going through the experience yourself. You have just experienced "Fresh Eyes"...