Expert Financial & Business Insights for South Africa
Strategic analysis from Idea Accelerator and ready-to-publish content from Financial News Daily.
The other day I downloaded three of my top film soundtracks from the Internet:
Start Wars Main Theme
Chariots of Fire
Rocky Balboa Theme
These were some of the form soundtracks that I’d listened to on my yellow plastic Walkman when I used to go running in the mornings.
The songs would help mask the pain on those long uphill stretches. Inspiration for when the running became tough. Continue reading “Do these theme songs inspire you to create or make you want to vomit?”
I wonder how many times I see the same familiar email pop up in my inbox:
“What is the # 1 single biggest mistake entrepreneurs make with their new business idea?”
I must have deleted this email because I can’t find it.
One mistake.
Really? Continue reading “Is there really 1 big mistake entrepreneurs make with their new ideas?”
We usually don’t consider farming as a small business and so don’t take interest in how much innovation is taking place today on modern farms.
Perhaps it’s because farms are outside the cities. We may only consider farming when we see headlines in the newspapers on farm attacks, labour problems and crop surpluses or shortages.
But these days innovation is taking place in many areas on farms with farmers challenged by the need to reduce costs, increase yields and better protect themselves. Continue reading “Despite the red harvest innovation in farming grows”
The Chill Can is the world’s first self-chilling beverage can. Developed by The Joseph Company International, the Chill Can has been in research and development for more than 18 years.
By simply pressing a tab on the can, the temperature of the drink inside the can drops by 16°C in three minutes. This technology makes it possible to enjoy a tall drink anywhere and any time – while camping, boating, fishing on the beach or hiking.
The beverage can has a built-in Heat Exchange Unit (HEU) which uses a C-CO2 and adsorbent-desorption system to cool the beverage in the can. Continue reading “Why didn’t I think of that?”
It’s raining. At last. After four months of winter in Johannesburg the rain has finally come. The August rain is the first sign of the change of season from winter to spring.
Outside in the garden the birds are twittering in the trees, dropping onto the ground to forage for food. A frog began croaking in the early hours of the morning in the rain after months of silence.
With his almost journalistic eye, Geoffrey Chaucer in the 1300s begins “The Canterbury Tales” with the promise of spring and its invigorating energies in nature: Continue reading “How to create value from new ideas through a business venture”
At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Huawei showed off innovative new smartphone platforms that it has designed in-house.
Smart phone company Xiaomi, compared to Apple for its marketing strategy and loyal following, is expected to sell more than 15 million phones this year, reports McKinsey & Company.
Chinese scientists have built the world’s fastest supercomputer, capable of performing 33.86 quadrillion operations per second, surpassing the US Titan supercomputer. The Tianhe-2, or Milkyway 2, will benefit Chinese sciences and industries and provide sound infrastructure for the growing global demands of big data processing.
If you ask people on the street what they think of Chinese products, they might refer to what they know and experience. In South Africa that could be clothing and textiles where China has packed a powerful punch to the local overpriced products with their Byzantine cost structures.
Prices side, most people would raise the issue of quality of Chinese manufactured products. Quality has been poor in many instances but these days quality is good enough. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have the growth in Chinese supermalls in the country.
In the 1970s the Japanese manufactured low quality products that sometimes was fare for jokes. But that all changed in the 1980s when the Japanese moved up the quality ladder. Today many Japanese products are so well made that you are lucky if you are able to afford them.
I’m not saying the Chinese manufacturers will produce high-quality on a huge scale overnight. My point is that Chinese manufacturers are moving into product categories with higher quality requirements and are seeing opportunities for product innovation. This will lead to superior performance and quality in “Made in China” products.
How long will it take is anybody’s guess. But the Chinese model for innovation is showing more willingness to go directly from development to manufacturing and shipping products. This would be based on “already-known” or “highly anticipated” customer orders, says McKinsey.
The traditional innovation process is: create, test, refine, develop, produce, market and sell. Going straight to development has the advantage of speed but can result in quality problems, waste in the development process and misjudging demand.
Whatever process you follow, the long route or the short route, knowing the viability and value of your new product idea is critical. “The One-Page New Business Idea Accelerator Evaluation Tool”, free for a limited time only, will help you decide whether you have a dud or a winner in your hands.
Governments struggling to encourage jobs look to small- and medium-size businesses to be job creators in their countries. But little or absolutely nothing is done. Some may have small business agencies run by – yes, you guessed it – government officials who have never started a business in their lives. Sharp operators sell governments business incubator snake oil and fill their bank accounts with millions for “training” entrepreneurs.
None of this sham boosts small business numbers to a level where sizeable job creation takes place. What really is needed is an understanding of who is motivated enough to take their own business ideas and transform them into products and services. Continue reading “No short cuts to commercialising a new idea – but this tool shows you the way”
Technology developed in Africa shows how innovation can lead to new uses for products which can open new markets.
A small to medium-sized company developed an x-ray scanner for detecting diamonds at mines in South Africa. Because regular checks were made the scanner had to emit minimum levels of radiation.
The innovative entrepreneurs making the scanner were not satisfied with this one market for their product. They began looking for new uses for applications for their scanner technology.
Now Lodox Systems has supplied more than 40 of their x-ray scanners to hospitals in South Africa and around the world. Their Xmplar-dr scanner takes 13 seconds to produce a full body overview of injuries and foreign bodies (such as bullets in gunshot victims). Continue reading “An innovator shows how new uses for products can open new markets”
Thursday evening I attended an awards function interspersed with the sounds of a jazz trio, the double bassist plucking notes that still reverberated in my head this morning.
A jazz band these days adds a touch of sophistication to an event. It’s not in-your-face music but rather brought out at the right times when the audience needs to be surprised, delighted… energised.
I am not the world’s great expert on jazz but I grew up with a jazz musician. My father was a double bass player in the 60s, playing in Johannesburg and Cape Town, while making his living as a journalist. Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong and others filled our house in Kalk Bay with jazz sounds from a Yamaha record player. My father cut his own jazz record which I heard once and wished I still had a copy. Continue reading “Birdland, Take Five, Son of Mr Green Genes: Jazz lessons on improvisation for business”
I spent two years working in a peanut butter factory in Randfontein, South Africa, and loved it. So forgive me when I get excited about peanut butter and associated food products.
Last year Pick ‘n Pay introduced the Planters range of peanut butter in its stores but sadly with the economy as it is even its flagship on William Nicol Drive, Bryanston, no longer stocks Planters. Pity. But they’ve cut away a lot of frills since opening that store including sometimes no flowers, fancy hand wash or electronically dispensed paper towels in the men’s toilets.
The interesting and innovative part of the Planters product, a company always known for its quality nuts, was that it decided after something like 80 years to introduce a peanut butter. Not only that but the positioning is towards the more mature adult rather than children.
I came across an entrepreneur Justin Gold who came up with an idea from goo packs, gels another squeezable energy boosts sold in stores. Continue reading “An idea that led an entrepreneur to a new food product”
