Innovation in Sports

Professional athletics is a business. It took me a long time to understand this concept, but I now understand that the main driving factor behind the NFL, NBA, and MLB is the money involved. Because professional athletics are a form of business there is an increased drive for coaches to innovate their sport. In fact, one of the greatest innovations in football history was the adoption of the forward pass. Until the late 1900's, forward passes where banned from football. Before the period of forward passes, football was very similar to rugby and was very dangerous. Eighteen people were killed in the 1905 season! The forward pass was adopted to make football safer, but it also proved to make offenses more effective. As shown in the case of the forward pass, innovations can be very simple, but can have a multitude of outcomes.

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To learn more about football innovations go to this website

The Flash Drive Just Got a Whole Lot Bigger

Over sixteen years ago, the first flash drive (USB) was sold in the United States. This original flash drive could store a meager eight megabytes and cost about thirty dollars. Now, eight gigabyte hard drives are readily available and cost only ten dollars. The flash drive market has just experienced an earth-shaking innovation: flash drives that can hold up to 2 Terabytes of data! These new flash drives will allow high data files, such as movies, to be stored and transported in your pocket. This is a wonderful example of improvement innovation: determine what is common in your market and make it better. 

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To learn more got to this website.

Say Goodbye to Cracked Windshields! (Hopefully)

Not all innovations are entirely new products or ideas; in fact, many innovators are inspired by current products and processes used in an industry other than their own. That is exactly what happened when Corning decided to convert Gorilla Glass, a glass commonly used in phone screens, into auto glass. Corning announced their new auto Gorilla Glass at the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas this weekend by replacing many common auto glass features and adding new glass features to an electric car. The display car included a Gorilla Glass windshield, rear window, and sun roof. Corning also included many new Gorilla Glass features in the interior of the car. The dashboard was almost entirely made of Gorilla Glass, the center console was a sleek, angled, Gorilla Glass touchscreen, and the steering wheel had a Gorilla Glass control board.
Corning claims that Gorilla Glass is thinner, lighter, and more crack resistant than tradition glass. This means that Gorilla Glass could significantly diminish the chance of rock chips or even worse, windshield shatters. The cost of producing automobiles with Gorilla Glass is still unknown, so don't count on it flooding the automobile market. Until the cost is known, we call all live with the hope of a world with very few cracked windshields.

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To learn more about automobile Gorilla Glass go to this website.

Consumer Electronics Show Innovations

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada is a rich field of innovative ideas and an excellent place to share them. My father has the opportunity to attend the show and has informed me about many new products being introduced and promoted at the show. One product of particular interest is the Cinema2Go MoGo. At first glance, the MoGo looks like the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset, but the MoGo is a headset that allows your phone screen to become your own portable movie theater. You slide your phone into a little phone holder at the front of the MoGo, strap the headset on and off you go on a movie adventure. The details behind the MoGo are quite difficult to explain, so if you would like to find out more go to this website.

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An Innovative Form of Television: AirTV

Released early today, AirTV marks a significant advance in entertainment technology. Prior to AirTV, if somebody wanted to watch traditional television and using streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Fire they would have to have multiple television boxes and television provider services. AirTV solves this problem by allowing people to get over the air channels and streaming services all through the same television box and using a single remote. Although AirTV does not allow people to connect their cable service to the AirTV box, I am sure that is an entertainment innovation that is soon to come. 

If you would like to learn more about AirTV go to this website.

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Have an Idea, Now What? Part 2: Get a Plan

After determining whether a viable market exists for your product or service idea, you must put together a detailed plan to make your idea profitable (unless, of course, a viable market does not exist for your product). Many different forms of business plans exists, ranging anywhere from 50+ pages to just one. Personally, I recommend using a shorter and clearer business plan. Oftentimes all the aspects of the large business plans are very dependent on external forces and, consequently, loose their value after slight external shifts. There are a few main brief business models and I must say that frankly I don't know about them all. But, I did find an excellent article that provides some business model history and a variety of brief business models. I hope this is useful and I would highly recommend searching around on The Innovative Manager for some more innovation-related advice.

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You Have an Idea, Now What? Step 1: Determine the Demand

Previously I discussed the many channels by which ideas come, including many non-conventional and accidental channels. Although I have briefly hinted at the importance of acting on innovative ideas, I have failed to stress the importance of action.

Oftentimes, innovators and inventors are filled with immense aspirations that their newest idea will eventually become a large source of income. The challenge for many of these innovators and inventors is that starting a business and actually creating revenue is quite a daunting task. In fact, I used to believe that the chances of starting a successful business were nearly impossible; but through business plan research and a more in-depth study of business financials I have come to realize that starting a business is actually quite possible.
The first step in starting a business is to determine the existing and potential demand for your product. One of the best ways to determine the existing demand for your product is to talk to as many people as possible to see if they would purchase or use your product. BEWARE: friends and family members are not always the best sources to talk to about product potential because of their personal bias toward you. Online surveys with subtle questions about your products benefits or features are a wonderful way to determine the demand for your product or service.
It is also important to take into consideration the current conditions of the market you are potentially entering. Is their currently a monopoly? Is the market saturated? Will the market growing or shrinking? All of these factors are critical to predicted the success of a product or service.
Frankly, most innovative ideas will never be profitably marketed; that is why predicting the profitability of a product or service before officially starting a business venture can save you a lot of stress and grief.

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