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.

Keep Innovating!