What shall we do with the poor old farmer?

We make him happy.

We should give him and his successors an inspirational view of the future and a win-win-win-win-situation!

Happy farmers

Here in Holland a lot of old and sometimes poor farmers have difficulties in finding motivated successors. Farmer children look for city jobs with more income, more status and more future security.

Although farming could be one of the most satisfying jobs in the world! It's a matter of organising and some innovation too.

What does a farmer really want? If I would be a farmer I would like to have all advantages of an office job plus independency, animals en sunshine. I would like to

1. be my own boss
2. work with and take care of my animals, my cows, pigs, goats, kangaroos, ...
3. use my brain as well as my hands
4. devise strategies and tactics for my farm and perform them as good as I can
5. enjoy sun, rain and earth

But what is the farmer actually doing? He is buzy with

1. paper work
2. multifold repetition of the same operation every day again
3. making appointments (veterinarian, milk transporter etc)

So let the machines do what they do best i.e. routine work and let the farmer do what he does best i.e. taking care, being creative, enjoying life.

The routine work is milking, feeding, health checking, contacting the veterinarian (can also easily be automated), milk pasteurizing (yes, why not a micro diary at every farm?), milk transport to the local supermarket (some market innovation), insemination (is already automated), etcetera. All this can be done by relative simple machines we already use in other branches as security, flower handling etc.

The farmer then has time to take care of every cattle, to make them happy (also good for productivity), to see rare behavior of his cattle, to check on rare deseases, and of course to think about strategies and innovation in order to make the farm an even better place for farmer and cattle.

The first thing to do is asking the farmer about the work he wants to get rid of and supply him with the corresponding machines. The result will be a much more productive farm, a much more innovative farm and much happier famer and happier cattle. Which is good for the consumers, the economy, the farmer and the cattle.

We've reached a win-win-win-win situation.

The cycleway contest

Today a former collegue emailed me about a bicycle highway contest. I like contests. Probably I might never have outgrown my need for competition.
And I like winning more than loosing, so my self esteem might also be a bit lacking.

But for the contest. The provincial authorities - here in Holland we call this particular one a 'Stadsregio' something like a city region - like to have ideas for the new cycleway of about 15 km between the two cities Arnhem and Nijmegen. And as always in such contests the hardest part is to determine their yellow spot. Of the authorities of course.

 

Here you see the first and only elevated cycleway, opened in 1900 and had to connect the centers of Pasadena and Los Angeles (about 15 km! history is repeating) in a later stage, but never did because of the increasing popularity of the automobile. The 19th century was a gold mine of inventings and innovations.

The ideas shouldn't be that innovative that one may think it cannot be realized within the next years. Or - if the idea is too innovative - one should cover or even hide the innovativeness. At the same time it must be innovative enough to have a great appeal for the jury. Luckily they have foreseen in a questioning round which should be used to determine this yellow spot.

I usually follow a six step approach, although I didn't know that before:

1.

My starting point would be to see some global pictures of the area, a global impression of the list of requirements and a global impression of the jury. Above all not too much, because it might pull you in some implicit predefined formats which could steer your upcoming ideas. De Bono has written a lot about this phenomenon for example in The Mechanism of Mind.

2.

The second part is making a VIL (a vague-ideas-list, see the blog of traffic contest ideas for an example). The VIL describes globally for a number of ideas how they should work and what advantages they would have.

3.

At third we need to examine thoroughly all contest requirements, jury members, time scedule and so on. We need to know exactly how the ideas will be judged by the jury in order to make a proper funneling of the VIL.

4.

Fourth, out of the VIL three ideas are chosen: one improvement, one innovation and one inventing, trying to catch the yellow spot. We'll shoot with hail, not with a bullet, to increase the hit chance.

5.

The fifth step is the working out of the ideas with respect to technology, marketing and finance. And keeping in mind the right level of innovation and eventually covering or hiding tactics.

6.

And at last we need to make everything presentable, keeping in mind audience, message and target. When I heard from this classification the first time from Michiel Boswinkel I understood immediately what was wrong about my texts. Unfortunately is understanding and doing not the same and it is still hard work for me.

So, winning an innovation contest has nothing to do with a romantic thing like 'the best idea will win' or so. No, it is about the best strategy, the best tactics and the best performance, like in every battle. The ideas are just the means like the chess figures are the means for the chess player.

Okay, next time my VIL. If you like you can make your VIL and eventually we can put them together for a more complete list, and devide the work. Let me know.

10 ideas for dull hotel owners

I don't like hotels. And since this morning I know why. On the radio this morning there was an interview with Vincent van Dijk, who blogged all hotels of Amsterdam. And he told that a big problem of hotels is that they are not surprising. Which is not surprising. Hotels should offer a bed and that's it.

But hotels are dull.

I remembered the times a few years ago that I was traveling trough Europe for my work, sleeping in big dull hotels. Always the same continental breakfast buffet, always the same unsurprising rooms, always the unbearable lack of inspiration everywhere.

So why not giving those dull hotel owners 10 ideas to inspire them to inspire their guests?

1. This one is from one of the hotel descriptions of Vincent: provide the rooms with an iPod full of all possible music styles and some speakers, a newspaper, internet, water and wine and friendliness. It's that simple.

2. Place a bookcase in the lobby together with a couch and some relaxing seats. Go to the flea market and buy five meter of (inspiring) books and comics and let the guest take the book with him when he leaves and has not finished his book yet.

3. Place a food and beverage vending machine somewhere inside or outside which delivers fresh food of the five continents.

4. Place a bulletin board in the lobby for events in the neighborhood, for looking for company for going out, play chess or philosophical talk, tips and warnings, etcetera.

5. Organise every evening a different board game tournament for the hotel guests and the neighborhood and organise workshops Delft Blue Painting.

6. Provide GPS units for city GPS tracks and city geocaching.

7. Show an art movie every evening in the breakfast room on a big screen. Except on Saturday: organise every Saturday a chamber concert. Also for the neihborhood.

8. Offer a farmer breakfast on one long table with fresh products right from the (biological) farmer. And offer excursions to the farm.

9. Organise every Wednesday a PechaKucha Night.

10. Get art from the art library or from the local artists and create a gallery of the hotel.

I might go to such a hotel in future! But you are not me and might wish other things to get inspired. Be my guest and add your ideas to this blog!

And apart from that a hotel might be a nice thing to make a crowd sourcing project out of it. Who is interested?

Saving traffic emissions by mind shifting

Today the nominates of the Zuid-Holland prijsvraag are to be selected. I couldn't find the names already so I thought this would be the right time to redeem my promise (see number 7 of the vague-ideas-list in traffic contest ideas) to tell how to save 75% of CO2 and other traffic emissions.

The most important thing we need is a mind shift. So what happens if we don't consider trucks as a sort of car but as a sort of barge moving along roads in stead of rivers and canals? What do we think then about speed, an extra crew member or acceptible payload?
Suddenly we have a barge that doesn't need to plough itself trough the water but goes nicely on wheels.

Or what happens if we consider trucks as a sort of train moving on the motorway in stead of a railway? What do we think then about the number of trailers, the number of trucks on a road section, so called slots in air transportation?

Okay, assuming a mind shift has taken place, here is the trick...

We halve the truck speed!

What?

We halve the truck speed!

Why should we?

The required energy per kilometer due to air resistance is proportional to speed squared. Doubling the speed means quadrupling the energy. Halving the speed means quartering the energy.
The effect of speed is huge. For example in nature speeds seldom exceeds 50-60 kmph. A higher maximum speed means a much higher maximum power of the creature. The extra bones and muscles needed to submit this extra power must be maintained which costs energy every minute of life.

Why shouldn't we?

Safety: Isn't it dangerous if cars are passing those trucks by a speed difference of 40 to 80 kmph? This would only be dangerous if a slower vehicle suddenly moves to another carriageway. But since trucks are no longer cars anymore they don't have the right to overtake other cars. This would only be permitted on special road sections.

Costs: if we would halve the speed we would permit to double the pay load at the same time in order to keep the transportation costs the same.

Practicle implementation: how is this to be implemented on ordinary dual carriageways and should private cars also drive only 40 kmph? No, that won't be necessary fortunately. We have two strategies, the middle lane and slots.

A middle lane like at norwegian roads enables traffic in both directions to overtake alternately. Lots of new builded dual carriageways are already equipped with a central berm which can be transformed into a middle lane.
Okay it costs a little bit, but the revenues are emission savings of 75%! - due to freight transportation.

The use of slots (like for airplanes) for road transportation would be the real innovation. Freight traffic will receive every hour a slot of lets say one kilometer per 10 kilometer road section. This slot is moving with 40 kmph along the road. Trucks are only allowed to drive in such a slot. The remaining 90% of the road time/space is available to non freight transport vehicles. This approach requires no infrastructural adaptations, but merely a sort of electronic road timetables.

Saving 75% of traffic emissions only by means of a mind shift. I don't know a more cost effective way.

God, entrepeneurs and managers

Today a friend was visiting me and we came to the conclusion that managers are gardeners, entrepeneurs are growers and inventors are creators (we called them god).

But so as God had to deal with human beings so has the inventor to deal with entrepeneurs and managers in the development cycle of a product. The apple cycle should look something like the pictures below (see also Why am I doing this) :

In the beginning there were no apples and no apple trees at all, just the appetite - which is nothing more than a problem perception. Then creativity comes around and give the platonic spiritual idea of an apple. The concept solver then picks up the spiritual apple idea, the essence, and transforms it into a concept solution, the apple DNA.

This was the thinking part, now the handicraft.

The DNA is still only a concept, it is not a practical solution for every day life. So the marketeer and the technician sit together and make an apple seed as a practical invention that can be patented eventually.
Then the technostarter in his role of the breeder takes the seed and breeds it to a small tree.

After the breed the entrepeneur (the grower) takes over and builds an apple orchard from the small trees. When the orchard is ready and the first apples are harvested and sold, the entrepeneur go away and the manager enters the show. He should keep the status quo and take care that the apple supply is guaranteed over the years. The last task then is the acquisition and the sale of the apples done by the sales man or the market vendor. And of course the apples must be enjoyed too.

Where do you want to be in the process?

Traffic contest ideas

After the summer holidays, which ended three weeks ago, I wanted to submit some ideas for a traffic contest, organised by a dutch government (see http://www.zuid-holland.nl/content_provincie/c_e_provincie-zuidhollandprijs.htm). The contest aimed to collect ideas that improve the liveability, safety and accessibility.

But the children had to prepare for school, the house had to be cleaned up, some social visits had to be undertaken and I had several other gammon and spinach, so there was no time left to sit back, to think a little about it and to enter some nice solutions. Although I had made a so called vague-ideas-list before summer.

The real reason was probably that I estimated my chances not very big. Usually the authorities want ideas that are in their yellow spot, which means no affect risk, introducable until the next election, understandable by everybody, acceptable by everybody and still improving their innovative image. Which may be understandable to some extend. But my ideas were a bit off the road I'm afraid.

You are invited to take a look at them and make up your mind for yourself. I like to hear your opinion!

1. Public transport's status above that of a private car. If we would make public transport more luxury, with more privacy, with more technical facilities, with shorter travel time from A to B and - most important - with more status than a private car the attraction of public transport should go up a bit above absolute zero. How? Well, I still had to think about it, but in the end mass production must always be more economic.

2. The google camera. Driving could be safer and roads could be used more efficiently by mounting a simple 360 degrees camera on the roof of private cars. A screen in the car connected to the camera would show a top view of the car and its surroundings (and will beep when a collision is coming).

3. Green city wave. On main roads in dutch cities usually there is someting like a green wave, which means that the traffic lights are always green if you drive exactly the permitted speed. But only on the main roads. I wanted to make green waves on every traffic light road. It may seem impossible on first sight but with for example the one-car-passing-a-crossing-at-a-time-concept there are interesting possibilities.

4. A heat pump for barges. This is more or less a conventional innovation, except that innovations are naturally not common in the shipping world. I might have added a cylinder sail, which is already done for sea shipping but not for barges on a regular base. Although this is not really innovative, it might have been exactly the yellow spot of the contest jury.

5. On the highway A15 to the port of Rotterdam there are always traffic jams. So why not get rid of a part of the traffic by transporting containers not by trucks but for example as submarines (see the "Every container a submarine"-blog).

6. A few months ago I designed an outdoor autowalk. One can often see the indoors at airports. The problem with them is that one small leave can make them stop. So I drew an outdoor one without moving parts; actually I was quite proud of it. Anyway, I thought to propose an implementation of it between the subway station and the Rotterdam airport. Yes, the subway passes the airport at about 2 kilometer!

7. The last one I wanted to submit eventually was an idea to reduce the CO2 emissions by 75%. I had already thought a bit about this idea so I may write another blog about it next time.


Of course I let you know when the winning idea is selected.