Expand Your Mind: Innovative Actions
by Miki Saxon
Last Saturday I provided links to innovation based on thinking different; there’s more of that this week, with some very inventive solutions to common problems.
The cost of setting up shop for a budding designer is beyond prohibitive, especially if they want to be close to their prime clients in urban areas like Manhattan. But just as an interest in food and fashion often go together so the food truck solution adopted by new chefs is being snapped up by young designers.
Styleliner is among a handful of mobile retail stores in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and across the U.S that are hawking vintage accessories, sexy shoes and denim to die for in their haute wheels.
An old industrial building in Brooklyn is signaling what could be a small renaissance for local manufacturing. It’s an approach that could be applied in many urban areas by developers with a more creative and longer-term vision than loft condos.
A surge of young entrepreneurs eager to produce $7 chocolate bars made from hand-roasted and hand-ground cocoa, or build theater and movie sets or fashion high-end furniture for a connoisseur’s market find the smaller spaces carved out of these old factories precisely what they have been looking for.
And now the story of Tito Beveridge, whose career proves that rarely does one get from point a to point b via a straight line. It does prove that constant personal exploration is needed to get from, say, premed to computers to geology/oil to your true passion—even if it takes a couple of decades—which sure kicks a large hole in today’s instant gratification mindset.
I saw a motivational speaker on TV who suggested that people at a crossroads consider what they enjoy doing and what they’re good at doing — and to find a job where the two intersect. I had been making infused vodka to give to friends at Christmas, and I really enjoyed that. I thought that was my answer.
Even people who like babies get tired of the endless stream of pictures posted on various social media, but that is especially true for those folks who, by age or by choice don’t have any. Twenty-somethings fit that demographic and a group of them have provided a solution.
Launched last Wednesday, Unbaby.me will scan a users Facebook newsfeed for certain words and phrases that indicate that a picture of a baby will be looking back at them. (…)The service describes itself as, “A Chrome extension that deletes babies from your newsfeed permanently – by replacing them with awesome stuff.”
I love the English because they embrace the unusual, quixotic, eccentric and downright odd. Being pragmatic, they allow gambling (knowing people will do it whether of not it is legal). You can bet on anything if you find the right bookie—there is even a term for it—novelty betting.
The history of novelty betting in Britain can be traced back nearly a half century, Adams said, to a man named David Threfall, who in 1964 requested — and received — odds of 1,000 to 1 on a man walking on the moon by Jan. 1, 1970. Threfall, obviously, turned his £10 ticket into £10,000, giving rise to an ever-growing legion of bettors who are interested in betting on the obscure, unlikely and (sometimes) unimaginable.
We’ll end today on what I hope will be a thought-provoking note. How many friends do you have? Not Facebook friends, but real ones; the kind you would tell you need serious help and would be there for you. Take a look at why the further out of college the more difficult it is to form real connections. If this shoe fits then you may want to commit some time to finding at least one new pair.
As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Enjoy!
Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho
