Graze.com introduce new 'light box'

Graze.com offer a new way to snack healthy at work. Graze will deliver a box to any address you want, including your office, in this box will contain an assortment of low calorie snacks, which range from 49 to 146 calories.  They aim to "help grazers across the country stick to healthy eating resolutions in 2012" (www.fdin.org.uk 19/01/2012).

The company was started by seven friends (Graham, Ben, Tom N, Neil, Edd, Tom P and Brendan) who gave up their jobs to build the graze.com kitchen in April 2008. They shared passion to create snacks that do consumers good has resulting in the creation of a brand new food category and a new route to market- Nature Delivered.  (www.fdin.org.uk 19/01/2012)

Since creating the graze.com kitchen, the company set up the 'graze school of farming' in 2010, which is a registered charity. The school is based in Kabubbu in the heart of rural Uganda where students are taught how to grow, maintain and then harvest fruit from their own trees- graze.com have donated over £40,000 since 2010. 

graze.com won New Product of the Year at the Growing Business Awards in 2009.(www.fdin.org.uk 19/01/2012)

graze.com are very innovative, they have taken an idea of a new way of snacking and have created it into a business that delivers hundreds of boxes each week to all over the UK.  Since creating the boxes in 2008, they now have over 100 different choices of snacks to put in the box ranging from flapjack to nuts to dried fruit to breads. I personally get one of these boxes delivered a week and at £3.49 I think they are a bargain, they give me something tasty to snack on while doing work! And with your first box free and the second one half price you cant go wrong with it!

Take a look at their website, theres bound to be something that will appeal to you...

www.graze.com 

Take Me Out takes dating to a whole new level....

After watching about 5 minutes of this so called dating TV show, it had me thinking "Is this the first show of its type?" After doing a bit of Google-ing I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

There was the Blind Date with Cilla Black which ran though the 1980's to the 2000's. This was a completely different set up to the ITV show Take Me Out.

The show 'Take Me Out' involves 30 single Ladies standing behind a podium, each lady gets a white light on their podium. If they are unimpressed by the single man which tries to impress the ladies, they can switch their light to red. After 3 rounds if the single man has white lights still remaining, he can then chose which lady he would like to take for a date to the Isle of Fernado's in Tenerife.

This is an innovate way of dating and TV as it is the first TV show of its type. The show manages to draw in views of over 4 million viewers each week, whether this is down to the witty comments from the host Paddy McGuinness or to see the humiliation on the lads face when he is rejected by every single woman there! Who knows but it certainly brings in the viewers week after week. And with the introduction of Take Me Out: The Gossip on ITV2 afterwards, this has brought in more and more views each week.(www.itv.com 18/01/2012)

Here is the advert for the show, its not the best but there wasnt anything better on YouTube!

Virgin- Many companies, one brand!

Whether its TV, planes, mobile phones, trains, bank and now even space travel, many people think of the Virgin Group.

Virgin is a leading branded venture capital organisation and is one of the world's most respected brands. Conceived in 1970 by sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Group has gone on to grow very successful businesses in sectors ranging from mobile telephony to transportation, travel, financial services, media, music and fitness. (www.virgin.com 18/01/2012)

As quoted from the Virgin website " We believe in making a difference. Virgin stands for value for money, quality, innovation, fun and a sense of competitive challenge. We deliver a quality service by empowering our employees and we facilitate and monitor customer feedback to continually improve the customer's experience through innovation."(www.virgin.com 18/01/2012)

When starting a new venture, Virgin base it on hard research and analysis. Typically, they review the industry and put themselves in the customers shoes to see what could make it better. They always ask fundamental questions, such as "what are the competitors doing? and Is this an opportunity for building the Virgin brand?" New ventures within the company are often steered by people seconded from other parts of Virgin, who bring with them the trademark management style, skills and experience. They frequently create partnerships with others to combine industry specific skills, knowledge and operational expertise.

 With keeping the project steered by current employees of the company, Virgin are able to keep tacit knowledge in the company. This will in the long run, help the company as tacit knowledge is hard to replace so once a employee knows this data it is worth keeping them in the company.

Youtube- $1.65 Billion Innovation and Counting

When was the last time a company innovated form zero to $1.65 billion in a market value in less thank two years from founding, and in less than one year from launch of their key product?

YouTube, a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide, serves over 70 million videos daily on their website- videos that are created and shared by everyday people. YouTube also draws 34 million unique visitors a month, ranking it in the top 15 most trafficked websites. 

Until Steve Jobs and Apple started the iPod and then iTunes revolution, which morphed into video downloads of hit TV shows onto iPods or desktops to allow people to view the shows on demand. However, even the brilliantly innovative Jobs missed what was to become a people video revolution. Where as Jobs focused on creaing partnerships with TV broadcast companies to monetize the market of recorded broadcast videos and grow the business at Apple. YouTube founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim were focused on the exact opposite- free video service created by the people for the people.

The founders almost went broke broke trying this innovative experiment out after the launch when the number of people uploading videos to share, and the number of people downloading videos to watch grew exponentially. However, the growth of Internet as a network and the fall in price of broadband, bandwith and storage kept their vision going ( and a few million dollar investment eventually by Sequia capital) The YouTube revolution was just beginning... 

YouTube, founded in February 2005, created many timely innovations that made it successful in such a short time paving its way to an acquisition by Google for $1.65 billion dollars. (Creativity&Innovation 2011:122-123)

 

Just to show how many people do watch videos, this clip of a boy having his finger bitten by his brother has received 410,240,778 views and is rated by YouTube.com as the most viewed clip of all time. (www.youtube.com, 18/01/2012)

All in one computer?

The HP TouchSmart IQ770 is the first all in one PC on the market to boast a touch-screen display. This computer does for the computer what the iPhone has done for the mobile handset.

HP's kitchen friendly computer, this one is beautifully designed, and its touch screen makes it suitable for work on the counter top as well as a desktop. HP also supplies a software interface, optimised for use with the touch screen, that ties into news, weather, and calendar details, among other daily-living information.  (www.pcworld.com, 18/01/2012) 

I think this is a very innovate product. HP have taken the normal computer and transformed it into an all in one PC. This PC is innovate in the way that it saves space, so the user can put it in most spaces, allows the user to not use a mouse, if they are unable to use a mouse and it means there is not many cables as there usually is. 

Pocket Shower... A fantastic idea!

I think this is one of the best ideas ever! I wish this was around when I was at festivals and doing my Duke of Edinburgh!

A pocket shower is an instant shower in the middle of no-where. This tiny gizmo unfolds to reveal a high performance waterproof reserviour that holds a mighty ten litres of water. The black fabric will, given a sunny day, warm the water up in no time. You just string it up to a tree and open up the attached shower head and hey presto, you can now luxuriate in a seven minute shower!

I think this is one of the most innovative products, ive seen. This allows people out walking, camping, festivals and other out door events to have a shower without the hassle of waiting for a cold shower, in a dirty shower room! (www.designswan.com, 18/01/2012)

Supply Chain Management

Most companies compete in an environment characterised by:

• Turbulent and dynamic markets, where the customers requirements change rapidly and unforeseeable.
• Strongly segmented markets, where various customers have varying requirements for products and services.
• Market requirements for multiple product varieties and customisation of both products and services.
• Increasing customer demand for "experiences", and not merely physical products.
• Global competition, which forces companies to become faster, better and cheaper.

These are the challenges that have made supply chain management an important management toll and competitive parameter for many firms.(Jespersen&Skjottarsen 2005:9)

The supply chain encompasses all organisations and activities associated with the flow and transformation of goods from the raw materials stage, through to the end user, as well as the associated information flows. Material and information flows both up and down the supply chain. Supply chain management is the integration and management of supply chain organisations and activities through co-operative organisational relationships, effective business process, and high levels of information sharing to create high performing value systems that provide member organisations or sustainable competitive advantages. (Jespersen&Skjottarsen 2005:11)

A generic supply chain model