Credit where credit is due

The Monopoly Pub Crawl in London

I know that 'credit' is a dirty word at the moment but this has nothing to do with the US election, unpaid credit cards, mortgages, Iceland or the current economic turmoil (unless you happen to be on the brink of bankruptcy in a game of Monopoly as you're reading this)...  

Anyway Some of you may remember that I criticised exam techniques in a post a while back.  Well it seems that the Lund University Economics Faculty were reading my blog (well maybe not but I'm going to take some of the due credit) because our last exam was great!  The exam was emailed to us, we were able to sit in the comfort of our homes, access the net and any other resources we needed to come up with what I believe were much more creative and interesting answers (although I may be jumping the gun because I haven't got my results yet... maybe the professor is reading this post and will up my mark accordingly :-) ).

The questions and my answer are below. I actually want to make my monopoly game! Although it may not be as original as I thought at the time check out Monopoly live, My Monopoly. and my personal favourite Monopoly Pub Crawl.

By the way if anyone else in my class wants to upload there answer or if anyone wants to come up with there own  please email it to me and I will publish it here.

Entrepreneurship Marketing Exam - Get more Business Documents

Top 4 - Bottom 1 - Advertising - Me No Fry!

Ok so I have been a little slack with my updates lately but here is the second in the series of the Top 4 - Bottom 1 advertisements of all time.  It's the 'Me No Fry' commercial which featured a number of eggs dancing and rapping in the street and trying to avoid being fried by the sun!  I'm not sure why, but this ad 'cracked' me up and the song and corresponding message has stuck with me since my childhood.  Even more impressive this ad was put out by a non-profit anti-skin cancer organisation proving that you don't need a lot of money to make a great ad - all the giant corporations who consistently put out tripe take note!  To tie this all in to my marketing course, I found that the whole campaign was followed up with much research into its affect on attitudes toward skin cancer and skin protection (see here, here and here).  A great example of following up your advertising campaign with some sort of research as to whether it has achieved its goal (this goal may be slightly more noble than trying to increase the obesity of the general population...)

Ok so enough of my rambling let's see the commercial... well this will teach me for starting to write a post without having the video to back it up!  But unbelievably I can't find this online anywhere despite having spent the last hour or so looking for it!  Now I know I'm not alone as the following quotes from a 2003 study would suggest 

“... me no fry with the egg. I used to love that ad”.

(Year 11 male)

"The ‘Me No Fry’ campaign was also recalled by participants in half

the groups, which could be considered surprising given that the

campaign took place during 1990-1996."

So I'm issuing a challenge to all you readers (or Mum as the case may be),  find the commercial and send me the link so I can embed it here and share the brilliance!  I have already emailed the Cancer Council Australia who do great work (and who you can donate to by following the link) to see if they can provide this for me.

The Top 4 - Bottom 1 is back...

Some of you will be familiar with the Top 4 - Bottom 1 format which ranked my experiences as I travelled around the US and South America. I had completely forgotten about this until one of my class mates sent me a link to the Times - Top 50 websites of 2008, reading this list I found a few great sites I'd never heard of before (e.g. Askmen, Afrigadget), a few great sites I knew about (e.g. WikiTravel, Open Source Food) and a few I didn't really agree with (e.g. PopSugar, The Nest) which may portray my personal interests more than the quality of the sites themselves so anyway check out the list and decide for yourself... Or if you don't want to decide this or a bunch of other entrepreneur related things for yourself and you trust me, I am going to be posting an authoritative Top 4 - Bottom 1 lists for a number of different categories - scientific discoveries, medical breakthroughs, green technologies, websites, companies and Dragon's Den pitches.

To kick it off, given that I am currently studying marketing, over the next 5 days I will be posting the Top 4 - Bottom 1 advertisements of all time. Starting at number 4 (although I haven't yet completely thought this through - so I reserve the right to change its ranking at anytime) is this absolute gem starring Brain from The Thunderbirds.






Now to be fair I love this ad but I have never bought a bottle of Drench water... Maybe it's because I never buy bottled water or maybe its because I have never seen it in the shops but I'm sure if I was going to buy some bottled water and it was available I would buy it - hence I can justify putting it in at number 4

6 Seconds of Thought

Ok so the basis for this entry was the following quote from one of the girls on my course 'For you, I'll give it some thought...maybe six seconds of thought...' Clearly a very flattering and generous offer :-)

Later that night whilst waiting for a Pizza to be delivered, I got to thinking about just how generous that offer was, what could someone accomplish in 6 seconds of thought and more importantly where the hell was my pizza.  Anyway in the next 6 seconds this is what I thought. 

1. Pizza delivery in Lund is remarkably slow
2. The city is tiny and full of students
3. Students want to earn money and they ride their bikes everywhere
4. Why doesn't the pizza shop take advantage this, hoist a flag outside everytime it has a delivery to send out and get a passing student to take the delivery for a small fee?

In 6 seconds I had come up with maybe the greatest business idea in the history of Sweden (Ikea who?)... or had I?  As I ravenously tucked into my Pizza half an hour later I thought about the delicious smell of pizza wafting up from my bike basket on its way to someone elses home and wondered how many of these student delivered pizza's would reach their final destination....

Change the World 1 Grain of Rice at a Time

Free Rice is one of my favourite ever charity websites its so simple, so addictive and a great cause.  Basically it is a vocabulary game (there are now also other subjects including geography, chemistry and languages) where you get a word, four potential meanings and you have to know the right one.  For each correct answer 20 grains of rice are donated to the UN World Food Program to help end hunger.  

I have decided to set a challenge.  I want all you loyal readers to play this game as much as possible (its a great way to procrasinate at work - and then bamboozle your boss with your new vocabulary when explaining why you haven't finished that project) keep track of how many grains you have donated (go to options and select 'remember my personal rice donation...') then by the 20th of December I want you each to send me a screenshot of your total rice donated - along with a picture of yourself.  I will make it my personal mission to go onto Free Rice and equal the total amount donated as my Christmas present to the world...Clearly after this my posts will get a lot more sophisticated and less accessible to the non-charitable reader :-)

Good luck and I'll post a reminder closer to the time.

The ultimate in self reflection? DNA mapping for under $5000

DNA 11 - hang this above your bed and make an informed decision about contraception?  

An interesting article published in the New York Times yesterday 'Dawn of Low-Price Mapping Could Broaden DNA Uses'  (you may need to sign up to see this article - but its free), talks about, as you might have guessed from the title, the significant lowering of the price of complete personal genome sequencing.

Complete Genomics, a start-up company in where else but Mountain View California, will next year begin offering complete personal genome sequencing for around $5000.  Initially they will not be offering the sequencing technique directly to consumers but rather will be targeting pharmaceutical companies and research laboratories.  According to the article, the cost of Genome Sequencing has been coming down by a factor of 10 every year with the average cost currently at around $100 000 per genome.  Complete Genomics expects to have 1000 genomes sequenced by the end of 2009 and 20 000 done by the end of 2010 - this is particularly impressive given that the total number of sequences completed to date is 'at most in double digits'.

This gives them a pretty impressive potential revenue stream - over $100mil in turn over by the end of 2010.  They are currently in the process of raising funding and finding partners to help them build 10 sequencing centres at a cost of $50mil each.  How could they raise such money and who are there potential partners?

Well my first thought was this: a) Iceland has been hit very hard by the global credit crunch (see numerous articles in the Financial Times ), b) deCode Genetics which currently owns the rights to basically the entire Icelandic populations genetic data (BBC article) has is basically in dire straights and has just been hit with a Nasdaq deficiency notice relating to market value (see here), c) surely this provides the ideal opportunity for some sort of take over bid by a pharmaceutical company (Roche has already invested $200million making them an ideal candidate) or a consortium of venture capitalists, utilising a partnership agreement with Complete Genomics?  

Anyone who reads this and gets rich on the opportunity, I want in!  Actually I have about $2000 dollars saved, with deCode's stock declining at the rate it is, maybe I can buy them...

I'll be following developments with interest (you can follow the news on my blog list) and am just about to send an email to Complete Genomics asking for a job - with stock options...

Turning a Problem Upside Down

Entrepreneurship is all about taking a problem, turning it upside down and creating an opportunity.  The process is poigniantly demonstrated in the video below a political advertisement which was aired in Argentina.

Sweet Home Alabama... unless you've been arrested

For any of you who were reading my previous blog, you might remember me talking about my visit to the Tuscaloosa County Jail... for any of you who I might be doing business with in the future, no I didn't get arrested, it was part of my exhchange program (yep that's how exchange programs work when you come from the convict nation...).  Anyway among the plethora of incredibly disturbing things we saw at the jail (blood covered shanks, Alabaman prison guards and a particularly delightful smelling home brew...) potentially the most disturbing was their website which offers any user the opportunity to access an arrest inquiry database which gives you access to the full name, a photo, what they have been arrested for and how much bond they paid... Wait a minute you say, surely you made a mistake, surely they if they were going to list people they would only tarnish the names of those that have actually been convicted! Nope anyone that has been arrested whether falsely or not will appear.  

The reason I started thinking about this was in the context of generating business ideas and thinking about Google Map Mash-ups, I thought of a great concept which I am going to call Possebook basically it allows the user to access a map of convicted or non-convicted 'fellons' and a social network through which they can organise a good old fashion Posse to get out there and exercise some Cowboy style justice.  Obviously the aggrieved can post rewards with the site taking a commission for all successful captures/kills and the network would provide the ideal advertising platform for weapons manufacturers and distributors thus there is a definite revenue stream.

Now obviously (I hope) this is a ridiculous concept but take a look at the next link down on the website and you can access something almost on a par - the sex offender map.  Now I am not entireley certain where I stand on this - if there is a convicted sex offender in my neighbourhood a) do I want to know about it, b) do I have the right to know about it considering they have served their time and been released - indicating that they are reformed?

Now let me just me put this in perspective with a quote from the Tuscaloosa County Jail Website 

"On August 5, 2002 the Tuscaloosa County Jail received Accreditation from the American Correctional Association. This makes the Tuscaloosa County Jail the first and ONLY county jail in the State of Alabama to receive Accreditation."

Clearly this is an exemplary institution demonstrating best practice for correctional facilities.  If this is best practice, then Possebook which at first seemed like a ridiculous and unethical use of Web 2.0 technologies seems to be middle of the road in terms of unethical uses of a technology that has the potential to change the world for the better (see the social entrepreneurship links section for examples).  Perhaps a better use - particularly in Lund would be some way of tracking bicycles, theft of which seems to be exponentially out of proportion to any other form of crime in the city...  

However discussions in class (and over a few beers after class) one topic that continues to come up is the ingenuity and entrepreneurial skills that criminals apply to their trade.  Which made me think what nefarious uses could criminals make of Web 2.0 technologies and wikinomics principles?  Could increased connectivity and social networking represent a boon for drug traffickers?  How would wikifraud help ur average scamster?  

I'd love to hear your suggestions (don't worry I'll ensure your annonimity...)

The Future of Exams

Calm before the storm... ok so its a somewhat tenuous link to the image above taken at the wonderfully named Lake Titicaca in Bolivia... but having just sat my first exam in over a year I was struck by just how antiquated the examination process is - filing one by one into an examination hall, sitting in silence and handwriting the answers you have memorised the night before!  To quote our teachers advice prior to sitting it 'you don't have to understand it - just remember it'.  

With the advent of the internet enabling students to access information almost instantaneously (whether this is a positive or not is the subject of another debate)  it would seem far more important to test the student's ability to find quality information and apply it to the problem at hand.  Online examination (that is examinations allowing students access to the web or a modified version thereof) is surely an option that educators need to consider.

What would need to happen before exams could be taken online?  Would all subjects be amenable to online examination? Could wikistyle development of test questions and marking systems improve standardisation?  Should there be a change from memory testing to problem solving?

To me online examinations are inevitable and institutional change will inevitably take a long time nevertheless questions such as these need to be addressed.  As always I'm interested to hear what you think?

Mind Maps

Work

Hobbies

Education

As promised, I have now uploaded 'Mind Maps' which I created using Freemind, if they give you any ideas please let me know or please feel free to email me any mind maps of your own.

Project 10 to the 100

Hippo Morph by Aizxana on Deviant Art

Google wants us to change the world and is willing to pay $10million for the best ideas.  A great example of a very simple idea that appears on the Youtube video on the competition web page and which neatly fits in with the animal theme that seems to be appearing on this blog, is the 'Hippo Roller' a rolling cannister that allows villagers (mainly in Africa) to more easily transport fresh water.

Coincidently this week we have been given a number of interesting lectures by Dr. Eyþór Ívar Jónsson of the Copenhagen Business School on techniques for idea generation and opportunity recognition.  Two particularly interesting techniques were mind mapping (FreeMind is free software for doing this, see also Imindi a social network based upon mind maps - currently in Beta) and Blue Ocean strategy.  Over the next few days I will be uploading the mind maps I have created to see if I can find an area in which there is an opportunity to change the world and then attempt to use a Blue Ocean Strategy to map the current state of affairs within that field and how they might be changed to create a new idea - hopefully to change the world...

Gorgeous Birds in Sweden

Beautiful, exotic, rarely seen outside her natural habitat are all words you might reasonably hear someone say when describing a beautiful bird from Sweden but how about Short, dark hair, kind of chubby, round face with a red beak...maybe not but thanks to a new site Birdpost.com, which was launched today at the TechCrunch50 Conference, not only can I go out and find an elusive Swedish bird but I can let everyone know where I had the encounter and add it to my life list of 'conquests'.

The presentation these guys gave absolutely blew me away, they along with a soon to be loyal following of 'birders' or 'twitchers' (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birdwatching  for an explanation of terms) are creating an encyclopedia of bird sightings (using satellite mapping) and a social network for birdwatchers to brag about the birds they've had encounters with.

Having spent numerous hours during my undergraduate degree working on research projects on birds (I wrote a groundbreaking report on 'the evolutionary history of handedness of Australian parrots and 'sexual dimorphism in Sooty Oystercatchers' I love these birds checkout Birdpost to see where you can see them for yourself) with Professors who are avid 'twitchers' and came to realise just how addictive and rewarding it can be.

Birdpost.com combines entrepreneurship and principles of wikinomics to reach a niche market which is apparently worth $US32billion.  But more importantly, the potential of this site as an educational tool for universities, and as a means of researching and promoting conservation is enormous and the platform could be expanded to map mammals, reptiles and plants.  I have been inspired by this site and my mind is racing with ideas (if anyone from Birdpost is reading this please get in touch with me).

I have already signed up and will keep you all updated (with pictures) on my encounters with rare, exotic and beautiful Swedish birds :-)

The Evolution of the Heffalump...

My Heffalump - created using Spore

Next year will mark the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's seminal work The Origin of Species which details the theory of evolution by natural selection and which continues to be heralded as one of the most powerful ideas in history so what better way to kick off a blog that will following the thoughts and ideas that will hopefully evolve into a successful business than to consider evolutionary theory and its application to the generation of business ideas.

In our first lecture Hans Landström compared defining entrepreneurship to trying to define the Heffalump from Winnie the Pooh 

"...a rather large and important animal. He has been hunted by many individuals using various trapping devices, but no one so far has succeeded in capturing him. All who claim to have caught sight of him report that he is enormous, but disagree on his particulars."

To me the Heffalump represents the entrepreneurs idea, an organism which in the entrepreneurs mind is 'a rather large and important animal' but in reality is more like a tiny fish at the bottom of the food chain, whose species is on the brink of extinction.  The survival of this Heffalump and the fulfiment of its evolutionary potential to become the 'large and important' animal it should be depends not on the survival of any one single trait that the Heffalump possesses but on the survival of the Heffalum as a species, the entrepreneur must be able to recognise mutations of the Heffalump that give it a competive advantage in the market place and avoid those that make it susceptible to predators. Sexual selection will also play a vital role, the Heffalump should preferentially mate with other Heffalumps that have desirable traits - mates with money, power, skills and influence will all play an important role along the evolutionary timeline...

Interestingly (if you are kind of a biology/tech nerd and let's face it, if you are still reading this post you must be....) a new game called Spore in which you create an organism and guide it along a treacherous evolutionary path in order to reach its greatest potential is being released by Electronic Arts  this week.  The game's has been tested and praised by evolutionary biologists at Yale University although with the proviso that it greatly simplifies the evolutionary process (see the New York Times Article).  Whether the game accurately represents evolution or not, it certainly represents an entrepreneurial use of Darwin's work, most probably one that will sell many more copies than Darwin's original book!

The creature creation software, which allows anyone to create their Heffalump  with limitless variations is available as a free download from the Electronic Arts website, a move which was praised on the excellent Wikinomics Blog here.  The blog will follow the creation of my own Heffalump; will it be successful?  Stay tuned....