(Time to read this Blog is about 3.5 minutes)
Before we get to the main topic, here are a few things to get you thinking or smiling:
- My Biz Quote of the week:
A new exposé from Reuters, a news agency, states that Tesla has been deceiving customers about driving ranges and failed to disclose how cold temperatures lower driving range.
Tesla reportedly saw so many complaints about driving ranges that it created a ‘Diversion Team’ to silence angry customers and cancel range-related service appointments. This leads me to this week’s Biz Quote…
“You can’t build a business on lies or broken promises to your customers, or to your staff.”
…Donald Cooper.
- Quick Biz Tip:
What kind of people do you need to grow your business and improve your bottom line?
What talent, knowledge, experience, attitude and personality will deliver the outcomes you need and fit best with your customers and your culture? Finding the right people is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But, it sure is a lot easier to find that needle if you know what the needle looks like!
Be absolutely clear who and what you’re looking for before you dive into the haystack. Start by writing Job Descriptions that focus on job outcomes, not just a list of job activities. No one loves writing Job Descriptions, but it’s an essential step to hiring the right people.
- The BC Port strike is finally over. One of the main demands of the striking Union was to stop ‘modernization and automation’ at the Ports in an attempt to guarantee their jobs.
But, they do need to modernize and automate. According to a Survey by the World Bank, BC Ports placed second last of 348 container ports in the world for overall efficiency …and dead last among ports of similar size.
How does such a bizarre situation come to exist? Is it incompetent management, or a power-hungry and completely unreasonable Union…or some combination of both. Don’t let this happen in your business!
- China deletes Canada from its List of Approved Travel Destinations for group tours. China was Canada’s largest tourism market in terms of dollars spent, but China has now retaliated against us because of our investigation into Chinese operatives interfering with and intimidating Canadian citizens and politicians of Chinese heritage.
The Chinese Government states, “Canada has repeatedly hyped the so-called ‘Chinese interference’ and rampant and discriminatory anti-Asian acts and words are rising significantly in Canada.”
Now, to this week’s important topic:
Six examples of breakthrough innovation to spark your creative juices:
As a business owner, leader or manager a big part of your job is to encourage innovation and improvement in every part of your business. The relentless search for new ideas, products, services and processes is at the heart of sustainability. It will also excite and engage your Team in a whole new way! Below are six examples of breakthrough innovation to spark your creative juices:
- Windfall Bio, a USA startup, is turning waste methane into organic fertiliser using naturally occurring soil microbes, restoring soil health while also sequestering the methane.
Methane is rapidly accumulating in the Earth’s atmosphere and is 84 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. Windfall Bio is capturing methane and transforming it into living organic fertiliser.
This process takes place on-site, allowing farms and dairies to transform waste emissions into high-value organic fertiliser that can be used directly on the farm, or sold to nearby organic farms to generate new revenue streams.
- A biz start-up, Woola, in Estonia is converting discarded wool from local farmers to create sustainable, reusable, recyclable wool-based packaging as a means of eliminating the need for fossil-fuel-based bubble wrap.
The company’s mission is to reduce by half the amount of bubble wrap used globally by 2030. Wool is soft, flexible, and naturally water- and temperature-resistant …all qualities that make it perfect for protecting fragile items. It’s also extremely durable.
- ‘Spent grain’ left over from brewing beer is usually burned, sent to landfill or used as cheap livestock feed. All of these are low-value enterprises. Now, Arda Biomaterials, a UK start-up, is converting ‘spent grain’ into a high-value, sustainable replacement for leather.
- 1.5 billion tires end up as waste every year. But Polish company Contec is treating used tires as a source of valuable raw materials. Using an efficient thermochemical process, shredded tires are converted into recyclable steel, gas, oil, carbon black and other useful chemicals.
Other uses for shredded tires are as an ingredient in paving asphalt that provides better traction and a quieter ride, playground flooring, anti-fatigue mats, vehicle mud guards, wastewater treatment filters and permanent garden mulch.
- Dutch startup, Aquabattery’s simple, safe, local and scalable saltwater-based storage battery system for storing ‘green’ energy is a breakthrough requiring no rare, expensive, toxic minerals. Just salt water and some electrodes. Brilliant.
- 87% of the fabric used to make clothing will end up in incinerators or landfills. San Francisco-based Unspun has developed a unique solution to make textile production more sustainable. The company has developed automated, 3D weaving micro-factories, called Vega, that can weave a pair of trousers in 10 minutes. The factories allow brands to make products locally, reducing the need for manufacturing in large quantities halfway around the world and long-distance shipping.
Unsun is now working on a process to convert used clothing back into yarn, from which new clothing can be made.
So, how do these six examples of innovation spark your creative thinking on how to recycle, reduce waste, improve process or create new products or services? This is a great topic for your next Team meeting.
That’s it for this week…
Live brilliantly!
Donald Cooper
Donald Cooper speaks and coaches internationally on management, marketing, and profitability. He can be reached by email at donald@donaldcooper.com in Toronto, Canada.
