YOUR WEEKLY FIX OF ENTREPRENEURIAL IDEAS
We’ve selected 15 new business ideas this week that will
provide entrepreneurs with plenty of inspiration. Spotted from
countries all around the world, these ideas offer a taste of
what’s to come.
3. Top 10 business ideas & opportunities for 2014
We’ve selected 15 new business ideas that will provide
entrepreneurs with plenty of inspiration. Spotted from
countries all around the world, these ideas offer a taste of
what’s to come.
YOUR WEEKLY FIX OF ENTREPRENEURIAL IDEAS
06-12 March 2014
4. This is part of a series of articles that looks at
entrepreneurs hoping to get their ideas off the
ground through crowdfunding. At the time of writing,
each of these innovations is currently seeking
funding.
Many people think that games are a
waste of time, especially for kids, but they
can offer learning opportunities when
they’re designed in the right way. We’ve
already seen Primo teach coding to
preschoolers, and now Koe is a JRPG
that requires players to learn different
kanji symbols in order to progress through
the game.
Read more about Koe »
1. Indie RPG teaches players Japanese
5. Weird Of The Week: This is part of a series of
articles that looks at some of the most bizarre and
niche business ideas we see here at Springwise.
How much use is a city-load of urine?
Quite a lot, it turns out. So much so that
the Netherlands’ Waternet utilities
company has placed some pee-collecting
urinals in Amsterdam, with the hope of
turning it into fertilizer for the city’s urban
roof gardens.
Read more about Waternet »
2. Public urinals harness pee to grow food
6. For those who have partied too hard in
Las Vegas, there is a bus called
Hangover Heaven that tours the strip and
offers hangover remedies. But what if
there’s absolutely no way of even moving
from that bed? The IV Doctor is a service
launched in New York that actually offers
a home visit to give revelers the treatment
they need to feel fresh.
Read more about The IV Doctor »
3. The IV Doctor will visit your home and cure a hangover
7. In the UK there are 85,000 prisoners, but
only 10,000 of them are doing valuable
work with their time. In order to change
this, Gaolhouse Denim is now
collaborating with a number of British
inmates, giving them meaningful, paid
work while also creating premium jeans
for consumers.
Read more about Gaolhouse Denim »
4. Jeans are made by prison inmates
8. Back in 2012, we wrote about Italian
sports apparel brand D-Air Street, a
motorcycle jacket that contains a hidden
airbag that inflates upon collision. Now the
company is back with the D-Air Ski, which
features a protective airbag that inflates
only upon the event of a serious fall.
Read more about the D-Air Ski »
5. Airbag-equipped ski suit could save broken bones
9. Rooftop gardens are not only a solution to
enabling space-scarce cities to create
produce locally, but — when combined
with specific venues — can be especially
convenient, such as Dakboerin‘s farms
atop restaurant kitchens in the
Netherlands. Now Japan’s Soradofarm
scheme is placing allotments on top of
train stations, to allow commuters to more
seamlessly fit growing their own
vegetables into their busy lifestyles.
Read more about Soradofarm »
6. In Japan, train station allotments let commuters garden on the
move
10. In the recent past, we’ve seen Soldsie
leverage social conversations as a
payment platform — enabling users to
buy fashion products by simply leaving a
comment on the relevant Facebook
photos. While a flight is typically a much
larger purchase, KLM Royal Dutch
Airlines is also now enabling its
customers to confirm and pay for a seat
on one of their flights through social media
platforms.
Read more about KLM Royal Dutch
Airlines»
7. KLM passengers can now buy a flight through Facebook and
Twitter
11. As with almost all previously offline
products, bikes and their accessories are
now getting smart. We’ve already written
about Helios handlebars, which feature
exercise tracking and GPS location
services. Now the MindRider helmet is
using EEG technology to enable cyclists
to see how their thought patterns change
over the course of their journey.
Read more about the MindRider »
8. Bike helmet reads cyclists’ minds, tracks their stress levels on
the road
12. Dining is more than just a treat for the
tastebuds and takes in a whole range of
sensory thrills, which explains the
popularity of themed film events such as
Toronto’s Mise — which matches its menu
with on-screen dishes. Now the
Netherlands is serving up The Bookish
Banquet, a culinary event for bookworms
that takes inspiration from popular fiction.
Read more about The Bookish
Banquet »
9. Book-themed food event matches meals with fiction
13. Hunger is a real problem, not only in the
poorest parts of the world but even in
major US cities. In fact, 50 million
Americans are meal insecure and one in
five kids in the US faces hunger,
according to Jon Carder — co-founder
and CEO of Mogl, a startup that hopes to
do more to stop people going without
food. Its new app now enables diners in
San Diego to enjoy a ten percent discount
on their meal at participating restaurants,
which they can either keep or donate to
food banks and hunger charities.
Read more about Mogl »
10. App lets diners keep a 10% bill discount, or give it to food banks
14. For those pitting themselves against the
elements, practical clothing isn’t just
useful, it can be lifesaving. While it may
not be able to stop gunfire, like Garrison
Bespoke’s Bulletproof Suit, the Life
Tech jacket from Seymourpowell is
designed to double as an extreme survival
kit that uses smart tech to help wearers in
a variety of dangerous situations.
Read more about the Life Tech »
11. This jacket could save your life
15. This is part of a series of articles that looks at
entrepreneurs hoping to get their ideas off the
ground through crowdfunding. At the time of writing,
each of these innovations is currently seeking
funding.
Bottles water has become an
environmental concern over the past
couple of decades, even leading to
organizations such as Ban The Bottle.
While an outright ban is unlikely to
materialize any time soon, a new startup
called Treeson Spring Water is aiming to
make its bottles as eco as possible,
including a free mail-back system to
ensure they get recycled.
Read more about Treeson »
12. These water bottles can be mailed to a recycling plant for free
16. Getting kids to read can sometimes be a
difficult task if they don’t have a lot of
options to choose from or — what’s more
likely — they’d rather play on their phone
or tablet. While ideas such as the
scannable Smart PJ’s have embraced
new technologies to make picking a new
story at bedtime more engaging, a new
service for kids called Epic! offers a large
digital library of children’s titles, complete
with rewards for finishing chapters and
embarking on reading marathons.
Read more about Epic! »
13. Netflix for kids’ books makes reading fun with unlockable
achievements
17. Vehicles are usually designed to serve a
particular purpose, with different functions
calling for completely new designs. While
in the past we’ve seen the hybrid
Sealander caravan work on both land and
water, the Ethos E30 modular boat can
be reconfigured for different purposes,
from tour boat, to fishing trawler, to family
cruiser.
Read more about the Ethos E30 »
14. Modular boat is for both work and pleasure
18. The rise of white collar industry in
developed countries means that the
majority of workers spend most of their
days sitting down, often with bad posture.
As a result, we’ve seen a few innovations
attempt to bring micro-exercise into the
office environment, such as the Stir
Kinetic Desk, which occasionally rises to
encourage users to regularly get up from
their chair. Now Tao WellShell is a smart
device that enables anyone to carry out
resistance exercise from their seat, while
also tracking their progress.
Read more about the Tao Wellshell »
15. Handheld device enables workers to sculpt their guns at the office