The Niche Beat
Beaver Eats Apple Farmer out of Business
Ecology Challenges When a new farmer in the state of Maine went into the Apple farming business, he awakened one morning to find that his entire crop was gone. During the night, a beaver had munched through all the fruit trees, from top to bottom. Lesson: Ecological issues include the weather and the habits of […]
STOMP
Dispute Launched a Unique Entertainment Company In the 1980s, drummer and street performer Luke Cresswell couldn’t use traditional instruments while performing on public streets, so he began using ordinary items that had a percussive beat. This idea served a number of purposes. Not only did he have access to an original supply of free or low-cost […]
Marketing Lessons for Potential Entrepreneurs
Why Good Contestants Can’t Win Food Network Contest In 2011, the final two were narrowed to a man and woman who prepared demo tapes, one of which offered Mexican cooking with a twist, while the other specialized in creating sandwiches. Some people seem to think it was a close call between the two, but I […]
The Pitfalls of Vocational Tests
Beware of Experts In What Color Is Your Parachute, author Richard Bolles’s cautions readers about the consequences of good and bad vocational testing. He tells the story of a man who was given the Strong Inventory by a counselor then told that according to the test results he had no mechanical aptitude; zip, nada. Traumatized, […]
The Help
When a Good Idea Doesn’t Sell The international best-selling book The Help by Kathryn Stockett is now a movie with a lot of media buzz, yet it was rejected 60 times before gaining acceptance. his latest literary piece about the civil rights era and the lives of black maids and their employers in the southernUnited […]
Shepard Fairey And Fair-Use Law
Using Presidential Images In Product Design Street artist Shepard Fairey created the now famous Obama poster and used a photo taken by an Associated Press photographer for his illustration. Fairey believed that he was legally entitled to use the AP photograph under the concept of “fair use,” so he didn’t get permission from the actual […]
Chesley Sullenberger
Smooth Sailing Sully Sullenberger knew he wanted to be a pilot from the time he was five years old. He built model airplanes and read everything about aviation that he could get his hands on. By his teens, he was flying. When Sullenberger became an adult pilot, and later experienced cuts in his salary and […]
Time Masters
Watching the Market The Meylan Stopwatch Corporation started out selling ordinary watches via mail order in the 1920’s, until competition forced the company to venture into the stopwatch field, where they began selling their products to sports buffs and government workers. The following decade, Meylan began supplying precision timepieces to the educational, scientific, and industrial […]
Hidden Talents
Aptitudes of Louis Armstrong & Theodore Geisel Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong is known internationally as a renowned jazz musician, but perhaps only diehard fans are aware that, despite his lack of formal schooling, he was a gifted writer, too. He penned his autobiography solo, without the use of the usual ghost writer or collaborator. Armstrong’s book is regarded as […]
Einstein’s Smart Refrigerator
Killer Appliances Although many people know Albert Einstein as a scientist, many are probably not aware that he was also an inventor. After winning the Nobel Prize in the 1920s, he began looking for a solution to a deadly problem. Entire families were being poisoned to death in their sleep by the toxic ammonia coolant […]