Small Business
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The issue: Many companies (especially tech-related ones) are located in extremely expensive cities. If a company in a major metropolitan area could easily relocate to a nearby but outlying area, then employee salaries could be cut by 25%, yet the employees would still have more after-tax/rent income. So essentially, the company would both be more…
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Background: Many web sites require a user to agree to a long and incomprehensible “terms of service” before they can use the site. Since these contracts are dozens (or hundreds) of pages, everyone just scrolls to the end and clicks “AGREE.” (See two examples in Figure 1). While you’d think that a company could slip…
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Background: When a company offers a rebate (“buy this widget, get $50 back”), only a fraction of customers will actually deposit the rebate check. If customers don’t deposit their rebates, then the company can keep the money. So it would be useful if there was some sort of dirty trick to reduce rebate deposit rates.…
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Background: Sometimes, your coworkers will come to work with obvious contagious diseases, coughing everywhere and spreading disease and pestilence throughout the land. Proposal: The best situation in this situation is for you or your boss to say “hey you, sick individual, go home!” This should save time and money by preventing others from getting sick, but is…
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Background: Haircuts can be time-consuming and expensive. Somehow, even though modern robotics have resulted in quad-copters, robotic surgery, and an alarm clock with a hand that slaps you in the face, the dream of automated haircuts remains elusive. Proposal: Behold, our salvation from laborious non-automated haircuts: the mechanical “haircut helmet.” Fig 1: Functional AND fashionable, the…
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Background: Have you ever had to deal with a shared refrigerator? If so, you may be familiar with the issue of old food items piling up in nooks and crannies of the fridge and never being removed. Periodically cleaning the fridge will fix this, but it’s a hassle to figure out which food is old…
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Background: If you go into a coffeeshop in a major city, there is a good chance that you will find it entirely colonized by patrons with laptops who use the shop as a “home office.” Even if you wait for half an hour, you might never get a table. Woe! Previously, this issue could be…
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The issue: Sometimes you pay for something in cash and get 19 cents in change. Who wants to deal with those coins? No one. Fig 1: Coins and a dollar bill. This is what people in olden times used to pay for things. Proposal: Instead of having to deal with annoying change in your pocket,…
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Background: In many office environments, communal coffee is brewed periodically. But it is difficult to tell how old the contents of the carafe are (or if it’s even coffee from the day before). Fig 1: The classic coffee carafe. No bells or whistles. How barbaric! Proposal: The carafe should be able to easily tell you…
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Background: Many jurisdictions allow a limited degree of direct democracy, where citizens can submit any measure to be voted on (for example: “the city will buy everyone a free horse to eat at Thanksgiving”). If a measure gets a sufficient number of signatures, it must be placed on the ballot. Proposal: It’s generally a lot…
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