Little i innovation every day

- Remember how I talked about little eye innovation versus big eye innovation? I'm going to share with you some examples of what little eye everyday innovation looks like. I hope this inspires you to see how simple innovation can be. In 2016, a Dutch e-bike company decided to start shipping their products overseas to the US. Now, the problem was, over 25% of their bikes were being damaged during shipping due to carrier mishandling. So their team gets together and asks the question, what would prompt carriers to be more delicate with the parcel? And do you know what their answer was? Why, televisions, of course. Televisions are a popular item in the US that shipping companies would handle carefully. So here's what they did. They took their shipping box and printed a picture of a TV on it. It just so happened that the bike boxes and TV boxes were roughly the same size and weight, and this small change resulted in an 80% reduction in carrier damage. This was huge for them. Think about this, all they did was print a picture of a TV and stick it on the box, and that was it. Incredible, right? This is little eye innovation. Here's another example. Rolling luggage. Before 1970, the only way you could move your luggage was either carrying it yourself or hiring a porter to do it for you. In 1972, Bernard Sadow, Vice President of United States Luggage, became the inventor, and patent owner, of the world's first wheeled luggage bag. Do you know how he came up with this idea? In 1970, he was returning from a family vacation, and was struggling with two heavy suitcases through the airport. In customs, he observed a worker moving heavy machinery around on a wheeled pallet, effortlessly. Seeing this, he said to his wife, you know, that's what we need for luggage. The next day, Bernard went to work and removed four wheels from a wardrobe trunk. He attached it to a luggage bag, and put a strap on it. And in his words, he said this, "I put a strap on the front and pulled it, and it worked." And that's it, that's how he invented rolling luggage. Isn't this brilliant? Bernard took existing resources he already had, combined them together in a new way, and boom, presto, he invented rolling luggage. It was so simple, yet no one had ever done it before. Here's one more example from my own life. My first corporate job was working at an insurance company as a designer. They hired me to design, and that's all I wanted to do. Now, the problem was, I also had administrative tasks that took me away from the more fun, creative work I wanted to focus on. So I needed a way to make those administrative tasks faster and easier. Part of the administration work was regularly updating our website, and it was a nightmare. It took lots of steps and a lot of time. I literally cringed every time I had to do it. And I thought, there has to be a better way to update the site that's quick and easy. So I found a solution, and I tested it to make sure it worked, and it did. I was ecstatic. Not only did it free me from doing tedious, repetitive work, it also gave me time back to work on more creative things, the things I wanted to do. I had optimized one of the more tedious processes that led to more value for the company. Back then, I didn't call that innovation, but it really was. I created a new future for myself. What do these examples have in common? They are evidence that everyone can innovate. They show that innovation doesn't have to be difficult, it doesn't have to take a long time. Innovation can be both in the small and big things. And innovation, my friends, starts with you. All you need to learn is how. And then that's what we'll be talking about next. Are you ready?