What type of good ideas do people have

Hi John

In the more recent coaching sessions the good ideas have been very focused around the notion of sustainability and affordability within the context of a post Covid economy. Typically exploring how to address problems in the food supply chain re transparency, traceability and very big on equity. The same for healthcare, utilities and fashion was a big issue for students in particular how the sector ethics and the environment.

For example a remarkable inspirational report by one of the students at Hult said this. “My good idea is to explore the idea of using digital technology to solve the problems related to sustainability and ethics in the fashion industry by creating transparency and allowing the user to leverage p2p interactions in order to make a sale or purchase, thereby decreasing its human and environmental impact. The business’ value proposition is to create transparency in the industry while reducing risk, cost, human and environmental suffering by creating a distributed supply chain platform that allows p2p interactions, encourages a p2p economy and reverses the supply chain.”

Interestingly, when I teach tech oriented people they tend to have a good idea to build something and then try to find a problem that is painful enough that people would adopt the tech. However when I teach business oriented people, especially young students they look at the problems and then see what value the tech might unlock

The same Hult student goes on to say. “The root problem of the business is that consumers have the expectation that fashion is a disposable, cheap commodity., which is emphasized by the fast-fashion culture that supports mass consumption of these goods and the industry’s reaction to this demand with mass-production. 

This root problem has 4 organisational subproblems: overproduction of garments, a lack of transparency, labour exploitation and unsustainable & unethical practices. These four problems are the ones that will be tackled in order to relieve or eliminate the burden of the root problem.”

The solution sets all range from very simple use of leaders and smart contracts where legal and social agreements can be established and managed all they way to entire whole of systems such as fully automated supply chains.

In regional Australia in a post Covid environment they are very grounded in their good ideas where retailers are looking at local value based loyalty models where trust in incorporated in to the reward equation rather than discounting. For example but switching from retailer to customer broker purchasing on behalf of a group to compete with the likes of Amazon. 

I am working on a video to illustrate the diversity of good ideas and will post up in the coming weeks

Stephen