random rants - banjax blog

Bob the Builder has earned £1bn

Link: Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Bob the Builder's gaffer prepares to unleash Fifi on world's tots.

Following the success of Bob the Builder, which has generated about �1bn in international retail sales since launching on British television in 1999

And the bugger still won't buy a pint in the pub!

Expect the Unexpected

I have just found an interesting article on the Economist website called Expect the unexpected. The results tie in with a quote I read some time ago - "Often the obvious is not apparent"!

So far, so obvious. What was much less so was the researchers' list of “idea factors”—where the ideas for the innovations came from, and how they determined the success or otherwise of the ensuing innovation. For instance, “need spotting” involved actively looking for an answer to a known problem, while “solution spotting” meant finding a new way of using an existing piece of technology—much as the CD player capitalised on the recently invented laser diode. “Mental inventions” were things dreamed up in the head with little reference to the outside world, while “random events” were serendipitous moments when innovators stumbled on something they were not looking for but immediately recognised its significance. The two other sources of ideas were “market research” and “trend following”.

When the team plotted the success-to-failure rate of the six different idea factors, the two worst by far turned out to be trend following and mental inventions. Both produced three times as many failures as successes. By contrast, need spotting produced twice as many successes as failures. Market research generated four times more, and solution spotting seven times more successes than failures. But the clear winner in the innovation stakes was “taking advantage of random events”, which generated 13 times more successes than failures.