Invention at Play

For those of you who might be visiting the DC area, be sure to visit the newly-renovated and opened National Museum of American History. The Lincoln Exhibition is great, but I really enjoyed the Innovation at Play exhibit on the first floor. It's interactive, very visual and tactile, and very imaginative.

Willie Watson - Friendly Reminder

An electronic flat screen daily planner with touch screen capabilities called “Friendly Reminder.”
As a college student, we have tons of obligations that pile in by the second. It is not a day to pass where we do not remember a task or that we recall at the last minute and our old friend “craming” comes to bail us out once again. Not only is this a problem with college students, but also managers, CEO’s, and all sorts of business oriented people. Yes, there are PDA’s cell phones, and those unreliable paperback daily planners that alert us during the day, but to be more effective on remembering upcoming appointments should be the first thing we see in the morning. I plan on inventing a digital wide screen calendar/planner that suspends from your wall. The calendar will allow you to program your appointments in the system with the option to “dispose after completed” for tasks typing a paper or the option to make it a daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, or yearly for events such as paying bills and birthdays. The most amazing feature about this calendar is the priority lighting system. It consists of three different colors; red, blue, and green to let you know as soon as you open your eyes in the morning whether you got something to do. Red is for task or events that is due that day, Blue is for events that week, and green is events longer than a week but approaching. So if you wake up in the morning to a room filled with flashing red lights, you might want to jump out of bed and check your calendar. The most convenient feature is that it talks to you and tells you exactly what you have to do, so no more wasting precious time instead you can continue getting dressed or whatever else you need to do to prepare for the day. I will have the greatest financial success with this product on college campuses so I am going to release it in campus supply stores and eventually branch into electronic stores such as Office Max and Circuit City. From an estimated cost of production, I figured that a price of $124.99 would be a legitimate price to make a substantial profit.
With all new products comes hesitant customers, and this product will provide no exceptions. It will pose the question “Do I really want to invest this much money into a calendar?” One major problem that the calendar will face is convincing people of the quality of this unproven product. College students are usually strapped for cash and have a tight budget, therefore it will be a problem marketing this product in the beginning.I will be faced with the obstacle of heavy marketing to insure my target market is knowledge of all the features and in result willing to invest in my invention. Another issue I face is creating a dual image for the product. Friendly Reminder must be trendy enough to appeal to college students and professional enough to appeal to the corporate world.

Gabriele Plate - Water Purification

We ran out of battery power on the camera for Alex and Gabriele. Read Gabriele's pitch through this link.

William Morris

Rebecca Casteel

Nathan McMullin

Morgan Nix

Matthew Bavar

Leighton Griggers

Lori Grant - Iron Bar

Justin Patterson

Jordan Winn

Jessica Ellison

Joseph Hubbard

Grey O'Brien

Grace Burch

David Baker

Darrell Miller

Danny Smith - Video Glass for Law Enforcement

Danny Beard - Solar Panels for Alabama

Christopher Boone - Organic Produce

Chris Smelley

Bryan Hahn - Contractor jobs database

Brennan Wheeler

Brett Coburn - Neighborhood Social Networking

Ben Thurber - "I'mAFan.com"

Ashleigh Gay

Alex Biehn - Online backup system for students

We ran out of battery power on the camera for Alex and Gabriele.

My idea for a new venture is an online backup service targeted at students. This would be a subscription based service that can be paid for by the month or on a semester basis. It would partner with universities so that students would have a worry free place to back up their files on their computers. This would solve a problem of having to constantly back up personal computers at home and give them a distant secure place to back up files in case something happened in their dorm, home, or apartment. The computer could be set up to automatically back up all files on the computer at night or at a set time daily. This way if the computer crashed or was broken all the student would have to do is log in to their account and reinstall the files on a new computer or the repaired one.

The start-up costs for this venture would be the costs of building a website, programming, and having the space to store files. Since more space can be bought as needed, the business model is very scalable, and you could even go the route of having another server hosting the site so that you never actually have to buy big hard drives to store the data on. This way you just rent or buy more space as you gain more and more customers. This could start as a very small business on this very campus.

The rates for the business would be something like $5 a month or $20 for a semester per student. Since most of the files on a computer might only add up to a few gigabytes starting with a terabyte external hard drive could service multiple customers. There is competition but I have not found anything targeted at students yet. Most of the online backup services are targeted at businesses. This would be a valuable tool for students with all of the class work being done on computers these days. If you could get 20,000 students at the university to sign up for the semester then the revenues would be $400,000. This would a hue profit margin with the relatively low start up costs. Getting programs set up at more and more universities would make this business a very lucrative venture.

Ashish Patel - Inventory Check Scanner System

Allison Abney - Green Grocer

The Sundance Channel: EcoBiz

Rent a Green Box - Ecopreneuring with Spencer Brown

InternshipIN Student-Founded, Student-Run Business

Founded by U.C. Berkeley students Arielle Patrice Scott, Jessica Mah, and Andy Su in the Fall of 2008.

InternshipIN is bridging the gap between two groups of people hungry to get to know each other with no true other way to connect.