Innovation Jeopardy

Value Proposition Innovation

100

In 2007 there was a design conference coming to San Francisco and the city’s hotels were fully booked, so two guys came up with the idea of renting out three airbeds on their living-room floor and cooking their guests breakfast. The next day they created a website, six days later they had a 30-year-old Indian man, a 35-year-old woman from Boston and a 45-year-old father of four from Utah sleeping on their floor. They charged $80 each a night. Today this has grown to have over 3,000,000 lodging listings in 65,000 cities and 191 countries. Name this company.

Airbnb

200

This company founded in 1999, was the largest online shoe retailer, before it was expanded and got acquired by Amazon. This company has a mission to provide best possible customer service. This company follows Holacracy for quite some time now, which enables its employees to provide the best possible service. Name this company?

Zappos!

Digital Innovation

100

This telecom major signed a deal with Aspen Group to create the first Smart City in the northern region of Malaysia. The services include security surveillance solutions, car sharing, digital signage, smart parking, energy, waste management etc. Which telecom major is this?

Telekom Malaysia

200

In March 2017, this company created a pair of sneakers that had a button hidden on the tongue, which people can click to initiate the default order that they have configured with their mobile app. Which company is it?

Pizza Hut

Leveraging Serendipity

100

This was created to be a cleaning product. This paste was first marketed as a treatment for filthy wallpaper — before the company that produced it began to go down the tubes. What actually saved the company wasn't that their wall cleaner worked particularly well, but that schoolchildren were beginning to use it to create Christmas ornaments as arts and crafts projects. Identify the product.

Play-Doh

200

Percy Spencer was an American engineer who, while working for Raytheon, walked in front of a magnetron, a vacuum tube used to generate electromagnetic waves, and noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket melted. In 1945 after a few more experiments (one involving an exploding egg), Spencer successfully invented the first ____________________.

Microwave oven

Guarding Innovation

100

Ferrucio was originally a farmer who made tractors. His business was very successful and he was among the wealthiest in Italy. He owned Ferrari among other super cars. But he used to face a lot of problems with the clutch of his Ferrari. The problem with the clutch was never cured, so Ferrucio decided to talk to Enzo Ferrari. He had to wait for him a very long time. ‘Ferrari, your cars are rubbish!’ Ferrucio complained. Enzo was furious. “You may be able to drive a tractor but you will never be able to handle a Ferrari Properly.’ This was the point when Ferrucio finally decided to make a perfect car. He named the company after his surname, that eventually became Ferrari’s greatest competitor. Identify the company.

Lamborghini

200

Soichiro was a mechanic at a garage. His job was to tune cars to prepare them for races. He founded Tōkai Seiki, a piston rings manufacturing company in 1937. This company won a contract to supply piston rings to an established automobile company – Toyota. But soon after, he lost the contract due to the poor quality of the products. He took time out to better understand Toyota’s quality control processes, and by 1941, he was able to mass produce piston rings acceptable to Toyota. Toyota took a 40% stake in his company, but he was demoted from president to senior managing director. Tōkai Seiki’s manufacturing plants were destroyed in US bomb attacks in 1944. He sold the salvageable remains of the company to Toyota and used the proceeds to found a Technical Research Institute in October 1946. He worked with a staff of 12 men in a 172-square-foot shack. They built and sold improvised motorized bicycles by building their own copy of Tohatsu engines and supplying these to customers to attach to their bicycles. This Motor Company grew in a short time to become the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles by 1964. They thereafter entered into mini pick-up trucks & finally into the car segment and today is a serious competitor to Toyota. Name the company.

Honda

Leading Innovation

100

His friends used to like his chicken recipe very much. The fact that this was the only novel idea he had, he decided to act upon it. He left his home and started his travels to different US states to sell his idea. He would tell restaurant owners that he had a chicken recipe which people liked and he was ready to give it to them for free, in return for a small percentage on the items sold. He got 1009 NO’s before he got his first Yes. With that one success, he changed the eating habits of the whole world. Identify this person.

Colonel Sanders, from Kentucky – founder of KFC

200

Fred Smith was an undergraduate at Yale University in 1965. As part of the coursework, he wrote an economics paper exploring the process of transportation of goods in the United States. He wrote a last-minute paper on how a company carrying small, essential items by plane could be a much better business. His paper was graded “C”. But Smith did not give up on the idea and launched the company in 1971. Today this company is a global logistics giant with operations in more than 220 countries and territories and an annual revenue of US $45 billion. Identify the company.

FedEx