Potential innovative and creative ideas for small business start-ups. The ideas here are mine and not copied from anywhere.
I spent months thinking about products and services that may not be in existence and I came up with some ideas listed below. It is creativity that drives technological innovations. These ideas may sound crazy but I believe someday they might be areas of technological research. When Facebook and Amazon began it looked like a joke, but today they are multi-billion industries. Let’s think outside the box. Let’s liberate our thinking/mind-set from the naive cultural blindfold and have a broader vision of reality and the world we live in. No matter how bad an idea is, it might turn out to be a solution to a problem tomorrow; so don’t give up on your ideas. An idea is neither good nor bad until it works.
Take up any of these ideas, research and develop it. But don’t forget to acknowledge the originator of the ideas.
MY JOURNAL OF CREATIVE IDEAS
Here are some of my ideas and a brief explanation on each.
Section 1
- Mobile barbing services. With this service, people can book online for barbing and have their hair barbed in the comfort their house.
- Training and certification program for automobile mechanics in Nigeria. This service is to update and train them on the latest auto technologies and repairs. ( This idea will be expounded more, later in the article )
- Unlike the US, in Nigeria, many families are sustained by the money that comes from local transportation using bikes. That is to say many due to unemployment go into transporting people using bike and tricycles in rural areas. Even those that have personal cars at one time or another use the “Okada” as it is called in our local parlance. The little money that comes from Okada riding goes into buying gas ( fuel) to fuel the bikes or tricycles. The Okada riders pick and drop people from point to point, covering only a few miles daily so, I have this idea of producing an electric bike or tricycle or hybrid one to ease the cost of buying gas for these local Okada riders and to maximize their income.
Section 2
Many students find it difficult to buy some books that are not available in the school library or in pdf copies and as such, it decreases their productivity. I have an idea of partnering with publishers and school libraries to open an online book lending store for most expensive books. The Publishers supply us the books and we lend it out to students for a semester at 50% of the price of the book. The student returns the book at the end of each semester. Rules on how to use the book and conditions for payments and returns apply.
- The number of electric cars plying the roads of California is gradually increasing. By 2025 most of the cars on the road will be electric vehicles. Looking at this gradual departure from the traditional Gas engines to battery-powered engines, we have this idea that mobile charging assistance that boosts the auto batteries by charging them fast will be needed to assist vehicles running out of power ( and low remaining miles) in areas where the charging stations are not accessible. The owner of the electric car will register with us and we provide assistance when we are called upon.
- Because of the many complaints of leaking roof during raining season in Nigeria caused by poor workmanship and the difficulty in tracing the leaking points under the dark roof, we have this idea of developing a device that can trace tiny holes( responsible for the leaking roofs) on the roof by sensitivity to light rays emanating from such holes. This will make it easy to trace and seal such leaking points on the roofs.
- An interactive vehicle tracking device. Before now tracking a vehicle is done using the smartphones(Using the GPS module on the car that communicates with the map on the smartphone). This system makes it difficult to track a vehicle when the smartphone is not available. So, we have this idea of developing a device that would interact with the GPS module installed and hidden in a vehicle. This standalone handheld device when deployed will communicate with voice, the vehicle position, location(including address) without any visual description on the map except when it is paired with a smartphone.
- An electric vacuum food flask that when plugged into an electricity source, keeps food at a steady warm temperature for days.
Section 3
- House mailbox delivery reminder. This is a device that will alert those living in a house that a mail is dropped in the mailbox. When mails are dropped on the mailbox, a mild the will sound and intervals as a reminder until the mailbox is emptied.
- A smart smoke detector that alerts the members of a household of any fire incident. It will work with an app that will be downloaded by all the members of the household to receive a notification.
- A solar face cap for camping and tourists. This will be a lightweight cap with a solar panel and battery. The solar panel charges the 5v battery during the day. It shall have LED bulbs and a USB port for charging phones.
- Palm wine extractor for local tappers in remote Nigerian communities. These tappers climb the palm trees with their plastic containers to twice a day: morning and evening to check and bring down the palm wine which is a favourite drink for many rural dwellers and a source of income to the tappers. We are looking at a technology that can assist these tappers to minimise climbing up and down daily and to save them from the risk of falling from the trees which have occurred severally in the past. This palm tapping technology with feature a manual extractor that collects the wine and empties it in a container via a flexible pipe.
- An electric incinerating trash can to minimize waste dump. When switched on, burns the garbage reducing pollution caused by decayed garbage and the quantity of trash thrown out.
Section 4
- TRAINING / CERTIFICATION FOR AUTO MECHANICS
The growing sophistication in automobiles and the complexities of the technologies that come with them imposes serious challenges to automobile mechanics especially in the third world or developing countries in the world. While the Western world is seriously advancing and researching into the autonomous vehicle – some prototypes already tested, Africa and most developing countries are still struggling with maintaining bad roads and lack of qualified personnel to handle the maintenance of most automatic vehicles in use by the citizens. In Nigeria for instance, people have a serious reservation when it comes to buying hybrid vehicles because of lack of replacement parts and qualified electricians and mechanics to handle the hybrid vehicles. As a consequence, there is a very limited number of such vehicles in Nigeria and as such Nigeria is not a fertile ground for marketing such as hybrid or electric vehicles. Statistically speaking the ratio of hybrid vehicles to other regular vehicles in Nigeria is 2: 50. My concern is not to propose the use of electric vehicles or encourage people to buy hybrid vehicles in Nigeria but to establish a way of training auto mechanics to equip them with the knowledge to tackle the problems that come with complex technological advancement in automobiles.
90% of the mechanics I have encountered in my lifetime in Nigeria have no college or university education. Most of them did not even finish high school. So the mechanic business seems to be a job reserved for the uneducated or simply say the less privileged youths in the Nigerian society; this should no longer be the case. The time has come to offer certification programs and training in specialised fields in automobile technology- it is no longer going to be the current situation where one mechanic works on a variety of automobiles with no specialization. We believe that with the availability of qualified electricians and mechanics, auto dealers will be very enthusiastic in the importation of auto parts that hitherto are not in the market and this will encourage the citizens to buy hybrid and other sophisticated cars.
2.AUTOMATED WALKER
An automated walker for visually impaired people. The walker will have these capabilities: object detection and avoidance, GPS voice direction and location, past walking route and location memory for easy guidance, Bluetooth connection to Earpiece for voice guidance etc.
3.IMPLANTABLE URIC ACID MONITOR
I would like to develop a device that monitors the level of uric acid in the blood of patients who have a failed or weak kidney and who go through dialysis weekly.
Why: Because there has to be a way the patient knows that it is time to go for dialysis to avoid the excess accumulation of uric acid in the blood which poses further dangers to the patient’s health. The device will also be used to determine the level of kidney functioning.
The kidney filters about 5 litres of blood that enters it through the renal artery every 5 minutes and in general maintain homeostasis (Ph level, blood pressure, osmolarity etc.) in the body. After filtration by the nephrons in the kidney, important nutrients needed by the body are reabsorbed into the bloodstream through the renal vein, while waste products like urea leave the kidney through the ureter and are emptied into the bladder to be discharged from the body as urine.
Design Description
The design shall consist of two devices. The first device consists of a Nanofabricated implantable device that runs on a lithium battery implanted along the atrial line in any part of the body where it comes in contact with blood. The second device shall consist of a portable device with a Liquid crystal display that receives signal wirelessly from the implanted device and runs on a 4000mah rechargeable lithium battery.
The implantable device shall be equipped with biosensors that track the level of uric acid in the blood and transmit the information to the external portable device that analyses the blood saturation of uric acid and outputs the data on the LCD display. The external portable device shall be equipped with an algorithm that measures the normal and abnormal level of uric acid in the blood. This information would help both the patient and health care provider to determine if a patient’s kidney is performing poorly or has failed completely and act as a reminder to go for Dialysis.
The implanted chip will also be designed to communicate with the dialysis machine in the hospital which is upgraded with this capability so that the doctor can also see the level of uric acid in the blood and make his or her recommendations.
Section 5
- Travelling Bag Identifier.
I have personally had the experience of waiting for so long to identify my bags at the airport baggage claim. Most times, it is difficult to identify one’s bags due to identical bags rolling around the machine carrying the bags. This happens to be the experience of many I interacted with. So we want to develop an RF or Bluetooth baggage identifier device that is placed on the bag or bags and a key holder sensor that works with it so that once the bag identifier device is close to the person holding the sensor, it begins to beep with red lights. - Trashcan disposal reminder alarm.
This system will be embedded in in-room trash cans. Shall be set to remind disposal according to the user’s preference. An electronic display enables users to input data to activate reminder - Bed Vibrator. This device is meant to help those who are deep slumbers and can hardly be waked up by the ordinary alarm. This device will be attached to the bed and with its electronic time display, one can set the time to wake up. Fast vibration will be activated at the set time to wake up the user from sleeping further.
- Electric generator Low Gas Alarm/ reminder. The use of generators for generating electricity is commonplace in Nigeria due to her epileptic power supply. 99% of the population uses electricity generators which could be diesel or gas( fuel). Most of these generators have low oil reminder which usually kicks in by shutting down the generator to protect the Engine when oil runs low. But the most embarrassing issue with generators is the absence of low gas alarm/ reminder, the consequence of this is that the generator can go off at any time, worse still in the middle of an important job. This makes the use of UPS ( uninterrupted power supply) a necessity as a backup to some sensitive electronic gadgets. We have this idea of developing a low gas reminder system embedded in most higher capacity generators to forestall emergency shutdowns. This embedded electric circuit with a sensor in the gas tank will automatically trigger an alarm to remind the users to refill gas when the gas runs low before the generator shuts down.
- Electronic water tap temperature regulator. This device will enable one to select hot- cold water temperature in the bathroom. I came up with this idea because when the bath tap is moved in a certain position either hot water or cold or warm water flushes it out. My body was almost burnt the first day I used the bath here in the US and till today many bath tap comes with various ways to regulate hot and cold water. So we have in mind of producing an electronic/digital water tap that can simply allow one to select cold, Warm, Hot, or very hot temperatures.
This device will replace the traditional tap knob and would be embedded in water taps.
If you find any of these ideas interesting, please comment and more importantly work on developing it.
