Business Cards
Here is a little tip. Not having a business card when someone asks is the kiss of death for success. All sales people know to keep plenty of business cards on hand. What if you run out? Even quick turn around companies like Vistaprint require a couple of days to get you a new supply of business cards. So what do you do if you need business cards now?
Here is what I do. Keep a digital copy on a CD or USB Flash Drive. The best format is an Adobe PDF. When you need business cards in a hurry, go to the local instant print shop, such as Kinkos and have them print your business cards from the file on your CD or a USB Flash Drive. I ask the helpful people at Kinkos to print my document on glossy cards stock using the color printer they have behind the counter. You can also request a matte finish and colors if that is what you want.
A single 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of card stock produces 10 business cards and costs about $1.5 per sheet or $0.15 per card. It’s obviously not the most economical but it’s fast and produces high quality cards instantly. You can have them cut it for you but since my card is a full bleed design I take the sheets over to the manual paper cutter and do it myself, saving a bit of cash.
Now for your normal cards I use psPrint.com. You can upload your dual sided full color business card file then place orders any time you need more. This is super convenient and cost effective. Their quality is top notch. And as I mentioned before, you can try VistaPrint, they offer a similar service.
A really easy way to make your business card file is to use the business card template I have here and paste a high resolution JPG into each of the 10 cells in the table. Make sure your JPG is at least 150 DPI (dots per inch), I prefer 300 DPI. This file will be several mega bytes when you are finished.
Action Items
- Make a PDF or Word Document of your business cards
- Get a USB Flash drive
- Keep the business card document with you ready when you need it
Miracle of Water, Key to Innovation
Water is one of the weird things in nature. It doesn’t seem to follow the rules that other materials follow. One of the essential skills to being innovative is finding and understanding odd cases. The better you are at seeing the things that don’t fit the established rules the better you will be able to innovate. Innovation is simply discovering a more accurate view of the truth and implementing your discovery.
The weird behavior of water suggests to me that other rules are in play. If we can uncover what is really going on we will make a ton of new discoveries.
I had planned on writing my own article about water but the same day I received the following article in one of the many newsletter to which I subscribe. Since its states the case for water being unusual so well I figured I’d just pass it along.
The winter months are rapidly approaching. In cities and towns across the nation temperatures have begun to drop. Here in North Idaho, a blanket of freshly fallen snow has enveloped Koinonia House. Like the staff here at K-House, many of you will have the opportunity to enjoy the poetry and beauty – and the needed respites – of the ice and snow of this special season.
Have you ever noticed that ice floats? Why?
Virtually every material substance contracts when it cools. As it gets warmer, the molecules increase their vibrational energy and require more room: the substance therefore expands as it warms. And, conversely, it contracts as it cools. Materials decrease in volume as they get colder. Water is the astonishing exception. It expands when it freezes into a solid. Why does water violate this general rule? Why does water expand when freezing?
The water molecule is a (not-so-simple) combination of two atoms of hydrogen bonded to one of oxygen. Yet this particular combination possesses an amazing array of unique characteristics that distinguish it from any other material known!
The Freezing Process
Although almost all materials decrease in volume as they get colder, water has an astonishing characteristic. As it drops toward its freezing point of 0oC (32o F), its volume also reduces until it reaches 4oC, after which it actually increases. In a pond or lake, for example, this “inverse convection” has the salutary effect of bringing oxygen dissolved at the surface down to the lower depths for use by fish and other organisms. This process continues until the entire area has reached 4oC. As the water cools below this temperature, it dramatically increases in volume, making it lighter than the water below. This ultimately causes the top layer to freeze, which then actually acts as an insulation layer against the very low temperature of the air above. If water did not have this strange property, the entire pond or lake would freeze solid and fish and other living creatures would be killed.
This expansion can have disastrous effects on uninsulated water pipes in winter. However, this expansion effect has essential functions in nature. The rain or dew penetrates the soil, and when it freezes, the soil is shattered into small particles, breaking up the hard earth into suitable conditions in which seeds can germinate.
Why This Exceptional Behavior?
This strange behavior derives from the unusual bonding relationship between the two hydrogen atoms and the one oxygen atom that make up a molecule of water, H2O. The oxygen atom strongly attracts the single electrons of the two hydrogen atoms, leaving the two positively charged hydrogen nuclei rather free to attract other negative atoms. This attracts the oxygen molecules in other water molecules to form rather large, but loosely coupled, frameworks.
These atoms are not in a straight line, however, and the hydrogen atoms are bent toward each other, forming an asymmetrical three-dimensional structure. The angle formed between the two hydrogen and the central oxygen atom is 104.5o, almost precisely that of a hexagonal tetrahedron shape (109.5o), so it can take up this shape (slightly warped three-dimensionally) with little stress on the bonds. Opposite the hydrogen atoms, the clouds of resulting negative electrification attract the hydrogen nucleus of an adjacent water molecule to form what is called a hydrogen bond – the key to water’s peculiar behavior.
These tenacious hydrogen bond frameworks give water many astonishing characteristics, including anomalously high values for viscosity, surface tension, and the temperature and heats of melting and boiling. This results in its ubiquitous role as a solvent, its remarkable thermal properties, its surface tension and capillary action, and virtually innumerable chemical properties that are essential for life.
One would expect that these unique properties would make it a very rare molecule, produced only with great difficulty under laboratory conditions. The reality is, of course, quite the opposite: it is the most prevalent material on the planet, covering three-fourths of its surface, diffused extensively in the atmosphere, and – to the surprise of geologists – also found at astonishing depths in the earth. That such a unique substance should be in such abundance is in contradiction to any expectation of random chance alone.
Snow
Water vapor is a clear gas, which, as it cools under normal conditions, condenses and forms into water droplets. At high altitudes, water vapor can cool to below freezing, but in the absence of an impurity such as dust, around which it can collect, it will remain in this state.
When ice crystals form, the molecules of water arrange themselves in a specific pattern that is determined by the tetrahedral shape of the molecule in the frozen state described above. As further molecules join those already frozen, they give up their high latent heat of freezing, and melt the adjacent molecules, which reform to a shape dependent upon the local conditions of air temperature, wind currents, humidity, etc. Each snowflake pattern is unique to itself, but is always based upon the hexagonal bonding pattern of the ice crystals familiar to us all.
Snow also has a constructive role in the ecological cycle. It filters dust out of the air, absorbs nitrogen which then enters the soil, and acts as an insulating blanket to the plants and roots in the ground. The difference in temperature between the air and the ground covered by two feet of snow can be as much as 40oC.
When snow melts, it requires considerable heat to affect this, and therefore melts slowly, lowering the rate of melt water and reducing the flooding that could occur if the latent heat of freezing were lower.
In addition to all these unique properties, snow also has the added ability of reflecting all the colors of the spectrum to yield pure white. Is no wonder that we often find ourselves in awe of the sheer beauty of a layer of freshly fallen snow. May the tell-tale signs of winter throughout the coming months serve to remind you of the wonderful works of our Lord.
If one very simply thing like water can be so amazing, just think about how many innovations and new understandings are possible if you are willing to look with an open mind.
Action Items
- List three (3) things that break the accepted rules. These can be physical items, behaviors, anything.
- List the basic assumptions that go into making the rule.
- List some things that were previously thought to be impossible that would become possible if that assumption was changed.
- List some changes you would like to see happen that would occur if a basic assumption was changed. Choose any assumption personal, scientific, popular, anything.
How to Predict Future Innovation
When I first started writing this I titled it “How to Predict Future Inventions.” I changed that because inventions don’t really change the world. People have invented thousands of silly things that didn’t and shouldn’t have caught on. Innovation is more than invention. Innovation is satisfying a need or want. Innovation has a human element and the engineering element.
To predict future innovations first figure out what people will want then design ways to satisfy those needs and desires. I hear you saying, “Well, duh! We already do marketing research and have lots of engineers & designers working on new products.”
Notice I didn’t say what people currently want. In the past it might have been good enough to supply current demand but everything is moving so quickly today that by the time you deliver on current demands someone else will have likely already done it and the need is satisfied or the market is so changed that your product has a hard time getting traction.
You might also say, “If I could predict a future innovation I would patent it and be rich.” Well, in future articles I’ll explain why patents often aren’t the correct approach; but, for now, would you like me to give you a patentable future innovation?
People always want more, faster and with less hassle. Until they have the ultimate, their desires steadily progress to the next level of more. If you want to predict future innovations first describe the ultimate.
Since iPods are popular these days and seem to be a big innovation I’ll give you the ultimate innovation on the iPod. First what is an iPod? It’s a way to listen to music. There is nothing new about listening to music. People have been listening to music since the beginning of time. What is the ultimate in listening to music?
The ultimate of anything is,
- What I want
- When I want
- How I want
- Where I want
- Who I want it with, for, or from.
Anything that matches all 5 ultimate desires for a particular want, such as listening to music, is the direction all future innovations for that product will head. So that means we can predict the final innovation. Predicting an innovation between now and the then is just a matter of applying current technology to better satisfy one of the 5 ultimate desires.
Are you starting to see how predicting future innovation is possible? Let’s look at the example of listening to music to help bring it into focus and to reveal that patentable future innovation.
Predictive Innovation Training
Predictive Innovation: Core Skills Book
RoundSquareTriangle.com