The OneDown mousetrap swings upright from horizontal due to a rodent’s own weight to clearly indicate that it has been trapped. There is no risk of snapping the fingers and creating any mess or smell as the trap doesn’t kill the mouse and can easily be deposited outside. OneDown was a Gold Award Winner, and was created by the DSK ISD International School of Design in India. See original post here.

The LA Times was there to cover the event and this is what they said:

Thursday night at Live Nation Enterainment headquarters in Beverly Hills, musician/producer/Eurythmic/renaissance man Dave Stewart and branding expert/author/ “marketing guru” Mark Simmons held a media event to introduce their new book, “The Business Playground: Where Creativity and Commerce Collide.” It’s a playful, genre-busting tome that discusses ways in which creativity can be used in the business world.

The pair discussed the ideas in the book, which has chapter titles such as “Idea Spaghetti,” ”Mr. Left Brain, Meet Mr. Right” and “Far Out,” for about half an hour. Then Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, who’s had a rough few weeks, sat down beside Stewart to have a one-on-one conversation about how Rapino and his company employs creativity to sell tickets to the 22,000 concerts that the conglomerate promotes worldwide each year.

Stewart asked Rapino how Live Nation harnesses their collective imagination in the service of filling seats, and Rapino acknowledged that at times it’s a struggle: “The irony in our business is, we’re kind of considered a sexy business because we’re in the music business, but what we’ve really struggled with is that the band is really the creative front, and they’re on the stage.” Live Nation, he continued, is the conduit through which the professional creatives — musicians — must travel to reach the ears of the audience.

Artists, he said, have been struggling to adjust their business model as concerts have become the major means by which they earn their livings. “The band has been reinventing itself for 20 years. I was at the Rihanna show last night at the Staples Center, and it’s a spectacular show. The band has done their job. The band has elevated the show, the song, the performance, and us handlers kind of got lazy along the way, and whether it was the record guy or the ticket guy.”

Over the years, continued Rapino, the music business in general and Live Nation in particular (referring to Stewart), “started to forget along the way that our job in the value chain is to kind of connect Dave and his fan, and make sure that experience and product is good. And I think what’s happening in the music business on the concert side – this is the first year in 20 years in which the industry is starting to feel kind of a push-back from the consumer. And it’s all about what you would think: We’re charging too much at the door; we’re charging too much for a service fee; we’re not being creative along the process in the delivery of the product. We’re letting you do all the creativity and then kind of wrapping it up in a noncreative way.”

Of all of Live Nation’s divisions around the world, Rapino explained, one group stands above the rest: ”I find my Europeans at an absolutely other level of creativity. One, because they’re smaller units. My Italian division versus the German versus the Belgian – they’re creative in a different way in our business. They’re not trying to hit the home run that gets them rich [and] solves world peace.”

Rapino then offered what he called ”a silly example” that he noticed when he was at a concert in the Netherlands. “We have a division that makes great festivals, and I was walking through the festival, and in a corner were a bunch of women standing up peeing. And I couldn’t believe it. And I looked for a second, and they were so proud that they’d created a way for a woman at a festival — and going to the washroom is always the hardest part — to pee, and move people through, and quicker. Now, that might sound horrible, but they take such pride with the small creativity along the way that’s spectacular. I find in America we spend a lot of time thinking how someone will be Facebook [and] make a billion that we miss a lot of the creativity in the middle.”

Rapino didn’t say whether this innovation in female urination technology will make its way across the ocean and into Live Nation’s American festival experience.

See here for more.

Ask any parent about trying to teach their kids to swim and they’ll most likely tell you a story of their child being too afraid to get in the water. Whether it’s a river, the ocean, or even just the shallow end of a pool, the water can be a scary place for a child who doesn’t know how to swim.

And kids have a right to be scared.

THE NUMBERS

In the USA, drowning remains the second leading cause of injury-related death among children ages 1 to 14. In the UK, one person drowns every 17 hours and drowning is still the third highest cause of accidental death amongst children. Contrary to popular belief, most drowning deaths occur in inland waters such as rivers, lakes and pond.

Other times a child is simply embarrassed. She sees other kids swimming and feels self-conscious that she doesn’t already know how. Swim lessons are often cost-prohibitive for many families, and thus hundreds of thousands of kids never learn how to swim. Learning how to swim is like learning how to ride a bike. Once learned, he or she will keep it with them for the rest of their lives. With over two-thirds of the Earth’s surface covered in water, swimming is a survival skill that is essential to every human being..

THE REALITY

Most children are introduced to water with a set of cheaply made inflatable arm-bands that do nothing to encourage swimming development. The majority of inflatable armbands have the following features in common:

• They are made from precious natural resources and shipped half way across the world.
• In some cases they contain harmful chemicals such as toxic plasticizers, like naphthalene and phthalates. Phthalates are believed to damage the liver, kidneys and reproductive organs. Phthalates are almost completely non-biodegradable.
• They are often inflated orally by different people which creates a hygiene problem.
• They are yanked up a child’s arm often causing discomfort
• They can have sharp edges which scratch them and others around them.
• They do very little to encourage swimming techniques.
• Small leaks often go unnoticed making it dangerous for young swimmers.
• If they are damaged they are irreparable.
• They eventually end up on our ever expanding landfills.

THE ANSWER: MONKEYSWIMMERS ARE BORN!

A small company, Rainbow Swim Ltd., started by two parents has created an answer: Monkey Swimmers! Monkey Swimmers are a uniquely designed, colorful arm band. Made from skin friendly and environmentally friendly reusable foam, they are made to last.

The genius of the idea comes from two innovations in the product. Each set of Monkey Swimmers comes with a brightly colored, brilliantly illustrated children’s book called “Monkey’s Can’t Swim”. The book tells the story about two little monkeys that cannot swim so their mum invents a fun product from banana skins that encourages them to get in the water and start learning.

The second element is a tiered swim program facilitated by the design of Monkey Swimmers. As children’s confidence and ability in the water increases parents can reduce the buoyancy slightly by removing foam layers from the Monkey Swimmers. This speeds up child swimming development meaning fewer swimming lessons, fewer accidents, reduces the millions of plastic armbands that end up on landfill and cuts CO2 emissions. And from the book kids learn more about the environment.

Monkeyswimmers  actively encourage both parents and children to develop water skills.  Increased swim education reduces the number of avoidable tragic deaths caused by drowning, many of which are the direct result of not teaching children the correct water skills at an early age.

Monkey Swimmers are the perfect example of  how creativity, commerce (and some good parenting) collide.

Made by Nokero the rain-proof light bulb is about the size of a standard incandescent bulb and contains a replaceable, rechargeable battery that can be charged during the day to provide light at night. Nokero says the N100 is designed for the 1.6 billion people who live without electricity and rely instead upon lanterns that burn fossil fuels. Full story here.

.

Kevin Scott, 21, designed the space-age bike that wraps around a lamp post so it can be locked-up safely – without the need for a lock or chain. The De Montfort University graduate used a ratchet system built into the frame of the bike to allow it to wrap around a pole, enabling the lock to be wrapped through both wheels and the frame. See more here.

Seeds embedded in the recycled card will grow up to 100 trees. See more here.

Job seeker Ramiro Pareja Veredas, a telecommunications engineer from Spain, created this PCB business card to set himself apart from other job seekers  and it houses his resume, cover letter, portfolio, etc.

From Gamma Squad.