Group:
Wong, Chun Cheung Boris (53804175)
Chan, Ka Ming Marco (53769642)
Couture, Dan (53911128)
Wang, Yonghua (53761017)
Innovation: the story behind the name 'CakeS'
There was a Friday in 2015 before which CakeS was a nameless bunch of individual schoolyard bullies who had yet to all formally meet. Due to circumstances far too complicated to detail here, Marco, Boris, Ken, and Dan met in AC2 at CityU. On that Friday when the worlds of the four hotheads collided, everything changed for them. Now, instead of rolling young students for their dinner money and Octopus cards they found it in themselves to change. The collective realization that they were all potential billionaires –of course, everyone who is not a billionaire is a potential billionaire– led them to stop taking the easy route in life and to start innovating.
First, they needed a name. As they were brainstorming creative and innovative ideas– names such as Sir-Mix-a-Lot (taken) and Alpha Kenny Wun (an unintelligible pun)– one of the members said "man, this group is going to kick ass." This last part was misunderstood by the group's Trello curator as "cake 's'" (stylized as CakeS). While this name does not immediately ring with innovation, it turned out to be exactly what they were looking for. It was created through collaboration and brainstorming, it was surprising, it was original, and most importantly, it worked. What is innovation if not that?
With that, CakeS was born.
Logo: a troll for the ages
CakeS's family crest is also its logo. It is the internationally recognized face of an internet troll. One may wonder, how does a troll represent innovation? But one must first ask oneself, what does a troll do? A troll serves two purposes. Firstly, the troll causes unnecessary heartache as it (notice the politically correct, gender neutral pronoun) torments unsuspecting and undeserving victims. But this torment serves another purpose, namely, inspiring critical thought.While a troll may call your completely innocent and benign ideas 'stupid' and it may constantly harass your online persona, it will also force you to reflect on your ideas and defend them.
Consider the following hypothetical example: There's a twenty-something student who was posting countless photos of his pet iguana online on social networks and other public forums. A troll came along and said "your iguana is ugly. Lawlz." While that may sound harsh and be an unsolicited attack on one's precious iguana, that twenty-something student thought to himself "should I really be posting so many photos of my iguana? Or should I try to invent something to change the world?" That twenty-something student immediately stopped posting his photos and then went on to invent a method to safely harness the power of dark energy.
Trolls -> game-changing innovation.
Reader, if you've made it this far, we only want to share one message: You too are (probably) a potential billionaire. It just takes one good innovation. Go get em', tiger!
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ReplyDeleteStudent ID: 53675601
ReplyDeleteIt was not a failure. From a financial point, maybe, but Concorde is about more than that. Calling it a failure is like calling the moon landings a failure. The technological achievements of the Concorde were similar to the moon landings. Concorde was the first airliner with fly-by-wire (analogue, not the more modern digital systems, but Boeing's first FBW jet was the 777 in 1994!). The variable air intakes in the engines are likewise computer controlled, this time with a digital system, and are themselves engineering marvels. Jet engines cannot operate within supersonic flow, so the air has to be slowed to subsonic speeds.
Secondly, Concorde as a scheduled passenger aircraft never made any money compared to the investment that was made; and the fact that ONLY the two major countries that invested in it actually bought it shows that it was a money loser in the eyes of other airlines in the rest of the world. The USA aircraft industry saw no profit in it and declined to make their own or even buy a single one. Pride funded by the tax payer kept it flying for 25years – pride for a technological feat was fully justified; pride for an economic and profit-making solution never was. To prove it, no country in the world (including the two Concorde investors) never were able to produce a new follow-on commercially-viable supersonic design for scheduled passenger flights; in fact after the last Concorde production aircraft (1979) the losses were so great that not a single Concorde was ever produced again. While I believe Concorde was a great technological undertaking, its real long term benefit lies in the fact that it proved to Europe that they could overcome political and national differences and set the stage for one of the greatest international industrial cooperation ever achieved: Airbus!