Valve's Steam grew from a patch tool into the PC games platform
Steam launched in 2003 to update Valve's own games, then opened into a multi-sided platform connecting publishers and gamers that reshaped PC game distribution.
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3,236 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDRolls-Royce sells engine uptime by the flying hour, not spare parts
Rolls-Royce's TotalCare charges airlines a fixed rate per flying hour and carries the maintenance risk, so both sides profit when engines keep flying.
Read the caseMiniso made the 'ten-yuan store' a global franchise by selling goods, not store rights
Franchisees fund the shop and keep 38% of daily sales; Miniso keeps supply-chain control — ¥19B GMV by 2019 and 7,600+ stores by 2025.
Read the caseKurly invented Korea's dawn grocery delivery: order by 11 pm, arrive by 7 am
Market Kurly built cold-chain warehouses plus order-prediction software so groceries ordered at night arrive before breakfast — repurchase rates passed 60%.
Read the caseKobe Bussan's Gyomu Super out-earns supermarkets by wholesaling to its own stores
Gyomu Super stores are franchisee-owned; Kobe Bussan supplies them from its own factories and imports, so it earns wholesale margins on top of retail volume.
Read the caseGalaxy Zoo turned a million galaxy images into a public classification game
A million galaxy images were too many for one team; Galaxy Zoo invited the public, and ~100,000 volunteers made 40+ million classifications matching experts.
Read the caseeBird turned birdwatchers' checklists into real-time science-grade data
Cornell's eBird asks birders to log when, where and what they saw; expert filters and reviews turn hobby checklists into science-grade data.
Read the caseAnker's 'shallow sea' rule: win mid-sized gadget categories, not giant wars
Founder Steven Yang defined 'shallow sea' as categories under $50B a year — big enough to matter, small enough that $30–50M of R&D saturates them.
Read the caseV.90 ended the 56k modem war with one ITU standard both camps could sell
Rockwell's K56flex and 3Com's x2 split the 56k market until ITU's V.90 merged them; one standard let any modem call any ISP.
Read the caseSF Express built China's first private cargo airline so parcels fly on its own schedule
SF Airlines launched in 2009 with one Boeing 757 freighter; by 2023 its 80-plane fleet made SF China's biggest air-cargo carrier.
Read the caseThe 1913 US parcel post turned package shipping into a flat national market
Uniform parcel rates from January 1913 moved four million packages in five days and supercharged mail-order retail.
Read the caseFlying Tigers flew surplus warplanes as the first scheduled all-cargo US airline
Wartime pilots turned Budd Conestogas into a freight airline, winning the CAB's first all-cargo route in 1949.
Read the caseArmour built the largest private refrigerator-car fleet to ship fresh meat east
Philip Armour's 1883 refrigerator-car line grew to 12,000+ cars and ice plants, making Chicago dressed beef a national product.
Read the caseSNB parked UBS's toxic assets in StabFund and later sold them back at a profit
The SNB took UBS's illiquid assets into a loan-financed fund; UBS bought it back in 2013 and the central bank earned $1.6bn in interest.
Read the caseEPA let refiners trade lead rights, and the phase-out beat every deadline
In 1982 EPA let gasoline refiners buy and sell lead credits instead of meeting identical limits; trading cut compliance cost by hundreds of millions.
Read the caseToyota's Prius split the drive between engine and motor, doubling fuel efficiency
Instead of picking gas or electric, Toyota split power between both so the engine runs where it is efficient and the motor fills the gaps.
Read the caseBlack-Scholes priced options by hedging away risk, and a derivative market was born
A 1973 formula showed an option's fair price needs no opinion on the stock's direction—only a hedge that removes the risk.
Read the caseTCP slow start ended internet congestion collapse by probing bandwidth gently
Van Jacobson's 1988 fix made senders double their rate until loss, then halve it—so the internet self-tunes to what the path can carry.
Read the caseJPEG 2000 fixed JPEG's block artifacts with wavelets, but lost the format war anyway
The wavelet-based standard offered better compression, lossless modes and progressive decoding—yet the old JPEG ecosystem would not move.
Read the caseTorikizoku's one flat price for every item took it from near-bankruptcy to 600 stores
Facing first-year losses, Torikizoku set every skewer, side and beer at one price; simplicity cut costs, and the uniform-price promise became the brand.
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