Denso Wave gave QR Code to the world and it became the scan standard.
Denso Wave invented QR in 1994, waived its key patent for standardized codes, and QR became the universal link between print and phones.
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3,236 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDOmya Hustadmarmor's routing DSS saved $7 million a year on slurry shipping.
A Norwegian plant shipped calcium carbonate slurry by sea; an inventory-routing DSS cut production and transport costs by about $7 million a year.
Read the caseJPEG compressed photos by deleting what eyes cannot see.
The 1992 standard split images into frequency blocks, threw away imperceptible detail, and made digital photos practical.
Read the caseSony's PS3 and Warner's switch made Blu-ray the HD disc standard.
Sony shipped Blu-ray in every PS3 at a huge loss; Warner went exclusive in Jan 2008, and Toshiba quit HD DVD a month later.
Read the caseSanta Maria launched a snack brand with a 9-volt-battery flavour and zero ad budget
Snack brand REWIND's first product tasted like a 9V battery; the stunt reached 348 million people and drew an official 'don't lick batteries' warning.
Read the caseResMed turned Sullivan's nasal CPAP into a home device and built a sleep giant
CPAP is a pneumatic splint for the airway during sleep; after Baxter passed, ResMed bought the technology in 1989 and made it quiet, comfortable and home-ready.
Read the casePJM paid for capacity years ahead — and prices stabilized
PJM's forward capacity market replaced boom-bust payments with a sloped demand curve; RTO prices ran $40.80, $111.92 and $102.04 per MW-day.
Read the caseThe residency match changed whose preferences drive the algorithm
In 1998 the NRMP switched to an applicant-proposing algorithm, giving students their best stable outcome and restoring trust in the match.
Read the caseMercedes-AMG sold out a US$1M roadster by listing 250 reasons not to buy it
With a roof-less, windshield-less car priced at $1M and limited to 250 units, AMG ran 250 absurd 'reasons not to buy' — and every unit sold.
Read the caseBank One's PORTICO priced each cardholder's rate and credit line by Markov optimization
PORTICO used Markov decision processes to set APR and credit line per account, beating the bank's old method and pointing to $75M more profit a year.
Read the caseAviation Partners' blended winglets cut fuel burn up to 7% on existing jets
Winglets recover energy lost in wingtip vortices; Aviation Partners turned NASA's 1976 idea into certified retrofit kits that cut fuel burn on existing jets.
Read the caseSQL won by letting users say what, not how
Codd's relational model made queries declarative; IBM's SQL became ANSI X3.135-1986, then US federal standard FIPS 127, and the database lingua franca.
Read the caseJSON won as an API lingua franca by being a subset of JavaScript
Douglas Crockford published JSON in 2001 as a JavaScript subset, so browsers could parse it natively; open and simple, it displaced XML in web APIs.
Read the caseECB made bank funding cheaper only for banks that actually lend more
TLTRO II (2016): ECB banks paid as little as the deposit rate if lending beat a benchmark; the first operation lent €399.3bn to 514 banks at 0%.
Read the caseSpark's Play ball traded outdoor play for screen time; families rebalanced in weeks
A smart rugby ball turned outdoor play into screen-time credit; after six weeks 68% of families spent more time together and brand love beat the telco average.
Read the caseVisionSpring sold reading glasses door to door, skipping the eye exam
VisionSpring sold ready-made reading glasses door-to-door through local women, skipping the eye exam, to correct presbyopia where optometrists were scarce.
Read the caseUK CMA made nine banks build the API rivals use
The UK's CMA ordered its nine biggest banks to build and fund the open API that lets fintech rivals access customer data, rather than fining them.
Read the caseTesla won in Massachusetts by arguing the dealer law had no dealers to protect
Tesla won in Massachusetts by arguing the dealer-protection law had no dealers to protect, since it never franchised any.
Read the caseSweden bundled carbon tax with income tax cuts
Sweden's 1991 reform paired a new carbon tax with matching cuts to income and corporate taxes, so going green cost voters nothing net.
Read the caseLee burned 150,000 phones to enforce quality
Samsung's Lee Kun-hee, after a quality memo failed to cut phone defects, publicly burned 150,000 defective phones to make the quality priority visceral.
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