Xbox turned Football Manager wins into real coaching licences
Xbox and Football Manager recruited women coaches by offering real Uefa licences for an in-game achievement, tapping a self-selected talent pool.
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3,236 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDXerox leased its copier and charged per copy
Xerox leased its $29,500 copier for $95 a month plus four cents a copy, making it affordable and profitable.
Read the caseXiang Yu sank his boats and smashed his pots to force commitment
Xiang Yu, outnumbered and facing hesitant allies, sank his boats and smashed his pots so his troops had no choice but to win.
Read the casePrussia built a tariff union that paid states to join
Prussia unified Germany's market by inviting states into a tariff union that shared revenue by population, making joining pay and staying out costlier.
Read the caseFERC paid customers to cut peak power at generator prices
FERC required markets to pay customers for cutting peak demand at the same price as generators, turning demand reduction into a supply resource.
Read the caseIndia's diamond trade moves $4m a day with unarmed couriers — the lock is who they hire
India's diamond trade moved $4m daily with unarmed couriers, hiring only from the Patel community where the job is a family's inheritance.
Read the caseBletchley Park recruited codebreakers via a Telegraph crossword contest
Bletchley Park recruited codebreakers by having the Daily Telegraph run a timed crossword contest, then contacting the winners.
Read the caseTokyo café hired homebound people as robot avatars
OryLab's Dawn café paid homebound disabled people to pilot serving robots.
Read the caseGoonj paid villages in donated clothes for digging wells
Goonj paid villagers in donated clothes for digging wells and repairing roads, turning charity into wages.
Read the caseGreen Bank of Caraga held smokers' money hostage until a urine test proved they quit
Green Bank of Caraga offered smokers a savings account where their own deposit was forfeited to charity unless a urine test proved six months smoke-free.
Read the caseMexico paid poor families cash for school and clinic attendance
Mexico's Progresa replaced food subsidies with cash to mothers, conditional on school attendance and clinic visits, breaking intergenerational poverty.
Read the casePaul Cox raised a school to save a Samoan rainforest
When a Samoan village planned to sell logging rights for a school, Paul Cox raised the money instead, and the village signed a covenant to protect the forest.
Read the caseSeshan cleaned up Indian elections by enforcing old laws
India's election commissioner enforced existing laws to curb rigging, bypassing a parliament that profited from the status quo.
Read the caseVOC let investors exit via share sales, not repayment
The VOC let investors exit by selling shares to each other, not by demanding repayment, keeping capital locked in for decades.
Read the caseDengue cities sprayed insecticide for decades; this team released more mosquitoes instead
Don't kill the mosquito — change it. Carriers of Wolbachia can't transmit dengue and pass the block to their young: one release, then the city works on its own.
Read the caseZopyrus cut off his nose and ears to open Babylon's gates
Zopyrus cut off his own nose and ears to pose as a defector, gaining Babylon's trust and opening its gates to Darius.
Read the casePiedmont High School's A-11 offense exploited a punt rule to make all players eligible
Piedmont High School's coaches exploited a punt rule to make all 11 players eligible, confusing defenses.
Read the caseClauson-Thue's public code book cut telegram costs
W. Clauson-Thue published a public code book so merchants could send long business telegrams at the ordinary word rate.
Read the caseAboriginal Australians turned a desert trade route into a singable map
Aboriginal Australians encoded 3,500-km trade routes into songs whose melody traced the terrain, making navigation errors audible.
Read the caseAirtable gives non-technical teams a real database by hiding it in a spreadsheet
Airtable gave non-technical teams a real database by hiding it in a familiar spreadsheet interface, so users got power without learning SQL.
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