Conservation International swapped Bolivia's debt for rainforest protection
Conservation International bought Bolivia's discounted debt and forgave it in exchange for rainforest protection, creating the first debt-for-nature swap.
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3,236 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDBuc-ee's turned clean bathrooms into a destination by paying crews well
Buc-ee's paid bathroom crews well above industry standard, turning clean restrooms into a reason drivers detour, boosting in-store sales.
Read the caseBurger King sponsored a small club whose shirt renders correctly in FIFA
Burger King sponsored fourth-tier Stevenage FC because its shirt renders correctly in FIFA, unlike top clubs' licensed shirts, then ran a challenge.
Read the caseBurger King sold a penny Whopper to people inside McDonald's
Burger King's app geofenced McDonald's locations to offer a penny Whopper, routing rivals' customers to its own stores.
Read the caseUM BWMC eased ER crowding by moving doctors to waiting room
UM BWMC moved doctors into waiting-room pods to treat patients without beds, fixing the real bottleneck.
Read the caseCadbury let fans campaign for Wispa's return
Cadbury let fans campaign for four years before relaunching Wispa, making the return a response to real demand.
Read the caseCarrefour sold banned seeds in stores to get EU law repealed
Carrefour sold banned heirloom produce in its stores, making an invisible EU seed law tangible and sparking repeal.
Read the caseFannie Mae paid tenants to leave instead of evicting
Fannie Mae and landlords paid problem tenants cash to leave, avoiding costly slow evictions.
Read the caseCATL locked in cheap lithium to win 80% of automakers' battery orders
CATL, losing share to BYD in a price war, offered automakers a locked low lithium price for three years in exchange for 80% of their battery business.
Read the caseCavendish weighed the Earth by hiding from his own experiment
Cavendish sealed his apparatus in a shed and read it through a telescope from the next room, so his body heat couldn't disturb the measurement.
Read the caseCedars-Sinai got doctors to wash hands by showing their own palm bacteria
Cedars-Sinai got doctors to wash their hands by photographing bacteria from their own palms and setting it as the hospital screensaver.
Read the caseCentral Park turned lamppost maintenance codes into a wayfinding system
Central Park turned its lamppost maintenance codes into a public wayfinding system, letting visitors locate themselves by reading the nearest post.
Read the caseChaoshan clans financed factories with a monthly bidding auction
Chaoshan factory owners ran a rotating credit pool where members bid implicit interest for the monthly payout, funding working capital without collateral.
Read the caseA&P rebuilt trust by funding a chicken contest it couldn't rig
A&P, convicted of antitrust abuse, rebuilt trust by funding an independent USDA contest that bred a better chicken, judged on objective criteria.
Read the caseChina's insurance-plus-futures relay let farmers hedge via simple policies
China's insurance-plus-futures let corn farmers buy simple price insurance, while insurers and futures subsidiaries passed risk to the exchange.
Read the caseChina Merchants used grain-tribute monopoly to fund price war
Li Hongzhang chartered China Merchants, a merchant-run firm backed by a state grain-tribute monopoly, to underprice foreign shipping lines and buy out rivals.
Read the caseChina cleared triangular debt by seeding cash through chains
China's state enterprises were stuck in circular debt chains, so the government injected cash at key points and required it to cascade through the chain.
Read the caseWilliam Van Alen secretly built a spire in Chrysler Building
Locked in a height race he couldn't win in the open, the architect built his winning move in secret, hid it inside his own building, and only assembled it once
Read the caseCistercian abbeys sold future wool for cash
Medieval Cistercian abbeys sold future wool clips to Italian merchants for cash up front, solving cash timing.
Read the caseLeMessurier confessed to Citicorp and secretly fixed his flawed skyscraper
LeMessurier found his finished Citicorp Center could collapse in a quartering wind, so he confessed to the client and secretly reinforced joints at night.
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