Starrett Brothers built the Empire State Building by overlapping phases
Starrett Brothers built the Empire State Building by overlapping design, demolition, and construction where dependencies were local.
Read the casegenius.wikiA CASESTUDIES.CHAT ARCHIVE
Good problems.
Brilliant solutions.
Ingenious ideas that solved difficult problems. Explore what made them work.
The full archive, in the appPublished cases
3,236 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDHan dynasty stabilized grain prices by trading against the market
Han official Geng Shouchang stabilized grain prices by having the state buy at harvest and sell in lean months, trading against the market.
Read the caseFamilyMart's crying sticker cut food waste by reframing discounts as rescue
FamilyMart replaced discount labels on near-expiry food with a crying sticker asking for help, reframing the same deal as a rescue and boosting sales by 5%.
Read the caseFan Li bought gluts to profit from seasonal reversals
Fan Li, China's earliest merchant, bought fur in summer and boats in drought, profiting from predictable seasonal reversals.
Read the caseFerrari sold road cars to fund racing
Enzo Ferrari built road cars solely to fund his racing team, inverting the industry norm.
Read the caseFlorentine merchants made ledgers self-checking with double-entry bookkeeping
Florentine merchant houses stopped trusting one bookkeeper by recording every transaction twice, as debit and credit, so the books had to balance.
Read the caseFord’s $5 day: retention, productivity and the conditions attached
Ford’s 1914 pay policy addressed costly worker turnover, but eligibility conditions complicate the familiar story of simply doubling wages.
Read the caseFosbury flopped over the bar backward to win Olympic gold
Dick Fosbury, unable to win with the straddle, reinvented the high jump by going over backward, exploiting new foam pits.
Read the caseFoucault proved Earth's rotation with a public pendulum
Léon Foucault built a giant pendulum in the Panthéon that made Earth's rotation visible to anyone, no expertise needed.
Read the caseFDA's Kelsey stalled thalidomide by declaring it incomplete
FDA's Kelsey stalled thalidomide by repeatedly declaring it incomplete, resetting the clock until harm emerged.
Read the caseFugger bank built private news network for trading edge
The Fugger banking house built a private courier network to get market-moving news before rivals, turning a timing disadvantage into an edge.
Read the caseGalileo slowed gravity with an incline to time falling motion
Galileo timed a ball rolling down a shallow incline to measure gravity's acceleration, since true free fall was too fast for his clocks.
Read the caseGE turned MRI into pirate ship; kids stopped needing sedation
GE designer Doug Dietz rebuilt the MRI room as a pirate ship, cutting pediatric sedation from 351 to 9 cases.
Read the caseAir Force found no pilot was average, so cockpits became adjustable
In 1950, Lt. Gilbert S. Daniels measured 4,063 pilots on ten dimensions and found none were average on all, prompting adjustable cockpits.
Read the caseGitLab livestreamed its own data-loss recovery
GitLab, after losing 300GB of data and all backups, livestreamed the recovery, turning disaster into trust.
Read the caseGoldcorp found gold by publishing its mine data online
Goldcorp posted its mine data online, paid strangers to find gold, and got 110 targets.
Read the caseLondon goldsmiths stamped a permanent hallmark after one assay
In 1300, London goldsmiths replaced buyer-side purity checks with a one-time assay and a permanent hallmark that every later buyer could trust.
Read the caseW.L. Gore capped plants at 200 and built new ones instead of expanding
W.L. Gore capped each plant at ~200 people and opened new plants instead of expanding, preserving peer trust.
Read the caseGrace Hopper won adoption for her compiler by outlasting skepticism
Grace Hopper built a working compiler, but when colleagues said computers only do arithmetic, she repeated demos until belief caught up.
Read the caseGrameen Bank lent to the poor by making neighbors the collateral
Grameen Bank lent to poor women with no collateral by making their neighbors jointly guarantee repayment through self-formed groups.
Read the case