McDonald's GamiFries rode the Switch 2 launch as a free 3D-printed fry holder
Rather than buy a seat at the Switch 2 launch, McDonald's Philippines gave gamers a free 3D-printable holder that snaps fries onto the console's magnets.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDTelefunken's PAL fixed color TV's hue drift line by line and became Europe's standard
Instead of a tint knob, Walter Bruch reversed the color phase on alternate lines so errors cancel — PAL reached 100 countries while France's SECAM stayed home.
Read the caseBell Labs' Kelly criterion turned an edge into exponential growth without the ruin
John Kelly Jr. solved how fast a gambler with an edge should bet, found the fraction that compounds without ruin, and gave Edward Thorp his sizing rule.
Read the caseFour sewing-machine rivals pooled patents to end the 1850s patent war
Singer, Wheeler & Wilson, Grover & Baker and Howe pooled patents in 1856; output exploded and Howe's royalties hit $444,000 a year.
Read the caseYas Island hired Ryan Reynolds as 'Chief Island Officer' — the role was the campaign
Miral gave Ryan Reynolds a real job — Chief Island Officer — and let the absurd title sell Yas Island; the campaign won Effie MENA 2025 Gold.
Read the caseIndia ranked its 112 worst districts monthly — on improvement, not level
NITI Aayog published a public leaderboard of India's most backward districts, 49 KPIs scored month-on-month, and the laggards started out-improving everyone.
Read the caseIndia made one bank card work on every metro gate, even with no network
Transit gates cannot wait for networks, so India put the balance on the card chip: any bank's RuPay card now taps through metros, buses, tolls and parking.
Read the caseSolexa read billions of tiny DNA fragments in parallel, and Illumina bought the trick
Reversible-terminator chemistry plus clonal clusters cut the cost of one human genome from ~$10M to ~$250K in a single step; Illumina paid ~$650M for it.
Read the caseVisionSpring sold reading glasses as wage-raising tools, then RCTs proved the gains
Reading glasses cost under $1 but never reached the poor. VisionSpring sold them as productivity equipment through channels that already employ the workers.
Read the caseChayan Yuese gave customers a lifetime free-remake right and saturated one city, not a map
While tea rivals franchised nationwide, Changsha's Chayan Yuese stayed direct-operated, dense in one city, with a lifetime free-remake right for every customer.
Read the caseTwo strangers turned a Hacker News comment into Unicode 9.0's power symbols
After a Hacker News wish for the missing standby symbol, two strangers filed the full Unicode proposal and got four power symbols into Unicode 9.0
Read the caseBrazil's Arco Norte flipped grain exports north: shorten the truck, lengthen the river
As soy pushed into Mato Grosso, exporters stopped trucking grain south and built river terminals on Amazon tributaries, barging the load north to the sea.
Read the caseMISEREOR built a credit-card reader into a poster and let donors slice the bread
A German aid charity turned an airport poster into a payment terminal: swipe your card, donate €2, and watch it 'cut' a slice of bread on screen.
Read the caseA hi-fi subwoofer maker spun 64 lasers into the eyes of the self-driving car
A stereo-equipment maker spun 64 lasers into a 360° sensor streaming 1M points a second; five of six 2007 Urban Challenge finishers bought it.
Read the caseCambodia's ACLEDA upgraded itself from NGO to bank and became the market leader
With IFC/UNDP backing, the NGO rebuilt itself to bank standards, won a 2000 specialized license and a 2003 full one, then scaled to the country's largest bank.
Read the caseUSCIS made the H-1B lottery count people, not entries, and the duplicate bubble popped
FY2024's H-1B lottery drew 759,000 entries — 54% duplicates — for 188,400 spots. Since 2024 each worker is drawn once, however many entries stack behind him.
Read the caseBirla Opus turned IPL rivalries into a new paint shade for every match
A new paint brand skipped logo placement: each IPL match fused rival team colours into a one-of-a-kind shade, making the sponsorship a demo.
Read the caseAmsterdam replaced its gameable school lottery with a strategy-proof match
Amsterdam's 2015 deferred-acceptance match made honest rankings safe; research found it raised welfare and helped disadvantaged families most.
Read the caseXianyu made strangers into neighbors — Alibaba's escrow-plus-community second-hand market
Xianyu layered escrow, 'fish-pond' communities and reviews onto second-hand C2C, turning strangers into neighbors — 100M users in two years, 500M by 2024.
Read the caseRobert Xiao found LocationSmart's demo tracked any US phone and got it fixed in a day
Asking LocationSmart's demo API for JSON instead of XML skipped the opt-in check — two POSTs revealed any US phone's live location.
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