American Eagle opened its supply chain to 66 other retailers (interview)
AEO exec Shekar Natarajan says a shared logistics platform now serving 67 retailers delivers orders 1.5 days faster with 10% fewer parcel miles.
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300 RECENT CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDHarvard's TERMES robots build castles with no blueprint — just termite-style cues
Head-sized robots, each running minimal rules, read what teammates have already built and place bricks accordingly — a colony builds a castle with no foreman.
Read the caseA villager's AI bot shames 1,300 daily speeders — and points police at peak hours
A homemade camera clocks 1,000+ speeders a day in an Essex village, auto-posting the worst to a Wall of Shame the parish council aims police patrols with.
Read the caseSamsung's split-hinge oven door made one oven into two at the press of a button
Hold the NE59J7850WS's handle button and the door hinge releases in the middle — one big oven becomes two compartments at different temperatures.
Read the caseQatar Airways loaned business-class laptops to beat the US cabin device ban
When the US banned larger devices from cabins on MENA flights, Qatar Airways offered business travellers loaner laptops with USB work hand-off and free Wi-Fi.
Read the caseNorthern Powergrid's BEET trial trims grid voltage to what appliances actually need
A retired engineer's idea uses smart-meter data to tune grid voltage to what appliances need — 15,000 homes trialled, £28 a year off bills if rolled out.
Read the caseA Somerset hospital put name badges on surgeons' theatre hats
Scrubs are sterile below the neck and lead aprons block badges, so Musgrove Park Hospital moved identification to the only spot left: above the eyes.
Read the caseLillestrøm handed cash to commuters who skipped the car — a 'reverse toll'
The Norwegian town pulled over walkers and cyclists on its main street to hand them 100 kroner — printing the $8-per-km society saves when you don't drive.
Read the caseHarvard's Fryer found paying kids for grades fails — paying for inputs works
Across 261 schools and 38,000 students, $6.3M of incentives showed paying for grades flops — pay the input (reading, attendance) and achievement moves.
Read the caseA dad wired a rowing machine to power the console — no rowing, no game
Jeremy Fielding turned an old rowing machine into a human-powered generator, so his kids' video games only run while someone keeps rowing.
Read the caseBicol University students built their own anti-cheating hats — and nobody was caught
Asked to wear headgear blocking the view of classmates' papers, Bicol University engineers built contraptions from cardboard and egg boxes. Nobody was caught.
Read the caseA hacker booted Linux on Intel's 4004 from 1971 — the boot takes 4.76 days
Dmitry Grinberg made the 4-bit, 2,300-transistor Intel 4004 emulate a MIPS R3000, letting a stripped-down Debian reach a prompt after 4.76 days.
Read the caseA Harwich shop screened its own shoplifting CCTV in-store and says thefts almost stopped
Wellworth-a-£ in Essex plays footage of thefts on a TV customers can watch, and says it went from about six filmed shoplifters a month to none.
Read the caseWeBuyBricks built an AI-and-air-jet sorter to resell mixed Lego, saving 25 million bricks
WeBuyBricks' Brick-O-Matic identifies pieces by camera and blows each into its chute, so mixed second-hand Lego can be rebuilt into sets.
Read the caseWalmart's AR app checkmarks the exact back-room box, cutting search to 42 seconds
Walmart employees aim a phone at back-room inventory and the app marks the exact box to restock, a third of the previous search time.
Read the caseWakati keeps produce fresh with hot, humid air instead of cold, using a solar-powered tent
Designer Arne Pauwels found produce lasts in a hot, saturated microclimate, so Wakati hydrates it for up to 10 days without a fridge.
Read the caseUtrecht's Cargohopper swaps delivery trucks for a solar-powered three-box train
Hoek Transport has shops leave goods at a warehouse outside Utrecht, then runs a golf-cart-sized solar train that does the work of five vans.
Read the caseTwitter made its ad a tweet, so it went everywhere tweets go, mobile included
Twitter rejected side-of-page banners and built Promoted Tweets as ordinary tweets, bought by auction and charged only when users engage.
Read the casePradhanang built floating wetlands from trash as proprietary mats cost a year's pay
A URI hydrologist and a Nepali group built plant-topped floating mats from styrofoam, bamboo and coconut fiber to clean a polluted lake for almost nothing.
Read the caseTochi Tech swapped washers' concrete blocks for containers filled with water on site
A sealable container filled only after installation replaces 25kg of concrete ballast, cutting a machine's shipping weight by a third.
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