Ericsson's Erlang switch software hit nine-nines by letting processes crash
AXD301 ran millions of calls on lightweight processes that die and restart, reaching 99.9999999% availability with 4x developer productivity.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDTesticular Cancer Society taught men self-checks inside football highlights
The Testicular Cancer Society taught self-checks inside football highlights, earning 42 million impressions on a £7,000 media budget.
Read the caseCainiao merges many parcels into one and halves cross-border delivery time
Cainiao built an online optimizer that decides which international parcels to consolidate and how to ship them, cutting delivery time at least 50%.
Read the caseEasypaisa turned Pakistan's corner shops into bank branches
A telco-bank joint venture franchised 20,000 shops as branches, reaching Pakistan's unbanked — 130 million transactions in four years.
Read the caseDigi's Footbraille lets blind fans feel football — Gold Kancil 2019
A Malaysian telco hid a miniature ball under a table-top pitch that mirrors the real match ball, so blind fans follow the game by touch.
Read the caseHaier dissolved its hierarchy into self-managing microenterprises chasing users
Haier's RenDanHeYi model turns employees into ecosystem entrepreneurs who must win users; by 2024 its incubator had produced 7 unicorns and 5,200+ ventures.
Read the caseNPCI's Hello UPI let feature-phone users pay by voice, no data needed
NPCI added voice to UPI: say 'Hello app' to pay or check a balance, and an on-call IVR works without internet — opening UPI to feature phones.
Read the caseEFF exposed hidden printer tracking dots with a crowdsourced test list
EFF had volunteers in a dozen countries test color laser printers under blue light, then published which models secretly print identifying dots.
Read the caseLATAM answered Cyber Monday by sending Chileans abroad to buy things
On Chile's Cyber Monday, LATAM pitched flights abroad to buy imported goods cheaper than at home, selling US$30m in tickets instead of competing on discounts.
Read the caseHome Depot turned the building-supply warehouse into a DIY superstore in 1979
Fired in 1978, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank opened giant discount stores where trade-trained staff taught customers to do it themselves.
Read the caseCornell replaced its lecture-time exam table with MIP and cut schedule conflicts
Cornell's registrar swapped a fixed lecture-time-to-exam table for a mixed-integer program, ending the 30-meeting-times vs 22-exam-slots conflict mess.
Read the caseJulie's comedic Raya film about single-mother stigma won Malaysia's Golden Kancil
Malaysia's festive ads celebrate perfect families, so Julie's told a single mother's Raya story as comedy — and won the Kancil Awards' top prize.
Read the caseLely's Astronaut let cows choose when to be milked; robotic milking went global
A stall cows enter voluntarily; a camera-guided arm attaches the cups, so Lely's Astronaut milks around the clock without a fixed parlor shift.
Read the caseWashington's first carbon auction sold every allowance at $48.50
Washington's cap-and-invest auction sold all 6.19M allowances at $48.50 — double the $22.20 floor — raising $299.98M on day one.
Read the caseRefisal turned a salt superstition into 18 million team-branded Bad Luck Reverser packs
Colombia's leading salt brand printed every club on limited packs and shipped them to the fans of whoever was losing, so a pinch of salt could reverse a streak.
Read the caseJioPhone: a refundable deposit made 4G phones 'free' and pulled 100 million Indians online
Jio priced its 4G feature phone at an effective ₹0 via a refundable ₹1,500 deposit, turning feature-phone users into data customers — 100 million units sold.
Read the caseUC Berkeley's 3D-from-2D trick cuts cost by refining only occupied space
Christian Häne at UC Berkeley rebuilt 3D objects from small 2D images by starting coarse, discarding empty regions, and refining what remains.
Read the caseFarmers Fresh Zone cut waste by making harvest follow local demand
Farmers Fresh Zone linked Kerala farmers to city orders, using demand planning and traceability to deliver produce within 16 hours.
Read the caseGarment factory line managers beat its IT system by trading workers on a handshake
An Indian garment factory's line managers beat its slow central IT system by trading workers on reciprocal handshake deals.
Read the caseUEFI replaced BIOS after Microsoft made it a Windows 8 requirement
Intel's EFI (1998) became the UEFI Forum's open spec; UEFI existed for years, but Windows 8's logo requirement made it the firmware every consumer PC shipped.
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