MIT's Kerberos let a user authenticate once and get access everywhere
Kerberos used a ticket from a trusted server so a user proved identity once, without ever sending a password across the network.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDMcDonald's Philippines turned gamers' hunt for lookalike food into free media
Leo Burnett made gamers hunt McDonald's 'food-alikes' in 350+ titles and trade screenshots for meals — 27M gamers reached, zero sponsorship spend.
Read the caseWhitcomb's area rule pinched the fuselage and jets stopped fighting the sound barrier
The F-102 had a design speed of Mach 1.2 but could not reach Mach 1. Waist the fuselage where the wings join and the drag peak drops — no new engine.
Read the caseMarkowitz's 1952 paper turned portfolio risk into a solvable equation
Investors knew not to put eggs in one basket; Markowitz showed which basket mattered — each asset's risk is its contribution to the whole.
Read the caseClaritin fought pollen by planting female trees
Male trees make pollen, so Claritin funded female-tree planting with the Arbor Day Foundation; 200,000+ trees later, searches for Claritin rose 255%.
Read the caseRip Curl turned surf-watch data into the world's first virtual surf contest
Every logged surf on a Rip Curl GPS watch became a contest entry scored by algorithm; the Virtual Pro is now an annual fixture sponsors pay for.
Read the caseMassachusetts built the insurance exchange that became the ACA
A public Connector pooled individual buyers, subsidized plans and an individual mandate to cut the uninsured rate almost in half.
Read the caseEratosthenes measured Earth's size from two shadows
Eratosthenes measured Earth's circumference by comparing a shadow in Alexandria to a shadowless well in Syene at the same moment.
Read the caseCarmen Castrejon's CD-and-pencil mirror turned a laptop webcam into a document camera
With no document camera on hand, Castrejon angled a CD as a mirror so her laptop webcam showed handwriting; the post drew 24,000+ shares
Read the caseHenlo's anatomical posters against imported dog breeds won two Grand Prix at Abby 2025
Henlo attacked status-seekers who buy Siberian Huskies in India's heat with vintage anatomical posters — and won two Abbys.
Read the caseCalbee banks Hokkaido's potato crop in chilled warehouses so chips fry white until June
Chips sell all year but Hokkaido harvests once, so Calbee Potato warehouses 38,000 tons near 10°C and holds sugar low — keeping fries white into spring.
Read the caseEko turned Delhi's corner shops into SBI bank counters with nothing but phones
Eko made grocery stores SBI's tellers: migrant workers opened accounts in 10 minutes and deposited Rs 5 at a time through a shopkeeper's mobile phone.
Read the casemycar built a free tool that translates car jargon into plain English
Australia's mycar offers Auto-Translate, a utility that turns confusing car terminology into simple, funny analogies.
Read the caseLEGO Ideas turns fans' set designs into official products via 10,000 votes
Fans submit LEGO set designs; 10,000 community supporters send a build to the review board, and approved fan designers earn royalties on every sold set.
Read the caseSAT search found Sir Robin, Conway's Life's first elementary knightship in 48 years
A 48-year blank ended when the oblique-spaceship hunt was encoded as SAT constraints, and a solver returned Sir Robin, the (2,1)c/6 knightship
Read the caseBurger King proved its Whopper's no-preservative claim by filming it rot
Burger King proved its Whopper had no artificial preservatives by filming one decay into mold over 34 days and running the footage as the ad.
Read the caseJulia ended the two-language problem by making a dynamic language fast
Julia's type-driven JIT compiles Python-like research code to near-C speed, so scientists no longer rewrite in Fortran or C++
Read the caseSpotify sold ads to CMOs by writing a personalized song about each one
To pitch digital audio to chief marketers, FCB and Spotify skipped the deck and sent each target CMO an original song about themselves.
Read the caseAtlantic Coast Conference 1997-98 basketball schedule built by integer programming
Clashing TV and fairness demands broke hand scheduling; pattern enumeration plus integer programming built the official 1997-98 ACC basketball schedule.
Read the caseAs-Samra treats 70% of Jordan's wastewater on a grant-cheapened BOT
Jordan used donor grants as viability-gap funding so a private operator could finance, expand, and run a world-class sewage plant at affordable tariffs.
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