WAP promised the mobile internet on phones; carriers' portals delivered headlines
The phone industry's 1999 standard for the mobile web locked users in carrier portals sold as 'the internet' — over-hype that set WAP back six months.
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
2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDCadbury stripped its own name off the bar to fight loneliness — sales rose
Cadbury removed the words from Dairy Milk for the first time in 115 years, donating them to Age UK; it reversed four years of penetration decline.
Read the caseCoeLux tricked eyes and cameras into seeing a real skylight by simulating the atmosphere
A nanoparticle layer mimics Earth's atmosphere so CoeLux's LED skylight shows a sun and blue sky real enough to fool people and cameras.
Read the caseCRDB reached rural Tanzania by wholesaling loans to SACCOs, not building branches
A privatized Tanzanian bank skipped rural branches and lent through village savings cooperatives — 157 of them in under five years.
Read the caseMatilda Bay sold its rejected beer batches and Original Ale sales rose 11x
The brewer bottled 27 failed test batches as a cheeky 'Rejected Ales' range; the joke made the flagship ale look flawless and lifted its sales 11-fold.
Read the caseCheetos made orange snack dust disappear into pants
Cheetos turned its messy orange finger dust into limited-edition pants designed to be wiped on.
Read the caseOne national opt-out list turned telemarketing costs around
A single free registry let US consumers opt out once, then a national list every caller must scrub — shifting the cost to callers.
Read the caseArthur Zang split the heart exam in two so a village clinic could borrow a cardiologist
Arthur Zang split the heart exam so a village nurse collects the ECG and a city cardiologist reads it over the phone network.
Read the caseWillow Garage gave robots away to seed ROS, and robotics got its Linux
A funded lab gave universities free research robots if they open-sourced their work — and the robotics software everyone shares is the return on those gifts.
Read the caseBillboard Arabia relaunched Saudi icon Etab with AI and won Dubai Lynx's PR Grand Prix
An in-house media lab revived Saudi Arabia's first female music icon as a new release — AI voice, remastered anthem, fashion line.
Read the caseCoppenrath & Wiese cracked frozen cream in 1975 and turned cake into a grocery trade
Two confectioners' sons found a way to shock-freeze cream cake without the cream breaking — and cake became a nationwide grocery business.
Read the caseCalifornia pooled quake risk to keep insurers
After Northridge's $12B losses, California created a state-run, insurer-backed pool.
Read the caseIKEA Japan gave virtual model Imma a real shop-window apartment
IKEA Japan opened a Harajuku store by letting a virtual influencer live in a physical, shoppable room for 72 hours.
Read the caseDexcom's G6 made glucose monitoring continuous and fingerstick-free
A skin sensor streams glucose every few minutes to a phone; the G6's factory calibration removed fingersticks, and trials showed HbA1c falling 0.6% more.
Read the caseSwanage Railway cut volunteer workload 26.7% with crew-rostering optimization
A heritage railway applied OR to a volunteer workforce, cutting some employees' workload 26.7% and up to 4 hours of weekly overtime in emergencies.
Read the caseSRC taught workers to read the P&L to survive 89:1 debt
Jack Stack's SRC taught all 119 workers to read the P&L, turning financial literacy into risk management to survive 89:1 leverage.
Read the caseSGI opened its 3D API as OpenGL and it became the industry standard
SGI turned its proprietary IRIS GL into the cross-platform OpenGL spec, and any vendor could implement it; it became the 3D API standard.
Read the caseMcDonald's Malaysia repainted a zebra crossing as fries pointing into its store
For its 40th anniversary, McDonald's Malaysia turned the Bukit Bintang crosswalk into giant fries leading into Malaysia's first restaurant.
Read the caseJack Kilby built the first integrated circuit from one material at Texas Instruments
In the summer of 1958 a new TI hire drew a circuit in which every component came from the same semiconductor, ending the hand-wiring limit on electronics.
Read the caseDagachhu stacked an export PPA, pension equity and carbon credits into one dam
Bhutan's first infrastructure PPP made a 126 MW mountain river bankable by selling its power — and its carbon — across the border.
Read the case