Do Apps change behaviour?

Uncategorized
I'm on my annual pilgrimage skiing in the alps. I'm very lucky that I generally manage 4 or 5 weeks a year. I've never used a ski tracker app but for this year four of us all downloaded Ski tracks. It’s a useful little app works out when you are on a lift and gives you whole set of stats about your days skiing. Now I've always been a great believer in measurement to drive change. It does take a lot of thought though as if the measures are not well linked to what you are trying to achieve they will not fulfil the objective. Back to skiing, essentially I go skiing for three reasons, fun, to practice and improve my skiing and also to teach. An app sounds like…
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Start up weekend (Sheffield)

Projects
Well, what an intense weekend. I was amazed at the calibre of initial pitches and the final 10 teams outputs. The winning team had a simple concept of managing doctors appointments to drive down no shows. The solution was an enhanced SMS system which was well researched and integratable into most surgery systems.  The final pitch was good and they deserved to win the weekend. Other ideas were around 3D imaging to cut down on the number of returned clothes from on-line purchases, peer parcel systems and an international sports team contact system. Our team did not disgrace itself, we built a prototype ticketing system which overcomes most of the problems of modern systems. Put simply it provides all the functionality of Oyster at a fraction of the cost. Even…
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Sheffield Start-up week

Projects
Hi This weekend is Sheffield Start-up,  part of the Start-up Global Challenge. From 74400, we have a great idea around using Beacons to revolutionise the ticketing industry. We have a core team and expect to grow this after the pitching stage this evening.  We've planned our pitch and expect to be one of the successful ideas  that go on to run over the weekend. It will be an intense weekend, 48 hours of focused activity aiming to reach a minimum viable product by Sunday evening, and trying to fit in a little sleep too. Follow all the action on by following @74400. Also support the event. Make Sheffield the number one start up city in the world by following and retweeting #swsheffield. More details here after the weekend. Andy      …
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Can big data predict the next Bill Gates?

Business
Well Bloomberg seem to think so. They have looked at the characteristics of successful founders and then used this data to target likely individuals. Some of this may not indicate the type of people you expect. People aged 30+ seem to have a better chance and also people who have stayed in the same company for a while. You can read the full article here   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29660624 It will be interesting to see if this causes anyone to leave full time employment and form a start-up. Bloomberg have certainly kicked of the networking to encourage it. Currently the target candidates are in key start up areas of the States but it will be interesting when Bloomberg spreads the the net wider.
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Is 74400 ITK

History
Welcome to the 74400 blog. When I first say our company name, people say, "That’s different, is there a story there?" Well there is and if you are interested please read on. Otherwise feel free to jump straight to the comments section and leave any feedback or questions. Many years ago I thought that living in the mountains with the views, the outdoor life and the snow would be the only way to live. What could I do there? In those days, Fatface and White Stuff were still small operations so I thought, "Why not start a T shirt company?" After a lot of soul searching I launched ITK Clothing. ITK stood for “in the know” and each of our T shirts was customised around the post code of a…
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