Information gap in healthcare: This is great series of NYtimes articles examining the lack of evidence-based choice of treatment. One particular article on hip replacement pointed to the lack of a national database as the cause of rising problem of faulty replacements. The database acts as a early detection system for unproven products and missing such a system severely handicaps the abilities of doctors to know what works and what not.A 2.0 solution is to create a community where users can input their conditions after certain medical treatment. The community can be seeded with opinions already existing in message boards and other communities. With such a community in place, the information it produces can be used by healthcare practitioners in general.Mapvertising opportunity: I wonder if...
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Startup Idea #78: Small idea-Marketplace for websites
21:47
aaronchua
This NYtimes article on flipping websites inspire a thought: if websites are becoming more like virtual properties, what startup ideas we can employ from the real estate properties?Search Engine: If more and more people are selling their sites, there will be a need for an Indeed equivalent to help users find the best deal.Pricing: Liquidity is going be important in a young market like this. Hence, there is an opportunity to create a Zillow for pricing websites. Alternatively, creating an Igglo for websites is also a good way to generate pricing information.Intelligence services: A favourite theme of mine - create a Reuters alike to service the traders of this market. Aggregate information and trends to help traders decide whether site is under or overvalued. Charting prices, volume et al is...
Sunday, 27 July 2008
Social network for fighting malaria
22:09
aaronchua
I have briefly mention about this before: using social network to fight malaria. Today, I want to take a moment and round up some of the very innovative 2.0 efforts in solving this problem. Through this summary, I hope to come away with some insights that will be useful for future startup opportunities. Before we begin, let's take a look at some facts about Malaria. It was forecast to affect 300 million people worldwide in 2007 and contribute to one in five childhood deaths in Africa, according to the World Health Organization. According to reports, one child dies from malaria every 30 seconds in the developing countries. Most cases occur in sub-Saharan Africa, but parts of Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe are also affected.Part of the reason for the high death rate is the...
Saturday, 26 July 2008
Startup Idea #77: Sports business 2.0
09:46
aaronchua
The global sports market is now a sizable aspect of the economy. As this market continues to grow, there are plenty of opportunities to get into the game. I have developed some ideas on what a startup can do. Here is the list;Player Trading: Player transfer between clubs is not new. What is astonishing is the value of those deals and yet little sophistication in the trading tools. This is a huge opportunity. Who is going to be the Markit for the player transfer business? To supply clubs with vital market information, player statistics as well as all the necessary documentations and compliance reporting.What about an exchange platform to coordinate the buying and selling of players. Player transfer is currently a time-consuming and close door affair. Is it possible to make it open, like an...
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Startup Idea #76: Forums 2.0
22:18
aaronchua
I first thought about the potential of message boards when a business plan from a startup landed on my table. He was trying to marry the features of social networks within the vibrancy of the message boards. I thought this was the right approach but somehow felt that he was missing a bigger potential. In my mind, that potential is to enable the community to do stuff together and that means a whole set of tools that build upon the current forum software, to enable communities to organise information, find each other and coordinate their actions.i) A Ning or Blogger for message boards: Lefora is a step in the right direction (See screenshot below)....
Monday, 21 July 2008
Idea generation #41: Resign food aid, innovative markets,
17:59
aaronchua
Innovative markets in eco-services: While the articles talks about the financial innovations from an investment bank's perspective, we can easily imagine how a more 2.0 service can look like. A decentralised peer-to-peer funding model (like Kiva) for entrepreneurs in the green space looking for investments in carbon projects. The profit from selling the carbon credits can then be shared among the investors. Worth a thought!Fixing food aids: This article highlights the problem (and opportunity!) in the current food aid model. This line below is especially telling.It means fixing health systems, improving the delivery of nutrients in the food chain,...
Saturday, 19 July 2008
Idea generation #40: Fighting obesity with games, udeas from VCs, water economics
14:17
aaronchua
Video games fights obesity: Can we construct an open source system for every kid to have a Wii type of gaming system for free, supported by advertisements? This system should be linked to marketplace where activity games can be uploaded for sale by developers.Ideas from VCs:When the money men speak, you better listen....or shouldn't you, as argued by Umair Haque.Water economics: This is a great blog on the economics of water trading which I have discovered. For those who believe in the edge economy of markets, networks and community, this should be an interesting read. His recent article on the water scarcity and pricing nails it perfectly.Saving energy by exposing usage information: The power of information organisation. It is easy to use this model for other markets such as water and ca...
Startup Idea #75: Comparision site for drug order
13:27
aaronchua
Image by Getty Images via DaylifeRisks in ordering drugs online: A clear case for market design principles. With rising health costs, it is reasonable to expect more and more people going online to source for cheaper alternatives. Unintentionally but not unexpectedly, there will be a corresponding increase in the number of counterfeit drugs.So, what kind of opportunities are open to a startup to help rectify the problem?I see an opportunity to build a JellyFish type of comparison sites for online drugs with a built-in reputation system for information revelation. It is also important to create a risk index for sites that have not been rated,...
Friday, 18 July 2008
Startup Idea #74: Small idea: Market for API access
22:20
aaronchua
As web services move toward open access, the use of web APIs inevitably will follow the same trend. As a service becomes popular, the burden of API calls will cause slowdowns and even crashing of the main service. While it is possible to remedy this problem by using additional servers, another approach is to design an economic solution: markets for API access.I see this market evolving similarly to Amie Street. The initial batch of API access is free. As demand increases, the subsequent user has to pay a certain amount of fees. The fee will increase along with each additional user, until the point where the limit is hit. This is where it will get interesting.Imagine now that there is a market where developers (or speculators) can start trading their access right like shares on the financial...
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Idea generation #39: Open source law, mobile phone to change cancer care, real 2.0
21:35
aaronchua
Law goes open source: As the web continues to commodities data, companies such as Fastcase will disrupt the LexisNexis of the world. The next step will be interesting. If such data continues to become cheaper and maybe even free, we can build powerful services such as Farecast for the law sector. We can even create law insurance to allow people to hedge against the risk of not winning. Eventually, we might have markets where legal can be freely traded and hedged.Managing symptons by mobile phones: I will want to use this technology from a social point of view. Use mobile phone to enable users to share their pain and sufferings. Cancer treatment is a painful and long process. The social structure which can be enabled by the mobile phone applications (imagine twitter) can provide a form of relieve...
Startup Idea #68 (Part II): Personal carbon trading
00:16
aaronchua
See part one of the post hereWe are definitely seeing more and more companies providing tools to the research and rating side of the market. Carbonflow is one such company, providing solutions which automates the verification, delivery and distribution of GHG or CO2e offset credits for renewable energy and energy efficiency-based programs. I also came to know about World Energy, a dominant player in the exchange part of the game.The question in my head is: where are the 2.0 players in this space? Am I missing anythi...
Monday, 14 July 2008
Startup Idea #73: Product 2.0
23:11
aaronchua
Image via WikipediaEver since I read reBang's post on product design 2.0, I can't shake off the feeling that this is going a very rich area for new forms consumer products. However, I can't place my finger on what to do until I bump into Olinda, a social radio (Nabaztag is another example). It is the moment where the lightbulb in my head suddenly turns on.If I read rebang's post correctly, a truly 2.0 product has to reflect, enhance and even transform the social experiences of users (either cooperative or competitive). It is to understand that such Experiences are the driving forces behind massive adoption, not merely being able to connect to...
Sunday, 13 July 2008
A wishlist for WWGD
00:31
aaronchua
I have been looking forward to Jeff Jarvis book, What Would Google Do (WWGD), since the day I knew of its existence. Beyond a doubt, I think it is going to an enlightening read, to say the least. What I hoping is that Jeff will also cover industries beyond yesterday's tired definitions. Industries like those mentioned by Tim O'Reily.As an incentive for Jeff, I will start posting about the WWGD principle to these industries in future posts. Think of these posts as a fan's wishlist. As a preview, let's look at detecting infectious disease. Applying the WWGD principle will lead the following idea:The most time consuming in modeling is data collection and the actual crunching. Why not have a platform that provides the raw data and the computing resources? Let the rest of the community work on...
Thursday, 10 July 2008
Idea generation #38: Tim O'Reily on 'be good' and other 'be good' ideas
12:12
aaronchua
Great week as there are a couple of interesting reading materials that surface to my attention:Tim O'Reily on 'Be Good': It is good to see high profile bloggers like O'Reily getting behind Umair Haque's vision of bringing 2.0 to solve real issues. Below is a nice list of issues that warrant a 2.0 makeover. I have blogged about a couple of ideas on some of these topics:earth monitoring,carbon markets, (opportunities on personal carbon trading, first post on personal carbon trading)energy efficiency of electronic devices,home energy managementcollaborative scientific research,early detection of infectious disease outbreaks, (post on early detection system)personalized medicine,resource discovery,new materials Financial literacy: Great article by the economist on the need for financial literacy....
Monday, 7 July 2008
Startup Idea #72: Data driven: Creating new markets
23:06
aaronchua
Continuing the push for data driven startup ideas, I am thinking of how to leverage on online data to form create new forms of industries that lies outside yesterday's definition.Intelligence on emerging infectious diseases: using online content to trace and predict the movement of infectious disease is going to be a killer. The next thing is to make it easy to plug that information into a country or a city's alert/medical/disease prevention system. Make it into a network where these critical information flows. As BubbleGen has mentioned, whoever make it easy to amplify the flow of data is going to be the winner.Similar efforts can be found here (Global Public Health Intelligence) and here (Google's Predict and Prevent Initiative).Forecasting terrorism: A network of analysts sharing information...
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Startup Idea #71: WWGD: Fashion edition
10:36
aaronchua
Image via WikipediaJeff Jarvis has been blogging about his book, What would Google do (WWGD), and how such thinking can reshape different industries. I have been having fun reading these 2 particular posts, one on remaking restaurants and one on remaking banks.This got my mind itchy and, with a few minutes to spare, decided to apply WWGD thinking to fashion, an industryplague with surplus inventory and all sorts of problems.i) Treat each piece of fashion as a platform and give it for free. Let users create fashion mashup by adding pins, clip-ons et al through an easy to use interface. You make $$ on selling the accessories;ii) Make your production...
Friday, 4 July 2008
Startup Idea #70: Data driven tools for enterprises
21:58
aaronchua
(Read the first post here)In my previous post on how the abundance of new data will transform job functions, I focus mainly on what new sources of data are available and the opportunities in creating predictive analytic business to harvest these new data. As I explore further in data driven businesses, the opportunities become so much bigger. In this post, I am going to rave about the kind of enterprise businesses that can be built.Risk management: The availability of data is going to reveal the hidden risks that are embedded with each function. Take IT for example. There is now geninue risks in employees leaking confidential information. How about surfacing the transfer of these information to alert IT managers that too much information is resting in too few people? What about HR and turnover...
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Startup Idea #69: OpenID for avatar
21:18
aaronchua
I always supported the idea of portability. There is little sense in forcing users to key in their information in every single web service they signed on. However, customising your avatar is even more painful. Hence, an idea I am toying with is the concept of OpenAvatar (See OpenID).While the current favour is on avatar portability, my personal view is that this approach is too hard to be achieved. My thinking is to have an open standard where the characteristics, not the actual avatar, will be portable. These characteristics can be seen as 'meta-tags' that describes the avatar and can include examples such as gender, skin colour, clothing colour, et al. With these portable meta-tags, each game can provide their users with similar looking avatar, despite different game engines.With these meta...
Idea generation #37: Exchange for internet capacity, billion doller idea for twitter, disintemediation of analysts
20:44
aaronchua
Market for internet capacity: The age of markets. The interesting thing is to apply markets to areas where it is not obvious. Things like HR recruitment? (more on that in a future post)How Twitter could be worth a billion dollars: Interesting angle. And we are long overdue on Paypal 2.0. Could Twitter be it?Who needs analysts?: The disintemediation continues. Open source research to the research market will be what blogging is to the publishing industry. Will there be a need for a blogger, technorati, techmeme et al for research or will current tools suffi...
