The Digital Tool Factory Blog

photo © 2006 Fin Fahey | more info (via: Wylio)On Sunday I watched Christianne Amanpour’s interview with Bill & Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett and Ted Turner on This Week on Sunday.  All three espoused some form of SpiderMan conservatism.   The only interesting thing that emerged from the interview was that the Gates Foundation funds experimental work in American public schools.

Why?  The rest of the Gates Foundation work seems to be devoted (from what I have heard anyway) to creating one-time, permanent fixes to problems that they can “just do” with no permission from regulators, which is what I have always liked about that foundation.  To attempt to make any changes to public education would seem to involve a long fight with a deeply commited vested interest and a range of lobbyists for a limited reward at best.

That got me thinking of permanent, one-time improvements the foundation could make without coming into contact with vested interests and their lobbyists.  Here is one idea:

Home insulation – The Gates Foundation could sponsor their own research and improve spray foam insulation until it

• has double to the R-Value per inch (up to R-14) of existing spray foam
• has half the cost of the cheapest insulating competitor per cubic foot
• is simple enough so that the average DIYer could resinsulate in a weekend
• could be sold at  at Home Depot or Lowes, and WalMart.

Once those goals have been met they could open source the patents and let the commoditization begin!  America is horribly under-insulated, and making an R-100 easy to do would result in a permanent, one-time fix to America’s housing stock that would dramatically reduce residential energy consumption.  It would also disproportionally help the lower-income who tend to live in under-insulated houses.

Having said all this I do realize that insulating is not that difficult, nor that expensive, but it is perceived that way by the general public, and if you could reduce the payoff period to less than a year that would surely improve matters.

What do you think, what would you do if you had 50 million to spend and the improvement had to be:

1. Permanent
2. One-time (no recurring maintenance or anything)
3. Mass-Market
4. Physical, not virtual

Thoughts anyone?  Please leave them in the comments.

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog

Lately my reading has been about cognitive biases in decision making and I had the thought that most good advice tells you what you already know, just in a form shorn  of anchoring effects, survivorship bias, and so on.  Sometimes it’s easier to remove the mote in thy neighbor’s eye than the beam in your own. Continue reading →

As my domestic status has changed over the past year, this idea no longer would applies to me, but here is another business idea I would have paid for.

Home Maker Inc – A service that would mimic many of the offerings of the good homemaker, solely in the care and maintenance of the home and retirement planning.  There would be no actual in-person services rendered by the Homemaker Inc (heretoafter called HMI) just financial  and long-term home matters.  The business would largely be by mail, phone, and internet.  The retirement and financial planning would be largely limited to enforcing Ramit Sethi’s I will Teach You To Be Rich book (which covers about 80% of what you need).

The home maintenance would consist of:

• Paying all utility bills (though the customer’s account), and notifying them of any deals (like on natural gas or the like) that come around.  The customer would be given a monthly statement of the expenses.
• HMI would hold all warranties in a central and findable location, and handle all home repair services.  HMI would also hold all insurance policies.
• HMI would schedule and arrange all home maintenance tasks (like annual servicing of appliances) that never actually get done.

That way the house could be maintained at limited expense, and things would actually get done.  Just a thought.

This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog