I spotted a trend idea!

Trends are everywhere and changing daily - even hourly. Twitter trends has become the new 'bestseller's list to get on, or at least hitch a ride with (for popularity and other marketing purposes).

I have followed Springwise "Your Daily Dose of Entrepreneurial Ideas" for nearly 3 years. I both excited and impressed every week to get the newsletter, and see the latest new ideas that people have put into business. The innovations are cool, and really juice up your creativity karma.

The other side of this exciting venture is the people that find the 'trends' - these new, innovative ideas. It's not even the business themselves that are plugging themselves, but people like you and me that see something new and say 'That's cool. I've never seen that before.'

This is the entrepreneurs ultimate idea fountain. See something cool on Springwise that was done in Berlin. You can emulate it and launch something similar in Portland, Oregon.


As their website explains: "Springwise scans the globe for the most promising business ventures, ideas and concepts that are ready for regional or international adaptation, expansion, partnering, investments or cooperation. We ferociously track more than 400 global offline and online business resources, as well as taking to the streets of world cities, digital cameras at hand."

Submitting to Springwise
This year I started submitting things that caught my eye. One idea that I saw from a couple of Israeli entrepreneurs was a startup for ordering from restaurants Bite2Eat. As their website describes: The team here at Bite2Eat.com wants to make interacting with restaurants across the country as convenient and natural as the on-line banking or shopping you've gotten accustomed to.

It looked like a unique, new and hip idea - leveraging our new online comforts for new areas. The idea could be applied in countless new directions, making more and more service experiences as convenient as online banking.

The idea was turned down. The letter I received was "It was either spotted by someone else or wasn't the kind of idea we're looking for."

Finding Trends
What makes a trend, or in for Springwise a local innovation with global potential?
I think the following points provide a good criteria
- Universality
- Adaptability
- Currentness
- Uniqueness

What I spotted
Well actually my wife found it, but I submitted it to Springwise. It is called Pikolonia, and it is a unique play center in Israel, resembling a mini city where children can experience the “grown-up” world. The activities help kids learn and explore different aspects of day- to-day life by touching‚ observing and acting‚ all done in an atmosphere of incredible fun!

This place had it all. It hit the 'trend criteria' on the ball. What is being done on the moderate scale in Israel, could be emulated on a larger, bigger budget scale in the US.

So we don't need to be the smartest people in class. Ideas are out there, we just have to know where to look.