Want to turn the 2 billion tons of waste (garbage) generated annually on our planet into plastic that you can sell for a profit?
That is the revolutionary recycling innovation breakthrough that Israel based, UBQ Materials announced earlier this month.
Through its innovative new technology, UBQ coverts everyday trash including rotting food, plastic bags, soiled paper, bottles, and containers into plastic.
The process begins by sorting, shredding, grinding, and heating the trash into a paste, then its processed into tiny plastic pellets that can be made into everyday items like plastic trays, pipe and packing crates.
As much as five tons of waste can be fed into a multi-chamber reactor that heats the material to 400 degrees to break down the organic matter into its core elements, then through various chemical and physical reactions it is converted into plastic pellets.
Validating Its Claims
Outside plastic experts are validating its claims including the Swiss environmental consulting firm Quantis, which found that keeping decomposing organic waste out of landfills and using it to create
second-generation plastics could significantly reduce methane, a gas that significantly contributes to global warming.
They found that substituting a ton of UBQ’s pellets for the same amount of polypropylene saves the equivalent of about 15 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Furthermore, adding as little as 10 percent of its material to brand new plastic manufacturing can make the result carbon neutral.
The company was founded by Rabbi Yehuda Pearl, a businessman who previously founded and built Sabra Hummus, which eventually partnered with PepsiCo to build it into a global operation.
Rabbi Pearl has an intuitive sense of seeing problems that can be solved in an innovative way. He said, “It was similar with UBQ,” he says. “I saw the germ of an idea that might be grown and influenced.”
New Products and Services
The past several Newsletters have examined several of the nine different types of innovation. In this edition we will focus on the most well-known Innovation type, new products and services.
While UBQ Materials breakthrough represents a “Radical” type of innovation, we will look a three other examples of new products and services, that are not radical ones. This will allow us to consider the continuum that new products and services can span.
Don’t think you need to come up with a ground-breaking innovation to introduce a new product or service, because as you will see in these examples, there can be a range to a product’s “newness”.
Lastly, we look at the three development steps that each of these four new product or service innovations have in common.
Tesla’s Cybertruck
Last week, Elon Musk founder of Tesla, introduced the futuristic Cybertruck, which he claims already has 250,000 new orders.
With a distinctive angular design, a stainless steel “exoskeleton” and an overall look that some people have called “post-apocalyptic,” it is Tesla’s effort to break into a market dominated by Ford, GM and Chrysler.
The Cybertruck starts at $39,900 and depending on the model, Musk claimed it will go 250 to 500 miles on one charge.
The introduction event also highlighted its 14,000-pound towing capacity well as its fuel savings. To prove the electric vehicle’s strength, Musk also played video of a Cybertruck pulling against a Ford F-150 and winning the contest.
New Amazon Alexa Products
Recently Amazon introduced a number of new Alexa related products including earbuds, glasses, a small device for bathrooms and garages, and a new dog collar that tracks a pet so an owner can locate it with a smartphone.
Dave Limp, who oversees Amazon’s devices business, said the goal is to have Alexa being used “throughout the day.” He also introduced the $200 Echo Studio, which creates the experience of surround sound.
According to Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with the market research firm Creative Strategies, “They are on a track to continue to penetrate the home, and then take it out of the home.”
Many of Amazon’s new announcements for the kitchen and living rooms integrate screens with speakers, because Amazon has realized that solely using voice is not the most effective way to convey some information. Relatedly, a new partnership with the Food Network will provide step-by-step recipe instructions for individual use and group cooking classes.
Disney’s New Video Streaming Service
This month Disney introduced its Disney+ (Plus) video streaming service. It costs $7 a month in the US, or $70 for a full year. While there are many existing video streaming services, including 
Amazon Prime Video, HBO Now, Hulu, Netflix, Sling TV, and YouTube TV, Disney+ is priced below many of its competitors.
In little more than a day, Disney+ signed up more than 10 million people, the company said, far exceeding its forecast. By comparison, HBO Now took nearly three years to achieve 5 million subscribers.
The “product” Disney is offering is its extensive library of Disney’s and Fox’s legacy content as well as new, exclusive TV shows, movies, documentaries and shorts. This includes nearly 500 movies and 7,500 episodes of TV shows from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic and other brands.
The “Newness” of These Products
The UBQ Materials innovation breakthrough possibly can fundamentally change the world. While Tesla’s Cybertruck is not a truly radical product innovation, it can create true disruption to the established pickup truck manufacturing community.
While Amazon’s new Alexa products do not create a new innovation platform, which the original introduction of Alexa established, the new products take advantage of the existing platform, adapt it to other uses, and enhance its functionality.
Even though the Disney+ video streaming service does not employ any significant new technology, it provides access to its unique collection of video content, which is the attraction of this new product.
The Three Steps for Creating Breakthrough Innovations
Focus – First, just as UBQ Materials did, you want to focus on a problem that a large group of possible customers are wrestling with. Likewise, both Tesla and Amazon looked at challenges people are facing and decided to try to develop solutions for them.
Explore – Next, explore various solutions to the problem. It took UBQ Materials many years and input from numerous leading scientists to develop its product. Similarly, Tesla and Amazon pursued various development efforts, while having to overcome assorted impediments in the creation of their new products. Whereas, Disney’s product development effort was mainly the work to bring its existing content to the public via a streaming service.
Work together – Finally, as in all four of these new products or services, it is crucial to get your entire development team to work together by casting the vision for what you are trying to bring to the world. Otherwise people will go in different directions and not contribute in a cohesive manner.
The key is to leverage your existing product knowledge and expertise in executing these three steps.
If you could use assistance with effectively developing new product and service innovations, please contact us using the information below so we can be a resource to you in this foundational area.
Fountainhead Consulting Group, Inc. is an Innovation and Business Planning firm. During the past 17, years we have shown over 1,200 companies how to achieve their goals by using our unique, comprehensive, and systematic FastTrak Innovation Program™, Innovation Academy™, and Structure of Success™ methodologies. Using the components in these methodologies, each month we examine an aspect of how to transform your business or organization into a true 21st Century enterprise.
Office: (770) 642-4220
www.FountainheadConsultingGroup.com
George.Horrigan@FountainheadConsultingGroup.com
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