If you’ve ever had young children, you’ll know that they need a booster seat in the car to use the seat belts safely. You’ll also know that they tend to be quite bulky, and a bit of a pain to carry around and transport between vehicles. Mifold is a portable car seat that holds down the child’s seatbelt, offering an alternative to bulky booster seats.

Traditionally, car safety seats for children work by lifting the child up to the height of the adult, so that the seatbelt can hold them securely in. Mifold inverts the process and holds down the seatbelt instead, offering parents an affordable, convenient alternative to bulky booster seats.  Since it is light and portable it can be taken easily from vehicle to vehicle.

I mention it for two reasons:

1. Because the product might be useful to you.

2. As a mental springboard. What the developers have done here is take the usual solution (raise up the child) and reverse it (lower down the belt). Reversing the solution to a problem can often lead to new ideas. How might you use this?

Website: www.mifold.com

Ever been to a restaurant that seemed under-staffed? Well I bet it had nothing on Amsterdam-based Foodsy, a restaurant with no staff at all. Customers cook, serve and even pay themselves using the food, equipment and instructions provided.

Guests are  provided with a menu of recipe cards that they can use to cook for themselves. There are also instructions for how to pour a beer and the best setting to make their own coffee. Once they have eaten, guests simply pay for their meal using an iPad app.

Foodsy is a pop up temporary restaurant at the moment, but it could be worth keeping an eye on how the concept is received.

Website: www.foodsy.amsterdam

In Asia, many people believe that your blood type should determine your diet and exercise regime. Now, a restaurant in Thailand is promoting that idea by organising their menu according to blood type. Each dish on the menu at The Third Floor in Bangkok is accompanied by the letters O, A, B or AB, to encourage diners to choose a meal that will complement their dietary needs.

According to the blood type diet, type O’s need a high-protein diet, stemming from their roots in carnivorous tribes, while type A’s should go meat-free, as their roots in agriculture mean they have a sensitive immune system, and so on.

I’ve no idea whether there’s anything in this, but as a means of differentiating your restaurant from the others in a crowded market, it certainly has merit. If you’re in a heavily populated market, it’s always worth looking for a way to separate your offering from that of the crowd.

One of my pet hates, having endured a tiring flight, is to then go through the annoying rigmarole that characterises renting a car at an airport. I was therefore interested to read about Skurt which aims to remove the hassle.

Skurt is a new Los Angeles-based service that enables visitors to order a rental car via an app and have it delivered to them by an agent at the arrivals terminal. Users can confirm and pay for the hire through the app. Upon landing, they are be met by a representative and then  escorted to their rental car directly outside. No shuttle bus, no queues, no paperwork to complete.

It sounds like a great service which any weary traveller would appreciate – wherever they’re landing. Who will be first to bring something similar to the UK?

www.skurtapp.com

Bartering is an age old trading system, but new technology is being used to bring it bang up to date. Italy-based TimeRepublik  allows users to learn new skills without money changing hands.

The website links users with those who can help them develop new skills. Users don’t pay for the service, but rather they build up ‘hours’ by helping others. If a member tutors somebody for an hour, they receive an hour to spend learning something else from other members.

By removing money from the exchange process, the company open up new skills to a wider audience than would otherwise be able to afford to attain them. It also allows other members to gain from dormant skills they’re not currently profiting from.

Are there other services that could benefit from a bartering approach like this? I’m sure there must be.

www.timerepublik.com