What Next? 2013 Musings.

Merry Christmas everyone; Happy Holidays. Here’s hoping the New Year brings you all that you hope for and more. I for one, generally spend the week between Christmas and the new year spending a lot of time thinking about what novel wonders will come our way. What trends will entrepreneurs capitalize upon and where will the next breakthrough idea come from?

Just think about the past few years: the smartphone has come to dominate our lives. When you stop to reflect on it one can do just about anything with a smartphone: from depositing checks (thank you US Bank, my bank, and all the others really) to having it serve as your personal trainer (try out Fitbit, it’s free); to well, from what I gather, the next big breakthrough will be using vibrations to allow you to feel things like fabric or fur on your phone – the sky obviously is the limit. So we know one trend bound to continue is the explosion of mobile apps. 

What else? Clearly the green/sustainability movement will continue to blow up. Whether it’s locally sourced products; organic food; and recycling just about everything; here too, the trend is unmistakable.

The mark of a great entrepreneur is one who sees trends and somehow combines them into one stunning new achievement. Here in Chico,at the Chico Mall, we might be able to see just such a product of what the great Peter Drucker called creative imitation . That’s right the Chico Mall where you can see and use one of the most stunning examples of combining trends I can possibly imagine: it’s called  ecoATM and it combines our love of new smartphones (the average American replaces his/her phone every two years) with recycling. 

How it works is even more startling. The following comes directly from their web site:

The ecoATM is an automated, consumer self-serve kiosk that quickly evaluates and buys back used consumer electronics directly from consumers for cash. The process takes just a few minutes to complete.

The ecoATM - Easy as 1, 2, 3

STEP 1: Place your mobile device in the ecoATM test station.
STEP 2: The ecoATM will examine your device and then search for the highest price we can find in the worldwide market.
STEP 3: If you agree to sell it, you will receive cash on the spot.

Take a moment to think about this one. It’s automated, self-serve and it yields instant cash. There are even protections in the form of fingerprinting and numerous on-board video cameras to stop thieves. According to their web-site, thus far less than one out of every 4,000 transactions was the result of a theft. The business, by the way, raised $17 million dollars in a Round B in May, so others or at least some VC’s believe in it. 

How about you? Do you think this one has legs?

Special thanks to Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution for bringing ecoATM to my attention.