Hello! I am Najib Afghan currently studying entrepreneurship at Grove City College. We studied in the adjacent possible approach to innovation and here is a great example of that.

Cary Pint an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University have come up with an innovative idea to use scrap metal to produce a battery that will last for 13 years.

The inspiration for the idea comes from Baghdad Battery. It consisted of a terracotta pot, a copper sheet and an iron rod along with some trace chemicals that could have been an electrolyte.

The battery will be powerful and easy to build. All you need for this battery to work is: inches long piece of steel, a piece of brass and a jar that can be recycled from the dumpster or junk yard.

Then you soaked the metal pieces in a jar with a solution of water and salt or a solution of water and antifreeze. Next, you apply a voltage to induce a known process called anodization, which restructures the nanoscopic composition of a metal. That exposes the metal’s interior surface and makes it more receptive to storing and releasing energy.

The next step was to place a physical barrier between the two pieces of metal. Lastly, you submerged it in an electrolyte solution made from water and potassium hydroxide, a soap easily purchased online. When connected by wires to a device that generated a current, such as a solar panel, you contraption should work like a car battery.

You can read more about this idea on LifeScience.com on my personal blog here.

Islamic banking is an ingenious a banking system that is based on two basic principles. One is sharing of profit and loss and two the prohibition of the collection and payment of interest by lenders and investors. Collecting interest is not permitted according to the Quran.

Basically if you invest you money in my company, you get half of the profit and I get half but if the company goes bankrupt and losses all it’s assets you get nothing back for your investment. You do not get interest.

For example, in 1963, Egyptians formed an Islamic bank in Mit Ghmar. When the bank loaned money to businesses, it did so on a profit-sharing model. To reduce risk, the bank only approved about 40% of its business loan applications, but the default ratio was zero.
REAKING DOWN ‘Islamic Banking’
Since this system of banking is grounded in Islamic principles, all the undertakings of the banks follow Islamic morals. Therefore, it could be said that financial transactions within Islamic banking are a culturally distinct form of ethical investing. For example, investments involving alcohol, gambling, pork, etc. are prohibited.
How Do Islamic Banks Earn Money Without Using Interest?
In order to earn money without charging interest, Islamic banks use equity-participation systems. This means that if a bank loans money to a business, the business pays back the loan without interest, but it gives the bank a share in its profits. If the business defaults on the loan or does not earn any profits, the bank does not receive any profit either.

What’s more is the fact the bank cannot take on high risk investment such as selling short or buying long. For example the can only offer rent-to-own model. Banks buy the house or what ever investment under their name and the then the tenant pays rent till the full price of the house is pain in set period of time. Obviously bank can price the house higher than cost of the house to make profit.

I think, the short coming of such system is in the area of credit loans and time-value-of-money.  I think, banks should not be allowed to play with other people’s money and move it out of the bank to invest somewhere or give out loans. Banks can give loans using it’s own money however. But not those customer who have opened a bank account with them.

Banks should create an app or platform where customer can meet entrepreneurs directly and consent to any investment.

By time-value-of-money I mean in a sense that inflation cause rise in prices and lower purchasing power of a currency. That’s why we need to introduce sound money backed by gold and silver. Then it does not matter how long you keep you money, it value will remain constant or go up as the demand for gold and silver rises and prices goes down as result efficiency industry and production processes.

I have blocked a domain name for my business idea Vesta International Bank which will be savings and investment that uses Islamic banking system and solve the shortcoming mentioned above!

In Wake of housing crisis and rapid rise in cost of living, people experimenting new ideas to lower housing costs. As the population rises in the big metropolitan such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, and cities like New York, Chicago, and Seattle, a new style of small space, dorm like housing has sprang up.

One University Professor come up an ingenious idea, merging the concepts of micro-housing and on-demand services (as well as downsizing for more affordable living in expensive urban neighborhoods), to build high-tech, compact living cubes that, modular style, that can slide into and out of steel frames tucked into undeveloped spaces in urban cores.

Before coming up with the idea, Kasita, Jeff Wilson, who is an environmental science professor at the University of Texas at Austin, spent 10 months living in a converted Dumpster in an experiment with cutting down on possessions and tiny housing. He then worked with industrial design firm Frog to create a template for a 208-square-foot, single-occupancy city apartment.

While most micro-apartment that looks like an out of shaped conventional apartments which an area of some 5×6 square meters, his apartment is as tiny as 3×6 square meters, 19.3 square meters to be precise.

“The prefab buildings are also fully loaded with smart tech. You can tell the glass to darken if you want privacy, turn on the lights and music, or ask for the morning news. Though the first units will plug into the grid, the startup envisions eventually running them off solar power stored in Tesla batteries and adding features like rainwater collection” Jeff told NextCity.org

The amazing part is that the apartment can be moved to different corner of the city and slid into a slot into an existing compatible building frame like a drawer on you desk. He hope that it will rent out $600 a month half the current market price for studios like this.

Moving swiftly to the next smallest apartment, micro-apartments, the University of British Colombia in Canada is also building brand new micro-apartment complex for it’s growing 50000 student body that are staying for longer period of time that is only 13 square meters (you could think of it as room 3 meter wide and 4 meter long, 3×4 square meters).

The only downside it notice is that you cannot use your while allowing a roommate to use your desk because the desk and the bedroom is one convertible item.

An alternative design exist where the kitchen, the bath room and living room are in a row in one 3×4 square meters apartment but the bed is on decker above the bathroom. Which is my favorite. It has everything you need.

Lastly, there an even smaller apartment/living space exist in Tokyo that more like hostel style bunk beds but each bed is more like a cage. It has it’s one sound proof doors and walls, tv, and a bed.

In conclusion, I think you can combine all of the above with food, cleaning and laundry plans to create a housing brand that help meet the needs of sing young people, travelers and those with family but at much cheaper prices. That way people can focus on their savings, on work and what they are good instead wasting time grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and etc… therefore, we will have better division and more efficient economy.