Ideas Lab

Not everything becomes a company.

Some become products. Some become client work. Some stay experiments. These are open concepts, listed with the question that decides which.

Could be a companyWaste

Kerbside Truth

A single machine-readable record of what every UK council actually accepts, updated from source documents rather than scraped summaries.

Open question

Who pays: councils, retailers, or the apps that need the data?

Could be a productRetail

Return Reason Codes

Free-text return reasons are unusable. Classify them at the point of entry into a fixed set that maps to a fix: sizing, description, damage, delivery.

Open question

Does a merchant change anything once the codes are clean?

Could be client workHorticulture

Bench Camera

A fixed camera over a propagation bench, one frame a day, counting germination and flagging drift before a grower would notice it.

Open question

Is daily resolution early enough to save the batch?

Stays an experimentConsumer goods

Weight of the Box

Estimate the packaging weight of an online order from the product page alone, so a shopper sees the packaging cost before they buy.

Open question

Estimates were within 18% — accurate enough to be interesting, not to be published.

Could be a productLogistics

Depot Handover

Damage is usually created between vehicles, not on the road. Photograph pallets at each handover and attribute damage to a leg of the journey.

Open question

Will a depot accept a system that assigns blame to a depot?

Stays an experimentConstruction

Spec to Skip

Read a materials schedule and predict the skip volume a job will generate, before the first delivery arrives on site.

Open question

Prediction needs site waste data that almost nobody records accurately.