I just watched a program on the BBC about the ridiculous amount of food that we waste – and rather oddly it struck an idea for a niche business.

We all waste food in our homes on a regular basis; a loaf of bread that doesn’t get finished here or a just-after-its-sell-by-date carton of juice. Supermarkets and restaurants are perhaps even more obvious culprits – frequently chucking out fruit, veg, bread and anything else that starts looking a little tired.

And, of course, much of what gets chucked out is perfectly edible. Where picky consumers are involved, aesthetics wins out.

But this starts even before it gets to the shops, with mountains of fresh produce and ingredients never even making it as far as the grocery store shelves simply because it doesn’t conform to specs. Apparently, courgettes (zucchini) for example must be between 17 and 21 centimeters – otherwise they’re simply composted, tilled back into the ground or fed to livestock.

So how about a niche market that sells exclusively misshapen veg, under-sized eggs, dented canned goods and overly bent bananas?

The goods could be sourced at a discount from producers and suppliers keen to get rid of stock that is rejected by the big retailers and then sold on to eco-savvy and cost-concious consumers, also at a discount.

If you know of a business that’s already doing this – let me know.

Everything comes with a story attached these days – often catering directly to consumers’ quest for authenticity and often in a simple attempt to differentiate one product from the rest.

Increasingly technology is playing its role too. Launched to coincide with Manchester’s Future of Everything festival, the RememberMe project uses RFID tags and QR codes to embed stories about clothes donated to Oxfam.

The project is a collaboration between Oxfam and Totem, who also produce an iPhone app that allows consumers to tag their own items and save video, audio or text ‘histories’ of these objects using printable QR codes.

This idea is also leading to other creative uses with one estate agent using QR codes to let potential buyers ‘see’ inside a house via their phones.

An estate agent in Didsbury, Manchester is using tales of things to creatively market its properties. Gascgoigne Halman has placed QR codes/barcodes on its properties to allow buyers to see inside the property without actually having to set foot in the house before making the commitment to view.

An opportunity for some creative thinking perhaps?

There is a sharp contrast in the attitudes to business failure in the US and Europe and this is often cited as one of the reasons for the more entrepreneurial, innovation lead culture across the pond.

When he visited the UK in 2009, Craig Newmark, founder of Craiglist was dismayed by the attitude to failure he found. “In Silicon Valley, failure is just a normal phase of one’s career” he commented on his blog. Contrast this with Europe where 57% of people would not invest money with someone who has failed in the past and 47% would be less inclined to buy goods from someone who had a blot on their business career.

These differences in attitude have a huge impact on the number of startups. At any one time around 10% of the US population are engaged in the process of setting up a business whereas the figure is around 4% in the UK and only 2% in France.

Innovation and entrepreneurship by their very nature require experimenting with new ideas, many of which will not be the hoped for success. Everyone fears failure, but innovation depends on it. A fear of failure can stifle the creative process in two ways.

Firstly, the stigmatisation of failure makes people reluctant to try new things. This can be a big problem in both new and established business as people will play safe and stick to the status quo causing stagnation.

Secondly, people who fear failure will persevere at a failing project too long. In his book, The Dip, marketing guru Seth Godin argues that successful people fail early and fail often. The secret is to learn from the experience and ensure that the next project does not make the same mistakes. Alongside the learning experience that failure can bring, it also pushes us out of our comfort zone and forces us to do new things.

After getting fired or made redundant, you may not know what you will do next, but one thing is for certain, if will be different and you will have to improvise. The experience can either be a crushing blow or exciting opportunity.

In 2008 J K Rowling, author of the ubiquitous Harry Potter novels, gave a speech to Harvard Graduates entitled ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure’. Before becoming a world famous novelist, Rowling suffered a series of setbacks. Looking back now, she feels that her failures allowed her to strip away the inessential and concentrate on the one thing she was good at, writing.

In her speech she said:

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way… …The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.

I believe that Rowling is onto something here. I often tell my friends that their problem is that they haven’t failed enough in their careers and consequently are stuck in dreary but well paid positions. A few failures along the way might have freed them from the fear of the unknown and given them the permission they needed to think big.

Before launching his online retailing business, Hello Baby, Trevor Ginn had more jobs than all of his friends put together. You can follow him on his blog and @trevorginn

Ever thought what Iddictive would look like live? Probably not, but I did.

The result is SHOWCASE, a one-day conference showcasing exciting new projects and product launches from hot start-ups and growing companies.

This first event will take place in my own backyard and focus on developments in the world of cloud, mobile and web-based apps. And it’s free.

If you’re going to be in Ireland on September 16th, come check us out.

Site: www.showcaseconf.com

Underwood is a business born completely out of love, in this case a combined love of vinyl records and short stories.

Twice a year the company produces a limited edition vinyl recording of two writers reading their short stories. And just in case you wanted to know, the name Underwood is taken from the typewriter invented by Frank Wagner in 1896.

Site: www.underwoodstories.com

Pic: BruceTurner

We’ve written here before about how smart retailers can move beyond price-driven retail and become community hubs. In doing so they market themselves, diversify their revenue streams, improve market share, keep their fingers on the pulse and have a helluva lot of fun in the process.

Based in Austin TX, Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop is Lance Armstrong’s spot. Calling it a bike shop doesn’t really cover it though.

More than a retail box, Lance and his friends aim to make the shop a hub of cycling life, commuting, social activity, fitness, and a temple of two-wheeled living….To serve the bike community is our job, but to convert people to a bike life is our mission.

In practice that means a retail store, a coffee shop, storage lockers for biking commuters, a regular schedule of events and classes on everything from maintenance to traffic skills, a “state of the art training and testing facility led by 6-Time Tour de France rider Kevin Livingston” and even something of an art gallery downstairs, housing photographic exhibitions.

This is retail as shopping destination, service provider, educational organisation, community hub and general fun place to hang out. It’s a movement.

How could you create this same kind of effect in your industry and scaled to your local market?

Site: mellowjohnnys.com

So Google have unveiled their App Inventor, which allows users to create Android-based mobile apps using a simple drag and drop interface.

“To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.”

When this same kind of idea was applied to online publishing we ended up with tens of millions of blogs and a new industry. When it was applied to web design we got businesses like  SquareSpace. Audio recording: podcasts. Low cost video cameras and simple eidting software: YouTube. Print-on-demand:  Blurb, Lulu and Newpaper Club.

Whenever you take something that used to required technical skill or access to expensive equipment and make it accessible to the masses, the masses seem to grab hold of it and run – creating all kinds of weird and wonderful things in the process.

App Inventor is the first big step in doing exactly this for the mobile app market (there are other DIY app tools out there but nothing with this kind of clout behind it). Expect to see two things happen:

• Individuals creating simplified, personalised apps to help solve their own daily needs or just for fun – some will break out and become hits
• New structures, like marketplaces for DIY apps, to grow up around them
• Hyper-local apps, which previously wouldn’t justify the cost of creating them, will become more common

Of course, this is really just a first tentative step and there’s a lot of ground yet to cover.

App builders will need to become even simpler and probably cross-platform. Apple will no doubt have something in the works too but the next big thing in this space may be a well-branded, well-back startup – something like a SquareSpace or possibly even an Open Source option, a WordPress for apps.

Whatever the format and whatever the timescale, it’s hard to imagine that DIY apps won’t become much more common – and that inevitably means new opportunities for creative entrepreneurs.

We’ve covered a host of travel related business ideas and Unlocked Guides – the newly launched series of the children’s travel guides – sit firmly in the ‘it must have been done before’ camp.

And it has, but not a lot and often not very well.

Unlocked Guides deliver a kids’-eye-view of cities like London and Edinburgh containing interesting facts, places to go and plenty of illustrations – all developed in conjunction with kids and parents through regular workshops.

“all over the world, parents are researching trips without getting input from their children. We like children, and we decided they deserved better, so we started to write our Unlocked Guides”

Started by a couple of ex-management consultant twenty-somethings, Factfinder, the company behind the guides, also produces kid-friendly travel guides and fact sheets for travel and tourism companies.

Every industry has its own underserved niche – where will you find yours?