Walking or cycling is a great way to save money and live a more sustainable lifestyle. But it can present its own set of problems. This is especially true if you want to walk or cycle to work. If you’ve got any steep inclines or a long distance to cover, you’re likely to end up soaked with sweat by the time you get to where you’re going.
This was the exact situation that Jarle Wanvik faced back in 1993. After spending some time arriving to work drenched in sweat and exhausted from the ride, he decided to do something about the most dramatic hill he faced. And so, Norway’s famous bike escalator, or Trampe lift, was born.
In 2013, Wanvik’s design was upgraded by the town and renamed the CycloCable. As word spread, it became more than just a way for people to get to and from work. It actually became a tourist destination itself, with people coming from miles away to see – and ride – the famous CycloCable.
This bike escalator makes it easy for cyclists to get up the hill at Brubakken near Gamle Bybro in Trondheim, Norway. It’s a hill that runs 420 feet-long and climbs at a gradient of between 10 and 18 percent. The CycloCable covers that entire hill, bringing cyclists from the bottom to the top in a matter of minutes, and moving at 5 miles per hour. Since its inception, it’s carried over 200,000 cyclists.
The design is simple but innovative. A series of small, metallic plates run along a line up the hill like a miniature ski-lift. A cyclist makes way to the device, puts one foot on the plate, and holds his other foot off the ground. The lift does everything else, carrying the user up the hill with no effort on his part. And though some might be afraid of injury or losing control, in the five years since the redesign, there have been no injuries reported.
At any one time, up to five users can take advantage of the CycloCable. And its benefits aren’t limited to bicycles alone. People with scooters and strollers have been known to zip up the hill as well.
Norway’s CycloCable is just one more example of how a problem can turn into an opportunity for innovation.
Startup
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend to become registered, startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to be successful and influential. Some startups become unicorns; that is privately held startup companies valued at over US$1 billion.
Actions
Startups typically begin by a founder (solo-founder) or co-founders who have a way to solve a problem. The founder of a startup will begin market validation by problem interview, solution interview, and building a minimum viable product (MVP), i.e. a prototype, to develop and validate their business models. The startup process can take a long period of time (by some estimates, three years or longer), and hence sustaining effort is required. Over the long term, sustaining effort is especially challenging because of the high failure rates and uncertain outcomes. Having a business plan in place outlines what to do and how to plan and achieve an idea in the future. Typically, these plans outline the first 3 to 5 years of your business strategy.
Design principles
Models behind startups presenting as ventures are usually associated with design science. Design science uses design principles considered to be a coherent set of normative ideas and propositions to design and construct the company's backbone. For example, one of the initial design principles is "affordable loss".
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