Do you have a tangle of cables and cords piled all over your desk? I sure do. My desktop now has two screens, but no built-in webcam, so there's a webcam velcro'd to the top of the screen. Which is used mostly for the mic for Skype calls, so is occupying a USB port.
My current desktop does not have a memory card reader, so I have one of those plugged in much of the time, for camera photos, digital audio, and digital video cards. But I frequently use a Flipcam, which also needs a USB slot.
My three iPad/pod/nano devices use two different cables, both needing a USB port.
But the key one is my beloved Plantronics ear-piece, which is in daily use. And of course needs a USB port! I usually have to unplug something else to charge it.
[I'm coming to the innovation thing... hang on a sec.]
So here's the crazy thing. My monitors have four USB ports, but only two of them are conveniently located on the side. So I never use the ones on the bottom. I had capabilities I could have been using, but wasn't.
A behaviorist might say this is due to the availability heuristic -- we are more likely to notice/use things that are easily accessible in memory. In other words, out of sight, out of mind.
My solution: plug the cable in to the inaccessible port, and leave it plugged in. So I notice the end of the cable. [Ed.: Gawd, Susan, that is so simple, surely you are not sharing this with us as an example of innovation?? Feeble indeed.]
Actually we all have -- either personally, or in our organization -- underutilized resources and capabilities. It might be people, or it might be an empty parking lot, or it might be USB ports.
What resources and capabilities are lying fallow in your organization? How can you solve your problems by using things that are just out of sight?
