Every case

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• GV's Design Sprint compresses a product decision into five days — prototype tested Friday2010–2016
• Dos Equis' 'Most Interesting Man' turns a no-name import into a premium US brand2006–2016
• Coca-Cola prints 150 first names on bottles — 'Share a Coke' wins back young Australians2011–2016
• Taobao 2016 Second Floor: Mackerel Dumplings Sold 340,000 in One Night2016
• Patagonia's 2005 rule: when the surf is up, go — trust and output replace time cards2005–2016
• NHS Couch to 5K: free 9-week walk-run plan turns beginners into 5K runners — 7M+ downloads1996–2016
• Google SRE turns ops into software engineering — reliability becomes a budget2003–2016
• Galaxy Zoo turns galaxy sorting into an online game — 36M classifications in months2007–2016
• Death Wish Coffee wins a free $5M Super Bowl ad via a small-business contest2015–2016
• Pokémon GO plays on the real map — Ingress players' landmarks become PokéStops and Gyms2011–2016
• Kumamoto gives its Kumamon bear mascot away free — sales pass ¥100bn a year2010–2016
• NTT DoCoMo's 176 emoji (1999): tiny pictograms that became the world's first emoji set1999–2016
• A PC in a Delhi wall: 1999's Hole in the Wall shows children teach themselves1999–2016
• NHS makes A, O, B vanish from British signs — 30,000 new donors in a week2015–2016
• TOMS ties a donated pair to every purchase — One for One becomes the model2006–2016
• Everlane publishes the true cost of every item — radical transparency becomes the pitch2010–2016
• Sweden gives the world its phone number — call a random Swede2016
• Dollar Shave Club (2012): razors by $1-a-month subscription, launched by a viral video2011–2016
• Kakao turns chat emoticons into Korea's top character brand and a 1,000-person queue2012–2016
• Volvo skips a Super Bowl ad, turns rivals' spots into #VolvoContest — Cannes Grand Prix2015
• Shiseido runs Hanatsubaki as a real culture magazine, not a sales catalog1937–2015
• Tracy Osborn pre-sells Hello Web App for $4.6K off a Kickstarter-grown email list2014–2015
• Mondo opens a bank API before launch, and a beta user builds his own online banking2015
• Assembly's Save Your Side Project turns stalled apps into community revenue-share products2015
• Grenoble frees its streets of 326 billboards, planting trees and notice boards (2015)2014–2015
• Whisper turns the pickle period taboo into a proud act — India's first Glass Grand Prix2015
• Rakuten's Englishnization makes English the language of a Japanese company2010-2015
• St John Ambulance's The Chokeables teaches parents to save a choking baby — 6.4M views2015
• Barbie's hidden-camera film 'Imagine the Possibilities' reframes a criticized doll2015
• Vodafone's ZooZoo egg-heads — shot in 10 days, they own IPL-2009 ad breaks2009–2015
• Buurtzorg runs Dutch home care through 10-to-12-nurse teams with no middle managers2006–2015
• Pixar makes RenderMan free for non-commercial artists — studios still pay $4952014–2015
• DistroKid charges musicians one flat fee for unlimited releases — keep 100%2013–2015
• Wu-Tang Clan makes one copy of an album and sells it as art — $2M2014–2015
• Serial turns one investigation into a weekly podcast drama — podcasting's first hit2014–2015
• Amazon pays Kindle Unlimited authors by pages read — not borrows2014–2015
• Tigerair's Infrequent Flyers Club rewards not flying — 500k members, Spikes Media GP2014–2015
• Overcast: an indie dev publishes exact App Store revenue, then makes the app free on trust2014–2015
• Under Armour's 'I Will What I Want' recasts a ballerina as athlete — 5.9M views2014–2015
• Tessei turns the 7-minute Shinkansen clean into a bowing ritual — 'seven-minute miracle'2015
• BSN hires a talking stray cat as its happiness officer — Kucing Happy wins Golden Kancil2015
• StoryCorps: a booth where anyone records a loved one's story — 630,000+ voices archived2003–2015
• Exploding Kittens: a joke card game raises $8.78M — Kickstarter's most-backed project2015
• Undertale makes mercy a mechanic — an RPG where every enemy can be spared2013–2015
• Blendle sells news by the article — the 'iTunes for journalism' backed by the NYT2013–2015
• Threadless: Let the community design and vote on T-shirts.2000–2015
• Microsoft's //oneweek turns a global hackathon into its idea engine2014–2015
• John Lewis 'Man on the Moon' makes a lonely man the gift — 2015's most-watched ad2015
• HUL's Kan Khajura Tesan turns missed calls into free rural radio — 8M subscribers2013–2015
• Samsung's Safety Truck shows trailing drivers the road ahead — 6 Cannes Lions, 20152015
• Ghost: free open-source core plus paid hosting — $350K ARR in year one2013–2015
• Edeka turns a spoken-word song into 'Supergeil' — a 20M-view viral phenomenon2014–2015
• Carlsberg's beer tap billboard — 'Probably the best poster in the world'2015
• Adobe's Kickbox gives every employee $1,000 and a red box to test ideas2013–2015
• PlentyOfFish: a one-man free dating site nets $10M a year on ads, sells for $575M2003–2015
• Always' #LikeAGirl turns an insult into empowerment — 76M views, teen intent 40%→60%2014–2015
• Splatoon rethinks the shooter — Turf War is won by painting the map, not killing rivals2015
• Volvo's invisible LifePaint spray makes cyclists glow in headlights — 2 Cannes Grands Prix2015
• Movember 2003: two mates turn the moustache into a men's health fundraiser — AUD 730M+2003–2015
• Samsung's Look at Me turns autism eye-contact therapy into a game — 60% improved2013–2015
• NRK broadcasts a 7-hour train ride unedited — Slow TV becomes a genre2009–2015
• Her Story makes searching a police video database the whole game — and revives FMV2015
• NRK's Skam (2015) tells a teen drama in real time on the platforms teens already use2015
• 2014: Pieter Levels commits to 12 startups in 12 months and ships all twelve2014-2015
• Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis System: orcs that remember you — 1M-copy first week2010–2014
• Gone Home makes one empty house the whole game — no combat, BAFTA Debut winner2012–2014
• OnePlus sells its $349 flagship by invite — fans earn the right to buy2014
• ndarville's 'List of Web Business Models' gist makes a sprawling HN thread browsable2014
• Tripod's pop-up ad keeps brands off risky pages — and becomes the web's most hated format1994–2014
• BookPlayer: RFID book cases let a nearly blind grandfather start audiobooks by touch2013–2014
• Atos's 2011 'zero email' bid cut internal mail 60% — and made email itself the enemy2011–2014
• The Living Christmas Company: rent a living tree that comes back next year2008–2014
• Matthew Arbesfeld's ~$100 DIY sous-vide cooker earns a 194-point HN thread2014
• Bell-Net’s Mother Book maps 40 pregnancy weeks onto a book that grows with the belly2014
• Honda’s Sound of Honda rebuilds Senna’s 1989 Suzuka lap from data — Cannes Titanium GP2013–2014
• The UK's 2010 'nudge unit' turned government letters into randomized experiments2010–2014
• Pantene Philippines' 'Labels Against Women' made gender bias the ad — no shampoo in sight2013–2014
• Thai Life Insurance's 'Unsung Hero' made a nation cry and sold life insurance2014
• Walkers asks a million Britons to invent its next crisp — the vote picks the winner2008–2014
• Got Milk? sells milk by showing it missing — sales rise for the first time in a decade1993–2014
• Vimeo On Demand lets any filmmaker sell video direct and keep 90%2013–2014
• Steam's Community Market monetizes player trading — 15% fee on every player-to-player sale2012–2014
• Sprinkles' 24-hour Cupcake ATM turns vending machines into a $9M cupcake business2012–2014
• Riot gives League of Legends away and sells style, not power2009–2014
• Goat Simulator: Coffee Stain turns a viral goat joke into a 2.5M-copy comedy hit2014
• Double Fine opens its prototype fortnight to fans, who vote on and fund the games2012–2014
• Newcastle fakes the Super Bowl ad it couldn't afford — 1B+ impressions, never aired2014
• Honey Maid answers ad hate with art — every negative comment becomes LOVE2014
• The Stanley Parable makes choice the whole game — a narrator argues every move, 1M sold2011–2014
• Papers, Please: stamping passports becomes a moral dilemma — and a hit2012–2014
• LEGO Ideas turns fan designs into sets; 10,000 votes pass review, 1% royalty.2008–2014
• Getty makes 35 million photos embeddable free — licensing becomes a trackable channel2014
• Xiaomi Mi 4 Launch: 'Artistic Journey of a Steel Plate'2014
• Binggrae's banana milk: one moon-jar bottle, unchanged since 19741974–2014
• Monument Valley makes a game where every screen is art — $5.8M from 2.4M sales2013–2014
• Volvo Trucks' 'Epic Split' — Van Damme splits between two reversing trucks2013–2014
• High Line: Residents turned abandoned railway into park, opened 20091999–2014
• Spies' 'Do It for Denmark' turns low birth rates into a viral city-break campaign2014
• Slack: the internal chat tool from a failed game becomes a $60M-funded work platform2012–2014
• The Halal Guys grow a hot dog cart into a global halal franchise1990–2014
• IKEA launches its catalogue like an iPhone — 'Bookbook' hits 9M views in a week2014
• Indie one-tap game Flappy Bird hits 50M downloads and $50k/day — creator pulls it2013–2014
• Pixar's Braintrust: candid peer review with zero authority fixed films in trouble1995–2014
• Spotify 2012: squads, tribes, chapters and guilds scale agility without losing autonomy2011–2014
• Ice Bucket Challenge turns a self-soak into peer pressure — $115M raised for ALS research2014
• Twitch chat finishes Pokémon Red together — one button press per viewer, 1.16M players2014
• John Lewis's 'Bear and the Hare' gives Christmas a friendship story — and £142m in sales2013
• Heineken's 'Departure Roulette' turns travel bravado into a red-button dare2013
• Goodreads: a solo-coded niche site for book lovers that Amazon bought in 20132007–2013
• Beyoncé drops a surprise album with no singles or promo — 828K sold in 3 days2013
• Pixar's Notes Day: 1,000 staff spend one day fixing how the studio works (2013)2013
• Glico claims 11/11 as Pocky Day — a snack holiday that twice held a Guinness record1999–2013
• Compare the Meerkat: a cartoon Russian meerkat lifts an insurance site into the top three2009–2013
• Best Buy's ROWE pays for results, not hours — 41% productivity, 90% less turnover2003–2013
• World Toilet Organization gives sanitation a birthday — UN adopts 19 November (2013)2001–2013
• Trampe: Trondheim's 1993 footplate lift pushes cyclists up Brubakken — world's first1992–2013
• Derek Yu's Spelunky fuses roguelike with platformer — caves that feel handcrafted2009–2013
• Adopt-a-Hydrant lets Bostonians claim a hydrant to dig out — open source, 9+ cities2011–2013
• Dominique Ansel Bakery's Cronut — croissant fried like a doughnut, queues by 6am2013
• Autocomplete Truth: UN Women turns Google's sexist searches into ads — 50 countries2013
• Suntory's Kaku Highball makes whisky a dinner drink — market grows again2008–2013
• NRK's National Knitting Evening: 12.5 live hours of knitting draw 1.3 million Norwegians2013
• WestJet's Christmas Miracle grants passengers' wishes at baggage claim — 40M+ views2013
• Turkish Airlines' Kobe vs Messi selfie shootout wins YouTube's ad of the decade2013
• Oreo's blackout tweet — 'You can still dunk in the dark' — wins Super Bowl night2013
• Louis C.K. sells his special for $5, DRM-free, straight to fans — $1M in 12 days2011–2013
• Salesforce's V2MOM turns company strategy into one document everyone writes1999–2013
• The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: Pride and Prejudice as a year-long social media vlog2012–2013
• The Guardian's 'Three Little Pigs' reimagines a fairy tale as news — Ad of the Year 20122012–2013
• Rotterdam's Benthemplein: a basketball plaza that stores 1.7M liters of stormwater2005–2013
• Uniqlo and Toray turn underwear into a heat machine - HEATTECH sells 300M+ pieces2003-2013
• Google's 20% time gives engineers a free day a week; AdSense and Google News are born2004-2013
• Dove's sketch-artist film proves women are more beautiful than they think — 170M views2013
• Steam Early Access (2013): players pay for unfinished games as they're built2013
• Netflix drops all 13 House of Cards episodes at once — the binge-release format is born2011–2013
• Valve's Steam (2003) turns game delivery into a direct digital channel — then a storefront2003–2013
• Netflix's public culture deck turns its people philosophy into a 13M-view document2009–2013
• David Tran's Huy Fong Sriracha — one sauce, zero ads, $60M by 20121980–2013
• Dota 2 lets fans fund The International: a $10 Compendium pours 25% into the prize pool2013
• Adobe ends boxed Creative Suite sales and rents Photoshop via Creative Cloud subscription2011–2013
• Journey strips multiplayer down to anonymity — strangers cooperate without names or words2012–2013
• Coca-Cola China's 2013 'nickname bottle' puts social nicknames on the pack — sales up 20%2013
• Zipcar sells car trips by the hour instead of the day — 'wheels when you want them', 20001999–2013
• Honda turns Senna's 1989 telemetry into light and sound on the real Suzuka track2013
• Metro's 2012 'Dumb Ways to Die' turned rail safety into the most-shared PSA ever2012–2013
• Fez turns a 2D platformer into a 3D world you rotate to reveal new paths2007–2012
• Mercedes-Benz 'Escape the Map': an interactive Street View heist to win young drivers2011–2012
• TNT Belgium puts a 'Push to add drama' button in a quiet town square2012
• Dropzone's $2 Tuesday put a $14 indie Mac app in the top 3 of the paid App Store2012
• 4ormat's portfolio builder refused Internet Explorer and saved over $100K2008–2012
• L'Escapadou turns Montessori learning materials into premium iPad apps kids use alone2010–2012
• Nike's 'Find Your Greatness' turns towns called London into its 2012 Olympic stage2012
• Aravind Eye Care: McDonald's-style surgery lines — paying patients fund the free ones1976–2012
• Old Chang Kee: a Rex Cinema curry puff stall becomes a listed company1986–2012
• Intel's Museum of Me turns a Facebook page into a personal museum — 2M visits in 48 hours2011–2012
• Zeniya Honten: pawned items wait for owners as loyal characters — ADFEST 2012 Best2011–2012
• Copenhagen's Superkilen: Nørrebro park built from residents' 60-country objects (2012)2008–2012
• John Lewis 'The Long Wait' sells the joy of giving — 1M+ views in days, 5.2M total2011–2012
• Amanda Palmer funds Theatre Is Evil on Kickstarter — $1.2M from 24,883 fans in 30 days2012
• Red Bull Stratos: a live-streamed space jump — 8M concurrent viewers, a YouTube record2010–2012
• Blendtec 'Will It Blend?' turns a CEO-blending-iPhones show into 150M+ views2006–2012
• Japadog: Vancouver allowed street hot dogs, so a Japanese couple made them Japanese2005–2012
• Google Chrome puts Hatsune Miku in its Japan film — Ad Stars 2012 Grand Prix2011–2012
• charity: water promises 100% of donations to wells — and proves it with GPS photos2006–2012
• Taobao Mall Turned Singles' Day into a Shopping Festival2009–2012
• NZTA's Ghost Chips turns a drunk-driving dilemma into a national catchphrase2011–2012
• Thai Life Insurance's 'Silence of Love': a deaf father's love becomes award-winning film2011–2012
• ThaiHealth's Smoking Kid lets children ask smokers for a light — 800K views in a week2012
• Rolls-Royce sells engine uptime, not engines: Power-by-the-Hour, 19621962–2012
• Facebook hackathons: overnight coding sessions spawn the Like button2007–2012
• Chipotle's 'Back to the Start' wordless farm film wins the Cannes Film Grand Prix2011–2012
• Rovio's Angry Birds turns slingshot physics into the first 1B-download mobile franchise2009–2012
• Mozilla 2011: Firefox ships every six weeks instead of yearly2011–2012
• Blender's open movies turn film production into R&D that funds open-source software2005–2012
• Incredible Edible Todmorden turns town into edible landscape — 700+ groups worldwide2008–2012
• Better Reykjavík: citizens write and vote on policy online — 70k residents, 10,000 ideas2010–2012
• Chaos Monkey: Netflix breaks its own service on purpose so streaming survives2010–2012
• Psy's Gangnam Style — a Seoul satire that became the first 1-billion-view video2012
• Valve 2012: a 56-page handbook teaches new hires a company with no managers1996–2012
• Kickstarter (2009): all-or-nothing crowdfunding lets fans fund creative projects2009–2012
• Emart turns noon sunlight into a scannable shadow QR code; lunch sales up 25%2012
• ToutApp founder turns his $350k fundraising emails into a post that demos the product2011
• OneVoice's $200 iPad app replaces a $7,000+ speech device — $19k profit in year one2010–2011
• Goldstar turns unsellable shows into half-price member tickets — no outside funding2001–2011
• Android MegaPad: a kitchen-built 23-inch Android 'tablet' for under $6002011
• Rite-Solutions runs an internal idea stock market called Mutual Fun2006–2011
• AutoFighter Pro: a 15-year-old turns a RuneScape ban into a $200k bot business2009–2011
• Ushahidi (2008): Kenyans' texts become a live crisis map that changed disaster response2008–2011
• Finland's KiVa program turns anti-bullying into a school-wide game the evidence says works2006–2011
• Dark Souls' async multiplayer: strangers haunt each other's single-player worlds2009–2011
• Volkswagen's works council switches off after-hours BlackBerry email to fight burnout2011
• Southwest's 10-minute gate turn lets three planes do the work of four1972–2011
• Etsy's Deployinator shrinks a web push from an hour-long ceremony to one button2009–2011
• Tesco Homeplus turns Seoul subway platforms into a QR store — online sales up 130%2010–2011
• UNICEF sells restaurant tap water for $1 — 40 days of clean water per dollar2007–2011
• Stripe turns online payments into an API — no merchant account, just 2.9% + 30¢ per charge2011
• Cards Against Humanity: a free PDF funds via Kickstarter, then tops Amazon's game sales2008–2011
• Morning Star runs a tomato giant with no managers — colleague letters replace bosses1970–2011
• Minecraft sells the unfinished alpha at half price, funding development as price climbs2009–2011
• Medellín installs outdoor escalator in 2011 for poor Comuna 13.2011