What began as an outlet for personal frustration became, in a period of weeks, a blueprint for a workable direct-sales company, the dream company for which Ash herself would love to work.
In its search for a workable model, the company flirted with reverse charge text messages (50% of which the mobile operators would keep), deals with ringtone companies and mobile handset manufacturers, and affiliate agreements with iTunes – which made Apple a lot of money, but were less beneficial for Shazam.
But it was the first to distill those elements into a workable package the company described as "the computer for the rest of us".
Meanwhile, Unilever, with Group Danone, has agreed to work with B Lab and others to make the B Corp status workable for multinational companies with numerous lines of businesses, products, subsidiaries and workers in different countries with different wage scales, among other things.
Workable enables smaller companies to post to multiple jobs boards, review candidates and schedule interviews.
They might even offer a more workable solution for companies like Theatre Rhinoceros that have vacated their former homes and now float from one venue to another.
Even if everything goes right, they note, and RFco's concept is workable in silicon, the company will not have a product on the market until 2005.
- to the practical - that just 20 gene switches may underlie 17 seemingly unrelated cancers, giving companies a workable number of drug targets.
After the bookseller declared bankruptcy in February, many publishers pressed for a reorganization plan, but they were left unconvinced that executives had a workable way to revamp the company.
A company with a workable technology would have a guaranteed market, given that Congress has set quotas for the consumption of cellulosic fuel but so far, hardly any is being produced.
