Filed under: Digital culture, Future of Media, Future of Work, Geek stuff, Google, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Mind candy, Research Methods, Research Presentations, Work Futures
“Interesting Snippets” is a flickr site for Lynette Webb, the Insights Manager at Google. She calls it “my personal dumping ground for various cool quotes, the odd stat, as slides to talk around when describing how things are changing online and in media & communications generally” and it’s jammed with a bunch of great stimulus about the way technology is changing the world in which we live.
It’s a Flickr collection online but she’s also published her slides in a book which you can buy on Lulu.
Check it out, it’s a must see Interesting Snippets
Filed under: creativity, Digital culture, geek, Geek stuff, Innovative promotions
In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with Haiku poetry messages. Haiku poetry has strick construction rules, each poem has only 17 syllables; 5 syllables in the first, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third. They are used to communicate a timeless message, often achieving a wistful, yearning and powerful insight through extreme brevity (and are much better than “Your computer has performed an illegal operation.”) Here they are:
Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
The Web site you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.
Filed under: Gen Research, Looking for insights, Oz research, Research Methods, Thinking, Work Futures
To find inspiration for innovation we need to hunt & gather in new ways
To be truly innovative, we have to force ourselves to look at the world differently. We have to be curious about new perspectives & new interpretations because they help us break away from the norm. By exposing ourselves to new ways of thinking and hunting for trends & ideas in other areas outside our traditional category space it allows us to return to the business and make genuinely new connections.
Let’s say you’re looking to innovate within the computer hardware market. Instead of asking people how they feel about their computers or how they feel about Apple vs PC or technology in general, what if you asked them about a time when their computer really let them down or saved their life? what if you asked them why it felt different using their own computer versus someone else’s? or what kind of car brand their computer feels like?
It’s much more productive to ask consumers a bunch of different questions which encourage storytelling around the product rather than going for the marketing jugular and trying to get people to explain how they feel about your product specifically.
An interesting post from Whistle through your comb I thought I would share with you ::
The “Big Idea Model” is dead from a business perspective. The big idea points in a direction and says, “Charge!” Resources are poured into it. It’s a boastful model built on force. And more often than not, it’s a Pickett’s Charge. (The movie industry is suffering from this as well)
On the other hand, having many small ideas is a cheaper, faster, lower risk and a more diverse way to create. After all, little ideas can out grow their fish bowl. You only need a few successes to really make it big. The Recording industry has operated this way for years.
As CMO’s tenures dip below 2 years, it seems they would be much better off working with agency operating on the Many Small Ideas model. After all, failure is more common than success and there are only so many big ideas you can execute in two years.
That said, maybe ad agencies should mimic companies like Y Combinator, Curious Office Partners, Obvious, Tech Stars and Hit Forge who incubate and execute lots of little ideas (typically Web 2.0 startups). Each idea out with a small bit of financing and once it proves itself, it receives more. This means that all the time and money wasted worrying about and researching whether a new idea will succeed is unnecessary; you simply try it out.
This offers up an interesting paradox: the agencies who thrive in the future will be those who do not just outsucceed other agencies but outfail them as well. They will grow not in spite of failure but because of it.
