Innovation feeder


Playfulness is one of the most important aspects of innovation
May 20, 2009, 9:28 am
Filed under: Innovation | Tags: , , , , ,

Here’s another little bit of mind candy from Tim Brown [of design company IDEO] taken from the brainbox TED. He talks about the link between play and innovation, how important it is to think back to the way creativity and imagination operated at a childhood level. We fear the judgement of peers.We’re embarassed about showing our ideas to peers. It’s this fear that causes us to be conservative in our thinking. If you looked at our children play, they don’t have this fear, they share their ideas. It’s only as they get older that they lose this freedom. Kids who feel secure and operate in a trusted environment are those most able to truly ‘play’ and take risks. The million dollar question is ‘how do we create this in a working environment?’.

Creative companies often have symbols to show how much they value creativity. At Pixar, animators work in wooden huts or decorated caves. At Whatif Innovation we used to have themed playrooms where we could hold meetings and play around with ideas and concepts. The Googleplex has volleyball courts and a fireman’s pole in the middle of their office. Whether these features actually cause more creativity to occur is kind of irrelevant, it’s what they signify that matters. Many corporates have taken on this ‘playfulness of space’ as an important factor in encouraging and allowing their staff to be creative.

Anyhoo, it’s a great talk and worth watching if you have 27:59 minutes to kill. Enjoy.

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Five buck brainstorms
February 1, 2009, 11:50 pm
Filed under: Borrow this, Innovation, Innovative stimulus, brainstorming, creativity, new product | Tags: , ,

5-dollar-brainstorm

Saw this and had to smile. This guy has been selling five buck brainstorms online – give him the brief, slip him a purple and he’ll send you back a brainstorm bonanza.

Now he’s not necessarily going to crack your number # 1 internal business problem but if it’s just a fresh perspective or mass market idea you’re after,  there is something to be said for quantity over quality, at least to get the juices going.

Watch out innovation gurus, Don the Ideas Man is coming to a site near you.

He also sells “Beanstorming” [brainstorming for an hour over a coffee @ starbucks]. Check it the Idea Barista

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A little ditty for your next innovation workshop…
October 3, 2008, 12:08 am
Filed under: Borrow this, Digital culture, Emergent media, Future of Media, Future of Work, Futures, Google, Innovation, Innovative stimulus, Looking for insights, Macro trends, Social media, Thinking, Trends stuff, creativity, open source | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
What if...

Another good piece of innovation stimulus from the lovely Lynette Webb,  Insights Manager at Google who created a Flickr site called “Interesting Snippets”. I’ve profiled her before and this is the latest image to her collection. It comes to us with a great quote from Russell Davies’ blog entry about Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody.

For those of you who haven’t heard about it, Clay’s book is about what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures. When the traditional obstacles are broken down and we can all connect, engage and speak freely. What does this mean for the way we interact? For the way media publishers direct content? What happens when our unrestricted right to access, to connect and to speak is not only realised, but assumed?

It’s worth checking out Russell’s post on the book here

And if you haven’t read Clay’s blog you should definitely wet your whistle with a little of this

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The Second Burning
September 29, 2008, 7:24 am
Filed under: Geek stuff, Innovation, Innovative gaming, Second Life, Social media, USA, creativity, social entrepreneurs, virtual worlds | Tags: , , ,
Burning Life

Burning Life

I see that SL has held it’s first ever Burning Life festival in world. For those of you who are not familiar, Burning Life is the Second Life version of a real Art, Fire and Community festival called Burning Man. Both Burning Man and Second Life began in San Francisco, California, USA, on planet Earth. Check it out here

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Go judge a book by its cover
June 23, 2008, 10:27 am
Filed under: Designers, FMCG innovation, Food trends & info, Innovation, Innovative marketing, Innovative promotions, Innovative stimulus, Marketing, Nice Design, Nice products, new product | Tags: , , ,

While you can’t judge a book by its cover, we often judge food by its packaging. One dollars worth of spaghetti sure looks a million dollars with a bit of fancy pants wrapping doesn’t it…Never underestimate the importance of appearance when it comes to food, or anything for that matter…

Why do pet care companies always put an animal on the front of their pet food? The dog can’t read but the owner can. Why are we packaging pet food for the pet? They know what dogs look like, talk to them in their own language.

I’d take a premium supermarket pet food brand & stick it in a stylish black tin with silver labeling & discrete branding with no visual reference to animals. Risky you say? I doubt it.

And another thing… why do washing detergents all use bright colours & show water or clean clothes? We make our decisions on what detergent to buy on the perceived quality of the brand. In the absence of any
laundry powders which don’t present pictures of clouds or water gushing through logos, let’s be honest, we pick the one we think looks more sophisticated or innovative or expensive than the rest.

Why not take washing powder & stick it in a metal canister that sits proudly on the laundry shelf instead of embarrassingly in the cupboard? Or better still, cook some good looking detergent granules &
put the stuff in a stylish transparent container.

For a fresh spin on packaging, make it design-orientated not product-orientated. Just because you’re selling pasta doesn’t mean you need a fat Italian & a bunch of tomatoes on the front. Lord, this is 2008.

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Another little ditty…
June 23, 2008, 12:07 am
Filed under: Innovation, Innovative marketing, creativity | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

nihilist chewing gumGum is always about taste. A nihilist doesn’t believe in anything. Nihilist gum doesn’t believe in flavour. Which begs the question..why chew it?

A counter trend can often be the most convincing way to get someone to try a product because for every go-with-the-grain consumer, there’s a million nosy parkers who want to try something new.

If we were to push this kind of reasoning to the extreme . . .well then, If restaurants are always about service, could you create a restaurant which goes against the grain of service? Instead of making you feel at home & treating you like a welcome patron, they abuse you and ridicule your food decisions..

If you don’t understand the menu they call you a philistine, if you don’t order enough they call you a tight-ass anorexic & if you don’t tip big they point out the cheapskate to all the other patrons. Dining becomes a combat sport. Welcome to the game, its survivor restaurant-style.

Assume for a moment that you are the marketing director of a large confectionery company. While everyone else is focusing on higher end premium bite size indulgence, you decide to launch the largest single
serve chocolate bar in the world. It is big & chunky and it proudly displays its calorie count on the front next to the name :: Fattyboombah. Nice huh?

For every trend there’s a counter trend. Look at the research, chuck it away & do the exact opposite. Imagine what you think people want and offer something completely contrary. The truth of the matter is that people are contradictory. A large percentage of Americans may disapprove of the reporting of a political sex scandal but you can bet that the circulation of trashmags increases when one is on the cover! So embrace the contradictions, scope out the challenge and then just close your eyes and pick a side….

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So what exactly is an unconference?
April 15, 2008, 12:22 pm
Filed under: Digital culture, Geek stuff, Innovation, Innovative marketing, Trends stuff, creativity | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

The wiki defines it as : An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is created and managed by the participants (generally day-by-day during the course of the event) rather than by one or more organizers in advance of the event. The term is primarily used in the geek community.

So where did it come from?

It all began one rainy day in the USA around 1984 with the first unofficial Hackers conference. In techland they have a regular conference called “Foo camps” where geeks get together & geek out over whatever they’re into at that moment. The problem is, Foo camps were always invitational which meant that there was an element of exclusivity around who was able to attend & who wasn’t. Thus, the idea of Barcamps was born. Barcamps began as a reaction to the exclusive elitest Foo camps. The idea was basically that people with a strong interest would publicly post their passion in meeting other like-minded folks and then the interested parties would self-organize a gathering. where everyone was welcome. Unlike the Foo, Barcamps were open to anyone & everyone & represented one of the very first unconferences.

Basically an “unconference” is everything a normal stuffy suity type conference is not – it’s open to anyone, anyone can come & anyone can speak. It disposes of the podiums, the rigid structure, the exclusive & polished speakers and the formalities in favour of a more democratised process where even the great unwashed may share their passions with the rest of us. (more…)

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The next frontier: Design Thinking
March 19, 2008, 3:55 am
Filed under: Designers, FMCG innovation, Food trends & info, Future of Work, Innovation, Innovation shops, Innovative stimulus, Looking for insights, Nice Design, Research Methods, Work Futures, new product | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Here’s another little ditty from Andrew Tan’s blog WhatIf which covers innovation & design from an Asian perspective. And no, he’s not part of the global outfit Whatif Innovation, he runs his own innovation company and this is his personal blog.

Design thinking is tnanobiker1.jpghe latest and hottest methodology talked about to help a company innovate. GE calls it CENCOR (calibrate, explore, create, organize and realize). The Mayo Clinic calls it SPARC (see, plan, act, refine, communicate). Andrew’s new company calls it GIP (Gather, Ideate, Prototype). Its most obvious and direct power is in the creation of new products and services. Design thinking allows an organization to differentiate its products and services in an avenue other than pricing.
Andrew’s method is not dissimilar to the IDEO method of industrial design, one which has nurtured some of the most popular innovations of the past few decades. Apple’s first mouse. Prada’s ultrahip Manhattan store. Stand-up toothpaste tubes that don’t get icky. The Palm V.
In the Ideo universe, great design doesn’t begin with a far-out concept or a way-cool drawing. It begins with a deep and empathic understanding of the human condition. The first step for any Ideo team on any project is to try to empathize with the people who might use whatever product or service that eventually emerges from its work. Ideo has crafted a set of systematic research methods for understanding what the firm calls “human factors.” It then goes on to develop ideas and from those ideas, prototypes which can be tested for real responses on real people.
(more…)
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Take me to your feeder
February 7, 2008, 8:08 am
Filed under: Advertising, Agency structure, Future of Work, Geek stuff, Innovation, Innovative co., Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Looking for insights, Macro trends, Research Methods, Thinking, Trends stuff, Work Futures | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

feeder-18-33-04.jpg

Whether you work in advertising, marketing, innovation or new product development, one of the most difficult things is having to come up with new ideas & perspectives all the time. There’s often a mad scramble to find innovation examples, social commentary or macro trends when we have pitches on or a presentation due, but the reality is that this kind of information is most useful & valuable when it’s applied consistently throughout the entire working process.

When we’re exposed to a bunch of different points of view, different modes of thinking & different models of expressing that thinking, we approach things differently from the start. We interrogate the client’s brief in more detail, we set the boundaries for the strategy more decisively, we look for creative & strategic stimulus in places others may not necessarily have thought of & think outside the intellectual systems & structures that we would normally fall back on when we just ‘use what we have’ or even worse, ‘what we’ve done before’.

So why don’t companies take this kind of role more seriously? My guess is because it seems like a role that anyone could do & everyone should do. And they’re right. Except that nobody does. The reality is that every advertising planner or innovation strategist can read ten blogs a day, keep up to date on general social trends & emergent media & keep abreast of what the trendy trendspotters like to call ‘contemporary cultural zeitgeist’ but they don’t. It’s human nature to get bogged down in the projects piling up on our desk & the whoosh of the deadlines as they go rushing past. To jump from one mindset to another in normal day-to-day work is extraordinarily difficult. Of course it can be done, by any smartie pants in fact, the difference is that the state of mind needed to write clearly defined project presentations, manage clients & the creative process is quite different to the open-ended permanently curious & steadily expanding mindset of the researcher or the information geek. It’s almost as if one mindset is about connecting the dots (those who have a
formal planning or strategy role), whereas the other is about drawing new dots, which take a while to be connected, sometimes if at all.

The definition of a “Feeder” is one who stimulates people’s minds with a constant supply of new trends & ideas. At least that’s how the big cheeses at Business Week define it. So how can you get around this in your own company?

(more…)

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Beta goes meta: From innovation to trend in a heartbeat
January 31, 2008, 11:20 pm
Filed under: Brand, Community, Digital culture, Emergent media, FMCG innovation, Future of Media, Geek stuff, Innovation, Innovative marketing, Lifestyle trends, Macro trends, Nice Design, Social, Social media, Thinking, Work Futures, beta, content communities, creativity, geek, neophiliac, new product | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
A great post by CNET blogger Tim Leberecht taken from Matter/Anti Matter.
Innovation isn’t limited to R & rooms anymore. The Web 2.0 movement–powered by start-ups such as Twitter, Malhalo and even YouTube, has proven that innovation often happens in iterations. Build, launch, tweak, measure, repeat. Digital experiences seem to be ‘always in beta’–learning and evolving along the way.
beta cultr

The idea of being in beta has become a broad cultural phenomenon. Many new products never make it beyond trial stage, and the trial and error beta-approach that helps Google and other alpha innovators to out-fail and thereby out-innovate the competition, is as much an attribute of successful organizations as it is a sign of our time.

But it’s not only analysts and conference organizers who are switching instantly from micro to macro, picking up nascent trends and elevating them to a must-deal-with core competence that transcends the current fad (just see all the Facebook conferences that are mushrooming right now). What I find even more interesting is how the media and blogosphere deal with it. If everything’s in beta, the public doesn’t have the patience anymore to wait for the alpha. As the media are increasingly forced to immediately widen the scope and view every innovation in a larger context as it occurs, the boundaries between reporters and commentators, bloggers and industry analysts are fading.

Some examples: Not too long ago, Twitter was all the rage, and it was stunning to see that just shortly after the initial coverage during SXSW in March, reporters were already elaborating on the concept of micro-blogging, wondering what the new “radical transparency” meant for business. Nowadays, there is a great chance that you will stumble upon a Facebook story when you open just about any publication: It’s Facebook vs. MySpace, the implications of social networking on the borders between work and personal life, reflections on the “Facebook economy,” Facebook vs. iTunes, and maybe a philosophical piece on Facebook “as a post-modern book” or the future of social networking, which, for TIME, equals the future of the Internet. It is only a small step from MySpace to the “MySpace generation,” and from Facebook to the “Facebook generation” and then to the “Fakebook generation.” Similarly, the recent buzz around Radiohead’s “pay what you want” online release has instantly led to the coining of a “Radiohead Generation” and praise for the band “as a pioneer of the digital revolution.” And there are hundreds of articles discussing if Radiohead’s decision ushers in the definite end of the record industry. The stories about the radical distribution model appear to eclipse the actual music on the album–in this case, too, the reviews are in before the story is told.

Evidently, the media need to cope with the current while also putting forward a vision for the up and coming. The time between observation and conclusion, between description and prediction, however, has shrunk to almost zero. There are no more lapses between news, analysis, background story, industry trend story, and intellectual dissection; they have become one and the same, at the same time. Not only is beta the new alpha–beta has gone meta.

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