Innovation feeder


Go judge a book by its cover
June 23, 2008, 10:27 am
Filed under: FMCG innovation, Food trends & info, Innovation, Innovative Design, Innovative designers, Innovative marketing, Innovative products we like, Innovative promotions, Innovative stimulus, Marketing, new product development | 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 Strategy & Techno-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: FMCG innovation, Food trends & info, Future of Work, Innovation, Innovation Companies, Innovative Design, Innovative Research Methods, Innovative Work Practice, Innovative designers, Innovative stimulus, Looking for insights, new product development | 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 Research Methods, Innovative Work Practice, Innovative companies, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Looking for insights, Macro trends, Thinking & Planning, Trends stuff | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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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 Strategy & Techno-culture, FMCG innovation, Future of Media, Geek stuff, Innovation, Innovative & emergent media, Innovative Design, Innovative Work Practice, Innovative marketing, Lifestyle trends, Macro trends, Social media, Social networking innovation, Thinking & Planning, beta, content communities, creativity, geek, neophiliac, new product development | 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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Kick starting your innovative brain for the new year
January 17, 2008, 4:51 am
Filed under: Innovation, creativity | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,


Are you an inventor or an innovator?

Whilst I believe that having creative ideas is really important we must remember that they won’t necessarily lead directly to innovation. Innovation counts for a whole lot more than just being creative; it is about bringing an idea to life and making it into a commercial reality, it could be about cutting costs, finding new and more efficient ways to do things, identifying new revenue streams or market spaces. Whichever way you fancy it, real innovation must add value and deliver impact. You can be as creative as you like but if you can’t identify how your idea can add value or deliver impact, then it’s just an idea. But without creative ideas, innovation can never exist. Sometimes it’s helpful to think about this in two parts, invention & innovation.

Invention =  The creative idea. A brand new idea. A new spin on an old idea, a new perspective, a new way of doing something or solving a problem or addressing a need.

Innovation = The realisation & impact of an invention, of that new idea. This is about making it real and making it happen. It’s about delivering real impact. This part is often commercial but not always.

It’s important to remember that creatively plays a role on both sides of the equation. We need to be creative at every step of the ideas process.  By implementing an ‘ideas process’ you can start to structure the way you generate ideas; and perhaps more importantly, the way you evaluate and start to implement those ideas. I’ll go through this ‘ideas process’ in more detail in a further post but for those of you with the impatience & attention span of a newt, here’s the short-hand version ::

The Ideas Process

1. Prepare: Find every stimulus material and tool you need, to effectively come up with ideas.
2. Create: Build as many ideas as possible.
3. Incubate: Take a holiday from your ideas and you allow your ideas to cook and simmer in your subconscious for while.
4. Adjudicate: Evaluate your ideas to determine which are the best.
5.  Act: Take action on your best ideas and turn them into realities.

So . . given the above definition, do you stop at Stage # 2 or do you go full steam ahead to Step # 5?

Are you an inventor or an innovator?

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Provocative Research :: Inspiration for Innovation
December 5, 2007, 7:03 am
Filed under: Future of Work, Innovation, Innovative Research Methods, Innovative Work Practice, Innovative stimulus, creativity | Tags: , , , , , , ,

So what it is?

It’s a rich, colourful and most importantly, an alternative POV to stimulate innovation. It’s not 100% backed up by six

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ty tons of data, it’s a broad brushstroke picture created by a bunch of interesting and springy data sources that suggests change is afoot!

It’s not trend research, it’s not qualitative research, it’s extreme and alternative points of view that provoke change. This is not foundational research, it’s about connecting the dots. It’s inspiration for innovation.

Much of what companies do is incremental innovation. Small projects addressing an immediate need for a new telco bundle offer or a new snack bar. Provocation research takes us beyond incremental innovation. It looks to the future, forecasting trends (industry, social or macro where appropriate) to provide a richer context for the work of now.

It’s a more extreme view (disruptive) but it’s about taking the principles of the future of the category and of the consumer landscape, how they might change and be disrupted, and applying those principles to projects today. (more…)

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ROI = Risk of Inaction
December 4, 2007, 10:57 pm
Filed under: Innovation, Innovation Companies, Innovative Research Methods, Innovative Work Practice | Tags: , , , ,

Todd Earwood at the Blog World Expo and posted the top 10 quotes heard on day one. One we love is . .

“When you say ROI, do you mean return on investment or risk of inaction.” - Paul Gillin, Paul Gillin Communications

Kindly provided by Tomorrow’s Trends

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Want to be bloody good at innovation?
November 1, 2007, 2:53 am
Filed under: Asia Research Sites, Aus Research Sites, Gen Research & Info sites, Innovation, Innovative Work Practice, Innovative marketing, Marketing, Mind candy, Work out up top, Work your biggest muscle, creativity, steal or borrow info

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What makes one person think more innovatively than another?

Most people spend their time doing stuff. Selling shoes, marketing hammers, securing distribution, balancing nutritional value with taste and so on and so on. So to sit down one afternoon & just decide that you’d like to think more innovatively is kind of like deciding that you’d like to paint a masterpiece without the paints or the canvas, or even the subject matter. In order to be more innovative you need to prepare your brain with the tools it needs & you need to garner the stimulus, the
subject matter if you will. Then how you interpret that subject matter will determine what kind of masterpiece you’ll create.

Some people seem to be naturally more creative just like some people are better musicians or artists. But there’s a big difference between people who are mediocre, bloody good and those who are brilliant. When it comes to innovation like everything else, there’s no reason why most of us can’t be bloody good if we set about learning the skills in the same way we would for music or art.

Picture the person in your head who you think is the cat’s pijamas. They’re more creative, more lateral, they see things and make connections that you don’t. They approach opportunities from different angles and they change things. Can you picture them? Are they better looking than you too? Some people have all the luck…

The truth is, those people that seem to be more creative or more innovative than you, it’s generally because they spend most of their time looking at things differently. If I’m asked to help companies innovate, I find it easier to come in & look at a category in a completely new way. That’s because I’m not bogged down with the details of how to sell in a product to stores, or pitch for company funding, or create a media strategy or control a budget. You know, the hard stuff.

I spend most of my waking hours trying to think differently & innovate - create new brand positioning, new revenue streams, to imagine a new space or think about what the future might be. The point being, that if you put aside some time each week to concentrate on being more innovative, you’ll find it easier too.

The best way to start being more innovative is to force yourself to start thinking differently. To start imagining ‘what if?’ rather than just being concerned with ‘what is’. That means taking some time to expose yourself to new ideas & thinking. It also helps to start gathering together a bunch of tools that will help you ask the right questions & force your brain to think differently.

It doesn’t have to feel like homework, it doesn’t have to take a huge amount of time out of your day. You could start by checking out of the site links on this site each day. Pick a blog or a site that sounds interesting, visit a new one each day and ask yourself : What is interesting about this site? What could I learn from this site? How is this site different or similar to my business or the issues we face? or the people we reach? or the sorts of ideas we’re looking for?

Being innovative is about making new connections, it’s about jumping from one space to another, it’s about putting a new lens on existing research or points of view. It doesn’t have to be a big shift, it might just be a little bit different. Sometimes that’s all you need.

This site has a whole bunch of brainfood but don’t stop there :: there’s a whole world wide web of non-work related mind candy goodness that will put some buzz in your uptop muscle. So go, hang your balls out in the wind and try something new.

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