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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Leaving something to the imagination…
June 23, 2008, 12:30 am
Filed under: Asia, Innovative Design, Innovative designers, Innovative retail, Innovative stimulus | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Leaving something to the imaginationThere’s something refreshing about a retailer who doesn’t just let it all
hang out for the world to see. The windows of this Commes des Garcons store are like a great first date outfit, you can see enough to know you want to see more but
not enough to satiate the appetite.

It’s almost as if they’re teasing you with a little peek but you have to
go inside to see the full story. You see, sometimes its better to leave a little to the imagination. A glimpse of skin is always sexier than getting an eyeful of the whole booty.

What if we took this idea someplace else . . Why not create a stylish fruit & veg store where you don’t actually show the fruit & veg? When people enter the store they are met with boxes upon old fashioned boxes containing fresh produce. People can read where the products come from, there’s a description of how delicious they are & the price point indicates they’re good quality. But you can’t see what you’re actually purchasing.

The philosophy of the store would be :: we’ve selected the best produce available for you, if you think that you can pick better fruit & veg out of some dumpster in a supermarket then you’re in the wrong store friend.

Think about how can you flirt with your customers? How can you play on their imagination & curiosity to drive demand? You need to make customers want you. Throwing yourself on someone is not only embarrassing, but lessens your chances of scoring.

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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.

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Piers has called the Emperor’s bluff and now he’s naked
February 8, 2008, 6:20 am
Filed under: Advertising, Gen Research & Info sites, Innovative Research Methods, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Looking for insights, Trendy Trend sites | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Piers has called the Emperor’s bluff and now he’s naked . . . . Here’s a sneak but check it out for yourself, it’s a good post.

There’s something wrong in the trends business. It’s broken. It’s broken by lack of imagination, lack of collaboration and secrecy. Below we’ve listed some major areas that need fixing, not for our competitive sake, but for an industry to evolve and become useful enough to inspire its clients to make things better.

Trends services have an unhealthy reliance on control, restriction of information and perception. Trends companies put up gates that guard this mystical information that somehow only they could gather. This presentation from Henley Center’s d_Code is an example of how the trends industry attempts to scare companies into thinking how little they know. There’s no explanation of why d_code knows better, just that they somehow know a lot more than you do (and they’ve got the graphic designer to prove it). AgencySpy gave this great reaction to the presentation in 2007:

“No ideas. No dissection of new cultural movements to help you on your way. No outlay of creatives, organizations, thinkers that are shaking up the underground to shape the future. Nada. Every one of their clients should feel like they just got punk’d.”

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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?

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Thinking blogging by a thinking blogger
February 4, 2008, 4:40 am
Filed under: Community, Digital Strategy & Techno-culture, Future of Media, Geek stuff, Innovative stimulus, Looking for insights, Mind candy, Social media, Social networking innovation, Work your biggest muscle, content communities, memes | Tags: , , , ,

From One Thinking Blogger To Another
Every day I check my site stats, I love to see how many people have visited & had a read or left a comment. It’s always exciting when someone links to your blog, especially if you’re a relatively new blogger like me. Not only is it interesting to see what appeals to people (and also what doesn’t) but it’s the ultimate procrastenation tool. It’s also a real buzz when you connect with people online who share your love of similar (or very diverse) things, you make you think differently, who are attracted to different kinds of content than you normally would be, and who broaden your horizons on a regular basis.
Gavin Heaton from Servant of Chaos has nominated me as a “thinking blogger” [original post here] and said some very nice things. Gavin has been really supportive of Innovation Feeder ever since I started which has made a big difference to me. I read his blog regularly & it’s really nice to have someone who takes an interest in what you do so thank you Gavin.
The way it works apparently is as follows:
  1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
  2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
  3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote

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So here are my nominations:

Max Lenderman - Who twists my brain a little every now & then with his blog on Experiential Marketing
Miel Van Opstal - Because when I need another juicy little insight or example for a workshop or presentation he always comes through with the goods
Erin Middleton - Offers great discussion around strategic planning amongst other things, puts a bit of buzz uptop
Katie Chatfield - who bite sized beauties I often flick through when I need a little pick me up
Laurel Papworth - Whose blog on social media & online communities is worth its weight in gold
3 Comments


What people are doing online
February 1, 2008, 4:27 am
Filed under: Beg steal or borrow, Digital Strategy & Techno-culture, Future of Media, Futures, Geek stuff, Gen M, Gen Y, Innovative & emergent media, Innovative Work Practice, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Macro trends, Social media, Social networking innovation, Trends stuff, content communities, creativity | Tags: , , , , ,

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I tend to take in information best with my peepers, I’m not great at listening [although I try very hard] and I really like to see things mapped out rather than a huge truckload of words. Which is why I love a good model, a good graph, schematic display - anything which represents information in a stimulating visual way. So here’s another one. This one comes courtesy of Business Week, spotted by one of Max’s colleagues & posted on his blog Experience The Message in the middle of last year. It’s a stormer for presentations & workshop stimulus so eat up friend.

You can check out Max’s original post here

The original Business Week article can be found here

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The Information Architects release the 2008 web trends map in beta
January 30, 2008, 11:07 pm
Filed under: Beg steal or borrow, Digital Strategy & Techno-culture, Future of Media, Google, Innovative Design, Innovative designers, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Social media, Thinking & Planning, Trends stuff, Trendy Trend sites | Tags: , , , , ,

ia-webtrend-map-08.jpg The Information Architects, a strategic design agency in Tokyo, Japan have just released the beta version of their 2008 web trends map. They’ve taken 300 of the most influential and successful websites & pinned them down to the greater Tokyo-area train map. Needless o say Google remains at the centre of the universe [or in this case Tokyo] with various ‘train’ lines such as ‘Social Networks’ line, ‘Game Technology’ line, Adobe & File Sharing lines.

It’s a beautiful thing for the mind & the eyes.

Check it out here

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My Media Week
January 29, 2008, 8:23 am
Filed under: Community, Future of Media, Geek stuff, Innovative Research Methods, Innovative stimulus, Looking for insights, Social media, Social networking innovation, content communities, creativity, memes, unbusiness | Tags: , , ,

Gavin tagged me (thanks Gavin) on the current meme sweeping the sphere - ‘My Media Week’ - the meme that gets you thinking about your own media consumption rather than everyone else’s. So here goes:

Reading

I have one red paperclip on my night table which a friend loaned me. It has been there for quite some time (sorry Kes) but doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. i.e. It’s certainly no closer to getting in bed with me & a cup of tea than you are. I love the idea of someone who swaps a red paperclip for something else, then swaps that for something else, yada yada, you get the picture. Eventually this guy gets a house. I like the idea of the story, I’m just not loving the story so much.

So what I’m actually reading is “How would you move Mount Fuji : How the smartest companies select the world’s most creative thinkers” by William Poundstone. It’s basically a commentary on Microsoft’s notorious grueling interview process which has been copied by companies everywhere who are seeking to separate the most creative thinkers from those who are merely brilliant. It’s got a bunch of puzzles & riddles throughout which are generally making me feel reasonably uncreative, let alone brilliant. Lucky I’m not trying to get a job in the valley I suppose.

I flicked through my usual monthly Futures magazine yesterday but I don’t think you could call that ‘reading’ with any integrity. They come in the mail, I flick through them & then make them at home in my bottom drawer. You see, I don’t have to actually read them, just knowing they’re close is enough. Oh and I read Who Weekly to get the update on Britney Spears’ fight for child custody. Are we supposed to omit the trash consumption?

 

 

TV / Video

 

The other night I watched a documentary on Australia’s most feared creatures, followed by an episode of “shark attack : I shouldn’t be alive”, both served to reinforce the threat of swimming at any beach in Sydney as one could be taken by an animal of the sea at any time. I’ve also been following the US election coverage with interest together with my usual diet of cable news & Sunset Tan when it’s on. (Sunset Tan is a top quality show on cable which follows the lives of people who manage a chain of tanning salons in L.A. It’s no West Wing but gee it’s close). Again, should I have omitted that?

Music

 

On iTunes play during the last week was Joan as Policewoman, Josh Rouse, James Blunt & a bit Pink for the angry woman moments. There have been plenty of those this week for no particular reason other than my computer has been rather temperamental.

Next Up

Next up I tag Erin aka Dora the Explorer :) who is on my daily Google Reader , Amanthaville to encourage you to start posting again!, Coolz0r whose blog is always jam packed with great examples & analysis, Katie whose site I love reading regularly for a brain top up, Weird from Slacker Nation whose blog is always an incredibly good read & Greg at Grassroots Innovation which I also check out regularly.

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What if we kept a record of all the random ideas we have?
January 25, 2008, 3:07 am
Filed under: A little genius, FMCG innovation, Future of Work, Innovative Work Practice, Innovative products we like, Innovative retail, Innovative stimulus, creativity, unbusiness | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Looking for a bit of Friday folly to procrastenate over while I garner the energy for another crack at work this afternoon, I stumbled across a new blog called ‘What If They Did’ - it’s basically a bunch of ‘what if’ ideas, a collection of random thoughts across all categories & platforms.

At first I thought might be an informal blog from someone at WhatIf The Innovation Company, after all, it would sit perfectly under their banner as a way of creating dialogue beyond the company lines. But no, it’s actually written by two creatives out of London who are using it as a playground to stash their collection of random ideas.

So whether you’re after a wacky idea for a particular category, or simply want think more laterally about how you go about generating ideas, this site is worth a look.

I love this idea for a lucky dip on the Skye Remote Control and when you think about it, it’s not so different from the concept behind iPod’s shuffle.

Check it out here

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