Innovation feeder


P&G’s social media hack
March 12, 2009, 10:41 pm
Filed under: Emergent media, Geek stuff, Social media, Work Futures | Tags: , ,

tide-tee031209It seems that the peeps at P&G realised that this whole ’social media’ thing was something they needed to get their heads across. What better way to do it than invite 40 of the best geeks from the Valley and stage a 4 hour social-media hack-a-thon exercise for charity.

40 executives from the Valley were invited down to meet with a hundred P&G marketers to help them get their heads around social media. They played in teams and competed to see which group could sell the most Tide t-shirts using only a thousand bucks and any social media tool they could get their hands on. All proceeds went to charity.

For those of you who haven’t yet read the story on P&G’s Digital Hack Night here’s a couple of links:

Ad Age

Cincinnati Enquirer

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T-shaped people make great planners
February 2, 2009, 12:36 am
Filed under: Agency structure, Work Futures | Tags: , , ,

This is an old post from 2005 by David Armano but it adds more info to an earlier post I wrote last year about ‘Looking for Innovation superstars‘. Sorry I know, 2 old posts don’t necessarily make a new one but I wanted to add this in anyway. Sometimes it takes a year for my brain to join the dots!

Anyway, an interesting thought so have a look:

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ARE YOU T-SHAPED? by David Armano
FEATURED PERSPECTIVE // 9/17/05
If you work in the marketing or design industry you’ve probably observed that there is a movement afoot. If you specialize in the interactive space, you might be at ground zero. There’s a new generation of work out there that’s being driven by customer insights and executed with strategic creativity. It wasn’t always this way. In the early days of the Internet, there was almost no such thing as “good design” when it came to sites or online marketing. Over time, graphic designers exerted their influence over the new media and although design got better visually–usability often suffered in return. Then came Flash and the whole ball of wax changed forever. Thankfully, those days are long gone.

The current reality is that the interactive medium has reached a major milestone in development. That is—the successful art of combining rational and emotional benefits to result in compelling experiences which people find useful, usable and desirable. So who owns the future of interactive design and related fields? T-shaped people.

Tim Brown of IDEO

Tim Brown, founder of IDEO describes the notion this way: “people who are so inquisitive about the world that they’re willing to try to do what you do. We call them “T-shaped people.” They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T—they’re mechanical engineers or industrial designers.

But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior that point to a universal human need”.

So what does this mean to traditional teams of specialists such as Art Directors & Copywriters, or even the relatively new discipline of Information Architects? What about Creative Directors such as myself? It means that the days of being a specialist are over. Not to be confused with a “jack of all trades” T-shaped people have a core competency, but can easily branch out. And they possess curiosity, empathy and aren’t afraid to ask “why”.

So what are the signs of a T-shaped person? Look for experimentation in their background. Have they worked in different areas of expertise? Have they experienced different mediums? Are they willing to place themselves in the shoes of others and throw pre-conceived notions out the window? Do they step out of comfort zones on a regular basis? Do they occasionally make you nervous? If so, you might have one on your team.

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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.
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The Digital Curator in Your Future
February 26, 2008, 1:14 am
Filed under: Digital culture, Future of Media, Future of Work, Geek stuff, Social media, Thinking, Trends stuff, Work Futures, geek | Tags: , ,

A great post borrowed from Steve Rubel who writes Micropersuasion

Credit: Met by jesst7Content: it’s everywhere. Content is in your inbox, your feed reader, outdoor media, your living room, your pocket and, increasingly, on every web site you visit. It also increasingly resides on sites built and managed by your favorite brands, which are bypassing the media and going direct.

The democratization of publishing is without a doubt a revolution. When we’re all dead and gone, the 21st Century will be remembered as a Digital Renaissance – one that rivals the original that preceded it by 700 years.

The Internet has empowered billions of people and is distributing their creativity across millions of niches and dozens of formats. Quality and accuracy, of course, can vary. However, virtually every subject either is or will be addressed with excellence – by someone, somewhere.

However, the glut of content as we all know also has a major downside. Our information and entertainment options greatly outweigh the time we have to consume it. Even if one were to only focus on micro-niche interests and snack on bite-sized content, demand could never ever scale to match the supply. Content is a commodity. The Attention Crash is real and – make no mistake – it will deepen.

Enter the Digital Curator.

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Looking for innovation superstars?
February 13, 2008, 11:51 pm
Filed under: Digital culture, Future of Work, Geek stuff, Gen M, Gen Y, Get another life, Innovation shops, Looking for insights, Research Methods, Social, Social media, Work Futures, creativity, geek, unbusiness | Tags: , , , , , , ,

I had brekky with a friend of mine this morning & amongst other things, we were talking about finding talent. He’s always on the lookout for people, I’m on the other side of the fence & always on the lookout for new freeelance opportunities. There’s a lot of people hunting for innovation consultants, innovation talent, researchers etc at the moment in Sydney. The market is abuzz with movement. People are moving around, everyone wants to know who’s free, who might come where & who’s looking for what. Anyway, this friend & I were talking about how innovation companies themselves are often not that innovative [ironically] when it comes to hiring. How they can talk innovation & have theories on innovation but when it comes to hiring practices, recruiting talent & looking for new blood, often their approach can be anything but.

As I was pondering this post-pancakes, I came across a couple of articles that speak to this topic brilliantly. So rather than bang on & paraphrase, I’ve just posted them here. Enjoy.

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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?

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What people are doing online
February 1, 2008, 4:27 am
Filed under: Borrow this, Digital culture, Emergent media, Future of Media, Futures, Geek stuff, Gen M, Gen Y, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Macro trends, Social, Social media, Trends stuff, Work Futures, content communities, creativity | Tags: , , , , ,

online.jpg

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

skybutton.jpg

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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A new virus
January 17, 2008, 1:37 am
Filed under: Advertising, Innovative promotions, Work Futures, creativity | Tags: , , , , ,

 It wasn’t so long ago that viral marketing was all the rage. It was trendy, irreverent [wasn't everything irreverent for a while there?] and we even thought consumers could just make it for us. After all, isn’t Generation C all about user generated content? Clients wanted it and agencies delivered it. Then some clients had the idea that they could get the consumers themselves to create virals which could be shown on TV or posted anne-summers-viral-acad.jpgonline. Further to this, we’ve seen the advent of Super Virals created by the guys at 12:20 which I believe has had great success. Courtesy of Faris Yakob I’ve just stumbled across Ann Summers Viral Academy and what a great idea it is.

Here’s the explanation on the website of how it all works:
 In A Nutshell
Viral advertising is a very important part of Ann Summers communications strategy. However we don’t retain a creative agency; instead we welcome ideas from talented creative people who contact us directly. These are people who want to bolster their show reel with some advertising that will be seen by millions (it’s not unusual for our virals to be seen by 20 million people), or want to do some work with an ideas led brand they can have some fun with – or just people who have a cracking idea.

However the ideas we get are not in response to a specific brief – are not necessarily true to our brand values or business objectives. We have created the Ann Summers viral academy to formalise the process – and to give people with great ideas more of a chance to get their work made.

Briefs will be posted up to 4 times a year and we have committed to making a production budget of up to £25k available for each brief to make the winning idea or ideas happen. We are also going to be awarding soon to be covetable black and gold rabbits. As well as that we will create a lot of trade PR for the winning submission, the creative mind or minds behind the submission and their agency homes – so professional kudos shall be forthcoming.

We expect most of the ideas to be for short films – like the ones you can find here but we don’t want to limit you in any way. If you have a great idea for a game, a song, a comic – anything at all – we’d love to hear it.

Our Commitment
We will make up to 4 new ads a year, for which we have put aside a significant production budget. We will then seed/place/distribute these ads. They will be first be seen as exclusive content at handbag.com, who are our online partners in this venture. They will then feature on our website and be sent to our sizeable database. We will work with you to try to ensure that the winning viral idea is a success and is widely seen.

Unlike other user-generated viral campaigns which invite the average user to create a viral for Jeans West or some other FMCG client, Ann Summers opens her briefs up to the creative industry, to those people who are keen to get some cutting edge work on a reel or try a new idea for their own portfolio.

A well considered approach to viral marketing and worth a look.

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