See more possibilities for what you already have.
Recently, we ran across a very interesting column in the NY Times about 3M’s new “World of Innovation” showcase at their customer innovation center in St Paul, Minnesota.
Although 3M is the inventor of thousands of products (the Post-it, most famously), the “World of Innovation” showcase isn’t a museum dedicated to glorifying their most successful inventions.
Instead it’s a room filled with 40 of what 3M calls “technology platforms” – which are technologies that 3M has developed in areas like optical films, reflective materials, abrasives and adhesives. And none of those technologies are shown as the finished products that they’re currently used in.
The goal of this Innovation Center is to inspire visitors to look at 3M’s range of inventions as potential solutions to their business challenges – whatever those challenges are! And it works. Customers discover new uses for the same technologies in vastly different fields.
Here at BrainStore, we love this concept and use a variation on it ourselves!
At 3M, engineers develop the technologies that are displayed in the “World of Innovation” showcase and then customers who have challenges (e.g. need to find a better adhesive for repairing ducts) arrive at the Innovation Center to search for technologies that will meet their needs.
At BrainStore, we don’t have a range of our own inventions that we display. Instead, our clients come to us because they need new ideas about how to get more out of a current product, whether that’s cheese or chemicals. Our challenge is to get the people who are who are involved with the product every day to see new possibilities and come up with new uses themselves.
And this also works! Amazing, isn’t it?
