Fresh Takes on Innovation

All here at BrainStore would just like to express their elation, happiness and satisfaction with the outcome of the election in the United States. We wish the new President a good transition and first term. Sure, there is a lot of work coming, but for someone who showed so much perseverance and patience during a long and tiring election, nothing is impossible!

And if he or his administration ever are in need of fresh ideas: We can help!

If knowledge is power, personal newsfeeds are your weapons. A newsfeed customized to your information needs allows for professional news monitoring and information retrieval like previously only news services and professional communication agencies could.
If for instance you wished to be constantly informed about your clients, suppliers and competitors, then an aggregated newsfeed could be an interesting solution for you.

In the following example I’ve combined selected data sources to process them with different methods. Eventually the outcome is a helpful aggregated idea-feed.

This is comparable with the concept of a search engine: finding what one is looking for via queries from any number of sources. So instead of constantly dealing with complicated Google scanning on a certain subject, you can continually inform yourself of a predefined field.

In this aggregated newsfeed example, articles of selected sources on the subjects of trends, ideas, innovation and future are displayed on a daily basis. For instance, you can subscribe to the Yahoo! Pipes aggregated feed as badge for iGoogle or Netvibes.

The Internet includes an elusive quantity of information. If we visited each existing URL on the Internet for only 10 seconds, we would be busy doing so for roughly 317,098 years.

Google and Yahoo search engines let you browse through this enormous amount of information as quick as lightning. And by using social bookmarking service providers such as Mister Wong and Delicious clever discoverers can find the information looked for in no time.

Based on a content analysis of social bookmark service providers, I have listed and summarized the most interesting websites on the subject of ideas, trends and future in a Google Custom Search. That is about the same as analyzing how many guests go to which restaurants. The best results however are not compiled in a list but in a search engine based on Google’s technology!

The result is a niche search engine to track trends, future and innovative ideas!

I suggest you begin searching for new business trends right away or start your discovery of exciting ideas from a land faraway.

Niche Search Engine to Track Trends, Future and Innovative Ideas:

Custom Search

For more informations see:
- We knew the web was big…
- Google Custom Search Blog

The Global Humanitarian Forum, chaired by former UN president Kofi Annan, aims at being a unique platform to address key humanitarian challenges. The Forum was launched in October 2007 and aspires to build a stronger global community to better meet the needs of the poor and vulnerable.

The first annual conference of the Forum at the beginning of this week in Geneva focused on the humanitarian challenges of climate change. In the aftermath of Myanmar’s Cyclone Nargis and in view of the ongoing global food crisis, the Forum’s President Kofi Annan called together 300 leaders from all sectors of society worldwide to urgently address what he calls “the human face of climate change”: the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations are affected by ever more violent storms, drought and floods.

The Annual Meeting 2008 pooled the expertise and experience of an uncommon combination of leading people from across sectors. They worked to develop creative solutions and boost action to meet the urgent needs of those worst affected by climate change.

In solidarity with the world’s most vulnerable, the Meeting will place climate justice high on the agenda as the guiding principle in the international response to climate change and as the basis for any future global climate agreement.

BrainStore will take part in the project “Give climate change a human face” by conducting several idea finding workshops to come up with practical solutions which will help the vulnerable communities in the affected regions.

See more information on the forum on their website

One of the long enduring ideas in human psychology: the moment of decision-making is not pre-determined by a single default of the brain, e.g. by a person’s character being calibrated to more of a rational or emotional nature.

Human behavior rather reflects a dynamic interaction between two distinct subsystems of the brain, as a new study by psychologist Adam Alter of Oppenheimer Lab at Princeton University fortifies. While a first affective system follows heuristic cues, a second conscious and rule-based system monitors the quality of these emotional signals. Although perceived as one single act, decision-making appears to be a two-step process.

This dualism is very well reflected within as well as over all the three major phases of the BrainStore method. For inspiration boosting we pull emotional triggers, in compression we integrate emotional yes or no sessions and systematic criteria scans. At the end of the day, decisions on ideas are taken rationally – given that our emotions play along.

This is propably the most high tech bar in the whole world. The IBar finds out which drink you’re having by using sensors that calculate the glass shape and then link it to the content of the glass. So if you drink a prosecco, the IBar will recognize that because you won’t usually have a whiskey on the rocks in a similarly shaped glass.

So what’s happening, I ask myself, if you’re drinking a cosmopolitan… How will the bar recognize that you’re not having a Martini? Will the IBar identify it because of the customer’s gender? Men don’t usually drink cosmopolitans, or do they now? What if the guest is a gay man or a female whiskey amateur?

But experts say that within a few years we’ll be using it to pay for our drink by simply placing a credit card on it. They also say the interactive device will be able to upload pics and videos from your mobile to show off to other bar guests in the same way. Plus punters will be able to flick through food menues, special drinks offers and jukebox tracks on the multitouch bar surface.

The first ever iBar was this week installed at London’s swanky Soho nightclub 24.

The Economist reflects the Lessons From Apple: Buy clever ideas, pursue simplicity, ignore focus groups and fail wisely.

Apple has no “invented here”-policy. Instead they welcome innovation from the outside. They acquire good ideas and boost their potential by adding their own twist: outstanding design, simplicity and usability. Having the courage no to listen too much to user demands is another key to come up with unexpected, clever products. Of course some products fail, but the core idea might be successfull in a second or third implementation.

Guy Kawasaki, a Silicon Valley Entrpreneur and former Apple Evangelist involved in several hot Web-Startups (Coghead, Truemors, Jajah etc.) shares his view about innovation at the 2007 Event Marketing Conference.

He has some good points about transforming ideas into business. Innovation polarizes people and you should not be afraid of this, he states. Be more afraid of “Bozos”, those guys who keep saying it can’t be done, shouldn’t be done, and isn’t necessary – not recognizing the potentials of revolutionary products or services.

More: The Art of Innovation-article on Guy Kawasaki’s blog

…according to a Business Week Special Report are: Apple, Google, Totota Motor, General Electric and Microsoft. The Top 50 List might be a little US-focused, but is worth looking at.

The correspondent article about The World’s Most Innovative Companies underlines the need for new business models and organizations that are capable of sustained innovation.

Getting people to step out of their comfort zones can do a lot in sparking new ideas. But if they’re not paired with more fundamental changes, all those efforts will lead nowhere.

This development has to be driven by the leaders, not R&D-departments. Innovation touches the whole organisation, and thus, the whole organisation must adapt to constant change.

Innovation also requires inspired leadership. Executives must free up resources to execute new ideas and have the courage to take risks rather than just talk about their importance.

Learn how cognitive biases distort our view of reality. The Health Bolt Blog has a list of 26 Reasons What You Think is Right is Wrong.