Fresh Takes on Innovation

In a recent BBC News article Technology reporter Jonathan Fildes talks about an extraordinary experiment conducted by Professor Sugata Mitra from India.

10 years ago, he started researching the way children teach themselves and each other with the use of computers and completely without teachers. The experiment started in a slum in India, where Mitra put a computer into the wall of his office and surveyed the children of the slum interacting with the machine.

Today, he has introduced similar experiments in many countries, with great success.

I very much loved the following part of the article:

“I wanted to test the limits of this system,” he said. “I set myself an impossible target: can Tamil speaking 12-year-olds in south India teach themselves biotechnology in English on their own?”

The researcher gathered 26 children and gave them computers preloaded with information in English.

“I told them: ‘there is some very difficult stuff on this computer, I won’t be surprised if you don’t understand anything’.”

Two months later, he returned.

Initially the children said they had not learnt anything, despite the fact that they used the computers everyday.

“Then a 12-year-old girl raised her hand and said ‘apart from the fact that improper replication of the DNA contributes to genetic disease – we’ve understood nothing else’.”

Kids apparently can teach themselves pretty much everything without adult interference, but one thing was highly interesting throughout all experiments: The kids need to be in teams or groups, gathering around a computer. The experiment won’t work as well when a kid just sit in front of one computer.

The power of self-organisation and of teamwork is truly amazing.

A few weeks ago, BrainStore organised a conference about the future for one of our clients. The goal was to give 120 people from this organisation the chance to reflect on the future, to get a sense of urgency and to trigger a desire for immediate action. Because, believe it or not, the Future is approaching with considerable speed, and as companies and organisations we need to ready ourselves for it.

To achieve this goal, BrainStore created an exhibit about the future at the Idea Factory in Biel and invited the participants to go through this exhibit, to write down statements about the future that are relevant to the company, and, based on those statements, to draft future scenarios for the company. Based on the best-rated scenario, they formulated commitments for the different departments of the company. The participants left the Idea Factory with a clear sense of what the future will bring and what they need to do as an organisation and as individuals to be prepared for this future.

Of course, we cannot share any outcome of this project nor our clients name, but what we can and want to show to you are a few of the 11 different stations we created to get people thinking about the future:

Waste not, want not

What participants saw: Lots and lots of trash.Purpose: Innovation creates value. Innovation also creates waste. Everything that humans ever produce eventually becomes trash. What, then, are we to do as consumers? As designers? Europeans generate 71 billion kilos of packaging waste each year. Who participants talked to: Packaging Designer Richard Williams.

The Future Forecast

What participants saw: Nine talking heads on nine different monitors. Purpose: The world’s leading thinkers have a lot to say about the future. How do you know who’s right? In this room, you will hear aligned and contradictory voices speaking from digital podiums. Who participants talked to: No one, but they listened to nine different futurologists and their predictions about the future. It was unnerving.

The New Producers

What participants saw: Two inventions by young students Purpose: To show that young people are not waiting for grownups to create solutions for them – they create their own solutions. Who participants talked to: Two design students from Germany who had created the prototype a product generator that comes up with a product based on different indicators from your body, and a team of highschool students who had created a solar kiosk.

Minus 10, Plus 10

What participants saw: In form of a tunnel, familiar objects that didn’t exist 10 years ago and fictious headlines we might see during the next ten years. Purpose: To show people how quickly the future approaches.

Perception is Everything

What participants saw:A movie called “perception is everything” Purpose: To show that good things can have a bad effect and vice versa: A movie featuring provocative imagery from our world. Economy, commerce, conflict, and social tensions all clamor to be interpreted and understood. Still, not everything is as it seems. What if bad is good and good is bad?

The Real Deal

What participants saw: Eight real, ordinary people from greater London, ranging in age from 11 to nearly eighty.Purpose: To get participants to talk to real consumers, aged from 11 to 90, who had travelled to Biel as a group that had just met 2 days before. The bonding experience for the group was a big important part of the group meeting with the exhibit participants.

After the immersion exercise, the participants then went through a BrainStore Idea Event to create specific ideas on how to act as a company to be ready for the future. They formulated commitments and rated them, creating a specific action plan for the next years.

We just found this amazing app called Codecheck. It allows you to scan the bar code of products and you will immediately get all available information about the product, such as a description of the contents, production information and ratings from consumers who have used this product. Clever and simple. http://www.codecheck.info.

As an Idea Factory, we like a challenge, and over the years we have dealt with some pretty complex projects and questions. There are two kinds of project challenges, however, that always seem to be a bit tougher than others, and those are how to make something boring attractive and how to attract young people to becoming members of charities or NGOs.

So if someone told you that in Berlin, every month, hundreds of people meet in a Club in the borough of Kreuzberg to play BINGO to support local projects, you would certainly ask the question how this might be possible.

It’s acutally quite amazing and also, astonishingly easy. Take a cool club, add benches and tables, ask the local shops to sponsor some prizes, get a cool band and two entertaining presenters. This, actually, is the mix that makes “Super Sexy Kiez Bingo” in Kreuzberg work since 9 years.

The two presenters are Inge Borg and Gisela Sommer (picture), two witty transvestites whose comments and questions are legend. They will introduce the BINGO rules to the audience and then draw numbers from an old cement mixer until someone yells “BINGO”.

But it is not all joy for the winner to get his pize, because Inge Borg and Gisela Sommer will question you about your work, your life, and – of course – your sexual orientation. The public engages by yelling, asking the winner to sing or take off his t-shirt (mostly if he is a good looking young guy, as about one third of the audience is gay).

When the number 11 is drawn from the cement mixer, the whole audience cheers loudly and the band plays a little tune. Infact, this tradition to cheer for the number 11 has been established a few seasons ago, says band leader Gary Dee of the “Wild Flamingo Bingo Band”, to make sure that the band stays well awake during the 5 hour long show. Inge Borg and Gisela Sommer vary the usually dull game of BINGO by introducing new languages, by spicing up the procedures with jokes and comments and by generally creating an atmosphere of entertainment and fun that rivals well-known comedy shows.

The atmosphere is a mix of beer fest, Las Vegas, charity concert and private party. To play BINGO you buy one or several rounds worth of playing cards and you make a donation to the charity that will receive the earnings of the night.

“Super Sexy Kiez BINGO” attracts hundreds of people from all walks of life, most of them between 20 and 30, and well before the show opens a long queue builds in front of the club, because people want to make sure that they get good seats.

The secret behind “Super Sexy Kiez BINGO”’s success is, we think, the unusual mix of the components. Bingo by itself would be boring. A charity event for a local project would probably not attract so much as 10 people. A show with funny transvestites and a band is not to everybodies liking. But mix them together, add some good drinks and a very cool location, and you get the sort of evening that is very memorable indeed.

Find Kiezbingo on Facebook

About two years ago, BrainStore helped the University Hospital of Geneva to come up with a name for a program that the Hospital was initiating based on the recommendations of the World Health Organisations to promote better infection control in hospitals through better hand washing routines.

The name that was created was “VigiGerme®”, litterally translated as “watch out for germs”. On the blog of VigiGerme®, the project owner, Dr. Hugo Sax, explains the background of the program:

VigiGerme® is a non-commercial brand. A piece of social marketing.It’s meant to be viral (infectious). We understand infection control as a product that has to please our prime clients, the healthcare workers. It has to make them look good. To feel good. To fit their intuitive thrive to excel in what they do: to satisfy their clients, the patients. To make them get better, not worse. The name VigiGerme® has been created in a rememberable interdiciplinary creative session with our friends of Brainstore. VigiGerme® is a product of the University of Geneva Hospitals. And it has already infected another hospital, Sint Jan General Hospital, Brugge, Belgium.

There is a video about vigigerme that shows how better infection control works in hospitals:

With spring just on the horizon, it’s almost that time again.  No… not wedding season… conference season!

Here at BrainStore, we keep hearing about tons of really innovative conferences in Europe and America.  Some are directly about innovation, while others just create an atmosphere perfect for innovation.

So, since it’s often hard to find out about all the cool conferences out there, we thought we’d share some of our upcoming favorites with you.   Perhaps you’ll even meet us at some of them!

Upcoming conferences we like (March through July):

SxSW Interactive (12-16 March in Austin, Texas) South by SouthWest Interactive is the place to be if you’re interested in emergecing technology, especially if it’s online.  The conference is five days of presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of networking events hosted by industry leaders and a huge showcase of the best new websites, video games and startup ideas.  It’s also chockfull of great music, fun events and networking – not to be missed!

Innovation: Fresh thinking for the ideas economy (23-24 March in Berkeley, USA) This inaugural conference, put on by the Economist Magazine, will examine the latest thinking on what makes innovation possible, how innovation is changing, and why innovation matters today more than ever.  The goal of this event is to expand or overturn established thinking about what innovation is, where it comes from, and how to make it work.

99% Conference (15-16 April 15-16 in New York City, USA) This conference is unfortunately already sold out, but it’s still so cool that we’re going to tell you about it anyways.  Most innovation conferences are all about how to have new ideas – the 99% Conference is all about idea execution – providing road-tested insights on how to make ideas happen. They don’t want to give attendees new ideas, they want to empower attendees to make good on the ones they’ve got.  If that sounds interesting to you, sign-up for their newsletter so you can find out about the 2011 conference right away!

Front End of Innovation (3-5 May, Boston, USA) The European version of this conference was last week, but if you weren’t able to make it to Amsterdam, you can still sign-up for the Boston event.  The Front End of Innovation Conference features fantastic presentations by visionaries who are passionate about innovation and have delivered real results.  The conference has four distinct tracks, from open innovation to green innovation, and most of the presentations are done by companies who talk about how they have applied the innovation concepts to the real world.

LIFT Conference (5-7 May in Geneva, Switzerland) The Lift Conference brings together a community of doers and thinkers to explore the social consequences of new technologies. The conference is a chance to turn changes into opportunities by anticipating the major shifts ahead, and meeting the people who drive them.  The three day conference will combine speeches selected by Lift curators with speeches proposed and selected by the online Lift community, as well as artistic and social events.

The PINC Conference (11 May in  Zeist, Netherlands) is a conference that combines new ideas, great stories and impressive presentations with speakers from all over the world and from every industry.  PINC stands for “People, Ideas, Nature, Creativity” and the conference’s goal is to touch on each one of those subjects while exposing attendees not only to great speakers, but also to an environment filled with creativity.

World Innovation Forum (8-9 June in New York City, USA) A 2-day conference right in the heart of NYC where the world’s greatest thought leaders in the field of innovation come together to provide actionable insights to revolutionize all aspects of business.  The conference covers everything from future trends, to innovation in fields such as marketing, health care and green technology and is attended by many of the most innovative companies in the US.

InnoTown (9-10 June 2010 in Ålesund, Norway ) InnoTown is a conference that seeks to open people up to innovation.  The conference emphasizes innovation, vision, inspiration, strategy, creativity, promotion and internationalisation. It brings together people from different countries, trades, environments and professions, and challenges all of them to find new ideas, to think new thoughts and to dare to fail (in order to succeed in the end!)

TED Global (12-16 July 2010 in Oxford, UK) TED is a legendary invitation-only conference that started in the US and has become so popular that additional TED events are held biannually in different locations around the world. The US-based TED ended last week (so get your tickets now if you want to go next year!) but the European conference will happen in July.  Just like the original version, TED Global will feature four days of short, fast-paced talks on everything from ecological debt to whether music can teach math.

Of course, those aren’t all the cool conferences happening in 2010, but it will give you a taste of what’s happening in the next couple months.  Please let us know if we’ve missed any that you recommend, or what ones we should be aware of later in the year.  We’ll do another post later on with what’s happening during the summer and fall.

Young Innovations Europe (YIE) is a fresh and exciting magazine created for and by young people interested in exercising positive leadership in their own communities in groundbreaking ways.

YIE are interested in showcasing the best initiatives, programs and innovations young people are implementing throughout Europe.

In their first magazine, YIE also portrais the Idea Factory BrainStore on page 9. You can read the article online on YIE’s website.

At Brainstore, we have a special liking for ideas that incite controversy.  Whenever we see an idea that half the groups hates, we know it’s a good one.  Even if that idea isn’t adapted, by simply including it in the discussion, we can often open up the group’s thinking to totally new horizons.

A recent article from the New York Times is one of those ideas.  In it, the author proposes that if we want humans to travel to Mars in the near future, we should send them on a one-way trip!

While it sounds like an awful idea at first, the article points out that there are benefits to sending astronauts only one-way.  It would be significantly cheaper and would move up human-travel to Mars by decades (at least).   It could even be staffed by  aging scientists who dreamed of going to space their entire lives, thought their chances were over and who would be thrilled to “boldly go where no one has gone before”.  It would let astronauts build-up a sustainable colony on Mars where other humans could eventually live – and the technology to make the return journey could be built there for future two-way travel.

See how considering a “ludicrous” idea can actually lead to new paths of thinking?  The first idea might never pan out… but by simply considering it, we end up looking at the challenge from a new angle.

I will say it right away that I have no statistics (yet) to prove my case, but I have a very strong gut feeling that what I am about to say is abolutely true yet not enough recognised with policy makers throughout Europe. I invite each our blog readers to contribute with whatever research material they can find to back this assumption.

Here goes: The most innovative countries in the world invest heavily in their education system, that is to say daycare, preschool, K-12 and higher education. It is NOT the countries that put the emphasis on strenghtening only the higher education.

Also, the most innovative countries would probably need to be those that already foster skills like problem solving, creative thinking and collaboration in the early childhood years.

I am very interested in learning about statistics and materials that back this gut feeling as well as schooling concepts that tell us something about how innovative kids that went through such systems become. Please contribute and we will share the results with you.

I learned about this amazing project while visiting the annual conference PINC in Holland. It is a grassroot movement from Estonia, one of the three Baltic states.

A small group of young people wanted to do something about the incredible amount of illegal waste being dumped in forests everywhere in the country. Mostly they wondered why no one seemed to care. They wanted to solve the problem, but also get people engaged in solving it.

Thus, the project “Let’s do it” was born. Four people decided that they would clean up the mess, in just ONE day, motivating a large portion of the population to participate in a day of cleaning up the forests. Only three full time employees managed to motivate 600 volunteers to participate in the project. They mapped the whole waste with help of GPS and cell phones. Celebrities participated in a campaign – for free! And 50′000 volunteers helped clean up all the mapped territories in just one single day. 10′000 tons of waste were gathered in one single day. Wow. It is truly amazing what people can achieve when they work together for a common cause!

What I like most about this project is that not only did the Estonians get rid of their illegal waste in forests, but they have started an ongoing dialogue about sustainability and ecology that every single Estonian at least heard about, but more likely participated in.