Fresh Takes on Innovation

The Swiss retailer Coop just launched a brand with 50 convenience food products for swiss teens. The brand and products were created together with BrainStore. We involved the target audience, convenience food specialists, packaging experts and the people from Coop in several workshops.

We learned a great deal about the habits and needs of swiss teenagers when it comes to food. Food needs to be uncomplicated and fun, can be healthy but should not shout about it, low priced without being completely cheap and have a design you want to show around without being too trendy (it’s only food, ok?).

The 50 products include all-time favourites like the giant brownie, energy drink, toast, pizza and donuts, but also new inventions like “planet salad”, a milkshake called “do me a flavour”, “maccaroni & cheese” (very well known in the US but quite new for the young crowd in Switzerland), sweets, smoothies and yoghurt like the “latte macchiato” mix.

Most meals come with an attached cinnamon chewing gum to chew after eating, and the design is very fashionable indeed. “Plan B” is the food that you eat on the go, when you just want to grab a bite and when you want to have some fun with your friends. read more (in German, French or Italian) on the official web site of Coop.

Did you know which bizarre conditions could affect your brain?

“The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat” (1985) is an absolute must read for everyone interested in the human brain.
In his clinical tales Dr. Oliver Sacks, respected neurologist and author, describes patients afflicted with different neurological conditions. For example you’ll find a young lady suffering from loss of propioception, e.g. this woman will not be able to perceive the spatial position of her limbs. Or there’s the title tale, where a husband wants to put his wife on his head. Or you’ll smirk over the essay where Sacks describes an aphasic person watching the president speak on TV; and although she doesn’t understand a single word, she can’t believe what he’s saying, simply by observing his non-verbal communication. Hilarious and so true to life!
If you have a minute, buy the book, read it and enjoy it. By the way, the title essay “The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat” was adapted as a one-act chamber opera by Michael Nyman, an English composer of minimalist music.
I’m really looking forward to reading Dr. Sacks revised “Musicophilia – Tales of Music and the Brain” which will be available as of September 23, 2008.

It wouldn’t be conceivable to take this amount of drugs while at work, would it? Sportsmen and sportswomen – still considered by many youngsters as role models – totally lose focus and fill themselves up to their necks with whatever they deem necessary to beat their competitors. Whether they want their muscles to grow faster, or to shorten recovery time, feel less pain or increase the level of awareness.

Imagine a sports world where doping were legal… instead of athletes’ names we would be talking about the producers of the substances or the so called doctors prescribing them. On track one: 5α-androst-1-en-3β,17β-diol, on track two: Erythropoietin, on track three: outsider Diamorphine. It could be a fascinating competition though; maybe some of the research efforts would even contribute curing real medical problems.

But as far as I remember the whole idea behind the Olympic Games was fair play and respect towards the opponents; and the audience’s respect and admiration for the athletes’ achievements. Maybe nowadays we are rather asked to revere chemists and researchers than training and discipline.

Well, obviously «citius, altius, fortius» can be interpreted in different ways. The momentary trend seems to be, rather than pushing human achievement (or animal – look at the horses) to its limits, to transcend it: go ever faster, higher and stronger than humanly possible.

If you want to succeed in life you have to be emotionally literate. The new formula to success is the Emotional Intelligence Quotient, rather than the traditional Intelligence Quotient, according to Daniel Goleman, clinical psychologist and founder of the business consulting agency Emotional Intelligence Services (EIS).

Rationality – or keeping your cool – is not the only guarantee to professional and private success. It’s your emotional competences. The EQ measures the intelligence manifested in our understanding and our handling of human emotions – dividing it into a complex scale ranging from fear to anger, love to aggression, doubt and joy. Goleman bases his theses on various clinical cognitive research and the latest findings in brain science.

In his latest work, he supports the following claim: without an intact emotional life, even the best intellect remains useless. There is a profound and complex interaction between the emotional and rational side, opening up completely new perspectives and possibilities in life to each human being.

BrainStore has long recognized the importance of the Emotional Intelligence Quotient, having experienced in many workshops that creating emotional experiences will be a trigger for surprising ideas – and can favorably complement traditional cognitive methods.

And what a party it was! We had great fun last week developing ideas for flying books with Artist Not Vital.

You can find pictures and all the ideas by visiting the special site we have created. Have fun!

Geoffrey Thomas attended the event as a lateral thinker. Read about his unique experience on his blog Group Brilliance.

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

For everyone who works in the field of ideas and innovation, looking at the world with fresh eyes is vital. And who can provide a fresher look than kids? I strongly believe that being in contact with children is vital to the success of any venture that has to do with innovation. You do not necessarily need to have kids of your own, but you should get exposed to children regularly to see how a complete new look at the world can create new ideas.

At BrainStore, for instance, we have our own daycare called the “MiniBrains” that helps us do this. Everyone at BrainStore gets in touch with kids between one and nine years old on a pretty regular basis, and it is a lot of fun. Listening to children, their views of the world and their interpretation of the weird stuff that goes on on this planet is crucial for us. So the grown Brains spend time with the Minis, playing Lego, eating Fishfingers, discussing the universe in general.

You can learn so many things from children. And most of all, it is often hilarious. My 5 year old daughter Ella asked me at the Birthday party of my Grandfather, when a lot of black and white pictures were shown: “And since when is there color in the world?”, clearly analysing that, not always, has the world been full of color. Or my son, when explained that “this was a long long time ago, when your father was a child” stated: “Oh, during the middle ages?”.

Clearly, this is not only fun, but also very instructive for your own way you look at the world. So go out and get in touch with not only your inner child, but children in general.

Players of PMOG, a multiplayer game grafted onto the normal experience of browsing the Web, get a profile on the PMOG site, shown above. The site tracks their equipment in the game, their list of allies and rivals, and their progress making and taking missions, which are interactive tours through the Internet that can earn points.

To get started, players download a toolbar. When they log in to PMOG, software tracks the sites that they visit, and gives them points for each unique URL they visit within a 24-hour period. Then they can create and take missions. For example, a PMOG player might visit the homepage for the forthcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight, and find a pop-up from a fellow player inviting him to learn about the history of Batman. If the player elects to follow the mission, a series of pop-up windows would lead him through sites where he might, for example, view cover art from the Batman comic books, read trivia on the Batman TV series, and view information about the making of the new film. At each site, he’d find pop-up windows displaying notes written by the mission creator, perhaps giving additional background on the site, telling a story, or leaving clues to a puzzle.

Suddenly the Internet is not a series of untouchable exhibits, but rather a hackable, rewarding environment!

Start now: http://pmog.com

After our very interesting project in Kuala Lumpur in December where we generated ideas on how to make this world a planet of entrepreneurs, we are now in Africa with the UNECA (UN Economic Commission for Africa) and the African Union.

The Conference lasts for three days and looks for ways how R&D in Africa can be boosted and collaboration North-South and South-South can be increased.

BrainStores task is to develop 15 – 20 ideas with the conference participants, who are members of Parliament of African States, Scientists, delegates of UNECA and other UN Organisations as well as representatives of other organisations and associations.

To read more, visit www.uneca.org/sciencewithafrica

We are having a great time here and are impressed with the diversity, hospitality and positive spirit of this wonderful continent.

Lift08 is a three day event to explore the social impact of new technologies. Entrepreneurs, investors, and private sector professionals gather in Geneva to talk about tomorrow’s most important trends.

A small delegation of our brains is at Lift08. Their workshop this afternoon, will provide an insight into Industrial IdeaProduction, highlighting the different steps «manufacturing – proto-industralization – industrialization – digitalization – virtualization» along the model of the world’s first IdeaFactory BrainStore.

We are looking forward to an interesting discussion with the participants.