Fresh Takes on Innovation

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?

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.

When I was a kid, I used to dream up things like this and draw them during dull classes. The flying car, the car that can swim under water, a city on the moon…

My friends and I truly believed that when we grow up, these things will indeed exist.

And now, look at this: The flying car, at last! Brought to us by Terrafugia, a company founded by award-winning MIT aeronautical engineers. It’s name is also a beauty, it is called “The Transition” and can actually legally drive on roads as well as fly. This is so cool!

The training only takes 20 hours and you can then fly your Transition and drive it home after landing. It costs around 200′000 Dollars.

Thank you, Pascal, who is always on top of all the trends in the aerospace industry.

Hans Rosling from Sweden is – in my opinion – the king of statistics. He studied Medicine and Statistics and is founder of the Gapminder Foundation that created a software that will show you statistics as you have never seen them before!

Enjoy one of the latest statistical contributions from Hans by looking at this interesting comparison of the news ratio between news about the swine flu and news about tuberculosis.

Design by Hwang Jin wook, Jeon You ho, Han Kuk il & Kim Ji myung

At BrainStore we were pretty excited a few years ago when a defense contractor asked us to create some ideas on how their existing technologies could be used to make the world a better place.

They wanted to know what the scenarios of future threats to mankind were and how to respond to them. We came up with many ieas to tackle themes like modern piracy, desertification, world hunger, water poisoning, terrorism in cities, deluge and many more.

One concept took into consideration to build a kind of “seed bomb” that you could drop over territories that cannot be reached easily. The bomb would carry seedy to grow vegetables and could be used by the local farmers to grow produce.

I found a similar concept on Yanko Design Magazine. The seedbomb consists of a biodegradable capsule that contains soil and seeds. Once the capsule reaches the ground, the plant first grows in the capsule and produces moisture, which then melts the biodegradable capsule. I like the design and the way the concept is thought throug. Bravo, Yanko Design.

While researching this topic, a friend pointed out that using seed capsules is not such a new idea after all. The technology exists since the 70ies in some way and was used by Guerilla Gardeners, wo try to claim back a piece of nature within urban space. I am truly amazed at the idea of Guerilla Gardening. It opens a whole new world to me! And here is one very nice example of a Guerilla Gardening blog worth reading!