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.

Imagine a phone made from cotton. Soft, pliable and light , yet never compromising on power or performance. The Soft Phone concept by designer Qian Jiang takes what we know about electronic cellulose structures and squeezes every last ounce of performance out of it. Literally!

The is a series of discs with electronic fabric stretched in between. The interface uses a combination of tactile gestures like squeezing to hang-up and touch which detects a deformation on the surface to register input. The fibers are fine enough and optically clear allowing light energy to pass thru to display simple contextual menus. Whenever you need a full QWERTY just unfurl the collapsible structure. The cell antenna, battery, camera, and micro electronics are contained inside a tiny clip which itself is made of soft, squeezable, stress-reducing silica.

source: yankoDesign

Each year, the Swiss Idea and Innovation Association awards people or organisations with the “Idea Oscar”. Their outstanding achievement consists in the production of spectacular as well as sustainable ideas. Their innovation initiative will have made a difference and will have led to the creation of new jobs.

If you are looking for a new idea why not let yourself be inspired by the idea generator? It’s a funny new widget by the team at MonkeyBusiness Labs. Fill in or generate 3 words by pushing the double arrow button. Feel the inspiration and perhaps come up with a new idea!

Try it

In the last years a lot of people have pointed out the difference between innovation and invention. They are of the opinion that “invention is turning money into ideas” and “innovation is turning ideas into money.” So basically, invention is coming up with new ideas and innovation is bringing a product to the market in a way that people appreciate.

Techdirts opinion is:

Innovation is a lot more important than invention. Successfully bringing a product to market is what makes the world a better place — because it satisfies needs in the market and expands the economy. There were music players before the iPod, but Apple innovated the iPod into more of a “must have” device. There were cars before Ford, but he innovated to make it affordable for the average person.

What’s your opinion?

The idea factory is deserted. Our staff and the blog team are taking a summer break. We will be back with Fresh Takes on Innovation on the 3rd of August.

Hi

It is a pleasure to introduce the BrainStore Blog to you. We will write about themes as varied as innovation management, idea generation, facilitation, networks for ideageneration and success stories from the world of product and service innovation. We welcome all comments to our blog that help us shape the future of innovation services! For a peek into our world, please visit www.brainstore.com

The BrainStore Blog is brought to you by BrainStore, the European pioneer of Industrial IdeaProduction. Since 1989, BrainStore has been developing ideas for multinational corporations, companies, organisations, NGOs, small&medium companies and individuals, using a rigid process called the “IdeaMachine”. The goal of our blog is to share with you our findings and insights about IdeaGeneration, Creative techniques, Community driven Innovation, Decision Making and Implementation of ideas. In short: Everything that makes innovation work, from front to back end.

This blog is developed by the BrainStore staff and edited by the Co-Founder of BrainStore, Nadja Schnetzler, Author of the Book “The IdeaMachine” (available at Amazon)