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

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?

Time Magazine just came out with a list of the 50 best inventions of 2009.  We took a look and selected 5 of our favorites.

Those might not be the 5 best inventions on the list from a commerical or social value, but they’re the ones that got our vote.

	The Foldable Speaker We like this speaker because it’s perfect for travel.  It starts off as a cube, but all you have to do to fit it conveniently in your laptop bag is to unfold it into a slim piece of paper.  Plus, part of the profits from sales of this speaker go to charity!
	The Solar Shingle Solar power is great, but it’s not very practical for most people.  It costs a lot to install giant solar panels, which don’t have a nice appearance. The Solar Shingles takes the solar panel and turns it into small shingles that can be installed on the roof right next to the normal shingles.  To make them even better, the solar shingles will cost 10% to 15% less than normal solar panels and are easier to install.
	The YikeBike We love our Brompton fold-able bikes at BrainStore and this is a new twist on an old favorite.  Imagine: an electric folding bike that charges in a little over 20 minutes and can reach speeds of up to 20 km/h (12 mph).  Yup, we think that sounds great too.
	Vertical Farming Vertical farming makes it possible to get more out of smaller parcels of land – which could be a huge benefit as the population increases and people want more locally-grown food (especially in urban areas).  It’s also cool that the vertical farming uses far less water than conventional farming while still making sure that plants get all the nutrients and sun that they need.
	The Human-Powered Vending Machine This invention doesn’t change the world, but it makes us happy.  The concept is simple: to get something from the vending machine, potential customers will have to pedal a certain distance.  We like the image of people pedaling madly away to get their afternoon treat, but we also like how an old technology gets a different spin.

Take a look at Time’s list and let us know which ones you like best!

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.

As a company that works with a lot of big organizations, we often don’t get the chance to share the results of our Idea Events.  Sometimes we get to talk about specific products and services that came about as a result of working with us – but we rarely get to give people a real glimpse into how our process unfolds.

But today we do!  Last month, BrainStore was one of the sponsors of  the Young Hoteliers Summit (YHS), a new hospitality conference put on by the Career Club of the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne (an internationally-renowned Swiss hotel school). As part of our contribution to the event, we ran the attendees through our Idea Factory process to come up with solutions to one of the challenges faced by luxury hotels today.

The Young Hoteliers Summit and Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne are graciously allowing us to share all their inspirations, raw ideas, the top 10 finished ideas and the results of their Idea Selection.

So, if you’d like to get a glimpse of the amazing results of one of our Idea Events, read on!

The Challenge

The Jumeirah Group, another sponsor of the event, proposed the following challenge to the attendees of the Young Hoteliers Summit:

“In the face of an overall decrease in demand, how to boost occupancy levels in luxury hotels without pushing prices lower?”

From that challenge, BrainStore developed a series of thought-provoking questions and criteria to come up with 10 great ideas.

The Process

We started by leading the students through one of our Creative Teams.  Creative Teams are the part of our process where we do quick, short exercises that result in thousands of “inspirations” rapidly.  We call the results of those sessions “inspirations” because – while they might not be a full idea in their own right – each inspiration has the potential to become, or inspire an actual idea later on in our process.

To get those inspirations, we first asked questions that don’t require a lot of thought, but require participants to consider different viewpoints.  Those included:

What do millionaires expect from a stay in a luxury hotel?

What do business travelers expect from a stay in a luxury hotel?

What do sporty people expect from a stay in a luxury hotel?

Then we moved onto more challenging questions that require participants to stretch their brains, such as:

How can one positively surprise various customer groups, in a way that leaves a lasting impression?

Imagine you are living in prohibitive times – alcohol has recently been outlawed – You are a wine merchant, and you must now find a way to continue selling your exclusive alcohol despite the ban.  How can you do this?

How do get your guests to feel completely comfortable in your hotel? Pay special attention to the five senses.

Through those questions, and the others that we rapid-fired at participants, we gathered over 2500 inspirations!

If you’d like to see the questions we asked and the responses, take a look at our records from the Creative Team:

(FYI, those results are rough – the goal for participants were to get as many inspirations as quickly as possible.)

After the Creative Team, we then moved onto the next part of our process: the Idea City.  In the Idea City, BrainStore pushed the YHS participants to combine all the inspirations generated in the Creative Team – and to turn those into fresh new ideas. During this phase, we still give participants challenges to think about, but now they have the time to create concrete ideas.

The ideas generated during this phase ranged from tempting guests with sensory experiences like baking bread in the morning, to providing above-and-beyond services such as adapter plugs (for travelers from different countries), to giving guest the ability to customize their rooms before they even arrive (like rock stars!)

The Idea City is a little more relaxing than the Creative Team – but all the brains in the room were obviously working madly away!  We had nearly 500 raw ideas come out of the Idea City.

Take a look at the raw ideas:

The Results

After the crazy inspiration generating of the Creative Team, and the quieter idea-generation of the Idea City, we hung up all the ideas and let the students pick their favorites.  This is always a favorite part of the Idea Event because participants get to see the results of their labor.  Plus, it’s a lot of fun to see the wide variety of ideas!

Then, we gave the students a little break while we evaluated their top ideas based on criteria and then put the top 10 ideas into a visual format so they could be easily understood and compared with each other.

After that, the Idea Selection began.  We turned on some fun music and projected the top 10 ideas in front of the participants from the YHS.  It was fun, and quick – with music (of course!)  We kept things moving because we didn’t want participants to overanalyze each idea (that comes later in a normal process during the Roadmap workshop) we just wanted to learn their initial impressions.

Meanwhile, in the background, we were crunching the students’ ratings of the ideas to find out what ideas were liked by all, and also which ideas were liked by some and hated by others.  (Those polarizing ideas are incredibly important to us!)

And then, in less than a day, it was done!  We compiled a document with the top ideas and showed how participants viewed their viability.

If you’d like to see the final results of our Idea Event for the Young Hoteliers Summit, with the top 10 ideas and how the students ranked them, check them out here.

Normally, this wouldn’t be the final stage of our Idea Event.  We typically helps companies thoroughly evaluate each idea with the help of experts, and then run a Roadmap workshop where the leaders of the company determine which ideas should be implemented, in what order and what resources/partnerships they need to make it happen.

In that way, we ensure that ideas generated with BrainStore don’t simply disappear into thin air – unlike many ideas that get pushed aside when other commitments get in the way.

But in a short workshop like this one for the Young Hoteliers, the process we described above gave the participants (and their sponsors) a series of great new ideas, a big gain in enthusiasm for solving challenges in their industry and many innovative building blocks and raw ideas to work with in the future.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed this glimpse into the BrainStore process!

In Long Beach, California (home to one of our Brains) the TED Conference is currently in progress.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it before, TED is a conference that brings together an enormous group of brilliant thinkers who are all challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes or less.

We love their motto: “Ideas worth spreading.”  And we love watching the fascinating talks that are posted after every event.

We can’t wait until the 2010 talks arrive online, but while we’re waiting, we thought we’d share one of our favorite talks from last year:

In this short (under 7 minute) talk, Tom Wujec covers a topic near-and-dear to our heart: the brain!  He talks about how our minds processes information and develop meaning.  He also explains how to use the brain’s capabilities to create a common mental image among members of a group so that the entire group can move forward.

Fascinating stuff!  We can’t wait to see what they’re talking about at TED this year!

We’ve been in Chicago for the last couple days, bringing our Idea Factory to a cool new American client.  We thought BrainStore was the only one in town, but it turns out we were wrong!

Yesterday,  Markus gave a presentation for innovative leaders at the Museum for Science and Industry.  We picked this location for its unique vibe – high ceilings, cool spaces and (most importantly) lots of inventions.

Imagine our surprise when we went wandering around the museum afterwards and saw their “Idea Factory”!  It’s a fun place, where kids can learn all about science through interactive activities.  It’s full of toys, bright colors and a big water geyser.  (What more could anyone want?)

Unfortunately though, the MSI’s Idea Factory has an age limit, so if you’re over 10 and have a hankering to come play with ideas, you’ll have to come visit us in Switzerland!

Look at this amazing invention by designer Andrew Bosley: The Brainstormer. Turn one of the three wheels or just press “random” to get a new and absolutely crazy suggestion for… well… I don’t know, but the design is awsome!

What about using this as a real tool for coming up with combined solutions, for instance for products or services? Or even just as a tool for decision making, for instance on how to spend your free time.

When developing scenarios for the future, many people struggle because they are trying to get inspired by thinking hard about the future, and feel overwhelmed when they do not find something “awe-inspiring” to say.

What about letting them invent “Headlines of the Future” for the industry or topic you are working on? It puts them in the shoes of a different group (journalists) and generally produces great insights that people can relate to better because they are more familiar to them.