Fresh Takes on Innovation

According to David Galenson, a University of Chicago economist, there are two types of innovators; experimental and conceptual innovators.

Galenson classifies the painters Cezanne, Renoir and Pissaro as experimental innovators. They did their best work in the mid to late periods of their careers. Experimental innovators explore their chosen area of expertise step-by-step: experimenting, reflecting, learning and then experimenting again until they perfect their craft. Conceptual innovators such as the painter Picasso, the poet Ezra Pound or the entrepreneur Bill Gates, are conceptual innovators. Conceptual innovators take the quantum leap. They usually make their greatest contribution in the earliest part of their careers.

Understanding that people approach tasks differently and bring different perspectives to the table is a core element of the BrainStore process. We recruit and involve a mix of people as diverse as possible in our innovation development – age, gender, nationality, academic background, experience, learning preferences and so on.

BrainStore believes that everyone has something to contribute when looking for good ideas.

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

This is the newest way to create modern art – www.nag.iap.de.

You just define the topic you are designing and how complex you want your design to be. That’s it! The machine searches the web for images that match your topic and chooses them completely freely, and as many images as you ordered and wildly combines them.

And the result? Your art looks exactly the same as in cool and trendy magazines. We suspect the fancy designers used the NetArtGenerator for years.

We in BrainStore like NetArtGenerator because the principle is similar to that of our IdeaMachine: the IdeaMachine incorporates the concept of random combinations to produce something really new. This element of random combination is only one part of how the IdeaMachine produces new and great ideas. Should NetArtGenerator increase their complexity and control possibilities, we love them even more.

On illustration: 6 images about the topic “dog” combined in 10 seconds.

This Pipe takes the BrainStore Blog, passes it thru a Content Analysis and uses the keywords to find Photos at Flickr for Inspirations. The photos appear in date order.

Clone the “BrainStore Blog Inspiration” pipe and fit them to your interests. And even begin to use flickr.

Pipes is a free online service from yahoo that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code. Learn more…

The effect of brain games is not as clear as one might think. Canadian tech site Digital Home recently questioned if they really work, stating that there is more “anecdotal evidence” than scientific proof, up to now.

Providers of brain fitness software like Luminosity or Nintendo with their bestselling ‘Brain Age’ game, insist on the effect of their “scientifically designed” products.

I played Brain Age myself and found it pretty entertaining and motivating. Still I think, that brain fitness is mainly about using your grey matter in every day life. Try not to use a calculator every time bigger figures come your way. Don’t write everything down, memorize dates, names and figures that surround you. Keep your body in shape, then your brain will be fit, too. Eat healthy, get enough sleep and socialize.

Need more tips? There are tons of brain improvement lists on the net: Try e.g. these 70 tips or these 22 ways to overclock your brain.

Everybody knows: Training your brain will help you staying flexible and creative for a lifetime! On this gamesforthebrain.com you will find a variety of games that will help you stimulate your brain in no time!

For example:

Drag

Mahjongg Solitaire

Find Alice’s mistakes

Try it out and make those neurons grow!

The Japanese are known for their unusual and creative ideas. This one is somewhat between completely nuts and just fabulous: Aya Tsukioka, an experimental fashion designer, has invented a special series of clothing that helps people disguise themselves when in danger. For example, a woman can turn a skirt into a big piece of cloth that looks like a vending machine and that can be hastily put over ones head when being pursued by a stalker in the street. Children can use a special school bag to transform themselves into a fire hydrant.

The fact that such ideas were greeted with straight faces, or even appeared at all, underscores Japanese society’s fondness for oddball ideas and inventions

writes the New York Times, in an article accompanied by a slideshow of these inventions. Thank you for sending us this article, Katie Kontrath (www.getfreshminds.com).

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

After financiers, privat equity and hedge funds have been ruling the economic game, creative entrepreneurs are on the rise, says Bernard Lunn in an article on the Read/WriteWeb Blog.

Creative people - whether they are developers, musicians, actors, scientists, writers or (insert creative type that I annoyingly may have omitted) - are the next Masters of the Universe. Entrepreneurs who tap the rise of the creative class will do well, but the trend is a deeper one that makes creative people into entrepreneurs.

Today, more and more artists are selling their works on the web (like e.g. Radiohead are doing it right now). Small software teams can implement web applications that are suddenly used by thousands or millions of people.

Lunn mentions several good reasons for the shift of power. One of them being the fact that you can outsource “pretty much everything other than creativity”. I think this is only partly correct. It might be true for art - but when it comes to products and services, a growing market of IdeaFactories and innovation suppliers show, that even creativity is something you can buy from others.

When working with individuals who are not trained in creative problem solving techniques, you need to work with a variety of methods and triggers. One of the fun and efficient tools we invented at BrainStore is the BrainRace. For a specific question - e.g. “what would be a great new claim for this new coffee machine” a variety of subquestions is generated (e.g. “claims that appeal to wiches”, “claims that sound warm”, “claims that are scary” etc.).

Then, the participants get a clipboard and a form with ten lines to write down 10 ideas. Loud music is played, and the participants write down 10 (legible) suggestions on their form. When they have 10 suggestions, they have to run a defined parcours (about 50 meters) as fast as they can, until they reach the “control table” where their form is checked (are there 10 ideas? are they legible?).

If everything is fine, they get an “OK” stamp on their form and they get a second form, where they write another 10 suggestions.

Whenever there is a BrainRace going on in our IdeaFactory, a lot of the staff come down to our great yard (where this exercise usually takes place) and cheer for the participants.

What happens during BrainRace? The Brain actually shuts down, people focus on the competition and thus write down the first ideas that come to mind. This way, we collect subconcious and silly inspirations that can be very useful when later combining these inspirations to ideas.

BrainRace always is a highlight at every CreativeTeam and is a lot of fun as well as a good wake-up exercise in the morning or after lunch.