Fresh Takes on Innovation

Matthew Inman aka “the Oatmeal” says his site “The Oatmeal” is about comics, stories and quizzes, but in fact it is so much more. It is a site that explains facts, products and things. It even explains, for example, which 10 words we need to stop misspelling.

As we have been dealing with coffee a lot lately at BrainStore, we particularly enjoyed the Oatmeals “15(ish) Things Worth Knowing About Coffee” which explains where coffee comes from, how it came to be our favourite morning drink and how it is served in different countries. What makes Matthews work so interesting are his great texts and great artwork.

You can follow the Oatmeal on Facebook or Twitter and get great and colorful explanations about lots of things regularly. Check it out!

This year, Biel/Bienne in Switzerland, where BrainStore is located, hosted an art event called “Utopics”

This art exhibit in the public space dealt with ideas like new nations, utopical concepts of society, the invasion of public space and new concepts of the way we could live together in the future.

Among the artists were Antoni Wojtyra and Anni Wu, who worked together in this exhibit as “W&W” and proposed the concept of
“ideally“, an art gallery that does not sell artwork, but rather offers it to someone in exchange of a wish.

The artists in the gallery were not allowed to sell their art, but they had to formulate a wish. Visitors of the gallery could offer to fulfill the wish of the artist and propose how they would do that.

Antoni Wojtyra had created a neon work of art called “let’s hope…“. His wish was at the same time simple and comlex. He wanted people to finish the phrase “let’s hope…” and to choose from those phrases the most meaningful for a future art exhibit.

BrainStore offered to collect the phrases for Antoni, and received the neon in exchange, which now hangs in the check-in at BrainStore in Biel and greets visitors with the challange to finish the phrase.

This Christmas, BrainStore sent this challenge to everyone who has been working with us as a client, partner, freelancer or staff. We want people to express their hopes for the future, for this world, and even for themselves.

Within 12 hours of having sent the Christmas greeting we had already collected more than 500 phrases. Among them are many that express the wish for a better humanity, for world peace and the end of hunger and war. But there are also more personal ones like “let’s hope she calls me” or “let’s hope for a kiss”.

From all the phrases, Antoni will choose a few ones to be part of an exhibition in late 2010 somewhere in the world. He will put the “let’s hope…” neon in the center and the finished phrases as neons around it. Antoni is currently also collecting phrases in Vancouver, among people who usually are not seen as very hopeful: The homeless, the drug addicts, people living on the margins of society.

BrainStore will choose one phrase to be made into a Neon and will offer it to the person who contributed the phrase.

You can contribute here:

in German

in English

I visited www.eternit.ch today. Eternit is the market leader in the roofing and façades sector in Switzerland. The company also acts as an important partner for fireproof and aesthetic interior fittings and design products.

Mr Daniel Hauri, who is responsible for the sales of garden and design products kindly showed me the production and explained the process of fibre cement, which is fascinating.

In the factory in Payerne (in the French speaking part of Switzerland) the company produces roof tiles and wall claddings in different forms and colors, but also gardening pots and design objects like the Guhl Chair (by Willi Guhl, Swiss Designer 1915 – 2004).

What impressed me is the way the company has expanded it’s product portfolio from typical building elements to design objects.

But what truly convinced me today about eternit was a very simple and meaningful marketing idea that was presented to me by Daniel Hauri.

“Because the design products section grew significantly over the last years, we had to hire new workers for our manufacturing process here in Payerne. As the demand rose, the quality (the gardening pots and design objects are produced largely by hand) was getting a bit below standard. We searched some ideas on what we could do and found a very simple solution: A sticker with the personal signature of the person who made the object can now be found in every finished object. It was great marketing in the shops because people realised that the object was actually produced by a person, but it also helped us raise the quality standards, because suddenly the workers went to the shops as well and searched for the pots and objects they had made”.

What I really liked about this idea is the fact that one idea worked perfectly to solve to issues at the same time: Quality and Image.

Thank you, eternit and Daniel Hauri, for sharing this idea with me.

UPDATE: We have a winner!  Congrats to Jan-Paul and Michael who correctly guessed (at the same time) that BrainStore is in Munich today!

If you’re been following BrainStore for a while, you’ll know that we’ve been all over the world.  We’ve traveled to four continents, holding our Idea Events everywhere from Zurich, Switzerland to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Chicago in the USA.

In fact, BrainStore’s traveling right now!

Today and tomorrow, we’re holding an Idea Event somewhere in the world… but we’re not going to tell you where we are!

Instead, we’re going to give you several clues and see if you can guess!

The first person to guess where BrainStore is today will win a copy of The Idea Machine in English or German (your choice) and  a set of  our special “It’s Possible” post-its.

Ready?

Here are your first 3 clues:

1. The city’s official colors are the same ones used by the Holy Roman Empire.
2. During World War II, the city was hit by 71 air raids over a period of 6 months.
3. This city is the most successful city in Bundesliga history.

We’ll post new clues every hour until someone guesses correctly.

Go!

There are all kinds of enemies to a good idea. To just name a few: The focus group, the legal department, the budget, the input of the Creative Director, the deadline…. you make the list.

Fabulous San Francisco based Illustrator Scott Campbell has created a series of subtle and humorous illustrations for the independent film group “Show Off” in Portugal, showing the idea and its enemy in the form of – for instance – Titanic and the Iceberg, Little Red Riding Hood and the Woolf or Marie-Antoinette and the Guillotine, advertising the creativity of “Show Off” film group.

Amazing talent and a great idea! Loved it!

Thanks to you Jan, for the link.

Did it ever occur to you that animals do not innovate? And why that is? I mean: You could talk to your cat and tell her an idea and she might even react to it, but she will never ever come up with an idea for herself.

Small kids though will come up with ideas as soon as they can talk and listen. The will reinvent, propose new things, mix and match ideas that they have seen and heard.

So what’s the difference? One explanation could be Malsows “Hierarchy of needs” pyramid. Humans want to fulfil not only their most basic biological or physical needs if they can get higher up in the pyramid and cover safety, belongingness, esteem and – highest in the pyramid – self actualization.

Of course, the way up in the pyramid leads through ideas. To get a level up, you need to be inventive, create opportunities, implement. And that is what sets humans apart, I guess.

On the other hand, maybe it is sometimes easier to be the cat …

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.

I will say it right away that I have no statistics (yet) to prove my case, but I have a very strong gut feeling that what I am about to say is abolutely true yet not enough recognised with policy makers throughout Europe. I invite each our blog readers to contribute with whatever research material they can find to back this assumption.

Here goes: The most innovative countries in the world invest heavily in their education system, that is to say daycare, preschool, K-12 and higher education. It is NOT the countries that put the emphasis on strenghtening only the higher education.

Also, the most innovative countries would probably need to be those that already foster skills like problem solving, creative thinking and collaboration in the early childhood years.

I am very interested in learning about statistics and materials that back this gut feeling as well as schooling concepts that tell us something about how innovative kids that went through such systems become. Please contribute and we will share the results with you.

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.

I learned about this amazing project while visiting the annual conference PINC in Holland. It is a grassroot movement from Estonia, one of the three Baltic states.

A small group of young people wanted to do something about the incredible amount of illegal waste being dumped in forests everywhere in the country. Mostly they wondered why no one seemed to care. They wanted to solve the problem, but also get people engaged in solving it.

Thus, the project “Let’s do it” was born. Four people decided that they would clean up the mess, in just ONE day, motivating a large portion of the population to participate in a day of cleaning up the forests. Only three full time employees managed to motivate 600 volunteers to participate in the project. They mapped the whole waste with help of GPS and cell phones. Celebrities participated in a campaign – for free! And 50′000 volunteers helped clean up all the mapped territories in just one single day. 10′000 tons of waste were gathered in one single day. Wow. It is truly amazing what people can achieve when they work together for a common cause!

What I like most about this project is that not only did the Estonians get rid of their illegal waste in forests, but they have started an ongoing dialogue about sustainability and ecology that every single Estonian at least heard about, but more likely participated in.