The Principality of Liechtenstein celebrated its tercentenary in 2019.
BrainStore is actively involved in shaping the celebrations and the future direction.

Task

Preparation, implementation and management of an innovation process to get all key people on board.

In the centre workshop in the Jewellery Museum in Pforzheim.

Preparation of the results and structured condensation and selection of ideas with the idea machine.

Results

Excerpt from the Idea catalogue

BrainStore has developed ideas for new products with one of the largest apple juice and cider producers of Switzerland.
The day is documented in this video and gives an impression of the different phases of the idea machine.

On 4 May 2007 about 80 people came to Biel/Bienne Switzerland to support Greenpeace to find ideas on how to better collaborate.

In June 2012 a BrainStore team supported Curaviva.ch to discover how we would like to grow old. What does it mean to be a Senior Citizen in 2050?

We invited Senior Citizens, teenagers and health care professional to a workshop. The youngest participant was 12 the oldest one was 92.

Before the workshop, BrainStore made a short movie in which teenagers interviewed children between 4 and 15 about their ideas about getting older.

This movie served as an inspirational source during the workshop, where participants from various facilities for the elderly as well as outside thinkers came together to create new ideas with the BrainStore Ideamachine. The different facilities then started implementing the ideas they liked best, based on their own philosophy and needs.

Here is a link to the movie with ideas from children about their wishes for their own old age: http://bit.ly/curaviva_movie

On 5 March 2006 BrainStore transformed the renowned Kunsthaus in Zurich into an Idea Factory. The quest: How can the Kunsthaus Zurich become more attractive to the young generation? It was a wonderful experience to brainstorm in this inspiring environment.

Around 60 participants took part in this workshop - experts, representatives of SMEs, lateral thinkers, young people and employees of Health Promotion Switzerland. They contributed to a colorful bouquet of almost 200 concrete ideas on how SMEs could reduce stress at work.

Inspiration was also provided by the discussions during the breaks, the keynote speeches and the location directly on the Limmat River.

In March 2007 a team of about 60 people came to Biel/Bienne Switzerland to reflect on how to synthesise formic acid in the future. We used the BrainStore Idea Machine to brainstorm on chemical engineering processes. BASF went home with a set of great ideas and has since then implemented the ideas and built new production facilities.

In order to tackle this complex problem, we introduced our process to a team of talented chemical engineers and explained the BrainStore Idea Machine to them. They worked alongside our staff to make sure that the chemistry knowledge was used properly within our process.

BrainStore then invited a very diverse group of people related and unrelated to BASF: Chemistry students, chemistry professors from various nations and external experts.

Thanks to the Ideamachine we were able to create more than a 1,000 raw ideas. Impressive! Our proven illumination phase allowed the experts to extract over 100 chemical synthesis ideas, and finally selected 10 that went into tests. Three of these were chosen for prototyping, and BASF has since implemented one of those three, creating a brand new production facility for formic acid.

This project allowed BASF to re-invent a production process that was 50 years old and to make it much more efficient and much less costly.

In January 2007, Nemo, 7 years old, wanted ideas on how to become an actor. Nemo invited friends to join the brainstorming. We used the BrainStore Idea Machine and came up with a set of amazing ideas.

In January 2010 about 80 managers from Kraft Europe came to Biel/Bienne for a three day BrainStore Future Expedition.

The goal: find out where Kraft Europe would stand in 2020 and which roadmap would be necessary to reach the defined goals.

The expedition took more than 120 participants on a journey of exploration. What does the future mean for us, for our divisions and our products? What can we learn from the past, and how can we prepare for the future? What do current customers tell us, and what are the blind spots that we all have and need to address?

The journey was accompanied by experts from all fields important to Kraft, for instance from agriculture, packaging, technology and from future research.

There were around 10 stations that the participants were able to visit with a group guide. They were aimed at bringing the participants out of their comfort zone and to let them reflect in-depth about the changes necessary for the company.

The stations, among others, provided the following experiences:
- Tunnel ten years into the past and ten years into the future: What can happen in a decade?
- A cross-generational group from London, who had traveled from London, ages 10 to 90, answering questions about the Kraft products and what consumers would like to change about them
- A packaging expert, explaining the true problems and sustainability issues of today's packaging
- Meet our producers: A farm with the animals that provide a large number of the raw materials needed by Kraft
- Future apartment: Meet the future clients in their habitat. How will we consume?
- A snack station designed by students - how are products created and sold in the future?
- An uncomfortable truth: Water scarcity and other raw material issues relevant to Kraft
- Futurologist as «Talking Heads»: 10 futurologists speaking from screens. Listen in closely or let yourself be overwhelmed by the noise of many who predict the future.

The Kraft participants were impressed with the consumer insights they were able to gain in this expedition, the speed at which the results were generated, the ability of BrainStore to process and summarise all knowledge streams generated in the journey as well as the heightened awareness of all the topics that will be important for the next decade.

The results of this amazing experience were evaluated in workshops (one per division).

A movie of the workshop series was made available to the Kraft Community. http://bitly.com/kraftmovie

On 5 September 2014 BrainStore organized a workshop for the Swiss Museum Pass, an organisation providing a pass allowing users to access about 200 museums in Switzerland. The workshop took place in an old castle the "Schloss Lenzburg".

In 1997 the Swiss Federal Railways approached BrainStore with the question "How can we make trains more attractive to the young generation".
BrainStore brought together executives from the Railways and representatives from the young generation resulting in hundreds of inputs and a set of concrete ideas.

The result: a breakthrough product the "Gleis 7" (Track 7). The card allows any person under 26 to use any train in Switzerland after 7:00 PM for an entire year for CHF 79 (about USD 145) and has provided mobility to an entire generation.

The product is still in use and has now been rebranded as the Night GA Travelcard.

On 23 November 2016 BrainStore collaborated with the Swiss Energy Department and organized a creative workshop to create visionary ideas for the future of mobility. About 80 participants contributed with their ideas and inspirations.

BrainStore had the honour to create ideas for the new convertible rooftop for BMW.
We used the BrainStore Idea Machine to come up with surprising new designs and then built rapid prototypes in a large warehouse in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The team had lots of fun and the out-of-the-box approach led to many new engineering ideas.