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October 27, 2006
What's the Big Idea?
The latest issue of Chuck Frey's Innovation Tools briefing (available via e-mail) includes links to several interesting feature articles on the Innovation Tools site, including one by innovation and creativity expert Paul Williams on the idea generation process. According to Williams, ideas come in all sizes, some big, some small. Over the long run, argues Williams, it is simply a mistake to place too much emphasis on finding The Big Idea:
"How often does your company develop 'big ideas' and what is their impact?" The answer typically ranges from once a year to once in a blue moon. The answer to the impact portion of the question reveals that the overall impact is quite often short-lived, as the rest of the market quickly adapts to the new idea in order to stay competitive. They know this because, these same business leaders admit to reacting quickly to the groundbreaking new ideas of their competitors. So what is the real advantage of that BIG idea? A quick win, a brief capitalization of market share, and some improved morale."
In contrast, small ideas can provide lasting value to a company in terms of efficiency and competitive advantage. As a result, Williams suggests, organizations should not discount the value of these small ideas:
"If you are willing to make the assumption that your company is full of these small ideas, waiting to be born, you can begin to see that their impact vastly outshines the impact of the big ideas. The beauty of the small idea - discounting the sheer volume of them when compared to the big ideas - is the fact that these will most likely never be discovered by your competitors. These small ideas are specific to your individual business operations. They improve the way you produce or provide services to your customers. While not earth-shattering, small ideas, when added together, provide the same market capitalization advantages as the big ideas."
[image: The Big Ideas store in Edinburgh]
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Which innovation metrics do you use?
In the current issue of its Serious Innovation newsletter, Swedish innovation lab Idélaboratoriet profiles a recent Boston Consulting Group report on innovation metrics. The BCG report, which is available as a free 17-page PDF document, highlights five key findings:
(1) Innovation is widely under-measured and few firms - even those that attempt to track innovation rigorously - are confident they're doing it right;
(2) The majority of companies that do use metrics typically use only a handful (i.e. five or fewer);
(3) The three most valuable metrics are time to market, new product sales, and return on investment in innovation;
(4) Few companies tie employee incentives to innovation metrics;
(5) The potential for most companies to improve their measurement practices is sizable.
[graphic: BCG Senior Executive Innovation Metrics Survey]
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Humanity and the pace of change
Here's a cool innovation graphic from Nobel Prize winner Robert William Fogel highlighting the accelerating pace of innovation over the past 300 years: "All of human achievement -- all our hopes, dreams, and fears -- in one graph. The mysterious pace of change is great. Where will be tomorrow?" I'm not exactly sure, though, what the photo of the lovely axe murderer is doing in the center of the graphic...
[graphic: The Escape From Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100]
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My customer, my co-innovator
On November 30 at the University of Toronto, CATA Alliance, Knowledge Media Design, Whetstone, Pearson, and The Access Group are co-sponsoring a My Customer, My Co-Innovator roundtable event that will take a closer look at the nascent co-innovation trend:
"How can we co-innovate our business processes in order to serve our customers in a new way? What challenges lie ahead? Who's making progress and how? In today's world, customers and competitors are consolidating, revenue targets are increasing and business complexity is at its highest peak. How can today's leaders "co-innovate" their "business processes" with their customers? What are leaders doing differently from the rest?"
As Michael Schrage recently pointed out in strategy + business magazine, more companies than ever before are working with their customers at the earliest stages of the innovation process:
"It's difficult to create products that customers want without understanding what they really need. Now that simple realization has spurred companies such as Cisco, Procter & Gamble, and Goldman Sachs to work together with their customers at the earliest stages of the innovation process, while making the entire process more transparent throughout the value chain. As a result, information flows freely between company and customer, designers have a clearer picture of what customers need, and the resulting products are more successful in the marketplace."
[image: Toronto skyline]
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A technological fable
Can someone please explain what's going on in this picture? Married to the Sea continues to come up with the greatest pictures and inexplicable WTF? captions: "What happened to Jamestown? They built a technologically superior, but morally corrupt, empire within a few years of settling. They had invented a public electricity system, and the surrounding land was so rich that the adults only had to work 12 hours a week in farming, enough to support the small town. They controlled their population efficiently, and spent most of their days loitering and riding the town's monorail. They were smitten by the Lord for being layabouts and no-good sit-n-thinkers."
[image: What happened to Jamestown?]
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Tupperware's innovation party
What would a Tupperware party be without a Tupperware dress? If you look closely at the woman in the photo, you'll see that the sparkling white evening dress is actually made out of plastic Tupperware containers. In order to celebrate its 60th anniversary, Tupperware Brands recently held a Tupperware innovation contest that attracted the attention of hundreds of inventors and designers from around the country:
"Tupperware has many purposes: forming Jell-O rings, spin-drying salads, storing spaghetti, microwaving oatmeal. But Tupperware as an evening bag? It may look a bit like a sandwich box, but the lace-patterned accessory is among the winners of a contest that challenged Tupperware sellers and users to get creative with the iconic plastic containers. The winners include a kaleidoscope, a model race car and an intricate illuminated sculpture. Their creators range from an Indian graphic artist to a French Tupperware saleswoman. [...]
Tupperware Brands doesn't want to be viewed as a clear-plastic relic of a more domestic era. The company, based in Orlando, Fla., has spent recent years updating products and tweaking its trademark parties. The design contest is another effort to "get Tupperware seen in a very different kind of a light," said CEO Rick Goings."
[image: Yahoo! News]
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October 26, 2006
Niti Bhan and Manuel Toscano on cultural avatars
In a comprehensive post about how brands communicate their qualities across borders, design gurus Niti Bhan and Manuel Toscano provide some practical advice on how to use culturally and socially appropriate cues in order to engage local consumers effectively. As Niti and Manuel point out, each company should think in terms of "cultural avatars" as they attempt to connect with consumers in every foreign market they choose to enter. A failure to do so could result in an erosion of the value of the brand, if not worse. Consider what happened to IKEA when it attempted to enter the Japanese market in the 1980s:
"IKEA learnt the pitfalls of holding on tightly to their Swedishness when they first entered the Japanese market, quite unlike their own. They pulled out in confusion in 1986 and have only just launched a store in Tokyo, twenty years later. What did they learn this time around? That they could retain the essential Swedishness of their brand through their choice of materials, finishes and designs of their furniture, while adapting the do it yourself aspect and size of the products to the needs of the Japanese market. Perhaps they will stay for twenty years, this time around..."
As innovation becomes increasingly global, it is easy to see how these same principles from the worlds of marketing and branding can be deployed within any innovation framework. Instead of simply copying products that were designed with North America and Europe in mind, truly innovative companies should be thinking about ways to develop products that are specific to the consumers in new emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.
[image: IKEA Japan]
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A real-world travel agency that books virtual-world travel packages
In its weekly round-up of innovative product and service offerings from around the globe, Springwise highlights the first-ever virtual travel agency for the online gaming world:
"Synthravels is the first travel organization to offer a guide service to anyone who wants to tour highly-hyped virtual worlds like Second Life or World of Warcraft. The increasing complexity of virtual worlds is making them more interesting, fun and potentially lucrative. But it's also creating a considerable threshold for newbies, especially for those who have little or no experience with online gaming...
Which is why it makes perfect sense for two savvy Italian entrepreneurs to set up a service that takes curious explorers by the hand and shows them the wonders of metaworlds. A customer registers with Synthravels, picks a destination and preferred day and hour for the trip. Within a few days, he or she receives an itinerary by email. To prepare, a visitor has to download any software needed for the virtual world and should also create an avatar. After logging in on the selected day and time, the visitor will find an expert guide waiting to show them the ropes, from the basics of maneuvering to finding elusive and exclusive virtual hotspots."
Already, the travel agents at Synthravels are working on putting together a number of interesting itineraries for virtual gamers: "Sightseeing excursions include 'Discover the Post Art Deco architecture of Paragon City', a shopping tour of Second Life, and a last-minute trip to Entropia Universe, including dinner with Deathifier, the legendary owner of Treasure Island."
[image: Entropia Universe]
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The future of the sporting goods industry
At a dinner keynote speech for a sports and technology convergence conference in San Diego, futurist and innovation guru Jim Carroll outlines a futuristic vision for the sporting goods industry: "When it comes to the future of sporting goods... the future is being redefined by the next generation... These kids live, breathe, learn, teach, talk, listen, create and innovate through a widely networked world that facilitates feedback so quickly it's rapidly changing how this generation will expect results and satisfaction from new products." As Carroll points out, there are at least five key trends that sporting goods manufacturers should keep in mind:
(1) It's happening faster than you think: "The rate of change in the world of sports -- by which everyday sporting goods are being connected, redeveloped, redefined and redeployed -- is nothing short of astounding";
(2) It's about much more than iPods - "It's not about accessorizing, it's about re-defining the product";
(3) It's happening in the infinite global innovation idea loop;
(4) It's about extensibility - "Smart sports goods manufacturers won't build a product and release to market. They will build a platform that customers can tinker with, add on to, modify and enhance";
(5) The rapid rate of change is being driven by the next generation, which expects products to perform a wide range of "cool" functions.
[image: The Burton iPod for skiers]
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Craft + creativity = Craftivity
The DIY lifestyle movement continues to gain momentum. Neatorama profiles a new book from Tsia Carson called Craftivity: 40 Projects for the DIY Lifestyle. The book is basically a primer on how to turn everyday, household items into designer goods:
"Have a pile of extra buttons and don't know what to do with them? Make a cool bracelet. Need some pillows for your new couch, and have a bunch of old wool sweaters? Turn those sweaters into felt and make pillows so beautiful you could sell them at any store. Knitting, felting, glass, and woodwork—it's all here. Craftivity is filled with 40 amazing DIY projects that show you how to take everyday objects and turn them into functional, fabulous art."
In Craftivity, you can learn how to make a unique coffee table out of a vintage suitcase, use a simple picture frame to construct a back-painted glass backgammon board, and transform plastic grocery bags into a durable tote. Oh, yeah, and if you want to learn how to transform a simple t-shirt into fashionable underwear, you can learn that too.
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How Novartis does innovation
In a one-hour video presentation for MIT World, Novartis Chairman and CEO Daniel Vasella explains the innovation process behind one of his company’s flagship pharmaceuticals, Gleevec. The discovery, development and marketing of this drug, which fights the rare chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), highlights some of the things Novartis does right. For example, during an important period of coordinating clinical trials and winning FDA approval for the drug, employees at Novartis volunteered to work in 24-hour shifts, seven days a week. In summarizing the success of the innovation process at Novartis, Vasella cites “intrinsic motivation in each Novartis staff member, high standards, savvy risk-taking and persistence in both research and marketing, and a company culture that brings out the best in everyone."
As always, MIT World provides excellent show notes for the one-hour presentation. There's also a brief bio sketch for Vasella and a short history of how Gleevec started out as an untested idea and emerged as a multi-billion-dollar blockbuster drug.
[image: Daniel Vasella of Novartis]
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How to defend your innovation
In an extended post about the "defensibility" of Web 2.0 business ideas, Guy Kawasaki provides a Top 10 list of possible answers to the following question: What makes your Web 2.0 company defensible? It's not an easy question to answer, concedes Guy, especially when the person asking the question is probably an experienced, big-time venture capitalist. With that in mind, the best answer combines a mix of clairvoyance, street wisdom, humility, honesty, and cockiness. So, the next time someone asks you about the "defensibility" of your innovation, here are some possible responses:
(1) “We know that there are no ‘magic bullets’ that provide defensibility.”
(2) “We have filed for patents, but we know that we cannot depend on patents as a major component of defensibility.”
(3) “We have an x month head start (mention “x month head start” only if x exceeds nine), and what we’re doing is hard. We know we have, at best, a temporary lead. It’s so hard that few established companies would defocus themselves by trying to do what we’re doing.”
(4) “We’ve built similar businesses before.”
(5) “We’ve amassed a ton of relevant domain expertise because our founders sold to these customers before.”
(6) “We used to work at [insert big-name company], so we know it won’t be a competitor. In fact, we quit the company to start this because our management refused to address this lucrative market.”
(7) “We don’t know if we’re the only people who can or are doing this, but we’ve already signed up key customers like [insert the biggest names that you truthfully can] to use our product. You’d think they’d know of better solutions if they existed.”
(8) “We came to you because we believe that the backing of a firm like yours will dissuade other firms from investing in competitive companies. We also know that you have a world-class Rolodex as well as access to the best talent.”
(9) “We expect that there will be competition because we’re not working on a get-rich-quick gimmick. This is a real business that we think is going to be big.”
(10) “It’s a race, and we’re going to work like hell to reach escape velocity. That’s the bottom line.”
[image: Trojan warriors]
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Google's secret innovation formula
What is Google's secret formula for innovation success? According to Amy Rowell of Innovate Forum, it is the company's willingness to experiment with "wild, ambitious" ideas, while at the same time, understanding that failure can be a catalyst for innovation success. Also, it doesn't hurt that the company has created "a sort of playground for adults" to get the innovation juices flowing:
"Google is one of those companies that just seems to keep getting it right. But as even its management team will tell you, that’s in large part because it’s not afraid to get it wrong – at least some of the time. In fact, Google’s innovation process leaves plenty of room for experimentation and failure, and does so by having a rather novel workplace environment.
By design, Google’s product development environment is a sort of playground for adults. In a campus setting, Google employees can, for example, reportedly enjoy the benefits of an outdoor wave pool, an indoor gym, free meals and the use of company-provided scooters to transport them between buildings."
[image: Life in the Googleplex]
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October 25, 2006
The 10 most innovative Chinese cities
According to a survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics in China, the most innovative city in China is Shanghai. Other cities cracking the Top 10 included Hangzhou, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Beijing, Changzhou, Yantai, Guangzhou and Shaoxing. For close followers of the Chinese innovation scene, these findings may not come as a shock, but I was personally a bit surprised to find Beijing at #6. Anyway, the survey also looked at the pace of R&D spending in China, the composition of this R&D spending, and the primary sources of funding for this R&D research:
"The survey found that that the majority of research and development funding is spent on improving existing products and technology; only one third is spent on developing new products and basic research programs. According to the survey, 33% of funds are used to improve efficiency and reduce the costs of production; 31% is spent perfecting current technology, and doing research to widen the uses of products; 24% is spent on the development of new products and technology; 9% is used in basic research; the remaining 3% is spent elsewhere. The survey also found that internal revenue-raising is the major source of funds for innovation. Over 75% of funds come from the enterprises themselves, 12% from loans, and less than 5% from the government, partners and capital market."
[image: Shanghai skyline via TravelBlog]
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Innovation should not require a leap of faith
Jeff De Cagna of the Principled Innovation blog argues that launching an innovation initiative should not require a leap of faith by the senior executives and board members of an organization:
"After many years of talking about innovation as a balance of systemic freedom and systemic discipline, it is frustrating to read articles written for associations that present innovation inaccurately. If there was one point on which I thought we were clear by now, it is that innovation is not a matter of faith.
I am reacting to the article, “Calculated Leaps of Faith”, which appears in the October 2006 issue of Associations Now. The very title of the article sends the wrong message to association leaders about the pursuit of innovation. Sure, good luck and good timing often play roles in innovating successfully, but with the consistent investment of resources over time, innovation is more like playing blackjack than shooting craps: the risk of failure doesn’t go away, but skill does improve your chances of success."
Instead of viewing innovation as a "risky all-or-nothing gamble," corporations need to take a principled approach to innovation that will help to mitigate some of the fear and uncertainty that they tend to experience. As De Cagna points out, "It would be very disquieting if, out of a misplaced paralysis induced by the fear of failure, association leaders concluded that innovation is simply too risky or too difficult for their organizations to make it a genuine priority."
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The Indian and his iPod
Using Google Earth, DarkVision Hardware found this huge Indian face embedded into part of a mountain in Canada. Is this a classic Internet hoax - or Earth's answer to the so-called Face of Mars?:
"Here's another weird finding on Google Earth. Somewhere in Alberta, Canada you can spot mountains that look like the face of an Indian. It looks pretty real, even a lot more realistic than the face on Mars in my opinion. It's also pretty big, I used the measure tool in Google Earth to measure the size of the Native American's forehead and its about 225 meters (0.14 miles) long." You can check it out in Google Maps or just enter 50° 0'38.20"N 110° 6'48.32"W in Google Earth. And like someone in our comment section said, with a bit of imagination you can see he has an earbud in his ear (maybe he's listening to his iPod?)
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Grant McCracken: innovations for innovators
In an incisive post about incremental and non-incremental innovation, Grant McCracken maps out the need for an innovation early-warning system at companies like Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Company, and Microsoft. These corporate behemoths, acclimated to the relatively slow pace of incremental innovation, need to find a better way of dealing with the type of disruptive change that threatens everything they hold dear:
"The problem at corporations like Time Warner, the Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft and "Detroit," is not intellectual laziness, a failure of the imagination, or, God knows, a failure of will. The problem is that non-incremental change forces the corporation off its game, out of its competence, and away from its deepest understandings of the world. Adaptation is possible, but a voice of warning sounds in the head of the senior manager: that way lies the destruction of the extraordinary intellectual, strategic, and cultural capitals that make us who we are. That way lies chaos.
There are lots of ways to rethink the corporation so that it can address the problem of non-incremental change. There is the challenge taken up by Brown and Eisenhardt, Foster and Kaplan, Hammer and Chompy, Handy, Peters, Prahalad, to name a few. The corporation is learning new tricks. The new corporation is being invented fitfully, gradually, and painfully. But it's coming."
[image: Grant McCracken at Pop!Tech]
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The best maverick R&D lab
In its annual "Best of NYC" issue, the Village Voice named the Graffiti Research Lab, which is based at the Eyebeam center in Chelsea, as the city's "best maverick research lab":
"The Graffiti Research Lab... is New York's only facility devoted to studying and developing cool tools for graffiti artists. Masterminded by Evan Roth - who wrote his prize-winning master's thesis at Parsons on analyzing graffiti using motion-tracking and computer code - and former robotics researcher James Powderly, the group dreams up innovative techniques for urban communication. They drum up ideas like electric messages studded with glowing LEDs, surreal video projections of graffiti being "drawn" on buildings, and a giant glow-in-the-dark school bus."
[image: The Science of Graffiti]
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Unisys wants you to appear on the cover of FORTUNE magazine
That is, if you're a tech-savvy C-level executive from a hugely successful U.S. corporation. In a free Wall Street Journal Online feature, Brian Steinberg describes a clever new advertising pitch from Unisys, in which the company is using the cover of FORTUNE magazine to sell its wares to some of the leading IT decision-makers in the country:
"Around 20 high-ranking executives at corporations such as Subaru of America, DHL, Citigroup and Northwest Airlines will get a surprise when FORTUNE magazine arrives on their desks this week. Each will find his or her own face gracing the cover. The covers are one-of-a-kind mock-ups wrapping the actual FORTUNE edition, part of an advertising ploy conducted by IT company Unisys that brings new meaning to the idea of niche marketing. Unisys is sending the magazines to get the attention of executives - mostly CIOs - responsible for making buying decisions about their companies' technology products and services. In other words, the people Unisys most wants to influence."
As Steinberg goes on to explain, the FORTUNE cover wraps are personalized to the needs of the particular corporate executive. Moreover, the company is placing outdoor signs and billboards in strategic locations that these executives might see, even going so far as to map out morning commutes in order to find the most advantageous locations.
In short, the new advertising initiative is based on influencing the influencers: "We're not trying to have grandma at home understand who we are and what we do. We're not even trying to have every business executive understand who we are and what we do. It's a very narrow set of executives that we really want to reach."
[image: Unisys trade show]
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George Bush uses Google
Think Progress has uploaded a clip from a CNBC interview in which President George Bush describes his use of search engine Google. Here's a brief transcript of the video clip:
Maria Bartiromo: I’m curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google?
George Bush: Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgot the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It reminds me of where I wanna be sometimes.
[image: CNBC]
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October 24, 2006
Embrace your Hidden Ninja
This hidden ninja pole vault video on YouTube features black- and green-clad ninjas helping to grab and lift a pole vaulter, physically moving the poles to make the jump as easy as possible, and then helping the pole vaulter to land gracefully on the mat. It's filmed in such a way, though, that the outlines of the black and green ninjas are only faintly visible. (I'm not sure if it's a result of filming against a certain color background or a quality of the outfits themselves, but the green and black Ninja uniforms almost appear to have a faint phosphorescent glow.)
Sergei Bubka, eat your heart out. Who needs skill or luck when you have Hidden Ninjas on your side?
[video: YouTube.com]
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From eggs and butter to interest rates and currencies
Responding to the proposed merger of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, James Grant (editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer) wrote a great op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal called, provocatively enough, Innovate or Die. Innovation, quite simply, is the key to future success within the financial services industry.
Mention the Chicago Merc today, and you probably think of sophisticated financial derivatives and financial innovation. Yet, the Chicago Merc actually started out life in 1898 as the much humbler Chicago Butter and Egg Board, trading contracts on commodities such as butter, eggs and onions, Suffice it to say, the Chicago Merc in those days was well on its way to becoming a "relic of the Old Economy." By the 1950s, it was left with a single type of contract to trade - the egg contract - that was itself the subject of constant manipulation by traders. So what happened? The Chicago Merc decided to innovate its way to success:
"They picked innovation. The same government that had stamped out the butter and onion contracts proceeded to create new opportunities through inflation and monetary turmoil. The end of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates opened new vistas in currency trading. The Merc seized them as it more recently did the chance to develop markets in interest rates and equities...
The Merc didn't burst when the Nasdaq bubble did. Today, it is generating over $1 billion in annual revenues, up from $210 million in 1999. Its stock market capitalization tops $17 billion, a nice, neat 17-fold appreciation in value for the seat holders in less than seven years... Properly, the CME Group is the envy of the New York Stock Exchange and of brokers and dealers worldwide..."
[image: President Bush at the Chicago Merc]
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How to develop your innostructure
Ron Fulbright, chairman of the Department of Informatics at the University of South Carolina Upstate, has written an interesting article on the need for and requirements for an innovation infrastructure ("innostructure"). In order to keep up with the next generation of agile enterprises that embrace creativity and innovation, Fulbright suggests, it will become increasingly important to have a loose, flexible innostructure in place that distributes innovation throughout the organization:
"Innostructure is the collective name given to the set of tools, services, processes, and culture supporting innovative and creative thinking in an enterprise. To maintain competitive advantage in the new globalized economy, companies must be able to quickly adapt by continual and sustained innovation to stay ahead of the competition. The monolithic research and development departments of the past represent a business structure that is too sluggish.
The answer is to distribute innovation throughout the entire enterprise permeating every job function and business practice. The value proposition is that a company’s innostructure provides a way to leverage the collective innovative ability of the entire enterprise. The power of this leads us to predict that, in the near future, every business will have to have an infrastructure supporting ubiquitous and pervasive innovation in order to be considered a viable participant in the global economy."
(Hat tip: Ellen Domb of TRIZ for the Real World)
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Slow mo, meet Mega mo
If you thought "slow mo" was slow, check out Mega Mo. Over at AutomotoSport, you can watch a one-minute YouTube.com video that shows off the capabilities of a high-quality slow-motion camera called Mega Mo. This ultra-slow speed camera is capable of taping 1000 frames per second. In this up-close-and -personal look at the world of drag racing, you can see how the tires seem to melt as they grip the surface and how each individual cylinder fires. Makes you really appreciate the type of Ph.D. level math that went into the construction of each tire and each car.
[video: Mega Mo]
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The Reluctant Guru
In his "Managing" column for the Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link available), Phred Dvorak recently profiled Patrick Lencioni, "an unlikely managment guru" who also happens to be a best-selling business author and a former Bain & Co. consultant. Lencioni doesn't have an MBA and "proudly shuns management tomes." In fact, he "derives inspiration from Pop-Tarts" and tends to emphasize common sense truisms that appeal to a wide audience of readers. Instead of writing management books, he writes "business novellas" that feature "homey advice" and "accessible prose" as well as characters that look and talk like average Americans.
As Dvorak points out, Lencioni is the management guru for people tired of jargon and complicated strategic models. He commands as much as $50,000 for speaking gigs and $60,000 for two-day consulting sessions. Among his fans: football players in the NFL, the Blue Man Group and a squad of soldiers in Afghanistan.
Taking a big picture view, Dvorak suggests that Lencioni is part of a major trend in the business publishing arena away from hard-core quant topics into more touchy-feely topics. I suppose books about innovation and creativity generally fall into the latter category - books that propose complicated strategic models for thinking about innovation generally do not fare as well as books that appeal to the intuitive, conceptual side of the brain.
[image: Patrick Lencioni]
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Understanding the Starbucks Aesthetic
On Sunday, the New York Times explored the notion of the "Starbucks Aesthetic," with a closer look at how the folks at Starbucks are influencing the tastes of millions of Americans when it comes to music, movies and even books. Customers who trust Starbucks when it comes to coffee are finding that they are also willing to trust Starbucks when it comes to "cultural sales items" that reflect the "discriminating good taste" of the national coffee chain:
"Starbucks is clearly very good at selling coffee, but why should it become involved in the movies — and books and CD’s, for that matter? And why would consumers trust its taste in books and films any more than they’d trust, say, Simon & Schuster’s taste in Ethiopia Gemadro Estate decaf?
Yet the chain is increasingly positioning itself as a purveyor of premium-blend culture. “We’re very excited, because despite how much we’ve grown, these are the early stages for development,” said Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks. “At our core, we’re a coffee company, but the opportunity we have to extend the brand is beyond coffee; it’s entertainment."
Recently, Starbucks has been moving to solidify its status as a purveyor of "premium-blend culture" through day-long salons that celebrate spoken-word performances, musical collaborations and one-act plays. The company is also sponsoring discussion groups at certain Starbucks locations to spark discussion about new books and movies. As Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz explained, "With the assets Starbucks has in terms of number of stores, and the trust we have with the brand, and the profile of our customers, we’re in a unique position to partner with creators of unique content to create an entertainment platform and an audience that’s unparalleled.”
What's interesting, though, is that the New York Times article seems to revel in the fact that the average Starbucks customer - early 40s, college-educated, financially secure and savvy about music and books - is almost the same exact profile as the average New York Times reader. On CNBC, though, I've heard Howard Schultz explain that Starbucks is looking for a slightly different demographic - the type of customer who might buy coffee at Dunkin' Donuts or 7-Eleven - in order to grow same-store sales.
What do you think? Will Starbucks eventually need to water-down the "Starbucks Aesthetic" in order to attract Starbucks-swilling truck drivers? Or can Starbucks feed the ravenous machine known as Wall Street by continuing to find new products to sell to the "faux-alternative" Starbucks crowd?
[image: New York Times]
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The paintball tanks
Apparently, there's an arms race going on involving the once relatively harmless game of paintball. At one time, people were quite content to use air pistols that fire capsules of water-based paint that splatter upon impact. Now, however, it looks like the paintball generals in the UK have started using paintball tanks:
"Two tanks are charging through thick mud, blasting away at each other. There is blood everywhere and I'm in the thick of it. [...] This is no military manoeuvre or computer game. It's much more fun than that. Because someone has just invented the world's first game of paintball with tanks. Now, we can all be Rommel for a day...
What's next? Well, how about "paintball bazooka" and "paintball airstrikes" from a plane?
[image: Daily Mail]
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