lead/marke | ralf schwartz

Afraid of the Web? Get a Glimpse of what 3D printing will do to your world!

"MAKIES is an action doll creator: a player/customer can design their own action doll – features, hair, clothes and everything – & we then 3D print it uniquely to them, build & dress it, and send on to them within 3 weeks of ordering."

Via Makie.

And, please, do not even think about everybody having their own 3D printer at home! This will become your worst nightmare - just after the web ...

Dear Adv/Marketing Pros, please stay realistic about Social Media Usage

"Those who work in advertising often wonder if they live in a sort of bubble. You wonder, are civilians as active on social media and as inclined to pay attention to what brands are doing on Twitter, and is the rest of the world as preoccupied with that award-winning ad campaign that industry types can’t stop talking about?

The unsurprising answer is no, according to a study commissioned by San Francisco-based advertising agency Heat ..."

Via.

Here are the results in a neat infographic. Have a look at the numbers BEFORE you plan your next 'big thing'.

And please have a look at the bottom comparison, too: Office Holiday Parties. Enjoy!

Click for a larger view. Via.

Video: Handcrafting the Hermès Leica

"It will cost an eye-watering $25,000 - and this video goes some way to explaining that price." - Via gizmodo.

 

Braille Mobile Phone: Any Implications for your own Product Development?

Looking at this Drawbraille Mobile Phone (Design Concept), what might that imply for your own products?

Wouldn't it make sense to incorporate Braille into your packaging, stickers, car doors, interior, ...?

"Designer Shikun Sun has put together a stylish mobile phone design idea for the blind - via Yanko Design:

DrawBraille Mobile Phone is one of the most compelling concepts that focus on making mobile phones easy-to-use for the blind. The entire UI and input keys are in Braille and even the touch panel reflects this system. The design and approach have a surreal finish to it and I am quite sure that Shikun Sun is on to something big with this!

More information, including photos and a video, can be found at Yanko Design here"

Image and quote via workman.

 

BecomeCareer: Geek vs. Hipster Infographic

Via becomecareer. Click for a larger view.

brandpoems(2): Dear Brand, "Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are."

Via nocturnality.

brandpoems(1): Dear Brand, "If you want to be an actress, you need to have something the others don't."

Via bastardette.

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > "Eight Business Models, and Why They’re Important"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

The term Business Model is one that gets thrown around a lot these days. Even though it might sound like a buzzword to you, it’s important to understand what a business model is, and how they are useful.

One of the confusing things about the business model concept is that there are a wide variety of models of business models, and it seems as though everyone that talks about them makes up a new one. This can be frustrating if you are trying to figure out how to use the concept.

At their core, all business models address this questions: how do we sustainably deliver value to our customers? In this instance, the sustainable part refers to your organisation – how can you deliver value so that you’re still around in the future?

Must watch this great Battle between Siri and Microsoft's TellMe! [Video]

 
Via Alan van Roemburg. 

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno > The Carpenter

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

The Carpenter from Dimitris Ladopoulos on Vimeo.

Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. Twitter: @congbo

@TheThirdClub - or: To All the Brave Entrepreneurial Wo/Men: Creativity & Innovation Desperately Need You!

(Note: This is a cross post with my distinctive leadership blog)

We just founded The Third Club!
Get to know more about it here (ya, it's German).

(Polaroid by Douglas Wilson > available here) 

At the moment we are 12 brave wo/men - but want to allure all brave wo/men out there! Just to give you a very small hint on what we are talking about please inhale the following list.

(Yeah, I know, some 20.000+ great people are not on that list.
But you do know: there is no definitive list of great people.)

This is not about names. The personalities beyond them will give you a pretty good picture what I am talking about. They are the wild-card characters of entrepreneurial personalities and spirit, of motivation, engagement, and dedication I would love to see @TheThirdClub:

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno > The Game Changer: Presence & Proof

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

What we have done up till now is limit our thinking of what online can do based on a narrow view of what marketing can do. But what happens when marketing changes?

Traditional advertising and design has one goal: to deliver a promise, either based on what the consumer wants to become, or what the brand wants to become. All traditional marketing, advertising and design is built around this core idea: the transmission of an idea from a sender to a receiver. Inside this mindset digital offers some abilities that are new, and speeds up some abilities that are old. But in essence digital is nothing more than a technological option – a choice between newspaper, billboard, TV, radio or internet ++.

Harley Davidson - The Other Apple

Once in a while you stumble upon another Apple. There will for some years be no other Steve Jobs - but there are some Apples out there.

Harley Davidson is one of them - even if you did not see them as such in the first place. But ask just one Harley fan!

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > Make Your Own Map to Make Novel Connections

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:

Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

Connecting ideas is the fundamental creative act in innovation.
If this is the case, how do we get better at it?

I was being interviewed in my office by a student yesterday for a project that she’s doing. As we talked, she kept looking at my bookshelves, with an increasingly confused look on her face. Finally, she said “this is off-topic, but what exactly do you study?” She had stumbled across one of my strategies for connecting ideas creatively – reading very widely.

Here is how I approached this issue in an earlier post:

A while back my PhD student Sam and I were talking, and he asked me about my RSS feed. His question was something along the lines of ‘what blogs would I have to read if I wanted to be able to make the connections that you do on your blog?’ As we talked, I realised that it didn’t matter if I gave anyone else my exact RSS feed, they wouldn’t be able to replicate my blog.

The reason for this is that the articles in my RSS feed that trigger ideas are completely dependent upon my unique set of experiences, including all of the things that I’ve read and done previously. It reminds me of the idea of psycheography that was developed by Guy Debord and The Situationists (it should be noted that they would be horrified at the use of these ideas in a context that has anything to do with business, but I guess this is part of building novel connections between ideas!).

Consider this map of Paris:

It shows the sections of the city used by a student over a period of several weeks. There are two important points to think about this with this. First, each person’s map of the city they live in will be unique. My version of Brisbane will by fundamentally different from that of everyone else that lives here. The same is true for all cities. Second, most people use only a very small percentage of the city in which they live. The student’s version of Paris is actually quite a small amount of the overall city.

The Situationists’ response to this was the dérive:

One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive [literally: “drifting”], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.

This might seem a bit abstract, but there are some important implications here for innovation, including:

1. Identify the paths you normally take through information: the world of information is even bigger than a city. Each of us takes a unique path through this every day. What is yours? What are the limits that this path imposes on the ideas that you have and the connections you make?
2. Introduce some new paths through this information: the dérive was a method for finding a way out of the normal paths one takes through a city. How can we do the same with information? Twitter can work as a serendipity engine, but to achieve this, you need to consciously connect and pay attention to people that have backgrounds and interests that are quite different from yours. And again, there is great value in reading widely.
3. Make your own map: I’ve been telling my MBA students that their assessments should reflect their own map through the materials that we’re working on together – each person’s will be unique because they are applying the ideas in a unique situation. In other words, they have to make their own map through the material. So do you.

All of this is probably just a way to rephrase what John was saying when he was telling us to Be a Hedgefox!

The bottom line is this – to increase the quality of our innovative ideas, we have to figure out a way to make novel creative connections between ideas. To do this, we have to find a way to access ideas outside of our normal patterns of thinking. We have to make our own map.

(ralf says:
The benefits of having an own map is even harder to explain to people during these days of navigational systems and nanny states around the world.
Yes, think about that!

The benefits of having an own map lie at the intersection of having a distinctive vision and being lost in an uncertain world while at the same time knowing how to handle a map, a plan, a compass!

Your own map gives you a feeling of mastering the landscape, the nature, culture, and future of your whereabouts and whatabouts.

Not being forced to a navigational system (ie. processes, structures, regulations, limitations) gives you individuality and independence, gives you serendipity!

Enjoy that!)

Tim is a lecturer at The University of Queensland Business School. He researches, writes, teaches and consults on topics relating to effective innovation management, with an emphasis on studying innovation networks. He blogs at The Innovation Leadership Network. Twitter: @timkastelle

Is Facebook the biggest Enemy of Miriam Meckel's Digital Serendipity?

"Facebook executives describe their efforts as upending the traditional model of marketing.

Rather than just helping people buy what they need, they aim to curate what they might want."

Facebook Makes a Push to Be a Media Hub - NYTimes.

> digitalserendipity, German
> Miriam's article in the NZZ, German

What made Mercedes trade Timeless Elegance for Pubertal Testosterone?

Via tiefgang.

The web essentially is a ... [Quote]

“The web essentially is a planetary-scale nervous system where individual minds take on the role of synapses, firing electrical pattern-signals to one another at light speed - the net effect being an astonishing increase in creative output.

Jason Silva, Venezuelan-American television personality, filmmaker, gonzo journalist and founding producer/host for Current TV, Connecting All The Dots, Dec 10, 2010"

Via amiquote.

"tumblr should buy a country - we’ll all be forever alone, together"

There is very much truth in these following words, found in tumblr, expressing the feelings and sensations of young, mindful people of all ages, interested in art, design, aesthetics, beauty, ugliness, horror, politics, living, networking.

Tumblr is the individual, daily, small revolution:

"I think tumblr should buy a country so all of us can relocate there permanently. It’ll have nation-wide free wireless internet. We can live in houses according to blog categories and we’ll stalk the good looking people on tumblr from an awkward distance. The only foods on our diet will be pizza and nutella. And we’ll all have a gazillion cats who dance. Of course, a HP Marathon once a week with the regular Misfits and Spongebob. Unicorns will be our chosen form of transportation. At tumblrland, we’ll embrace each others’ awkwardness and best of all, our humors will finally be properly appreciated. And we’ll all be forever alone, together."

Via workman, accumulating some 133.000 notes.

Tumblr is the most advanced, most fashionable social network. It might even be the future of blogging, sharing, or archiving personal information and knowledge in the cloud.

That is why you should watch it carefully!
But don't break it!

My tumblr: this message is to wide to fit your screen.

Distinctive Leadership: CEOs and Managers of the World Breathe a Sigh of Relief on Steve Jobs' Resignation

As Steve Jobs' resignation is not just a leadership issue, but also an innovation and value creation issue, I repost my distinctive leadership post here:

"CEOs and managers may respire. Their hardship is finally over. After Steve's resignation nobody - they hope - will compare them to Steve again.

They all hated to be compared to a phenomenon. They all hated to be confronted with expectations only a Steve Jobs could live up to.

And they had a great excuse: he was the only one, there was no other coming near to his achievements. Yes, he was a phenomenon, and they themselves were great managers. They could live with that.

I must disenthrall them all, it's even worse: they all could become a Steve Jobs, they all could innovate, they all could transcend markets, they all could build Informal Markets (as I call them), they all could introduce revolutionary business models, and realize them successfully. No excuses apply.

Thinking Outside the Facebook-Box!

More than ever you will have to start thinking outside the box - outside the facebook box that is! Facebook is a trap.

Via thisisnthappiness.

More than ever you might learn now - by observing what happens within Google Plus - how vulnerable social networks are. The more vulnerable the more closed they are.