lead/marke | ralf schwartz

The Ultimate Brand & Business Challenge: The Digital Dump

Via GOOD. Click for a larger view.

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno > "10 Projects Changing/Challenging the Concept of Communication"

(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)

Do we fail to see the extent of what communication is / has become?

Here are 10 projects that should / hopefully would change / broaden our idea of what communication is:

1. The Copenhagen wheel
The Copenhagen wheel is a perfectly designed combination of a lot of separate ideas, that collectively demonstrates the potential in modern communication. It offers both immediate interest and value through personal benefits in the context where it is used, but also ads a layer of communal value – and taking us one step further in creating the connected cities of the future. It’s an exceptionally complicated idea made into something people could understand and want immediately.

2. Life of George
LoG is a small initiative exploring the interface between technology and reality. It has been extremely well concepted and designed. This might not be an eye-opening revolution, but it is a very well thought through commercial mass-produced product. It has been through all the barriers and ended up as something that could easily, and hopefully, be adopted by the mass (iPhone-owning) market.

3. Sniff
Sniff is only a prototype, but demonstrates with beauty the life an inanimate object can have as soon as it takes on some form of well designed behavior. There has been digital technology inside toys for tens and tens of years, but Sniff approaches the idea of what technology is, not what it outputs.

4. Nokia Push Snowboarding
The way the technology has been implemented into the culture of the sport it is trying to augment is the most impressive feet. Nokia and Burton have pushed the snowboarding culture first – and then designed itself to it – which could not be said for a lot of other commercial technology…

5. Nest the learning thermostat
The objects learns by recording our behavior – and calculating something on top of that recording. Objects are still dumb, but in a very intelligent way. The Nest is an example of everyday appliances becoming a second brain, and a demonstration of how digital objects have gone from furniture you hide away in small offices upstairs to objects you display and want to talk about.

6. Up by Jawbone
How does a wristband with no screen and no sound communicate with its carrier? A vibration in itself says nothing, the interesting thing is how we learn what the vibration means in different contexts. This is a perfect example of the rich unexpectedness of communication – the one without the spoken/written language – and how quickly we adopt and learn new forms of communication.

7. Zeebox
Zeebox is one of several new products being launched to augment the TV experience. Behind it lies the concept of increasing the value of something local by connecting it to the rest of the world – through a parallel system. In this case the linear TV experience. Now any idiot could do that, but it is the tools by which they try to achieve the connection which is brilliant. Zeebox is a first generation concept in this arena, but demonstrates the potential of what is to come.

8. Waterpebble
Ideas don’t have to be big and shiny, they can be small and solve minute problems. It’s the aesthetic of the idea that is the important thing: How does the mechanic of such a small thing change the dynamic of something bigger… Now, if they only could connect it to the Internet…

9. The Wattson
The Wattson gives us access to things that previously where invisible and not present in our consciousness. Just because we can’t see things and talk about them doesn’t mean they aren’t important. The Wattson gives us access to a layer of reality that we haven’t been able to see before but which is highly real and important.

10. Nokia kinect
Now the first nine examples have been impressive, most of them include sensors and things which gives us access to a part of reality that we haven’t explored before. But it doesn’t stop with the invisible data… The next generation handsets gives us access to the layer of communication that emerges as objects becomes haptic and kinetic, opening a whole new world of interaction and behavior, through the sensitivity and richness of touch and force.

In conclusion:

“in the future we will communicate with identities, if these are people or objects doesn’t really matter” – 180360720.no

“Our goal is to first connect all the rabbits, and then connect everything else” – Rafi Haladjian

(ralf says:
This just tells me in its own way and means, that we still do not understand the true scope of the web. We still do not understand what we would sacrifice, if we choke the web with obsolete rules and laws and stuff.)

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

What the Future Holds!? [Video]

"Which technology will have the greatest impact in the next 10 years: the internet, genomics or geo-engineering?
Are you optimistic about the future, or pessimistic? Find out how some of the sharpest thinkers imagine the world in the next decade and in 2050.
Filmed at Google's headquarters in California as part of Science Foo Camp 2010: ...", via YouTube.

Via Science Foo Camp - more videos there.

My favorite comment from the YouTube page: "The woman at 2:35 had the most realistic view of how things will be in 2050, and thats: I dont know".

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > "The Biggest Innovation Challenge of All"

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

 

We all get caught up in the day-to-day activities of work and life but have you really stopped to think about how extraordinary your life is? Don’t worry, I’m not about to do one of those self-help/motivational rants but I do want to make the point that we may be in the middle of a economic development bubble if we don’t address the biggest innovation challenge that is confronting all of us.

The long-term growth in world GDP per capita is a confronting chart. I first saw this in Eric Beinhocker’s book “The Origin of Wealth”. Really, nothing happened until the 18th century and then there has been an increasing rate of GDP growth that really takes off with the industrial revolution. This is the chart from “Origin of Wealth”.

We are living in extraordinary times and it’s very easy to take this development for granted. As Beinhocker puts it even more succinctly:

…over 97 percent of humanity’s wealth was created in just the last 0.01 percent of our history. As the economic historian David Landes describes it, “the Englishman of 1750 was closer in material things to Caesar’s legionanaires than to his own great-grand children.”

The trouble with this rate of growth is that it is both amazing and disconcerting at the same time. If I showed a curve like that to a finance colleague they might say that it looks like a market bubble. If I think back to the ecology classes in my science degree it looks like the population curve of a species that goes through boom and bust cycles.

Since the 18th century this growth has been underpinned by the use of finite fossil fuels, particularly coal and oil. There is a very close relationship between GDP and energy consumption and while economies are slowly becoming less energy intensive, this relationship is largely intact. The biggest innovation challenge of all is decoupling fossil fuel consumption from GDP growth. Food and water might be constraints to growth as well but these can be overcome with energy.

Energy Consumption and Economic Growth (The Economist)

The first energy crunch in the middle of the 17th century was due to the loss of forests around cities that provided wood. The winners were the nations and towns that could find and extract coal to power development.

The winners of the next energy crunch may not be the nations that own resources. Instead, it will be the innovators who can restructure economies to break the relationship between fossil fuel consumption and economic development.

(ralf says: Incrementals won't save us. Innovation for innovation's sake won't save us.
And - as Einstein said: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them".
Now read Tim's last sentence again ;)

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

Business Innovation: 20 Predictions for the Next 25 Years

The first week of 2011 ends. If you still think about strategy once a year (in September!?), you better start today with rolling micro strategies.

Here are 20 scenarios from the Observer's team of experts for the next 25 years - a foundation for your vision and longterm strategy, and of course to direct your micro strategies:

"1 Geopolitics: 'Rivals will take greater risks against the US'

2 The UK economy: 'The popular revolt against bankers will become impossible to resist'

3 Global development: 'A vaccine will rid the world of Aids'

4 Energy: 'Returning to a world that relies on muscle power is not an option'

5 Advertising: 'All sorts of things will just be sold in plain packages'

6 Neuroscience: 'We'll be able to plug information streams directly into the cortex'

7 Physics: 'Within a decade, we'll know what dark matter is'

8 Food: 'Russia will become a global food superpower'

9 Nanotechnology: 'Privacy will be a quaint obsession'

10 Gaming: 'We'll play games to solve problems'

11 Web/internet: 'Quantum computing is the future'

12 Fashion: 'Technology creates smarter clothes'

13 Nature: 'We'll redefine the wild'

14 Architecture: What constitutes a 'city' will change

15 Sport: 'Broadcasts will use holograms'

16 Transport: 'There will be more automated cars'

17 Health: 'We'll feel less healthy'

18 Religion: 'Secularists will flatter to deceive'

19 Theatre: 'Cuts could force a new political fringe'

20 Storytelling: 'Eventually there'll be a Twitter classic'"

Helge Tenno > "Emotional Design: Key to motivate Learning"

Note: Design as an emotional motivator. One reason more to finally excell at it .... Please enjoy!
(L/M NET features Helge's inspiring posts on a regular basis.)

“Emotion” as a word is a discussion killer, often added to an argument as a sure fire reason for success – an unquestionable truth. But the concept’s lack of tangibility only leaves uncertainty: Why or how would it work?

“Emotion” as an argument becomes useless.

Still we know, and most people accept, that people are only part rational and the other part emotional. Emotion is an unavoidable element in our decision making process. So the question would be: How do we make “emotions” work as an argument?

In my latest presentation: Rebuilding the barriers I discussed with engineers and accountants the concept of emotional design, brand and design strategy. And it struck me that emotion is quite simple to explain rationally…

Explanation:
In the article How The Mind Works: Revelations Israel Rosenfield and Edward Ziff summarize from a range of books and propose how the mind works:

1. The brain is a bundle of trillions of neurons.

2. A neuron is a string/cell with one receiving end and one transmitting end.

3. Neurons are not connected to each other. There is a gap (the synaptic cleft) between each one.

4. When two neurons communicate the cleft is bridged by the transmitting end of one neuron sending chemicals (neurotransmitters) into the cleft. These chemicals charge the receiving end of the other neuron and communication has occurred.

5. A neurotransmitter can be a range of different chemicals – having different effects.

How we learn:
1. Some of these neurotransmitters cause a “sensation of reward” ( an emotional response).

2. Rewards cause repetition and repetition strengthens connections between neurons and makes the specific communication more effective and more common.

As the human organism is an extremely complex and intentional machinery it seems that the origin and reason for emotion is to help us repeat stuff in order to learn it. In other words:

Emotion is a chemical reward sensation in the brain designed to motivate us to learn new stuff (and make smart decisions).

Let me introduce two arguments to why this could be an interesting and valid argument:

Donald Norman’s alarm clock project identified that people were more motivated to figure out how alarm clocks worked if they were designed aesthetically pleasing – emotional design.

Michal Tchao, when presenting the Nike Plus project at Picnic in 08, commented on the fact that there was nothing new about Nike Plus, but the competing solutions already positioned in the market place where designed with the emotional gravity of an EKG mixed with Microsoft Excel. – What Nike did was merely design something that motivated people to learn how to use it.

And this is exceptionally important, because it argues that the role of design is not merely a branding or identity exercise, but also exclusively important in order to do the most important task of any application or thing: motivate people to not only use it, but learn how to use it.

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. @congbo

Neuromarketing: Hype oder Hoffnung?

"So einfach, wie es uns populärwissenschaftliche Trendstudien nahebringen wollen, ist es leider noch nicht. Nicht alle Prozesse der Werbewirkung, allen voran die Emotionen und ihr Zusammenspiel mit rationalen Entscheidungsprozessen, werden von den Neurowissenschaften bereits heute gut genug verstanden, um tatsächlich „revolutionäre“ Einsichten für das Marketing zu gewinnen."

Via Gründerszene.