A (largely) defunct innovation: the airmail envelope.
Yet instantly recognisable to those of a certain age.
Now a useful way to share seeds from the garden.
What else could this evocative design be used for?
A (largely) defunct innovation: the airmail envelope.
Yet instantly recognisable to those of a certain age.
Now a useful way to share seeds from the garden.
What else could this evocative design be used for?
Tags: Design, innovation, photo, travel
Consultants are much in the news at the moment – and it’s not a good press they are receiving.
We define a consultant as someone who provides guidance and advice, often at a strategic level – in contrast to trainers, researchers, lawyers, facilitators, accountants.
A few have mentioned this early article of ours from 2006. In it, we share some lessons for a DIY approach to consulting.
Enjoy!
Tags: assumptions, facilitation, innovation, management
Creativity is wanted. Actually, we are told it is essential. The changes needed in the British economy need fresh thinking.
Broadly, there are two sorts of creative people.
You have the ‘Deep Creatives’: the artists, the ideas people, the inspirers. Often brilliant and counter-intuitive, these thinkers are helpful in reframing an issue or imagining a totally new product. They write, they talk.
On the other hand, the ‘Process Creatives’ are those that help individuals and groups think more widely, clearly and imaginatively, drawing on methods such as the lateral thinking tools of Edward De Bono or techniques for facilitated meetings.
Comparing the two, there is a critical insight: one’s own ideas are ‘owned ideas’. Without that ownership, you can’t overcome the subsequent challenge of putting innovation into practice, of getting from inspiration to implementation.
Advice from the outside has its place. But the aim of this should be to involve all – and not just the few – in creative thinking that routinely and regularly makes a difference to what gets done.
Tags: creative, innovation, thinking
David Byrne of Talking Heads has become an unlikely advocate of PowerPoint as a creative tool for getting your ideas across.
Now established beyond the popular music world into writing, theatre and film, he also produces art with a .PPT file extension!
Having thought it a limited and ‘corporate’ tool to start with, experimentation has enabled him to create rich and interactive images.
So maybe it’s time to take a stand against the backlash on PowerPoint slideware (or Keynote or whatever) which has been going on for a couple of years at least.
Why do so many people rush to join the condemnation of an efficient tool for conveying complex ideas? Why not also have a backlash against the novel in book form? After all, that’s another highly formulaic medium where information is carried in a fundamentally limited way – using only the power of narrative – and it has many drawbacks.
There are rubbish novelists as well as great ones (try comparing Charles Dickens, Jackie Collins, Leo Tolstoy, Jody Picoult, Alasdair Gray, Tomas Hardy and Honore de Balzac).
As well as those who regularly bore or beffudle us with endless dreadful slides there are those who influence and inspire with pace and passion. TED.com and Pecha Kucha have plenty of examples and we all know people who are good (or even great) exponents of the medium.
Having the potential to use software (as with a pen or a paint brush) should be seen as a help not a hindrance. Like David Byrne, we should want to make the most of our chance to communicate with others and take the effort to produce great work.
Tags: art, communication, innovation
If you are a fan of either whisky or the rock band Status Quo, you might have seen that Francis Rossi, the lead guitarist, has bought a stake in the Glen Rossie distillery and taken over as Chairman.
This 200-year old Scottish whisky company now has a new shape bottle and a label shaped like a guitar pick.
In a world where whisky increasingly competes with premium vodka and other top end spirits, profits might be boosted by sales alongside other merchandising at Quo concerts.
Or traditional Glen Rossie drinkers may be put off by the association with the King of Three Chords.
Is it the passion to bring a favourite drink to a new audience that motivates this? To share the personal delight in a much-loved product? Or is it vanity, replacing mental images of rocky glens with those of a ‘geri’ rocker?
How much are branding decisions really about making a connection between the customer and what they are buying? And how much are they personal motivations?
Tags: band, brand, innovation
We were dismayed a couple of years ago to learn that Polaroid instant cameras were being discontinued and the special film for them was going out of production. So we’re delighted that a new consortium has brought them back to life.
I remember when my parents bought one like this around 1975. The magic of the film coming out immediately followed by putting it in a metal jacket to warm under your armpit to help it develop (the instruction booklet told you to). It was leading-edge for its time.
Amazingly, they are still hugely popular more than 40 years after being launched.
Why? The quirkiness of how you use it, the look and feel of the paper, the white border around the picture, the way the image emerges in front of your eyes, the fact that you have something permanent in your hands (would you rip a photo up as easily as delete a digital one?).
Photographers, artists and designers experiment with heat or chemicals to create interesting effects as the picture develops. They are de rigueur for certain fashionistas in the media industries. We even take them to client events as everyone enjoys using them to help build a record of the time together.
It’s not easy to come up with products and services that will command this amout of affection and loyalty across generations (people will now pay for film that costs more than £1 per shot). But the passion around Polaroid can inspire us to be different, to be useful, to be memorable and to offer some fun.
Tags: innovation, photo, photos, trends
Finding a taxi around Elephant and Castle in south London has often proved hard.
Until yesterday, when one came along the road as I stepped out of a meeting. Chatting to the driver, I mentioned the challenge of finding a cab there. He said he went up that road regularly every day. Having dropped a passenger in central London or the City, his strategy is to return to the King’s Road in west London via Blackfriars bridge and Lambeth. And it works. He never has any problem “making his money”. Other cabbies, he said, often sit on ranks in the City for half an hour waiting for a fare to come along.
Everyone needs a strategy. If you are a high-tech company, are you going to licence your IP, provide a service or become a product company? If you are a hospital, how are you going to continue making life better for patients in the face of funding pressures?
Without a strategy, achieving your goals is just luck. How is your strategy working?
Tags: Decision-making, innovation, organisation, strategy
Around London, there are fancy developments with steps like these…funky, nice looking BUT functional?
Great design is a combination of beauty and ease. Think about your favourite home appliance or piece of furniture.
Here, the interesting angles and absence of lots of hand rails looks good but is tricky for the visually impaired and the infirm.
In business, where do things that appear nice make things harder? That paper on a tricky topic? That set piece meeting or conference?
Tags: Beauty, Design, innovation, photo
Every improvement involves change but not every change is an improvement.
Travelling a lot by train, the national rail enquiries website is an invaluable source of train time information. The simple interface worked well and with a few clicks you had all the details you needed.
Now they’ve changed it as part of a revamp to the site. The result? It may look a bit better (can a train timetable site ever look cool?) but it’s clunkier as the text in the search boxes isn’t automatically over-typed, the drop down menus are slower and it’s not as easy just to get train times for today.
Why make life harder for customers? At the very least, make sure some of the team/web designers/public compare how it works before and after to be absolutely sure it’s as good as before.
Contrast that with Ocado online shopping. They make regular tweaks to the site and every one manages to make it easier and more satisfying to shop with them.
It’s a lesson for us all. Whatever the reasons you embark on making a change, make sure it ends up as something customers will agree is an improvement.
I’m off now to get the 0943.
Tags: change, customers, innovation, travel
A cold winter morning. Queue for coffee at the AMT concession in the railway station. In front the person asks for “a small cappuccino to take away” . They only do one size and only takeaway. The person after me says “a cappuccino with sweeteners”. “We only do one size, and do you have your own sweetener for us to add?”. Me: “A cappuccino, no sugar, with chocolate sprinkles”. “OK, coming up.”
Not clever. Just, I have been trained. I know the ritual. Familiarity breeds easy. But ingrained rituals can hinder innovation. Keeping the familiarly/freshness balance alive is key.
Tags: behaviour, change, innovation, leadership, organisation
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