February 2012
15 posts
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How Can A Font Help Brand a City? →
Typeface designers are working to give Chattanooga, TN, an identity through its own font. Which got us thinking, how can we apply this type of design thinking to our clients and ourselves.
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“Failures are infinitely more instructive than successes.”
– George Clooney in an interview with NPR.
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Get to know the newest Facilitators at ITG
Ideas To Go is happy to announce the hiring of two new Innovation Process Facilitators: Bob Taylor and Greg Cobb.
Bob comes to us from Chase, where he was VP of Retail Marketing Innovation. And, being a part of several ITG projects with Chase, Bob understands ITG’s innovation process first-hand:
“At the heart of innovation—and good marketing in general—is the need to identify and...
“The consumer leads and the consumer decides…we have to trust the consumer.”
– Geoff Cottril, CMO of Converse at the Yale Center for Customer Insights conference #YCCI
“Creativity is more than just a song or a painting, it’s pushing things forward.”
– Geoff Cottril, CMO of Converse at the Yale Center for Customer Insights conference #YCCI
“I detected a pattern suggesting that something everyone else had overlooked...”
– From: Psych Central News — Improving Innovation by Reinterpreting the Familiar (via creativesage)
Check Out The Creative Problem Solving Institute →
Sharpen your creative thinking skills, or learn to facilitate creative problem solving sessions with groups, the Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) is the pre-eminent conference in the world. June 19-21 in Atlanta.
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WatchBrian Henson, Chairman of the Jim Henson Company, shares lessons he learned from his father. “I try to emulate his approach of really get the most out of people by allowing them to experiment and certainly allowing people to make mistakes…people need to be able to be taking risks and if it turns out to be a mistake—if it turns out not to have been the right choice—that should be...
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“When I started managing this brand, current leadership said the strategy was to...”
– AJ Bernstein, Brand Manager, Digestive Health, Fleet Labs
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Forness® the Word vs Forness® the Meaning
For every project we do, we teach our clients Forness® thinking. “Forness” is a made up word (we should know, we were the ones who made it up). But it is the best word to convey its important meaning. (More on that later.)
Recently, as we were planning an upcoming project in Germany, we debated about how best to translate our made up word into other languages. Dafürsein, which means...
More on Groupthink and Brainstorming
Lately two articles about brainstorming have been making a stir in our world: Jonah Lehrer’s article “Groupthink” and Susan Cain’s “The Rise of the New Groupthink.” Both authors argue that brainstorming is not an effective method of stimulating creativity.
ITG facilitator Susan Robertson added our voice to the fray with “NYT Groupthink Rebuttal: Effective Brainstorming Works” and “10 Rules for...
January 2012
31 posts
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Creative Consumers® associates at work →
Here’s just one example of how awesome our Creative Consumers® associates are: Charles is one of our veteran Creative Consumers® associates in Minnesota, where he has been a part of the theatre scene for most of his career. His son Seth originated the lead (human) role on Broadway in War Horse. Both Charles and Seth were interviewed about their acting careers in this segment on Minnesota...
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Interpreting Customer Needs in the Tech World
By Shari Morwood, ITG Facilitator
Yesterday, in The New York Times, there was an article about “Apple and Google as Creative Archetypes.” I think it takes a creative interpretation of customer needs to be successful. Consumers don’t know what technology should, or could be developed — but they can provide insights, wants and needs for themselves and their lives. It’s then up to the...
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ITG ebook: 10 Rules for Brainstorming Success →
Originally published on our Tumblr site, now it’s an ebook!
Why J.C. Penney Will Be The Most Interesting... →
“J.C. Penney just blew up its brand — in a good way — thanks to a new management team with some radical new ideas.”
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Another Critique of the Attack on Creative... →
Much like our own Susan Robertson’s rebuttal to the New York Times article by Susan Cain, Keith Sawyer states his own case for how effective group brainstorming is.
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Innovation Takes Both Introverts and Extroverts →
Right on Gregg! In his blog, Gregg Fraley accurately articulates that both introverts and extroverts are needed in ”the innovation tango.”
“The diversity of Creative Consumers® associates’ (CCs) perspectives is...”
– Corey, Creative Consumers® associate
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NYT GroupThink Rebuttal: Effective Brainstorming...
by Susan Robertson, Facilitator and VP of Business Development
If you happened to read the opinion piece published on Sunday, January 13, in The New York Times entitled “The Rise of the New Groupthink” by Susan Cain, you may be wondering about the value of brainstorming. If it’s as useless as the author claims, why is it so popular? Should we continue doing it? The short answer is that the...
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10 Rules for Brainstorming Success
by Susan Robertson, Facilitator and VP Business Development
A recent New York Times article suggested that group brainstorming isn’t effective at generating creative solutions. That assertion is erroneous, for a variety of reasons. Groups can—and do—successfully brainstorm creative and useful solutions.
But research does show that effective brainstorming requires adherence to some specific...
Ba-dum-dum
“A survey of Super Bowl snack habits by SUPERVALU found that 54% of respondents plan to eat throughout the game, with little thought given to the food’s healthfulness.” (Progressive Grocer)
The other 46% of respondents plan to eat throughout the game, but will feel guilty about it the entire time.
Virtual Bubblewrap →
What is it about popping those little pockets of air that’s so addictive?
Go forth and pop to your heart’s content. Manic Mode recommended.
WatchHow can (underwater) art help an endangered ecosystem? In a cool and creative way. Check it out.
“Thank you for a tremendous project. Your claim of being only ‘facilitators’...”
– testimonial from a happy Novartis Marketing Science client
“Innovation is hard, but so worth it, like raising a child, doing the Saturday...”
– Adam Hansen, Facilitator & VP of Innovation
Creativity Breeds Creativity →
Check out this great article from Edge.org on how subconscious primes and a person’s immediate environment can help them unlock capabilities they might not realize they had. We see these principles at work in every one of our projects. Creativity breeds creativity.
WatchWe think the Guerilla Haiku Movement is pretty cool. It’s all about:
a) joy b) being inspired by that which is around you c) engaging all people in small acts of creation d) getting chalky e) celebrating the temporary and the virtually permanent f) adventures with the unknown g) joy h) haiku (of course) as the perfect melding of all of the above, and thus our medium...
Be An Innovator. Not A Copier. →
Check out this interesting article from Edge.org. Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist, discusses how one of the basic mechanisms humans use to learn may be making us less creative.
Inspiration from Fake Grimlock. →
We think #3: Iterate til Awesome is awesome.
“I would like to praise you on a number of aspects: efficiently run process,...”
– Testimonial from a very happy pharmaceutical client
First, Empathic, Then Emphatic
Listen deeply, then trust your intuition, your subattentional genius to create something new, exciting and relevant. Get past the “either/or” mentality. There is a huge difference between giving them what they say they want and giving them something that elicits Apple-level devotion — and it hinges on internalizing enough to help you play around with it, a lot. First, be deeply...
December 2011
5 posts
Phil McKinney » Podcast: Speech on the Skills of... →
Innochat →
Chat about innovation every Thursday at noon
“The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution,...”
– Albert Einstein
