The "Fun Theory"

About a week ago I put up a blog post entitled "Wave...It's Good Will Hunting and Pulp Fiction!" in  which my premise was: How do you take creativity and turn it into innovation? My answer:

Well...sometimes it happens when you don't actually sit down and say "ok, let's get creative and innovate up some game changing ideas. It often takes place when you actually don't focus on the issue at hand and simply do something totally unrelated or do something fun that gets your mind thinking in a whole different way.

Building your brand in today's marketplace will ABSOLUTELY take creative thinking.  So often creative thinking means focusing on a particular problem from a unique viewpoint. But from my Wave. . .It's Good Will Hunting... post, I suggested that a valuable approach could be doing something fun and totally unrelated to the "work at hand" to get the creativity to flourish...

Enter the "The Fun Theory."

An initiative by Volkswagen states:

. . . something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.

Awesome. Volkswagen is building brand value by:

1. Not focusing on their product (cars) at all.
2. Focusing on fun (and who the hell doesn't like fun!)
3. Addressing the issue of changing the world to make it a better place.

Rockin!

Check out the "Fun Theory" videos below and check out their site here

The future. . .and the "social media" misnomer

I initially met Jeremy Epstein in early November of 2008 when he did a presentation at an event hosted by Michelle James (a very good friend of mine). During his talk he discussed a lot of different things.  Two people that he mentioned that night were Seth Godin and Hugh McCleod (two folks that I deeply admire). After those two names came out of his mouth I knew that I definitely wanted to reach out on a personal level and begin to build a rapport with him. And I did. . .

Jeremy was impressed with my "reaching out strategy" so much that he blogged about it, and ever since then we have been colleagues and friends.  Just this past August, he was a panelist for one of my Convergence Events, in which he, along with Peter Lamotte and George Pierson, talked about the future of business, technology and culture. 

I'm mentioning all of this because I have a huge admiration for Jeremy and he's always impressive (in his work and his ideas) in exploring the new business landscape.

Do yourself a favor and take 30 minutes of your time (I know, I know. . . with online that's like 10 hours) and check out the inverview he does below with leading edge thinker Adriana Lukas (I promise. ..it will be well worth your time!)

Enjoy!

"I'd rather be lucky than good"

Let me ask you all a question.

Which would you rather be: lucky or good? I'll give you a minute. . .

As the market (and the world) continues to transform, right before our eyes, everyone is trying to figure out how to manage these changes. Trying to figure out how to successfully navigate the new landscape. Thinking about what should the next move be (hoping it's the right one. . .maaan sooo hoping it's the right one). 

As Lefty Gomez said, "I'd rather be lucky than good," maybe being lucky is the way to go about figuring things out.  One problem though. You can't walk around trying to be lucky as a way to go from point a to point b.  Or maybe you can. . .

I came across this interesting article written in 2003 by  a British psychologist named Richard Wiseman in which he says this:

A decade ago, I set out to investigate luck. I wanted to examine the impact on people's lives of chance opportunities, lucky breaks and being in the right place at the right time. After many experiments, I believe that I now understand why some people are luckier than others and that it is possible to become luckier.

As a result, Wiseman's research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. 

• They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities.
• Make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition.
• Create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations.
• Adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

In the wake of his studies, Wiseman details three easy techniques that can help to maximise good fortune:

• Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell - a reason to consider a decision carefully.

• Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

• Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

 After reading this I'm definitely looking at lucky a little bit differently.

Wave! It's Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting!

How do you take creativity and turn it into innovation?

Well. . .sometimes it happens when you don't actually sit down and say "ok, let's get creative and innovate up some game changing ideas. It often takes place when you actually don't focus on the issue at hand and simply do something totally unrelated or do something fun that gets your mind thinking in a whole different way. 

A great example of this is the Google Wave project below. 

Now in case you haven't heard about Google Wave, it's an online platform designed to merge email, instant messaging, wikis and social networking. Now the question that's out there among the tech pundits, "expert" product reviewers, and the blogosphere is "what is it?" and "what is it good for?"

Well, as I mentioned before, sometimes you just have to play around with "it", conduct some experiments, do something wild and crazy with it and then that's when the light bulb may go off (you may even fail a few times in the process, but failure is almost more important than the successes) as to the practical and/or noteworthy application of it. 

With Google Wave Joe Sabia did just that. He didn't say "let me take this new thing and try to solve the world's problems," he just said let me do something fun with it and voila, you have the first step in what could be a completely revolutionary product that solves the world's problems (or not).  

Well, the important thing is that Joe did what most people don't - he did something. Which is often half the battle. Is what he did useful? Not really, but it's an important first step to show what the thing can actually do and the end result is very cool. 

So let me introduce you to Google Wave and Pulp Fiction. . .

. . . and Google Wave and Good Will Hunting. . .

Up, up and awaaayy. . .

What happens when a creative marketing agency, a forward thinking camera company and Japanese pop stars decide to converge?

You get a killer experience for your brand.

To tout the new Nikon Coolpix, which has a built-in projector, GT Tokyo strapped several of Nikon's cameras to the bodies of Japanese pop stars, Helicopter Boyz. When the Boyz performed with the cameras attached to them at Japan's Yomiuri Land, their images were projected on a screen behind them - which resulted in a very cool three minute show.