Everything I needed to know about product development, I learned from a 10-year old.

Her name is Lily and her dad’s name is Joe Born.  Melissa Harris wrote about them in the Chicago Tribune over the weekend. Joe is a successful lifelong inventor, which helps explain why Lily invents things too. 

Her grandfather has Parkinson’s Disease, which causes him to frequently spill beverages.  Lily wanted to create a spillproof cup for him.

So naturally, she conducted some focus groups, developed some insights, wrote some concepts, tested them qualitatively, refined them, tested them quantitatively, refined them some more, did some BASES testing, went through several rounds with Legal and R&D, then got the go-ahead to create a model of the cup.

Actually, her process was a little more simple.

1. Assess the challenge

2. Sketch out a solution

3. Build a prototype

4. Go to your dad’s friend’s pottery studio in China to create pre-production samples

Other than the China part, it’s pretty simple, intuitive stuff.  In her dad’s words, “The is the way you should do product development.”  It led to her creation of the  Kangaroo Cup, which is basically a cup with legs.  Duh.

When it comes to product innovation, if you know what the challenge is, and have an insight around how to solve it, and have just a little bit of sketching skills (or have a friend who does), you can do a pretty good job of developing great product ideas.  Even if you don’t have a friend in China.

Of course, it isn’t always that easy in corporate America.  There’s lot more at stake than a coffee cup with legs and I’m not sure Lily would survive longer than a few hours.  That said, she still has a lot to teach us.  Primarily, that understanding a challenge can lead to a simple, desirable solution:

 An idea with legs.

Want to create brilliant ideas? Go away.

Imagine living in a place where nothing exists except for what immediately surrounds you.

Your property is on a dirt road, with neighbors pockmarked every half-mile or so.  In winter, you have to plow yourself out or dig in for the long haul.

When you drive up the dirt road to your house and step out of your car, the silence is deafening.  The stones at your feet crunch like someone’s eating potato chips in your ears. The constant hum of nothing rushes into your ears like a backdraft, but you soon adjust to the peace and breathe in unaffected, unpolluted, unbelievable air.

Your dogs have the run of acres of the land.  Your garden produces a bounty of fresh rhubarb and strawberries and other good stuff.  “Your lake,” while open to others, is a short hike away and as beautiful and secluded a place as there is on Earth.

I stayed at a place like that over the weekend, in Southern Vermont. 

It was heaven.

And it was a great place to let my thoughts ramble and do a little extracurricular cranial sightseeing, landing in places that they ordinarily might not ever get to.

As you read this, you may be in your office or in transit, eating or drinking, surveying and surfing.  Wherever you are, you’re likely surrounded by people and machines and lots of artificial things that make noises and smells.  

There’s an energy to it that’s infectious.  It’s what keeps us going.

So for a few minutes, stop.

Get yourself to a place where those things don’t exist.  I bet it isn’t that far. 

Get out of town, or stay local.  Find a nook or cranny in your house or apartment or office or neighborhood where you can be assaulted by silence.  I bet you can find it.  Bring a pad of paper and something with which you can write or draw. 

See what happens to your mind and body when everything slows down. Watch how creativity creeps up from behind and smoothes into your lap.

If you can’t get to Southern Vermont, find your version of it. Surround yourself with nothing but potential ideas. 

It may not sound deafeningly silent, but it'll still sound pretty good.

Michael Jordan, Gene Kranz, and harnessing the power of optimism to create success

Last year at Chicago Ideas Week, I hosted a panel titled “Is this economy killing creativity or inspiring it?”  Five panelists discussed the challenges of staying fiercely creative in a less-than-encouraging economic climate.  They all agreed on one thing:

When life gives you lemons, creative people make limoncello.

It’s important to know that these weren’t all super-creative, off-the-charts right brainers.  Along with the owner of an amazing home and garden store (Sprout Home), a clothes designer, and an online entrpreneur, we also had the President of a superhot Chicago ad agency (commonground) and a senior marketing manager for a large packaged goods brand.

I was inspired by their optimism and conviction to take on the challenge of overcoming obstacles, regardless of the climate.  It reminded me of one of my favorite Michael Jordan quotes:

“If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

I flashed back to that panel when I read an article in yesterday’s Sunday Chicago Tribune about young adults who have graduated college and instead of facing the promise of a great future as in previous generations, are facing enormous obstacles. 

It spoke of “…a historic recalibration among expectations of every generation of Americans” and  continued, “As Europeans are being gripped by dream-crushing austerity, hopes are also being downsized here in ways not seen since the Great Depression…”

Wow.

Wowzer wow wow.  A historic recalibration?  Dream-crushing austerity?

How would that make you feel if you were sending a child to college in the Fall?  Knowing you’re about to spend thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare her for…shredded dreams and crushing austerity?

Well, that would be me, and since I’ve written a post about why I believe college is still worth every penny, I can think of no better person than Apollo 13’s Mission Control Director Gene Kranz to answer the question.  One of the most memorable moments in film.

I think Mr. Kranz would agree with our panelists, and with Michael Jordan, and with anyone in this country and in this world who would argue that there’s always a creative answer for any situation, challenge, or hardship. It starts with enthusiasm and belief.  And above all, a fervent, almost blindless optimism.

And when you get around that wall, a nice cold of limoncello will be waiting on the other side.

Square pegs + round holes = Brilliant Ideas

I saw Moonrise Kingdom over the weekend.  LOVED IT. It’s a story about two intelligent, inventive, incorrigible young teenagers who fall in love, get torn apart, and ultimately wind up happy and together, told as only the wonderfully quirky Wes Anderson can tell it.

It’s a story about round pegs in square holes.  Which probably describes most creative thinkers. 

Watching Moonrise Kingdom reminded me of one of the greatest TV commercials of all time.

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Of course, it was for a company owned and created by one of the most distinctive, visionary square pegs ever (See a cool version of the commercial narrated by Steve Jobs, not Richard Dreyfus).

Hopefully, you see a little of yourself in one of those dreamers.  All it takes is just a little bit of crazy to do something great and wind up happy, just like in a Wes Anderson movie.

Go see Moonrise Kingdom.  Get inspired to be the square peg.

Why college is worth all the money

Surreal /səˈrēəl/ 

Adjective:  having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream

Taking your daughter to college orientation is bittersweet.

Taking her to orientation at the same college you attended is surreal.

Walking the grounds of my alma mater over thirty years later, everything is similar but nothing is the same.  I know I’ve walked every inch of every path but I can’t remember what it felt like back then. 

Things change.  Yesterday’s piercings are today’s tattoos, and the quaint soda shop is now a Bruegger’s Bagels.  If things didn’t change, it would be wonderfully satisfying for the alums and terribly sad for the students.

What hasn’t changed:  A community of professionals who dedicate themselves to making sure young people transition from childhood to adulthood in a way that makes them better and smarter, more interesting, more interested, and more well-rounded individuals.

College is the single best cranial training ground in the world and the world would be a better and more productive place if every one of us could go back every decade or so. 

It would be like renewing your vows as an enlightened human.

One of my favorite orientation speakers laid out the skills that the college student of 2012 will come away with:

Problem solving

Decision making

Critical thinking

Not to mention, becoming an informed citizen and lifelong learner, gaining breadth and depth of knowledge, and forming invaluable connections.

Is it any different than 10, 50, 90 years ago?

Conceptually, no.

Financially?   Yes.  Ridiculously so.  

But as insane as the costs are, I believe it’s worth it. 

Now that’s surreal.

Anybody know what this is?

Well, it’s like a phone, but it doesn’t move. You have to stand near it when you talk to somebody because it’s connected to the wall.

You can make a call where the OTHER person pays for it. Pretty cool, huh?

Does your iphone do that?

You hold that black thing with the wire coming out of the bottom in the middle, kind of level with your cheek, and you talk into the bottom part and listen with the top part.

It’s called the receiver, but if you get mad and hit someone with it, then THEY’RE the receiver.

Does your iphone do that?

Since it’s stationary, you can’t pace around while you talk. And you can’t play games or watch videos or text or Facebook or Tweet. You just have to focus on the conversation and the person you're talking to.

Does your iphone do that?

You may not have ever seen one of these things; they’re pretty rare. Maybe the tech companies will take notice and start making more of them.

You never know.

Keep your eyes peeled.

If you put an Apple logo on it, people might line up for it…

Let’s hear it for Winter’s warmth

Yup, you heard me right.

Sure, the snow and cold and sometimes cruelly raging winter winds can make tears freeze and cheeks crack.

But it also makes you more appreciative of a warm fire. The warming house for ice skaters. Seat warmers in your car, hand warmers for winter dog walks.

And warm people.

Is it my imagination, or are people just a little bit warmer in the winter? A little more likely to help someone carry groceries, shovel snow, give you a warm bagel instead of an old one at New York Bagels and Bialy (the only place for great bagels in Chicago).

Hot toddies and hot chocolate are nice, but warm people are even better. Because warm people are more likely to come together. And any time people come together, something good can happen. A great idea. A solution to a tough challenge. The inkling of a community.

Let’s hear it for Winter’s cold. Without it, we wouldn’t have Winter’s warmth.

Water in a Box

Before we continue our conversation about Discovery, an interlude about the importance of follow-through.

I’d bet lots and lots of people have thought of ways to sell water in something other than a landfill-filling plastic bottle.

So why haven’t the huge corporate monoliths brought an alternate to market? And why has a small ecologically responsible company beaten them to it?

Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d bet it has something to do with that annoying little thing called profit.

Too bad, because this is a phenomenal idea with wonderful design. And not only did they discover it, they made it happen. They brought it to life. So please find some and buy some, and be inspired by a great idea executed really well.

And PS, it’s delicious.

Discovery is the action that creates moments of newness

Discovery has been around as long as people have been around. Whatever you consider to be the beginning of human civilization—Adam and Eve, Cavemen, Led Zeppelin, fresh pasta—the great ideas of the time were sparked by a moment of discovery.

Doing the naughty when you're not supposed to is an idea; finding fruit on The Tree of Knowledge was a Discovery.

Light bulbs are an idea; the controlled movement of charged particles like protons, electrons and ions was a discovery.

Discovery is the action that creates moments of newness.

Is it any different now? Absolutely not. Ideas are democratic. Discovery is unique and is the key to getting to fresh ideas.

The more intriguing question is, does the act of discovery change over time? Will our kids and grandkids experience discovery the same way our ancestors did?

The answer is, much like most questions comparing digital natives to their forebearers, yes and no.

The difference can best be articulated by the way people listen to music now vs. the way I listened to music as a teenager.

If you’re curious to hear how, check back on Wednesday.

There’s a reason they didn’t name it the Space Shuttle “Ideation”

Let’s talk about Discovery.
Discovery is an action. That goose-bumpy spine tingly activity that sparks the creation of the germ that becomes a great idea.
People love talking about the moment they come up with a great idea. That moment of inspiration. But “come up with” and “inspiration” are passive words.
Discovery is an active word. Synapses are firing, adrenaline is flowing.
Discover Dis • cov • er(diss kuvver): be first to learn or find something. (v)
A verb.
The actual moment of “Aha!”
“Idea” is not, sayeth the dictionary, a verb. Only recently has the world begun turning it into a verb. Ideating and Ideation are sexier ways of talking about what Alex Osborn simply and clearly coined “brainstorming” back in the Mad Men days. Now it’s a way to sound smarter and charge more money to facilitate it.
I’m fine with making conjugations of “idea” into different parts of language as long as we all acknowledge that there’s no new ideas without discovery.
Lots of ideas, to be sure, and lots of creativity, but without discovery, forget about fresh thinking. Which is all well and good for people who can get by with warmed over ideas that generate mediocre excitement and flat sales.
But smart cool profitable ideas? How do you get one of those?
Look for part 2, coming early next week.

Can I get your digits?

No surprise, but the population growth of our great planet is growing. Within that fact, there’s good news and bad news.

The bad news: We’ve picked up speed, doubling to seven billion over the past fifty years. Resources are stretched. The poor get poorer.

The good news: More people means more cool ideas, more possibilities to put your head together with your universal brothers and sisters, more opportunities to find ways to work together to think up something smart, productive, profitable, beneficial, and fun. Solve the growing problems with even bigger ideas.

See where you stand in the chronological order of the world, and take pride in your digits. Then get together with someone and get thinking.

Gives new meaning to giving someone your number.

Occupy something more positive

I'm mad as hell and I could see myself Occupying something other than my desk chair or that one really good seat at Starbucks with the good view, away from the door but close enough to people-watch.

And I understand the way anger builds up, and I get why thousands of people have joined the Occupy movement.

But I would suggest one thing:

Occupy something a little more positive.

Last week at TEDxMidwest, I heard Bill Strickland talk. Fairly quiet, somewhat unassuming, intensely passionate guy. Read about him, see if you can help his cause, but more than anything else, be inspired by his story and the stories he's helped thousands of other people successfully tell. Then see if you might feel like Occupying something more positive.

Generosity = confidence

A very wise, very good friend told me that many years ago. It stuck with me and I passed it on to many others because it’s wonderfully pithy and powerfully true.

When you give something away, people don’t just see you as likeable, they see you as confident.

So I was blown away by these five very confident people who served on a panel at Chicago Ideas Week, at Twist’s event titled “The Economy’s Effect on Creativity,” and gave away a lifetime’s worth of great advice for creative thinkers in the span of 6o minutes:

Tara Heibel, Founder and Owner of Sprout Home

John Timmons, former Director at Sears Holdings and Social Media Consultant

Sherman Wright, Co-Founder and Co-managing Partner of CommonGround

Catherine Hudon, Digital Producer and owner of Online Clothing line Shorty

Kathleen Luttschyn, Owner of the new maternity blog Style Nine and blogger for Apartment Therapy

Thanks to all five panelists, to all of the people who filled the room at Twist’s session, and to Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, an amazing institution in the heart of Chicago that is filled with ambitious designers of the artistic future.

Here’s to giving great stuff away and the supremely smart and confident people who do it.

Finding creativity in simplicity

The Postal Service is the the nation’s second-largest civilian employer, with 574,000 employees. Who’s #1?

Why, it’s that little company in Bentonville, Arkansas.

What does this mean? It confirms that when it comes to the way we shop, the vast majority of Americans like ‘em big. We want lots and lots and lots of choices; nothing very fancy; please make it friendly, thank you very much; and of course, make it as cheap as possible. But I suppose that’s pretty global.

Not a real complicated formula and I don’t think Sam Walton would argue. Sometimes ideas are great because they strip everything out and become wonderfully beautifully simple. I don't think he'd argue with that either.

PS, please check out Twist's event at Chicago Ideas Week next Tues 10.11. Space is limited and filling up.

You can't always want what you get

I saw this blurb in my weekly Accounts on the Move email:

“SECRET WEAPON MARKETING WINS 1-800-DENTIST
Secret Weapon Marketing, the agency that handles only three clients at a time, filled the final slot in its three client roster with 1-800-DENTIST. Creative duties were previously handled in-house.”

I love Jerry McGuire, so I must love Secret Weapon.

I don’t know anyone there, although I’ve admired a lot of the Jack in the Box commercials over the years, all of them directed by Dick Sittig, the agency's founder and Creative Director.

Skeptics will scoff at their three-clients-only policy as a gimmick, or an excuse, or just a plain old money loser.

I say it’s genius. For one, it’s a great way to save time and money doing countless RFPs, which greatly increases employee's mental happiness. It allows them to focus on the business at hand, building client relationships, doing great work, and, heaven forbid, enjoying the work they do.

Plus, I would argue that it makes the agency more attractive to clients, regardless of how many clients SW takes. Every schoolboy who’s ever had a crush knows that some folks only want what they can’t have (at least that's how I explain my high school dating drought). For once, it’s the clients who should be nervous, with the possibility that they could lose their agency if another client comes along and steals them away.

And of course, it’s a different way of thinking about doing business. It changes the model. It’s twisted, and I love that.

One of my favorite quotes in one of my favorite movies is about the time and dedication that it takes to truly do a great job on behalf of another, and it can’t be underestimated. Secret Weapon understands this.

I just hope they're really really good at negotiating their fees.

I'll pay you not to like my product

This is kind of genius.

One way to get people to use your product is to get the people they admire to use your product. Hence, celebrity endorsers, product placement, league deals, sponsorships, etc. It enables even simple little products to dream of someday becoming the next George Foreman Grill.

But the field is getting more and more crowded, endorsements are becoming less and less meaningful, and consumer cynicism around celebrity endorsers grows daily. So I love this Twisted thinking.

It’s a brilliant way for Abercrombie to make clear who they are, by saying exactly what they’re not. Not only are they publicly disassociating from Jersey Shore, they feel so strongly about distancing themselves, they’ll pay to prove it!

And they do it in a way that their target can relate to. “I wouldn’t go out with Danny Schuman if you paid me.” A familiar-sounding high school refrain (and a little too close to home...). Point is, you have to really really not like something to pay money not to be connected to it.

It’s irrelevant whether Snooki or The Situation takes the dough. It’s the offer, and the clear meaning behind it, that counts (In fact, some are now saying it's a big back-to-school publicity stunt).

Either way, it's smart. Abercrombie thinks so little of the Jersey Shorers, they’d rather give them money than have the cast members wear their clothes. Fun, ballsy, stake-in-the-ground move. Makes the brand feel like it’s iconoclastic and trendy simply because they buck other trends.

Suicide-preventing pens!

I’ve been away from the blog for a while helping other people come up with great ideas, but in the words of Sir Isaac Newton, great ideas never take a vacation. Here’s the proof:

Who knew there’s a magical, lifesaving pen out there? A pen that has literally prevented people from killing themselves!

Actually, I don’t have any proof of this, but the last time I lost an entire notebook of notes and thoughts from crucial client meetings, the only thing that stopped me from killing myself was a bottle of Chianti and an Ally McBeal marathon.

So this pen is called the Echo smartpen from livescribe. First, you have to write on a special notepad. Then, when you connect it to your computer, your notes, scribbles, drawings, etc, are instantly and magically uploaded. And when you click back on your page, the pen tells you when you made that note or drawing.

I’m not doing justice to all the pen can do. Put it this way. For anyone who has taken notes and then forgot about…
--Where you put them
--When you had the conversation
--What the context or reason was for the conversation
--What the hell they mean !#$#$%@$%#!#
…this is technological manna from heaven. Gives your brain a break, your anger a breather, your sanity a refresh.

The single biggest question I had: Why didn’t Steve Jobs get there first with an ipen? The answer, of course, is that he was beaten to the punch. By a PC, no less. But like all things PC, it just doesn’t look as cool as the Mac version.

More on great ideas to come.

Up with Humans!

You know what the great thing about the world is?

Humans.

If you don’t like humans, or think they’re annoying, please stop reading. If their smell bothers you on the El, or the way they slurp their soup too loudly at Panera makes you want to put headphones on, you are excused.

Because I think humans are awesome, I say, “Up with people!”

One of the great things about humans is, they come up with amazing ideas. They think up things like the theory of relativity and the Flowbee (800 watts of stylish suction).

The guy who sells me my teriyaki chicken has ideas about a lot of things, some good, some bad; his recent ideas were around Chicago’s July 4 fireworks and how more people could see them (make ‘em bigger and higher!”).

A few years ago, the marketing world realized the value of humans and the power of their ideas and became an enabler to the development of User Created Content, also known as Consumer Generated Content. In other words, marketing communications that’s created by regular humans instead of professional marketers.

It’s some of the very best marketing communications out there. Here’s a very recent example. And here’s one of my favorites, a TV commercial created by real humans and voted by humans to be the best Super Bowl ad of 2009—and which helped coin the temporarily famous headline, “Two nobodies from nowhere.” Good stuff, don’t you think? You gotta love real human ideation.

One reason humans usually like Consumer Generated Content so much may be because it’s created by real humans. It doesn't have to jump over the many hurdles like an idea created by real marketers, such as focus group testing and rounds and rounds of revisions, so it hasn't had to have too many changes along the way, and the idea is often closer to what it originally looked like. The work may not always be as strategic as ideas that go through rounds of focus groups, but other humans sure seem to like it.

Just think if real humans created all of the marketing communications. It might be marketing anarchy. But it sure would be fun.

I daer yoo not 2 laff

Pablo Picasso may not have been real hip to computers, but he might have changed his tune if he'd hung around long enough to experience all of the wonderful stupidity of the internet.

Visionary entrepreneurs are building empires on the foundation of pictures of cats wearing ties accompanied by misspelled captions. I dare you not to laugh at Lolcats.

Or Fail blog.

Or There, I fixed it.

All these sites are owned by the Cheezburger network, a bunch of crazies who identify possible new Funny by monitoring community forums, blogs, and websites and use the intel to spin off new sites. The sites are easy to make and spread and they’re hugely popular. Thousands of submissions are rejected; many of the rejects are the basis new sites.

It’s a bastard stepchild of America’s Funniest Home Videos, a wonderful way to make something out of nothing by coming up with a new way to Twist what already exists, and it’s brilliant.

So see what's under that pile on your desk. Pay closer attention when you're surfing the web. Take another look at the back of your cereal box. Never hesitate to take a good look at what you already have; it's a good way to discover something new. It might even happen by accident.

Just ask these guys.

Pablo Picasso was right (and wrong) about computers

“What good are computers? They can only give you answers.”

Thank you, Pablo, for criticizing computers in a way that doesn’t make you seem like a curmudgeonly old complainer like the other 40+ers who love computers 98% of the time but once in a while curse them for hurtling the world along faster and faster each day, and specifically, for the continued contraction of deadlines they’ve caused. If negativity is the enemy of creative thinking, then Time is its best friend. Give a good amount of time to some healthy collaboration and cognitive dissonance, allow time for Ideation, and watch the ideas explode in million wonderful directions.

Among the many things I wonder about Gen Y is if they ever curse computers and their very existence. Digital natives live with computers as appendages and don’t consider their continued minute by minute use as causing progress, as much as facilitating every day doings. Mason Bates is one example.

I would guess he’s made every tux-wearing symphony subscriber nauseous, and caused every classical musician to create Mason Bates voodoo dolls and stick hollow point pins in the eyes and hands. It’s interesting work, and it’s certainly art. And with all due respect to Mr. Picasso, I’d bet Mr. Bates’ compositions have created far more questions than answers.

Across media, there’s no doubt that the creative product thrives when computers are involved. It just means the art takes shape a little differently, which qualifies it for a spot on the evolutionary timeline that started when the first splash of paint hit the cave wall. It’s not about how it’s created, as long as someone is creating it.

Perhaps our friend Pablo said it best:

"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun."