How do you describe your product?
Using the word ‘extreme’ is extreme, but maybe not if you are an ornithologist!
And thinking of little books, download ours on influence here…
March, 2010 |
Mar 25 |
Polaroid passions |
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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.
![polaroid[1]](http://www.idenk.co.uk/ideasdigest/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/polaroid1-300x237.jpg "polaroid[1]")
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
Mar 15 |
Obscuring changes the picture |
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The work on Kings Cross station carries on apace.
A bit of covering and suddenly a different view – radically so in certain lights!
What we obscure matters.
Tags: behaviour, choices, confidence, obscure, organisation
Mar 11 |
Selling science sustainably |
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The New Scientist magazine offers some interesting observations on the recent debate about climate change science in its lead editotrial (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527492.500-honesty-is-the-best-policy-for-climate-scientists.html) and main article (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527493.700-can-we-trust-the-ipcc-on-the-big-stuff.html?full=true). These:
- reaffirm the basic conclusions of the science on the causes of climate change
- propose sustainability as the big overarching theme of our time (of which climate is a part)
- warn against an ‘anti-human stance’
- insist that the scientific and public debate should be balanced with all evidence given fair weighing and treatment (and that doom mongering has the opposite effect to that desired by those who do it)
- highlight that governments wanting detailed forecasts of the possible impacts on their own countries has led to many questionable forecasts of what climate change will lead to (especially short-term over the next 10-20 years)
- take a positive view of the Earth’s ‘nine lives’ in being able to accommodate mankind (even though the article points out that three of the boundaries have been crossed already).
It’s a shift from a lot of the positioning and language around selling the science of climate change and sustainability that has been to the fore over the last few years.
Most of the thinking around helping humans change (whether as individuals or for organisational life) stress the need both to understand what is really going on now and to find a positive way to plan for the future.
It’s a message for us all in everything we do to be honest about what we know, what we don’t know, what we think might happen and what we can start to do to make things different.
Tags: behaviour, change, climate, organisation, positive, science
Mar 4 |
Modern contrasts |
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In less than hour from rural calm to urban chic.
Contrasts and contrasting assumptions about Modernity…
Mar 1 |
The ubiquitous Post-It |
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The Post-It is everywhere (here in a hip converted factory as part of the Shoreditch House private members club in east London).
Yet its ubiquity, as a tool for facilitation and managing the thinking at meetings, means that it is no longer a fresh way to work in many contexts. It sometimes attracts opprobrium. Increasingly so.
We have a pad of post-its with the words “oh no, not another learning experience” printed on the top of each!
Yet, the alternative stuffy Boardroom-style meeting is tolerated despite its low utility.
Curious…