I’ve been mulling over the transition from ‘brain for hire’ to ‘products for purchase’. In my innovative world, the goal for me is always to help people re-discover their creative talents and passions and apply them at work. And, given I’m an Ideas guy, I end up using Ideas as the touchstone to help them rediscover their talents to innovate…ideas. Its a circular conumdrum that makes sense in the verbal telling but doesn’t translate so well to type.

That said, for the past lets say 5 years I’ve been working up different Ideas about ways to truly help people have Better Ideas. The curiosity is that I’m on the verge of collecting all of these ‘ways’ into a ‘product’ that others can use to help have Better Ideas, because these products will help them become aware of their own creativity, do more with it and collaborate around theirs and others to innovate Better Ideas. I believe in this product, I’ve walked my own talk and created it based on real audience need (and unknown wants), it’s been tested, piloted and developed. I’ve had some of the UK’s finest help me think, craft and execute. And we’re on the verge of signing a real client who see’s the smarts, has the conscious need and strategic foresight to make bold steps into this space - and is passionate about making it work.

Thats taken a long paragraph to describe and you still may not know what the hell I’m talking about - which brings me to my point. I’ve funded this venture to date and will keep funding it because it’s such a big opportunity, it’s an innovate solution and it could blow up big whilst truly delivering value - a project worth doing on all accounts. However, I need to connect and collaborate ongoing with smart people and organistions around the project to realise it’s potential.

And so to Innovate UK - otherwise known as Technology Strategy Board. Here’s the rub. They have currently got a competition to ‘give-away’ £18milion to start ups that are working in the digital innovation space to help drive innovation capabilities across Britain.

My project fits the bill - no question. I’ve run it by a few authoritative persons and they 100% agree.

Like lotto tho - you gotta be in to win. What that requires is for me to down tools, spend a quantity of quality time to fill in pages of documentation - not my best of skills lets be honest - and post it in blind i.e. no other supporting materials, no presentation, no mockups, pilots, links, images, testimonials etc etc ec bloody cetera.

I don’t have the time to stop. doing. so that I can apply for ‘free’ govt cash to help with this project that will help others get innovating. Maybe I should look at my priorities - but innovation in business is my business, I gotta keep innovating to stay in the innovating business - so who has the time to stop doing that to fill in a load of forms when a ‘dragons style’ 5 mins would explain all.

This competition opportunity will go begging because I’m furiously working to stay smart and keep doing. Needs must.

Maybe it’s meant to be this way. I don’t mind - I really don’t. I’m excited as all hell and am going the extra miles because I’m so pumped.

Maybe in a bit I’ll pitch the TSB to see if I can’t help tart up how they facilitate their competition offers - and use Wayne to show them how…

Epic timing today no matter the market fuss about iPhone 4 supplies - jumped on the old dutchy and cycled a sweaty lovely sunny ride down the High Street in hunt of the O2 store. I thought I’d have to put my name down for the jump from 3G to 4.0 (didn’t bother with the 3GS, trying to do my bit for skinny living). But no - lined up, was greeted by an amazingly efficient calm O2 service guy (team) who said they had stock.

Upgrading or even just signing up to a new mobile contract is no speedy matter - so I was fully prep’d for a long wait.

And the line grew longer.

So let me paint the scenario - they’ve got 3-4 stations to actually serve customers 1:1 to do the sign up and talk thru the tariffs - and lets face it, there’s hundreds of them so for most people it does take someone in store walking through what they actually mean (cannot someone invent consumer friendly language to translate tariff booklets!!! we’ll do it!). As I sat there waiting, and then being served, and then waiting again because of some issues (always issues), the line grew longer and the wait longer obviously.

Anyway - to the reason for this post. The service staff of 4 were doing an amazing job - people slightly irate waiting, or asking for the translation - which the team must be repeating to EVERY person (insight?) - the phone is going off non.bloody.stop. People are coming in HOT, queuing, waiting, standing, complaining - and still the phone rings. I asked the guy why the phone didn’t divert to the customer service centre - he said the rule was that the instore phone was supposed to be answered within 6 rings!! yeah right O2 instore ‘in-the-HQ’ bossperson. I have nothing but praise for their service and handling a stressful day of which I only played a small customer part. And to think it’s still going on for them now some 5 hours later. Apparently I get sent a text once this phone is activated asking what I thought of the service - trust me, that team gets gold medals from me.

The O2 brand line is ‘we’re better, connected’ - which I have to say is cool, I’ve been with O2 for years and they’re brilliant. However, if we think of the branded service delivery, the cultural representation of O2 by their people instore, they’re doing amazing things in the face of huge demand completely under staffed.

02, your people would be even better, better resourced.

And forgive me fro being so bold, you should ask the front of line staff for their Ideas on improving things - you’d be pleasantly surprised.

O2 we’re better, connected

This in from the Guardian this morning:

When we talk about newspapers, we talk about them being critical for informing the public; we never say they’re critical for informing their customers. We assume that the value of the news ramifies outwards from the readership to society as a whole. OK, I buy that. But what Murdoch is signing up to do is to prevent that value from escaping. He wants to only inform his customers, he doesn’t want his stories to be shared and circulated widely. In fact, his ability to charge for the paywall is going to come down to his ability to lock the public out of the conversation convened by the Times.”

It’s the social ‘guru’ Mr Clay Shirky speaking about all things web and the latest Timely moves by Mr Murdoch. What’s really interesting re his observations about news ramifying out wider to society is that it’s similar to some difficult thoughts we’ve been having around the ‘value’ of music and it’s ability to sound track our cultural events.

Think back thru every major cultural event, either in the wider society or in our own ‘cultural’ lives - there’s always a soundtrack that helps anchor the event, adding the sensorial, emotional resonance to our memories of them. Music matters, and in profoundly important ways.

This leads to all kinds of esoteric chat about how those soundtracks ‘get’ created, chosen, selected and embedded in the DNA of these collective moments. More interesting, what would happen if we didn’t have them? Who would be the less for it - we the target audiences? Or would it be the industry who helped shape and create the music in the 1st place, and is now using our innovative smarts to help connect it with the right target audiences - would it be them who suffered?

If you think deeply around this - and we have and might now start speaking a bit more given our work with our Sony client has come to an end - there is a relationship between music producers and music audiences that goes unrecognised by both. We the punters want great music, we want to know when it’s out, who it’s by and how can we get it - and why we should! But we don’t want to pay over the odds for what we could get at any time, with a bit of effort - for free.

Yes the music industry will be watching closely to see how Mr Murdoch goes with his pay walls - but there’s a bigger conversation to be had between the Industry and it’s audiences about the value of music beyond the cover price.

After all, would all our great moments have been so great without the music? Or more worrying for those who argue for the demise of the Labels and the rise of the crowds,  imagine those moments with shite music!!!

More to come on this for sure..

Well it’s been a long shall we say pregnancy (altho want to be careful about carrying that metaphor too far!) but finally our very own Wayne is here and in the ‘beta’ world. Who would have thought a proposed 4 month build would take a year - but there you go, take that for your naivety in all things webby software world.

Of course this will mean nothing to our 4 blog readers - because even if you did click thru to meet Wayne you won’t be able to get in because it’s invites only. That said, if you are keen please email ‘wayne@usingwayne.com’ and am sure we can sort you out for a ‘meet and greet’.

For the rest of the innovating world, we give our silent promise that the name Wayne will soon be manifest  above any and all World Cup footballing frustration to the dizzying heights of Creative Mastery…

ps - many thanks to the Nike commercial for metaphorically writing our Waynes future (we like to think the positive on bended royal knee version!!)

Norville Barnes, originally from Muncie, Indiana but arrives in New York City as the inventor of the Hula Hoop - so goes the film The Hudsucker Proxy in which Norville uttered those simple words when ‘pitching’ his idea (which consisted of a round circle sketched on a note, him holding this piece of paper out in front and stating confidently ‘you know…for Kids’). Well, we ourselves are off to NYNY next week to ‘pitch’ one of our IndustryApproved Ideas and it is certainly - well, you know…for Kids. It’s an exciting idea, an app for iPhones and iPads that translates our innovative expertise for the youngest audience in fun, imaginative ways. Could be really cool - and starts us down a new productive path. You know…for others…

When Fast Company start reporting IBM studies that say ‘For CEOs, creativity is now the most important leadership quality for success in business’ then it just might be that our IndustryApproved time has come!! Which means we have to put our ‘coding procrastination’ aside and unofficially launch our resident expert W. to the world (ok, maybe not the world - lets say our ‘habitat’ which is pretty much West London!!). Standby people…the name Wayne will soon be up in the bright lights

We’ve been talking to lots of people lately about the polarity of innovation; about the tension between the 2 poles of ‘art’ and ’science’ - or as we say ‘creativity’ and ‘discipline’ - that is the ‘creating’ and ‘making happen’ of any decent idea.

Polarity shows up everywhere tho - and none more so than all things zeros and ones.  With the rise of the capital P in iPad Publishing so we’re also seeing the polar opposite rise in the use of newsprint as a publishing format. It’s the new old school - and it’s set to be v v cool. Howies are on it - this is their latest Spring catalogue in newsprint. And we’ve just signed up to the beta test of the ‘newspaper club’.

Stay tuned - we’re going analogue very soon. Brilliant.

so tomorrow is finally really tomorrow - another hotly anticipated launch of Apple’s latest game changing device. Inspired by a project last week and the recent work we’ve been doing with Random House publishing, it seems that the world of ‘entertainment’ is about ready to explode - and whether it’s the fabled iSlate or some other e-reading digitally loaded multimediarised connected handheld jutebox portal, the whole ‘verb’ of discovering, purchasing, enjoying and sharing entertaining content is transforming. Which got me thinking about ‘apps’ for the home. Imagine turning on the flatscreen and instead of a sky menu or tv show, you had a window full of ‘apps’ much like the iphone screen - and each was the portal through to either stored, cloud based or stream accessed on call personally selected entertaining content - I’d buy that right now - that truly would be you and me in control. The messaging challenge would then simply be exactly as it is now; how do I know it’s out, who is recommending I watch/listen/read/view it and thru which ‘app’ should I go get it. Actually it’s not the only challenge - I know ‘consumers’ would go for this kinda thing, we’ve been out there all December taking to people about these kinds of thing - it’s the gate keepers of the content that have to get on board; the production houses, the Labels, the studios etc.  Maybe finally this new iPad thingy really will change the game again.

I am absolutely convinced tha tall this green guilting does absolutely nothing to help the urgent need for us to get changing our carbon consuming ways. Business need to innovate new ideas to help us, in fact more than just help they need to make it easy, and they need to make sense - exactly the kind of ideas that the crew at Kenwood are getting their heads around. Check out there new energy sense kettle we had delivered. We’d been using a gas hob kettle for ages, cos we like the old worldyness of it. But having read about gas supplies over the winter etc it became clear that using gas to boil the kettle must be v v inefficient use of resources. And so to John Lewis and Kenwood’s new energy sense kettle. My rationale goes like this - we want to be able to make lovely cuppas at home, and that takes energy. And that energy is delivered via a plug. So the main control we have over power use, and trying to be more efficient, is what we plug into. So here’s to you Mr Kenwood, a kettle that helps us use up to 35% less energy. Brilliant. Others makers of plugged in things take note - this. is. the. way. forward.

Last week I helped Sony Music craft a pending fresh release from the 1 time genius that was Jimmi Hendrix. Without diving into the creative details, one thing it inspired in me was the nature of ‘rebellion’ or more specifically ‘cultural rebellion’. You might recall that Jimmi Hendirx is kinda synonymous with the 60’s and specially that period of turmoil around 68′ and 69′ with the anti war period etc - see any clip of Vietnam and chances are it’s soundtracked by a Hendrix guitar riff. That’s not to say Hendrix was a rebel, he was just doing his virtuoso thing. But his fans, the times, the cultural mood was one of rebellion and it seems they chose Hendrix music as part of their playlist. Which got me thinking about ‘today’ - what or who is a rebel today? And what are they rebelling against? And how are they doing it? What is todays modern expression of that kind of rebellion? It’s an intriguing question that actually doesn’t have a lot of answers or icons…which is either slightly depressing or a massive creative opportunity. Hmmmm.