How To Avoid Commoditization - Scott Dadich on Designing Wired Magazine

Today Lipitor the world's best selling drug will become generic. Sadly, so will most businesses. That is called commoditization. Commoditization is ordinarily mind numbing despite well intentioned. In a business it is when not enough people salivate for your product; when customers go elsewhere. Commoditization is a greater scourge than the economy. Avoiding it can be the sought after accelerator out of the Great Recession. Below Scott Dadich of Wired Magazine provides a simple way to meangifully be distinctlybetter. Eh - Let's just call this what it is. Hmmm. How about innovating? That'll work. Talk to us about our 28 day program to strengthen your innovation capabilities to drive growth.  

 

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Consulting, Speaking & Coaching. Driving Growth through Innovation  

Innothink Group is a strategic management and innovation consultancy. Where many consulting firms are reluctant to bear risks or tie their rewards to project outcomes, we decided to build a better model. We align our success with yours. We’re outcome obsessed, outcome paid, putting over a third of our fees at risk subject o hitting predetermined milestones. More than a guarantee we wanted from the outset to create true partnerships. 

For speaking, coaching or consulting inquiries contact: 

CEO Jim Woods

+1 719- 649-4118

For Some of the World’s Poor, Hope Comes Via Design and Innovation

It is late. About 12:10 in Colorado Springs. I am fascinated by the social and business ramifications associated with Mike Kimmelman's New York Times story on design and technology through "Why didn't someone think of this before" solutions. The photos below provide a multitude of implicit ways to better the world locally. Indeed Kimmelman’s article is awe inspiring not from the standpoint of observation but transformative participation. Which is the point. 

Below a renovated public walkway, along the canal in Bangkok, where residents are helping to design cleaner places to live. With families in flimsy homes on stilts above polluted waters, architects from nearby Sripatum University were enlisted to devise row houses, detached houses and semidetached houses, along the lines of what residents said they wanted.

via nytimes.com

In the photo above the solution is absolutely simple. They have enriched a community. That enriches familes. Do you think the value of the improvements have been achieved? 

A community cooker is fueled by refuse that residents collect in return for time using the oven.

A few solutions:

1. a filtered drinking straw that prevents the spread of typhoid and cholera
2. a bamboo treadle pump that helps poor farmers in Cambodia and India extract groundwater during the dry seasons
3. The Q Drum, a doughnut-shaped plastic container, easily rolled, even long distances by children, which is used to transport up to 13 gallons of water.  I suggest reading this article in entirety via New York Times.

 Consulting, Speaking & Coaching. Driving Growth through Innovation  

Innothink Group is a strategic management and innovation consultancy. Where many consulting firms are reluctant to bear risks or tie their rewards to project outcomes, we decided to build a better model. We align our success with yours. We’re outcome obsessed, outcome paid, putting over a third of our fees at risk subject o hitting predetermined milestones. More than a guarantee we wanted from the outset to create true partnerships. 

For speaking, coaching or consulting inquiries contact: 

CEO Jim Woods

+1 719- 649-4118

Bordeaux citizens design bike for city-wide rental scheme

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The City of Bordeaux has crowdsourced the design of its Bike of the Future for its public bike rental system.

3rd April 2012 in Government, Transportation.

We’ve seen the crowds chipping in to design everything from credit cards to new fashion collections, and we’ve seen a number of city-based bike rental schemes. Combing elements from all of these, The City of Bordeauxrecently asked its citizens to design the Bike of the Future for its public bike rental system.

The City asked residents to submit their ideas for a new bike design through the official City of Bordeaux je participe micro-site, with more than 300 respondents taking part. Designer Philippe Starck was then brought in to translate the numerous suggestions into a single concept. The final design, unveiled at the second Cyclab event in Bordeaux in February, is a silver and yellow bike-scooter, with a foot panel placed in front of the pedals to enable users to safely push start the machine. Peugeot has now been contracted to put the bikes into production before they become part of a city-wide rental scheme.

The aim of the project was to give citizens an input into a service they will be using themselves, with the final bike reflecting their concerns over ease-of-use and safety. Government departments elsewhere: could crowdsourcing ideas from local residents improve your services?

Speaking 

As the CEO and founder of InnoThink Group, Jim can help your organization enhance the strategic innovation and competitiveness of your business policy and strategy, with an emphasis on increasing top line growth. 

 If you’re interested in having Jim speak at your next event, simply use this form to send us your details and speaking requirements, and we’ll be in touch shortly. Or you may call us at 719-649-4118. 

via springwise.com