Brand Autopsy

Don’t sleep on BusinessWeek’s latest issue about creativity/innovation in business. Sure, Fast Company magazine may have beaten BusinessWeek to the punch with special issues on Creativity (Dec. 2004) and Design (June 2005). However … BW’s issue on creativity and innovation is more focused and has given me more useful ideas than did FC’s special issues.

Some of my key takeaways from BW’s creativity issue include …

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The Methodology of the New Design Strategy:

Observing consumers behave in real situation and in social situations

Prototyping ideas by making useable models

Storytelling the emotional aspects of how a product connects with a consumer

Integrating all the organizational processes needed to make design strategy an integral part of a company’s culture

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Common Innovation Myths:
Innovation is about crazy creativity. Reality says true innovation is more about designing useful products/services rather than creating far-out spectacles that have little to no usefulness.

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Quotes from “Innovation Gurus”:
Yves Behar | fuseproject
“Consumers want products that tell stories, have magic, and inspire.”

Beth Comstock | General Electric
“Creativity is a word we’re wrestling with. It seems a bit undisciplined, a bit chaotic for a place like GE.” Instead, Comstock uses the term “imaginative problem-solving” and has employees ask “what if?”

Larry Keeley | Doblin Group
“The worst mistake [in brainstorming] is to have everyone running off generating a million ideas. The goal is to focus a very few bold ideas that tend to work, as opposed to many, many ideas all over the place that tend to fail.”

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Further Reading:
Business Week’s new Innovation & Design sitelet
(I’m sure some sort of registration/subscription is needed to view BWs Innovation & Design sitelet.)