Dutch designer Greetje van Tiem (Graduate Design Academy Eindhoven) has an intriguing idea.
Turning old newspapers into yarn that can be woven into carpets, curtains and upholstery. A great example of maximising value!
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Now is your chance! If you want to live the “O.C” lifestyle but don’t have the O.C. bucks, here’s your chance.
Despite its glamorous reputation as the place where great wealth meets great tans, Orange County, California, is ground zero for the housing bust.
Today there are more than 3.300 foreclosures in the area which makes it a great bargain, especially for Europeans with the weak US dollar. BusinessWeek listed the most expensive foreclosed properties coming to auction here. For a detailed report on The Other Orange Country you can follow this link.
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Onitsuka Tiger, the Japanese sports brand, launched a sneaker vending machine on Carnaby Street today. Sneaker vending isn’t entirely new-it’s been done in Japan, off course, by Reebok. Onitsuka Tiger, on the other hand, put some effort into custom-building their machine, which can sell 24 pairs of shoes at a time, in 6 sizes.
Following its London debut, the machine will travel across the UK to bring convenience-buying to the rest of Britain. Fun bit of brand promotion; “What, these shoes? I just got them from a vending machine down the street.” Nevertheless, other unconventional vending machines have been reported in the past such as machines that vend umbrellas and hair straighteners.
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When I first saw that Barack Obama “followed” more than 23.000 people’s Twitters and Hillary Clinton followed 0, I thought it was simply bad PR on Hillary’s part. Like Obama, she probably should pretend she’s listening to all those people, even though neither has the time for it.
Now I was left wondering if Obama’s thousands followers could be valuable data? Perhaps analytics companies could rake through those tweets and give the candidates charts about shifting attitudes and responses to speeches. Costly? Not much in comparison to TV ads at state television I assume. Is it worth it for candidates to mine Twitter?
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I highly recommend Gary Hamel’s latest book: The Future of Management.
In any field of human endeavour you ultimately reach a point where you can’t solve the new problems using the old principles. Hamel thinks we’ve reached that point in the evolution of management. When you go back to the discipline upon which our modern companies are built: standardisation, specialisation, hierarchy, and so on, you realise that those are not bad principles but are inadequate for the challenges that lie ahead.
Management and organisational innovation often lags far behind technological innovation. Right now, your company has 21st-century, internet-enabled business processes, mid-20th-century management processes, all built atop 19th century management principles. Without a transformation in our management DNA in line with principles I outlined in chapter 8, the power of the web to transform the work of management will go unexploited (Hamel, 2007).
Below you can find a video where Hamel comments on his latest book.
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“The future belongs to those who give the next generation reasons to hope.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
(found on the back of a Daimler Sustainability report)
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Happy 50th Anniversary for LEGO! Hearing or reading the name LEGO always brings up good memories and puts a smile on my face! During my childhood LEGO was my favourite toy! I could literally play all day with it! Yesterday was the official 50th anniversary of LEGO.
From a business perspective LEGO is a text-book example of a company that successfully transformed itself for the 21st century. Late 90s LEGO seemed to have had its best time. However it managed to blend in and fully adapt internet in its business model. Resulting in the fact that you now can first build your very own artwork online and have it delivered at your house in the famous interlocking bricks!
Furthermore, if you do a really good work in making your own LEGO artwork it can even be put in mass production by LEGO and put up in stores worldwide. LEGO gives you royalties of 5%, which in turn can make you a good living. Building and ordering LEGO bricks online now accounts for 10% of sales. So still loads of potential especially if you take in account the long tail. Building and ordering your very own LEGO artwork online is basically an unlimited supply of LEGO artwork variety.
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What’s on the agenda for this week. Last week was dominated by macroeconomic news and off-course large financials recording their 2007 Q4 earnings. This will continue with over 100 S&P500 companies (amongst others Microsoft, Apple, General Motors, Ford, DuPont en Bank of America) recording their annual and/or 2007Q4 results but there is more in store this week and from another front namely international political economic news:
EU on Green: The European Commission unveils a comprehensive energy policy on Wednesday January 23rd in an effort to limit carbon emissions, increase energy security and shield economies from volatile fuel prices. It will include targets to reduce greenhouse gases, beefed up carbon trading and incentives for clean coal, biofuels, renewables and other sorts of greenery. Background articles here (The Economist) and here (IHT).
The World Economic Forum: Davos, will again welcome the World Economic Forum for its 38th annual meeting. It officially focuses on collaborative innovation, but the hottest topics behind the scenes will more likely focus around the credit crunch and the prospects for the world economy. On Thursday there will be the most prominent public meeting of the forum with ECB-president Jean-Claude Trichet, American minister of Finance Henry Paulson and leaders of leading American merchant banks. They will address the threat of any wider impact and implications of the credit crunch. Digital footage can be found here.
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2007 has been an eventful year for me with lots of “grand” turning points in my life! Some of the highlights are that I graduated for my Master’s which implies that I am not a student any more after many incredible years! Started with my first job and had wonderful encounters during my holiday in South-America! In addition my family and friends are by and large well and happy! What more can I wish right?
I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and I wish you a kick-ass’ingly amazing, loving, healthy and inspiring 2008. May your dreams come true in the new year, may the world be a little bit better at the end of 2008, may you have lots of joy and happiness in your life.
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” (Aesop)
“There are two ways to lead your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” (Einstein)
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- What the next big thing will be?
- What I was doing exactly a year ago?
- What will happen if China stumbles? Alright, Daniel Altman was so kind to answer my question here?
- Why “innocent drinks” are so little and overpriced but so damn tasty?
- Why there is still no usage of cameras and other technologies in football matches to rectify the referee decision?
- Why greater flexibility is advised for logos and branding? ooh wait Wolff Olins comes with a solution here and here! Love it!
- Why Wordpress doesn’t let me wrap text around an image easily?
- Why I didn’t come up with the idea for Facebook?
- On the Facebook note, would it be better for a company/charity to have a profile on Facebook, or a group? I think my preference now goes out to a profile. Makes it easier to follow what they do, since it’ll show up on the feeds on my Facebook homepage. I still haven’t figured out how (if) to get the changes on my groups on my RSS feeds.
- Why brand management or advertisement agencies always have the coolest and most innovate website designs? Please check out the new Wolff Olins site. Lovely!
- How International Herald Tribune (IHT) can always pull it off to be higher ahead of the curve with respect to usability of its webpage? I was quite some time I visited the webpage but I think the current layout is quite 2.0! E.g. you can listen to each news article, write a comment, and even translate the text. Furthermore, the layout is very comfortable, dynamic, and interactive, and still clean!
- How cool this new project (the World Beach Project) at the V&A is.
- How interesting it is that Ebay is copying Kiva’s idea at their new website Microplace (source: this article in Businessweek).
- Where my favourite (blue) t-shirt has gone?
- Where I will work and live in three and ten years from now? Asia? Europe?
- Where I will go for my next holiday? USA, Canada, Brazil?
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