What Business can Learn from Avatar
Over the last couple of days the Avatar movie has broken a Billion dollars in sales just 3 weeks after its release. I saw Avatar a couple of nights ago and was blown away. While I see a few people criticising aspects of the movie, it is difficult to deny the power of the totally immersive entertainment experience [...]
When Lighting your House is Unexpected
In this blog we have looked at various unexpected ideas, and often these are big ideas or innovations from organisations, such as electric bikes, worm poop plant food, and plans to mine the moon for rocket fuel. But unexpected ideas may also be things you and I take for granted – like lighting and water. [...]
I Yike the Yike Bike
I have been fascinated by the New Zealand designed and developed Yike Bike, which has been profiled on New Zealand TV3 recently, and has also been launched at the Germany Eurobike Show this last week. The Yike Bike is an electric bike, that can be collapsed and carried away in a carry bag. With a [...]
FREE
Author of The Long Tail and Editor of Wired Magazine Chris Anderson says that every economy that becomes digital eventually becomes free. The technologies that underlie the web are becoming so cheap that the cost of the provision of digital services effectively becomes free. We already use services such as Gmail and Google Search for [...]
Willy Wonka Differentiation
This blog is about business differentiation, but not just small points of differentiation – I’m interested in differentiation that is unexpected. Differentiation that re-defines the game, violates expectations, and grabs attention. We have already seen some great examples of this – Terracycle who built a business on worm poop and waste, Moller who is working [...]
Hottest Curry in the World
A few years while living and working in London I was fortunate enough to attend a team lunch at The Cinnamon Club, an upmarket Indian restaurant in Westminster. At the time the restaurant was (and may still be) part owned by Sir Michael Caine. I was intrigued to find that this same restaurant recently received media [...]
Little Miss Matched Socks
If you follow the marketing legend Seth Godin you will be familiar with the company Little Miss Matched, which started off by selling sets of three mismatched colourful socks to girls. The company decided to take advantage of the issue that one sock in a pair always gets lost, so why not sell socks that [...]
The Pursuit of Life and Rocket Fuel on Two Moons
“There was a time when people did bold things to open new frontiers. We have collectively forgotten that. Now we are at a time when boldness is required again.” Bill Stone, 2007 Unexpected ideas come from inspired leaders driven to achieve the unachievable. Bill Stone is one of those leaders. Stone has a fascinating background. [...]
Start with an Unexpected Business or Product
Unexpected messages follow naturally from an unexpected business or product. It is difficult to deliver an authentic unexpected message if your business and products are undifferentiated. If you want to deliver messages that have real impact and grab attention, maybe the best place to start is thinking about how you can make your business or [...]
TerraCycle – A Business Built on Waste and Worm Poop
TerraCycle is an eco-capitalism business that makes all of its products entirely from waste. Their unexpected business model and products have generated massive media attention, creating a strong profile and following for their ground-breaking business. Their founding product was TerraCycle Plant Food. TerraCycle is paid to take waste product, which they feed to worms, and [...]