Instantly Obsolete

There is an intern for just about anything. Really?

Shop the InternStore—A new project from Hyper Island students.

Once again, reality is stranger than fiction.

Above is a nice wrap up of some of the more interesting business models that launched in the digital landscape last year. Some, like Groupon and Spotify have been widely discussed. But, there are also some lesser-known models that have really sparked our collective imagination.

For instance, PayWithaTweet, is a great example of how people can leverage their amassed social networks in new ways – in fact, I tweeted to buy a digital book earlier this year. While I can’t recall much about the downloaded document, I did find the behavior quite satisfying. And, Quirky is really pushing the boundaries of co-creation and shaking up the way a product might come to market.

My personal favorite the new platform for funding creative ideas – Kickstarter. While I actually haven’t funded any projects yet, I do really enjoy perusing the wonderful and sometimes bizarre creative tangents that people nerd out on. My current idea crush is on the “Searchable Rap Almanac”.

And, thanks to the Board of Innovation for the SlideShare. On a side note, they produce a cute “Business Model Kit” that allows teams to quickly visualize and explore new business constructs. You should check it out, if you’re the serial entrepreneur type.

Only in New York.

On Wednesday night I hopped out of a cab on 10th Avenue and passed through a series of traffic barricades and found myself among a massive throng of people packed onto Little West 12th Street. Everyone was staring up at the Southern facing side of the The Standard Hotel in the Manhattan’s burgeoning Meatpacking District.

Symphonic dance music blared, as pulsing colors illumined 170 rooms of the hotel. The rooms were occupied with over 60 dancers, executing a carefully choreographed fashion show to visual program designed by Daft Punk’s lighting designers.

My jaw dropped, and this sometime jaded marketer joined the masses, giggling with delight at the awe-inspiring public event for the retail giant, Target.

Conceived by the crew at Mother New York, the event was streamed live (and lives on) at a custom Facebook app created for the event. Note: the show begins a little over half way into the videos.

Later that evening, as I marveled the beauty of the Highline Elevated Park from The Standard’s roof top bar, I couldn’t stop thinking about one of the best branded events I’d ever witnessed.

Hats off.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a little while now, so perhaps you’ve already heard about OpenIDEO, the latest venture from the global design innovation firm, IDEO.

It’s a compelling and ambitious endeavor, in which IDEO uses their own design process, and deep network, to facilitate crowdsourced solutions for some of the most pressing issues facing our world.

The platform is built around sponsored challenges (or “big questions”) for which participants (any and all “creative thinkers”) can post inspirational material to spur thinking and discussion.

From there it moves into a concepting phase, where participates can collaborate and build on the ideas of others (a key tenet in IDEO). Then of course the community evaluates the ideas and a winner emerges. That winning idea is then available for development by the challenge’s sponsor.

I really appreciate the altruistic sentiments, and I certainly hope OpenIDEO is a huge success.

One of the more experimental, and questionable, aspects of the program is the introduction of the Design Quotient (or “DQ”) rating for individual contributors. The idea is that you build up your DQ rating based on the amount of input across the development process. This then can then be shared out to social networks as a badge of honor, or cultural capital.

Genius? Contrived? Or both?

I don’t have much time for TV these days. But, I do have a few shows I like to keep tabs on. One of those, somewhat predictably, is ‘Mad Men’.

Like many I record the show and watch it when convenient. And, like the some 50-70% of DVR owners, I happily speed through the commercial blocks searching for the first signs of my program and quickly hit play.

A few days ago, while watching the second episode of Med Men I inadvertently hit play on the Dove advertisement above, thinking my program had resumed.

While I quickly realized it was an ad (or branded vignette), I watched it through and smiled at the cunning.

Indeed, a crafty team at Mindshare and Ogilvy had busted my ad-skipping behavior with a simple, yet powerful idea – create custom branded content that looks like the content the audience is currently watching.

Yes, you could call it a bit “tricky” or deceptive, but it’s also novel and well done. I’d have to guess pretty darn effective too. It got me – and frankly, I was far more more impressed then annoyed by it. I might even stop again and watch the next “episode”.

Read about the details on the intuitive in this NYT article.

When I was a kid, I really only wanted three things from the future — a videophone, a personal jet pack and a home teleportation device. Within a week (or so) I should have the first item checked off my list.

As I got older, my dreams for the future shifted and took a more outward focus, specifically, to the health of the planet and the people that inhabit it. My hope has been that with a desire, determination and technological advancements we might solve some of the world’s toughest issues.

That’s why I am particularly proud of Odopod’s latest site for Tesla Motors. The site launched yesterday, just days after the company’s IPO, and in my estimation is a bold step forward for a car company that can help alter the destructive trajectory established by our current dependence on fossil fuels.

It’s early days for the fledgeling automaker and we all know there’s still a lot to do in order to persuade consumers, Wall Street and big business to buy into their dream. But this first step has me feeling very optimistic.

Fig. 1 – A dream come true
Fig. 2 – A dream to come
Fig. 3 – Perhaps a dream deferred