Influx

There’s much talk around the web today about a printer that’s been developed by a London consulting company called-BERG. Here’s the film. Hello Little Printer, available 2012 from BERG on Vimeo. Here’s what’s important… 1. Printers are the most boring things...

Bain makes a great observation in its new report- The Great Eight- Trillion Dollar Growth Trends to 2020- that there’s an opportunity to make already good things, even better. It’s a reflection of the increasing wealth of the marketplace and the desire for these consumers to have fresh...

It’s fast becoming a fact that there’s a generation gap when it comes to ideas of business and business process. Quite simply, the internet has changed the rules and no presents a massive ocean of disruptive opportunity to anyone with the imagination and vision to capture it. The non-internet...

Kickstarter just released an amazing set of data about its performance: 1. In  just two years, it’s funded 10,000 projects 2. Over 6,000 of those projects have been in the worlds of music and film/video 3. It’s raised over $75 million 4. The number of backers totals 790,000+ The brand...

There's been lots of work done in the area of human herd behavior, but recently some research was conducted at Oxford University to examine the behavior around the download of Facebook applications. What the research discovered was fascinating; for herd behavior to "kick in", applications need to...

Pepsi must have dozens of agencies working on its behalf to bring it new ideas on a regular basis, but it appears the brand isn't content relying on these guys for its tech ideas, so it's created its own forum for technologists to bring their ideas directly to the brand. The PepsiCo 10 is a two-day...

Here's a brilliant talk from author Matt Ridley at TED Oxford about the power of collaboration and exchange to create ideas.Matt suggests that recent human progress is down to the combination of multiple ideas or ideas having sex using the biological metaphor. Matt highlights the significant shift...

The Wired UK article on the battle between Four Square and Gowalla makes for a fascinating read. What's especially interesting is the career path that Four Square founder, Dennis Crowley took after graduation. After graduating in communication from Syracuse University in 1999, he wanted to work in...

There's a great slide in a presentation by Nick Emmel, Planning Director of Dare, that nicely sums up the scale of change we are talking about in the world of communication. While this might not be the whole story, it's a big part of it.Posted by Ed Cotton

Back in March, Starbucks asked their customers for ideas, it created a website and the ideas have been been flooding in, exceeding the expectations of the company. It makes me thing that every brand should be doing this, why not?Here are the top 20 ideas that are being considered. It's a great list...

I just quickly pulled together a deck that highlights some interesting quotes from experts, observers and the media in general on a variety of topics including; advertising, China, economy, environment, food, media/technology, etc. It's a smorgasboard of smart thinking that sums up the year rather...

Sometimes ideas are so powerful and iconic, that the power drowns out questions about effectiveness. A great example is the CCTV camera in London. Cameras are literally everywhere and appear to provide citizens with greater security. However, if you dig a little deeper, you discover the CCTVs don't...

The first day at the AAAAs Account Planning conference in San Diego started with a bang, straight out of the gate, Sir Ken Robinson set the stage with an inspiring address about the human resource crisis and suggested building and nurturing creative cultures as the only way out. Sir Ken suggested,...

Business Week recently conducted a survey amongst senior executives on the topic of innovation. One of the questions struck Influx as being especially interesting; the obstacles to return on investment for innovation. The barriers aren’t exactly what you expect them to be, for...

Everyone these days is talking about viral marketing and memes, but it's often a tough concept to grasp, it appears so intangible. So here's a great real world example for you. Improv Everywhere are a NYC performance group who are all about doing great stunts (100s of blue shirts invade Best Buys,...