Hasta La Ideas

Sorry, the website seems to have had some problems loading due to the Creative Connection flickr slideshows I had embedded previously. I’ve since removed them, so please clear your cache if you’re still having difficulties. There’s so much I could recap about The Creative Connection—and would have loved to do so earlier—but the week passed since I got home has been gruelling! The work never seems to end; I spent many many days getting the mailing data for UPPERCASE #11 ready to go. I really do need to hire some help!

Tomorrow, Tuesday Sept. 27th, Core77 welcomes Oved Valadez, David Thorpe and Tom Lakovic of INDUSTRY for our bi-weekly creative speaker series: The Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club hosted at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland, OR. INDUSTRY is a collective of creators, designers, thinkers and makers in Portland, Oregon that have joined together to form a new design and innovation company. Their talk is entitled “A Change In Trade: Why the Linear and Prescriptive Innovation Process is No Longer Relevant in a Digital World.”

In anticipation of tomorrow night’s presentation, we came up with a few queries for our speakers to get an insight in to their work.

Hand-Eye Supply: In your talk you will be discussing a “Change In Trade”—shifting strategies in the design process to adapt. What are the major catalysts behind these changes? Are they specific to design or does it impact across all trades?

INDUSTRY: During the Industrial Revolution, the way things were designed and made went through a radical shift. It defined a new meaning for the word “industry.” We believe that the world is experiencing another one of those major shifts, from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age and beyond. We have never been this globally connected. There has never been this much transparency. The pace of change has never been this rapid.

These larger cultural and technological trends have brought about an idea revolution. We are in a time that as a brand (new or old) you need to innovate or break. The new competition are kids creating “apps” in their basements. New, free experiences are being created for consumers instead of Super Bowl ads. Companies are launching products and then quickly add or remove features based on consumer feedback.

(more…)

Leading a green, healthy lifestyle can be an expensive proposition, as the attendant products always seem to cost more than their less healthful counterparts. Plus there’s always that fear that a manufacturer is slapping “green” on the label of a product unworthy of the title. So before we can see mass uptake, we’ll need to see innovation not only in the design of those products, but innovative business services from companies that will get them into your house.

Blissmo is one such service, acting like something of a Groupon-meets-Netflix for green products. The idea is that the company digs through the glut of organic and eco-friendly products on the market, peels back the layer of “green washing” to find out which have legit credentials, then ships a selection of them to you each month in a Blissmobox. Because they negotiate bulk discounts with the suppliers, Blissmo can knock about 33% of the cost off, meaning your $19 monthly fee nets you roughly $30 worth of product.

Does it work well? Too early to tell, as the Blissmobox service just launched a few months ago. But we like the imaginative approach, and hope it either succeeds on its own merits or helps to spark other creative business models that enable consumers—and suppliers—to see a little green.

Here’s an interview with Blissmo founder Sundeep Ahuja on the company’s approach:

(more…)