Innovation in Practice Blog
The LAB: Innovating the Lego with S.I.T. (June 2010)
I just had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Seren Lund present at the PharmaBrand Summit in Monaco. He is the Senior Marketing Director of Product and Marketing Development at the Lego Group. He told the amazing story about how Lego markets their product and leverages the power of their user community to create innovation and growth. It prompted me to search the blogosphere for other stories about Lego, and I can see that the company is quite popular. Blogging Innovation, Endless Innovation, Stefan Lindgard, and various others have written useful blog posts about Lego..
Rather than talk about Lego and its innovation, I decided to apply the corporate innovation method, S.I.T., to the basic Lego product – the 2×6 brick. I created these new embodiments during the two hour break following Seren’s presentation. With a bit of research, I learned there are some 24,000 SKU’s. While I have some general knowledge about the product (having purchased it for my son), I must admit I do not know a great deal. So it would not surprise me to find that I created ideas that already exist.
Brand Man
The role of brand manager may be the most difficult yet rewarding of all marketing jobs. It defines much of what marketing is about. The brand manager is multifaceted and works at several levels in a company. Duties are varied and challenging. Brand managers see the product being created and manage through all of the product’s journey. Brand manager is the most important person to have around when a new product is being created or even when an old product needs to be re-launched.
How has the role changed over the years, and what is the role’s impact on new product or service innovation? Here is the first job description for a brand manager. It’s from an internal memo dated May 13, 1931 that I got it from Ed Rider, head archivist at P&G’s Heritage Center, a corporate museum that documents the history of the company and its brands. It is titled, “Brand Man:”
Academic Focus: City University London
A survey from IBM’s Institute for Business Value shows that CEOs value one leadership competency above all others – creativity. It is therefore timely that the City University London formed its Centre for Creativity with a goal of becoming the UK leader in the teaching, research and transfer of creativity in professional practice, ranging from informatics and engineering to business and the arts. City is already a world-class centre of applied creativity research through activities in informatics, business, psychology, music and the arts. To achieve this objective it aims to achieve the following 3 sub-objectives:
The Voice of Serendipity
Many products are invented accidentally. Serendipity led to the microwave oven, corn flakes, Teflon®, penicillin, fireworks, Viagra®, chocolate chip cookies, and the most famous of all accidents…the Post-it® note. The problem with serendipity is it’s not predictable. It is not an innovation method one would count on for corporate growth. But there is value in serendipity if you can unlock its hidden secrets. How?
Discover Where Creativity and Innovation Live.
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