Have you ever wanted to own your business, be your own boss, or leverage a great idea?

On Wednesday February 28th at 5pm in the Memorial Union 2nd Floor Main Lounge, a panel of UW alumni and student entrepreneurs will discuss how they took their big ideas and made them happen.

Panelists include Corey Capasso and Nate Lustig of ExchangeHut; Kris Dressler of TurboTap; Ben Fiechtner and Troy Vosseller of Sconnie.com; Lauren Frank of Prep Cosmetics; and Matt Sloan and Aaron Yonda of Blame Society Productions and Chad Vader fame.

I will be introducing the moderator, Joe Boucher, to kick off the event. Join me there!

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On my blog (http://innovateyourself.com) I’ve lately been exploring tips for learning to become a better innovator. Gaining innovation knowledge is important. How does one do this, especially with acquiring research grounded knowledge about innovation? During my years of graduate school I had to do a lot of reading. I discovered something important. For most academic books there was also an article that described the same research. For instance, Robert Putnam’s book about social capital “Bowling Alone” started as an article… as do most. It is research first, then an article, then a book that explains the research further. My favorite books I encountered in grad school were those large edited ones that included a number of articles from different authors in the field. These articles tended to sum up their books quite effectively. So, from that point of discovery forward I started to seek to read more articles and less books. The Harvard Business Review is a good example of a source for you to get the necessary information or theory from a number of different books. Each article in their innovation issue for instance represents the significant findings that the various books would explicate. You can become a more interdisciplinary expert on innovation by reading this one issue of many articles than just one of the specific books. I figured that getting to the essence of it 10 different times through reading the 10 different articles in the Harvard Business Review would allow me to innovate myself better than devoting the same amount of time to just one book. Breadth first, then depth for me. Sometimes though through experiencing this breadth of new knowledge you may find a very relevant and intriguing article that you want to go deep on and actually read the book. So my tip is this…seek out the article first, read a bunch of articles, then read a book if the article is very relevant to you.

2 Comments | Creativity & Brainstorming, Managing Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Last September, Top Venture Capitalists had shared their ideas in Business 2.0 magazine and offered funding for 20 innovative business ideas in this article.

By now, I am sure that hundreds of people must have approached them offering to take their money at at attempt to commercialize the ideas they listed. This presents an opportunity where one can brainstorm new ideas that act as peripheral businesses to those businesses about to start and go big! Any ideas of this type? Comment them in.

No Comments | Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, New Concepts & Ideas | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

If you have not yet seen the Virgin America plane, you’ve got to see this video.

It is a fully decked-out Airbus 320. The best part is that a ticket to fly on this plane will cost about the same as tickets cost now. So basically, it is a free upgrade! This innovative plane will blow away the competition and I hope the DOT will let them fly here in the USA. If you would like to fly this airline in the USA, sign the petition here: http://www.letvafly.com/fightthegoodfight.php

I think the airline industry is in desperate need of innovation. We fly on 20 year old planes with no leg room and pay $400 to fly anywhere. Even with this, half the airlines can’t stay in business. On top of that, it seems like half the flights are late or delayed. If you think about it, the airline industry is a mess. We need Virgin America.

No Comments | Gen-Y ideas, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Besides the hundreds of Pro Idea Generators that BrainReactions has, it’s CEO, (me) Anand Chhatpar, is (currently) living proof that students can generate patents and intellectual property by brainstorming for companies.

My 6th patent for Pitney Bowes on Field Programmable RFID was just granted recently. Here’s the story of how this patent actually came about:

I was sitting one fine morning with the Concept Studio team in Pitney Bowes’ Shelton, CT, offices. I was on my second summer internship there. Playing with a pencil in my hand, it dawned on me that its made of lead, which is a metal and should be able to conduct electricity. My mentor Tom Foth encouraged me to test the resistivity of pencil marks using a multimeter. When I did the tests, it was clear that we should be able to create a closed switch in a circuit by simply drawing a thick line with a pencil across the connectors. Conversely, if you erase that line, the switch opens. Beautiful!

Add this discovery to brainstorm among the brilliant Pitney Bowes team of Brian Romansky, Tom Foth, Jeff Pierce and Andrei Obrea, and you’ve got new applications and patents flying out by the minute! The very next day, Brian showed up at the office with an actual working prototype that he built in his home electronics lab and everybody got real excited about the ideas looking at it work like magic!

Looks like 3 years later, PB has the patents on their names. Now, I just wish PB would actually do something with this killer idea.

No Comments | Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Innovation Techniques, Open Innovation, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

The web offers us a vast array of sites to connect with our friends and others with similar interests. The number of options out there (Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, etc.) can be overwhelming. Unfortunately, the ability to connect with friends when you’re on the go is underwhelming. For instance, if you’re logged on to one of the sites at a coffee shop, there’s no way to know if someone in your network is in the vicinity. Also, the ability to discover if someone with similar interests is in the same coffee shop is lacking.

Given these two situations: 1. So many sites for social networking and 2. No way to find out if your friends or possible friends are around, I propose Connecting On the Go (or, as I have just now decided to call it, COGO) to rectify the situation.

Here’s the basic idea. First, the software/site would allow you to enter your info for any networking/friend/profile site. It would also allow you to pick one picture to associate with your combined profile that would come from all the different sites. It would act as a master repository for all your likes/dislikes/interests and friends. It could also conceivably incorporate information from say your mp3 collection or google news profile. The purpose of this master repository is to allow the consumer to connect with friends or people with similar profiles on the go.

The ever so important connecting would happen in the following manner using either a laptop or web-enabled digitial device (pda, mobile phone, etc) and blue tooth. The software associate with the site would occasionally scan other blue tooth devices in the area. When it finds a device with an associated profile of either one of your friends or someone with a profile that matches your criteria (say a single female who likes Van Morrison) you would be notified of the opportunity to connect via a pop-up, text message, etc. with the profile picture of the person, his/her name and the fact that they’re in range. This information could then be used to go chat with a friend in the area, or make a new friend.

I imagine that this service could become extremely useful as more and more folks have web enabled phones. Imagine the utility of being out in a bar or a coffee shop, just drinking or reading and getting a notification that the girl/guy of your dreams is in the bar and getting a picture of that person to guide you right to her/him.

2 Comments | Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Dr. Bruce Barringer of the University of Central Florida’s business school has come up with the 2nd edition of his textbook on entrepreneurship, titled Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New Ventures (2nd Edition)
BrainReactions is featured as a case study in the second chapter of this book under the topic of “Opportunity Identification”, and it is supposed to be read by students in a 120 different colleges and universities! Holy smokes, I’m eager to see the impact of that!

An interesting way that they’re marketing this book to students is by creating podcasts using interviews with the subjects within the book. I’m expecting to see a podcast with my interview in it that I did for this book out very soon. I’ll blog about it when I get its link from the publisher.

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View Made to Stick on FORA.tv

In this video, co-author Chip Heath explains the concept of generating ideas that are ‘made to stick’. There is an interesing question and answer session in the end, do check it out.

No Comments | Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Innovation Techniques, Marketing to college students, Marketing to young women, New Concepts & Ideas | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

I’m making my way through an excellent book right now, Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. I’m only about a quarter of the way through it, but there are some interesting advertising concepts that have been brought out in the story so far. These are tactics that I think would appeal to Gen Y and the trend setters.

First, the main character is basically a free-lance evaluator of ‘cool.’ Companies call her in to determine if their logo, product, or campaign has ‘it’. I want this job, so if anyone out there is looking for someone, come knock on my door. That aside, a major part of the story revolves around short video clips that are being posted anonymously and occasionally online. The clips are so breathtaking and so mysterious that something of a cult grows up around them. The third interesting technique discussed is ‘guerrilla advertising’. Basically, someone is hired to go to specific spots (bars, clubs, etc.), chat people up and apparently casually reference some product. As the person doing this is attractive/cool/the like, the person who heard it is inclined to pass that info on to others.

The mysterious posting and guerrilla advertising both are techniques that I believe would work well for marketing to Gen Y. First, the anonymous postings. Imagine some company buying airtime and showing some exquisitely cool ad, but not showing or mentioning a product. A series of these come out over the weeks, obviously connected. Soon, there is a buzz surrounding these and news outlets begin to pick it up. Finally, the product can be revealed, to much media and fan frenzy. A campaign like this would be quite appealing to the scenesters and trend setters of our day, not to mention the every-day, average, ordinary Joe.

As for guerrilla advertising, I’ve posted on this before. I think many of us in Gen Y reject conventional advertising campaigns and that’s forced companies to come up with new ways, like sponsored parties, etc. to reach out to new customers. I’ve said it before, but both PBR and Scion did very well with ‘underground’ marketing. This takes it one step further and makes the corporation even less of a factor in the getting the word out. Many of us don’t want to be hit over the head with ads, and this paid word-of-mouth seeding is a great way to get around it.

1 Comment | Marketing to college students, Voice of the customer, Corporate Innovation | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

I just read a rather interesting article on Pitchfork Media.

Its basically a comparison of the presence of Star Wars and the continent of Africa on the internet and asks the question “are the denziens of the net more involved in an imaginary world than the real world?” I’ll leave it to you to peruse the article, but it got me to thinking about what role corporations and websites hosting some of the prominent web 2.0 sites should play in shaping the debate and the information out there on social issues.

Ideally, I’d like to see websites and corporations innovating with services and products that encourage the consumer to learn more about the world and to get involved while still remaining appealing. I’d be intrigued if Wikipedia, for instance, devoted a sidebar on the page to some current world topic and had links to organizations where you could learn more or get involved. There are a ton of opportunities out there for corporations to increase their social credibility and still maintain a strong marketing and product presence.

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