Contributed by Darin Eich, Ph.D., President of BrainReactions LLC http://brainreactions.com

Sometimes we assess our professional lives and realize that we have just been operating a metaphorical machine for an extended period of time. This machine may not even be a real machine but what we discover is that our work, our organization, or our processes have become a bit stagnant or repetitive. We lose our excitement or even hope for the future because nothing is changing. We are doing the same thing every day, every month, and every year and this has become bothersome. We are doing precisely the same service, making the same product, doing the same marketing, giving the same speeches, and asking the same question every month and every year. When this repetitive stagnation happens it not only adversely affects our professional life but also seeps into our personal life. Hey, most of our personal lives revolve around our professional lives anyway, so when that isn’t good, little else is. What people need is change. This is the first thing. Staying in ruts is no fun, getting out of them is.

But change for what? Just change for the sake of change? Well, if we are stagnant, sometimes even change for the sake of change is a good thing because it starts an action. It will add a little bit of air and movement to break the stagnation and stops the mold from growing. But what is powerful, what can be downright compelling, is change when you have a vision, change when you see a potential for a purpose, change when there is a goal that attracts you and others like a magnet. When there is a new challenge, this awakens something in you. It may be fear, but that usually comes about first anytime change happens. So, connected to that fear is excitement and also a newfound hope and perhaps, invigoration, in your professional life. This vision, this purpose, this goal gives you a destination to strive for. It gives your mind a reason to start thinking again. This can be invigorating for anyone!

What is the ultimate for a person’s professional life is this thing called innovation. Innovation is changing. Innovation has a goal, a goal to get better. Innovation can happen in a lot of different contexts. You can innovate new or existing products. You can innovate your marketing. You can innovate your services. You can innovate your business processes. You can innovate your organization as a whole. Most compelling, motivating, and inspiring is that you can also innovate yourself as a person. Yes, all of these things have the capacity to change, to grow, to develop, and to improve in slight ways and in ways that you can’t even tell the difference!

Work and organizations can be stifling. People complaining about their jobs and companies are as common as conversation. Some of the people who work at the large established bureaucratic organizations are full of great life though. This is because they work in innovation. They are concerned with innovating products, services, and everything else. They look to innovate everything they see and realize that they, with others, have the capacity to actually do it. They have that challenge, that goal, that purpose, and that vision in their professional lives and I can see the difference in these people. My conclusion: innovation is good for a person and involving yourself and others in innovation in your organization and life is a positive change.

Where do you go from here?

1. Assess. Is your professional life stagnant? Is there a lack of change or growth in the stuff that you do and in your organization, heck…in your own life too?
2. If you assessed that yes, change is needed…well change for what? What can be changed for the better? A product, service, process, organization, or you? Perhaps all of these things could use innovating.
3. What is the purpose connected to a vision connected to a goal for this change?
4. Start innovating.

OK, so what does “start innovating” mean? To say “I’m going to innovate” is exciting, certainly. Saying this to yourself in the mirror each morning is a little weird but will probably have some good effects. I’m a leadership geek. I’ve studied leadership for a number of years and it is a really fuzzy thing that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Innovation is similar to leadership. They both have some similar meaning and they both get a “huh” response when you ask people for a definition. What I’ve found to be helpful is to take this fuzzy concept and break it down into its parts. So for innovation, let’s break it down into some different stages. Many different organizations and individuals define innovation in different ways, have different systems, and have different parts of these systems. In general though, some similarities exist.

Let’s break it down simply.

Stage 1: Identify the opportunity or problem that will lead to the innovation. This requires some hard thinking and some research. What exactly is it that you are trying to innovate? Is this the correct thing that you should be going for? Make sure that the “innovation for what?” question is answered here and gather a fair amount of information. This is your background research stage.
Stage 2: Formulate questions. Because you’ve done stage one you should have a much more thoughtful understanding of the situation, problem, or opportunity. Start breaking that problem down into it’s pieces and formulate corresponding questions. So, if the problem is that nobody knows about your organization and thus cannot do business with you, a simple “how can we get more people to know about our organization?” is a question that can be broken down into “who do we want to reach”, “what we want them to know,” “how do we communicate this message,” “how can we use the internet to communicate this message,” etc. There are a lot of ways you can break down the problem once you’ve gone through that first stage of understanding it and thinking about it.
Stage 3: What I like best; it is the “coming up with a bunch of ideas” stage. You do just that. Take each question, organize them in a way from more general to more specific, and come up with a bunch of ideas for each. Utilize many different ways of coming up with ideas from just writing some down on your own to using a group brainstorm if possible. The goal here is to literally come up with hundreds of ideas.
Stage 4: Make meaning of all those ideas you came up with and analyze them.
Stage 5: Develop some solid concepts in greater detail.
Stage 6: Test out those concepts and develop them further based on feedback.
Stage 7: Take action and do what you had set out to do in the first place. Execute the marketing plan to increase awareness about your organization, if we refer back to the previous example.

Innovation is fun work and also challenging work. It is much easier to do if you can break it down into the stages and take each stage at a time. Many times organizations start but don’t finish. So do each step at a time and make sure you move up the steps and finish and actually take action! If you go through the stages what you will be taking action on should be pretty good because you studied and clarified the problem, you formed great questions, gathered a number of ideas, made meaning and analyzed the ideas, developed solid concepts, tested those concepts and improved them even more. This leads to a breakthrough innovation! Start innovating!

No Comments | BrainReactions News, Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, Open Innovation, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, Managing Generation Y, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

BrainWaves is a quarterly e-periodical for people who are interested in how organizations cultivate individual and group creativity. Each issue of BrainWaves features information and perspectives about individual and group ideation; how businesses and not-for-profits actuate the best ideas; and reports on remarkable innovations that promise novel solutions to intractable problems. Brainwaves is produced and edited by BrainReactions, producer of “outside insight” — ideas for organizations conceived by outside professional brainstormers and from online brainstorms using BrainReactions.net. BrainReactions also provides innovation training to help companies and individuals generate more and better ideas. 

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In This Issue

• Help others Hear and See your Innovative New Concepts
• The Flying Cart Story: Building a business and creating features based on researching customer needs
• How you can take advantage of the recession by starting a business
• Frost & Sullivan’s conference on Growth, Innovation and Leadership is going global!
• Rapid Innovation: The Potential to Utilize Social Media and User Generated Content Create Strategic Competitive Advantage, Differentiation and Elite Brand Experiences

No Comments | BrainReactions News, Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, Marketing to college students, Marketing to young women, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, Managing Generation Y, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Contributed by Anand Chhatpar, CEO of BrainReactions LLC http://www.brainreactions.com

I have been an entrepreneur as long as I can remember. I started my first company, Pyxoft Infotech Pvt Ltd. at age 17 in India. I went to college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in my second year in the US, was involved in my second start-up, OZ Innovations and we went on to sell the product internationally in a retail chain of over 72 stores. I was also fortunate to have been named as one of the “Top 5 Entrepreneurs Under 25″ by BusinessWeek and also featured on CNBC TV’s “Young Turks.” Now is as good a time as any I have seen to become an entrepreneur.

This is a great time in life for you to start a new business, especially if you do not have the responsibilities of a family or the pressures of a house mortgage payment. Starting a new business has become much cheaper today because office rent, cost of advertising and cost of employees has gone down. You probably also have a group of friends who would like to work with you and all of you can pool your startup money together. Some of you have ideas, but are hesitant to act due to the fear of making mistakes. Let me assure you that everyone makes mistakes when starting a new business. What is needed to succeed is the will to recognize your mistakes and to fix them quickly. As I learned from my mentors during my internship, “Fail fast to succeed sooner!”

Some of you may not yet have thought about any ideas for a business you can start. My company, BrainReactions http://brainreactions.com, is in the business of identifying new opportunities for entrepreneurs and companies by generating creative new ideas. We not only generate ideas professionally for clients, but we also teach people methods of being more innovative systematically so they can create useful new ideas for their unique situation. Perhaps we can share some business ideas with you here. Although the general sentiment today is quite negative, this is in fact, a great time to use the recession to your advantage.

Not all businesses are suffering in the recession. According to Barry Moltz’s recent survey, about a fifth of all businesses are such that they actually do better in a recession. Such businesses, called “countercyclical businesses”, present great startup opportunities right now. Businesses that help people save money generally tend to be in this category. For example, in a recession, people prefer to buy more groceries or eat cheaper food than eat at a fine dining restaurant. Insurance agents that can save people money on their car insurance premiums also do well in a recession. Funnily enough, in India, astrologers tend to have an increase in clients during a recession. Could you, perhaps, create a new product or service that helps people save money or reduce wastage in their homes and offices?

For new entrepreneurs, it is easier to set up service-based businesses that have a low startup cost. Businesses like web design, tutoring, delivery, event planning service, and a travel booking service are some examples.

Since you are reading this article on a computer, I would assume that you enjoy the Internet and are open to ideas for online entrepreneurship. Sites like eLance.com and odesk.com provide opportunities for freelance writing, graphic or web design, programming, and even simple tasks like data entry and virtual assistance. Similarly, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk at mturk.com pays people for completing simple tasks online as well. If you are good at photography, you can upload good quality photos to iStockPhoto.com and get paid royalties. Metacafe pays users to upload videos that are popular. Sites like ReviewMe.com and PayPerPost.com pay you to write reviews of websites on your free blog. Speaking of blogs, Squidoo.com and eHow.com pay a revenue share to people who contribute articles to their site. SpringWise.com has a database of unique business ideas from around the world that you could spend hours reviewing. The web is a huge resource of business ideas and for reaching out to other entrepreneurs who are available for providing guidance and help for your new business.

To get more new business ideas, I would recommend traveling to a new place that you have not been before, perhaps to a different country if you can. Experiencing a new place and culture can give you tremendous amount of fresh inspiration for new ideas. Also, check out the book called “Successfully launching new ventures” by Dr. Bruce Barringer which features BrainReactions as a success case study in its second chapter. Furthermore, you can double your chances of success by learning the fundamentals of systematic innovation through a four-week online course we deliver via webinars at http://www.innovationtraining.org or get recordings of the training sessions. You can walk through activity by activity the steps to create a solid business concept or new product idea.

I hope that after reading this article you will rethink your career and normal daily job-hunting and actually use some of the ideas and resources that I have shared in order to create your own successful business and create new jobs for our country and our world.

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About the Author: Anand is the CEO of BrainReactions LLC, a company that helps companies and entrepreneurs with innovation. Anand has a degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Computer Engineering. He holds 8 issued U.S. utility patents.

No Comments | Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, Managing Generation Y, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

BrainWaves is a quarterly e-periodical for people who are interested in how organizations cultivate individual and group creativity. Each issue of BrainWaves features information and perspectives about individual and group ideation; how businesses and not-for-profits actuate the best ideas; and reports on remarkable innovations that promise novel solutions to intractable problems. Brainwaves is produced and edited by BrainReactions, producer of “outside insight” — ideas for organizations conceived by outside professional brainstormers and from online brainstorms using BrainReactions.net. BrainReactions also provides innovation training to help companies and individuals generate more and better ideas. 

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In This Issue

• How to innovate and brainstorm a better idea to change the world for a share of $10 Million from Project 10^100
• Utilizing the Labyrinth for innovation and convergent thinking in the Conceptual Age
• The Labyrinth: An ancient and emerging tool for idea development
• Review: Frost & Sullivan conference on Growth, Innovation and Leadership

Announcement:

BrainReactions’ most popular webinar, Fundamentals of Idea Generation for Innovation, which has been attended by over 100 companies already, is now available to watch as a video so you can watch and learn from the webinar video at your own convenience. To download this webinar and the related materials, please visit http://training.brainreactions.com

No Comments | BrainReactions News, Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, Marketing to college students, Marketing to young women, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, Managing Generation Y, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Contributed By Dan Neely, founder and CEO of Networked Insights

There has been a lot of recent talk about “Engagement”. Engagement is the new metric for social media, the measure of success for social media marketing. Although clearly defining engagement has been a challenge and people have disagreed on setting standards, it is certainly a concept worth exploring.

As soon as social media started to change the way people communicate and share interests, values or concerns, it became a gold mine of customer intelligence and insight. The key to unlocking this intelligence is to understand engagement.

What is engagement? Engagement is a combination of how people interact with each other and content (viewing, posting, inviting, rating, etc.) and what causes people to change or define their behavior (how influential people or content are).

Engagement not only shows where people are spending their time, and what topics they are discussing and with whom, but also shows the degree and depth of customer-to-customer interactions. If ad placement is based on engagement, advertisers know that the advertising is more relevant to the people that see it because it is based on the topics and people that they engage with.

For advertisers and marketers, knowing facts about their audience before spending money on social media is a huge benefit. For example, if Nike notices that a large number of users on MySpace are engaging around a particular shoe model and that very few people are doing so on Facebook, it would make a lot more sense to spend more heavily on MySpace and know exactly where to place and direct that spend. This tactic uses engagement to ensure results, not just to measure them.

Marketers all acknowledge the importance of engagement. While the subjective aspects of the metric have yet to be defined, the factual elements taken from customer engagement provide the real value. Using engagement as a way to guide and predict your ad buy or marketing spend is a clear and simple method that leverages the customer intelligence that can be gained from engagement metrics. This intelligence can also help accurately inform the content and message of the resulting marketing collateral to ensure it resonates with the target audience.

Engagement is here to stay. Just like any new metric, it will take some time to take-hold and become fully standardized, but it is undeniably a multifaceted and powerful metric that can provide value to marketers throughout the marketing process – especially before it even starts.

About the Author:

Daniel Neely
Dan is the founder and CEO of Networked Insights, the leader in customer intelligence across social media. His 10 plus years of entrepreneurial, management and operational experience with technology companies, has given him the expertise in customer intelligence and experience with the challenges companies face in gathering relevant, real-time insights about their customers.
Before starting Networked Insights, Dan co-founded Market Performance Partners, which guided companies in market ownership through customer intelligence. Prior to that, he was the director of strategy at Scient, one of the fastest growing services company in history. Before Scient, Dan was part of the team that launched eSurance, the leading online insurance company.

No Comments | Gen-Y ideas, Marketing to college students, Marketing to young women, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Managing Generation Y, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Contributed by Sarah Gibson, President, Accent Business Communication
(See complete bio below the article)

As employees, we all want to be seen as team players, but when a change is introduced to our teams at work, most of us cringe internally. In order to minimize the stress innovation and change can cause to our psyches, we each need to keep in mind what we risk losing when a new idea is introduced.

One approach to understanding our response to the change process is to look at change through a generational perspective. This short piece will help you see change as a three-step process and give you some perspective on how each generation may view innovation and change.

William Bridges approaches change as a three-phase process—the end, the in-between and the new beginning. Ultimately, we go through all three phases simultaneously, but the end goal is to realize change is a new beginning.

Here’s a quick example. When I started my own business, I had to acknowledge the end of a steady paycheck, friendships at work and corporate backing. During my in-between phase, I would vacillate between “I love owning my own business” and “Was I nuts for doing this?”. During the new beginning phase, I realized that my thinking had shifted to completely accept the change and embrace the idea of working on my own.

Since we go through all phases at once, I still have days where I experience loss and wish I had my corporate career, even though I’ve shifted to really loving being on my own.

The same is true for change for each of us. However the key to moving you and your work team to the new beginning phase is to accept the end of your previous processes before change and innovation took you to a new beginning.

From a generational perspective, we have to acknowledge what each generation loses during change. In essence, if we introduce a new idea, we’ve asked them to let go of something important to one’s generational framework.

For example, a WWII person is asked to give up his sense of loyalty to a product. Or perhaps he is asked to give up knowing where he fits into the chain of command.

A Baby Boomer facing change has to let go of the energy, recognition and dedication she put into a product. Sometimes she may also feel that she has to give up her competitive edge and expertise when an innovation comes her way.

A Gen Xer feels threatened because change asks her to give up a sense of independence and flexibility.

A Millennial struggles least with change because he has become so accustomed to change that adaptability has become key to his skill set. Still, he may feel a loss when his friendships at work are weakened when a process pulls him away from those friends.

Ultimately, the best way for us to become team players during change is to acknowledge both what we risk losing during change and what others risk losing. If you are introducing a new innovation, consider your audience. What are you asking them to say goodbye to during the end stage of change.

From there, you can move toward the new beginning of acceptance using the strengths each generation brings to the workplace.

Contributing writer: Sarah Gibson

Bio:
After identifying a need for written communication and generational issues training in the Midwest, Sarah Gibson founded Accent Business Communication in 2004. She has offered her classes to a variety of companies, including Harley-Davidson, Metavante and the Wisconsin state government. Beyond her organizational training programs, Sarah also teaches for the evening MBA program at UW-Madison.

Sarah holds a Master’s degree from North Dakota State University and has been teaching in academic and corporate worlds since 1998. In addition, she’s a member of Madison Area Business Consultants, Society of Human Resource Management, and the American Society of Training and Development.

This article is part of the April 2008 issue of BrainWaves E-magazine on Innovation and Ideation

No Comments | Managing Ideas, Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Managing Generation Y, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Contributed By Darin J. Eich, Ph.D.

We hear from many organizations that they desire a positive culture of innovation within their organizations that relies on the collaboration, contribution, and shared leadership of all employees. At BrainReactions, we have created a program to achieve positive outcomes in this area. During the final three years I worked on my doctoral dissertation studying high quality leadership programs, I was also creating and testing an innovation program for BrainReactions. This was a leadership program designed to help participants learn and engage in ideation and innovation for real purposes.

Like many companies, we highly value creating and sustaining a positive culture of innovation in our organization. Achieving this requires an intentional approach to develop the people of your company as exemplary creators, innovators, and leaders. Our vision with our leadership training program at BrainReactions involved moving from brainstorm sessions to a front end of innovation leadership program. This moves from just generating the ideas to also including training and development of the people who innovate.

In addition to the research of high quality programs, which included interviews of 62 stakeholders across four different exemplary leadership programs, the researcher developed and tested a new innovation program and individual program sessions with BrainReactions brainstormers. During a three-year period of research and testing, approximately 100 sessions where conducted, assessed, and improved accordingly. Sessions were qualitative and consisted of 5-12 individuals per session. Sessions were recorded, transcribed, and assessed for participant engagement, idea quantity and quality. The researcher employed the constant comparative method, an analytic induction grounded theory data analysis technique, to explore the data and construct a theory.

The theory of high quality leadership programs developed in the dissertation study is grounded in those programmatic attributes that, when enacted, contribute significantly to enhancing learning and leadership development. The data analysis revealed 16 attributes of high quality leadership programs organized into three clusters: a) participants engaged in building and sustaining a learning community; b) student-centered experiential learning experiences; and c) research grounded continuous program development. Through the program attributes, participants learn about innovation, leadership and themselves in the course of engaging in the leadership process while reflecting on and applying their new learning and skills in collaborative action with others.

The results of this multi-case grounded theory study of high quality leadership programs could be applied and adapted to enhance leadership development and innovation in a wide range of organizations. This theory will allow organizations to enhance their programs and participants’ leadership development by helping participants improve themselves through self-discovery, personal development, reflective practice and collaborative leadership action with others. This leadership action and learning can be directed towards idea generating for innovation to meet changing needs and opportunities for the organization though helping individuals contribute to and share leadership in an organizational culture of innovation.

To be a high quality program involves anchoring the systems and program in research, both what has happened elsewhere and what you have discovered internally. Our high quality leadership program for innovation that has yielded numerous positive individual, organizational, and client outcomes involves three clusters of attributes for program development. Both the diverse and engaged participants cluster as well as systems learning for continuous program improvement cluster are leveraged for development in addition to the individual centered experiential brainstorming experience cluster.

In essence I recommend more organizations to implement a leadership program that allows all employees to contribute to a positive culture of innovation through participating in innovation together. Programs can be constructed and facilitating using the identified clusters of attributes that matter most for learning and development.

There is a report identifying attributes of high quality leadership programs and how BrainReactions put these attributes into practice for their own innovation program and programs they develop for clients. Email Darin Eich at darin.eich@brainreactions.com for more information or to receive the report.

No Comments | Creativity & Brainstorming, Managing Ideas, Generation-Y wants, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, Managing Generation Y, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Reaching GEN Y and keeping their attention is one of the greatest marketing mysteries of our generation. Young people today are very fickle and are constantly changing what they consider to be “cool” and “hip”. As a current summer camp counselor and college student, I have had the chance to experience this up, close and personal. It is quite amazing that the amount of knowledge our young people today have on current culture, products, and lifestyle. That is very important to remember when marketing to GEN Y — never take them for granted or assume they are not capable of understanding complex situations or products. GEN Y is one of the smartest, tech savvy and idealistic generations of our time. They know what they want, but they do not always know how to get there, and that is where market research, focus groups, BrainReactions brainstorms, and other tools come in handy. It is important to not just understand the wants, likes, and dislikes of GEN Y, but also who they are and where they want to be in the future. The youth of today love to discuss themselves and they want to the world to know they are here to stay. Our generation has grown up knowing mostly that as long as they dream big and work hard they can achieve and get anything they want. Now, that is a tough group to create for and sell to, but with the amount of money GEN Y controls, either their own or their parent’s, companies cannot make the mistake of not listening and understanding their concerns.

GEN Y is always searching for the next big tech item, clothes, shoes, etc. to jump unto and call their own. Youth of today love the idea of interchangeable products, such as multiple shoe designs, backpacks that do more than just hold books, and they are very primitive to the art of multi-tasking, more so than past generations. They are used to playing XBOX, doing their homework, chatting and texting w/friends, and planning their schedule for the next day better than the best of us. Due to the globalization of our culture and economy, companies cannot wait for their competition to create the next big thing — being on the cutting edge of product research and development is vital to the growth and expansion of products/services marketed towards GEN Y. There are truly no perfect ways to keep the attention of GEN Yers, but there are some techniques that can be utilized to increase outreach and interest of youth in a company’s products or services. Along with these eight techniques, I would also like to say the most important way to learn from and market to GEN Y is to simply listen to them. They want to be heard, but they do not always have an applicable outlet to have their voices, ideas, and concerns heard. Your company’s future can be bright when it comes to targeting GEN Y, but only if you show GEN Y that you are ready to open up and listen to them.

1. Utilizing Buzz Marketing/Word of Mouth Marketing: Young people are very open and vocal about a product or service they see as useful and innovative and will not hesitate a bit to tell their friends. Buzz marketing can be a commercial that a GEN Yer saw on TV/Youtube that was hilarious and it had some memorable slogan or quote, or it could be an interesting product name, or it could be totally something created in a GEN Yers mind from personal use of that product or service.

2. Creating fresh and innovative products or services: GEN Yers were born in a generation where new products/services are created everyday. Everything from iPods to clothing. GEN Yers expect unique creations that stretch their imaginations to new heights and offer the creativity of new technologies we are used to seeing and envisioning in our everyday lives. GEN Yers also expect simplicity of use and function, but at the same time something out of this world!

3. Make Our Lives Easier: GEN Yers expect products/services that make our hectic lives a little less fast and more relaxing and organized. GEN Yers are used to working, going to classes, and being super involved in school clubs & sports, all at the same time. In addition, anything created to make things more integrated is a plus. That could be a music player that has a scheduler/calendar or a cell phone that is also a picture taker and moviemaker. GEN Yers expect multi-function capabilities in almost any new product created aimed at our generation.

4. Attach Product/Service to a good cause: GEN Yers love companies that help good causes. Most young people volunteer according to recent studies and are more attracted to companies who have the same giving philosophy. When they know that by buying a pair of new shoes or clothing, part of the proceeds go to an important charity, they are more likely to purchase from that store and the opposite is true for companies who do not engage in charitable causes. GEN Yers care about helping those less fortunate and expect the same ideals from companies they spend their money on.

5. Style/Image Branding: Style and image are everything when it comes to product buying by GEN Yers. If a new product or service is not deemed cool or something they can tell their friends about the next day, then that product has lost a chance to make that very important first impact on a young person. GEN Yers can either be brand loyal or fickle, so companies must regularly ensure that the way they design and package new products fit in the realm of what GEN Yers expect. GEN Yers expect sharp, creative, and innovative styles and creations.

6. Advertise/Market Where GEN Yers Are: Most young people spend countless hours and days in front of their computer, at the mall, and in the movies. So placing ads before popular youth market films will reach the GEN Y audience very well. It is important that any ads speak the language of young people. Young people feel more comfortable seeing ads with actors that can relate to their age group. Unique and funny ads are essential for creating buzz for a new product or service and giving something young people can tell their friends about. In addition, advertising in popular youth magazines is a vital way to reach the GEN Y market. Furthermore, most GEN Yers have computers and access to the Internet, so advertising and collaborating with popular youth sites, like MTV.com, is an awesome way to reach the GEN Y market.

7. Street Teams/Peer-to-Peer Marketing: This is one of the best ways to reach GEN Yers. GEN Yers trust what their peers have to say, more than they do someone not their age. Street teams are an awesome way to rally youth around a new product or service and to get young people excited and engaged. It is important to ensure potential youth buyers trust the messenger. Young people are very smart and intelligent and can smell a fake ad or message a million miles away. Once a company loses that trust factor, it is very hard to regain that customer back. Street teams also are a good away to initiate buzz marketing.

8. Innovation/Incentives: Its important that a company marketing products/services to GEN Y consistently come out with new and innovative products on a regularly basis. GEN Yers expect continued new ideas and inventions on a regular basis, considering that we are used to such happenings from birth. GEN Yers also respond well to incentives, discounts, and free stuff. By utilizing a combination of those or all three, your company is sure to create a good initial buzz and interest in what you are trying to sell.

No Comments | Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, Marketing to college students, Voice of the customer, Managing Generation Y | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

It seems that its about time for me to weigh in again about the sorry state of marketing geared to Gen Y individuals. Granted, I can be a very judgmental individual, but there are so few really quality marketing campaigns out there that I often find myself telling my friends that there needs to be a group that has to approve all marketing campaigns and ads to save us from having to watch some of the truly awful ones.

On that note, I’d like to propose an option for companies looking to market to Gen Y and college students. Marketing firms should be making use of the internet to put together focus groups who watch the ad campaigns via streaming video or evaluate print ads on some website. By mining the data on social websites like Facebook and MySpace, companies could identify individuals that they want to be part of the focus group and invites could be sent to those individuals with a promise of compensation for participating.

I’m sure there must be online focus groups already in operation, but aside from using the social websites to identify individuals to take part in the group, my other innovation for this undertaking would incorporate a device to monitor physiological responses from the individual watching the ad. I remember a West Wing episode in which a focus group watching Bartlett giving a state of the union address were monitored using a simple dial that they adjusted in response to what Bartlett was saying. A simple extension of this approach would be a device that is shipped to the individual in the focus group. The group members would hook this device up to a USB port on their computer and before watching the ad, they would place their hand on the device, which would measure electrical and physiological responses to the ad. A baseline could be taken by also showing the group members ad campaigns that the company thinks are ones they either want to emulate or not emulate.

This approach would allow marketing firms to reach the ever so important Gen Y demographic in a very controlled manner and would also provide more information than they would get from a simple form that group members would also fill out after watching the ad campaign.

No Comments | Creativity & Brainstorming, Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, Marketing to college students, Marketing to young women, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Managing Generation Y | 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.

1 Comment | Corporate Innovation, Managing Generation Y | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this