John Winsor and Alex Bogusky have written a book titled Baked In that posits a way forward for products and marketing working together. I enjoyed the doodles throughout and fully agree with the principles of learning by doing and prototyping often. Check out the book’s blog at http://www.bakedin.com for an example of the principles of the book embodied. It’s interesting for many reasons not least of which is that they drank their own Kool-Aid.

The thesis goes something like, creativity is an ultimate business weapon and marketing should be part of the definition of products in such a way that they market themselves. The book and blog are baked together. They each market each other and themselves due to their connection to Twitter and their invitation for people to interact and participate.

I received an early version of the book. I was eager to read and happy to do so. I’ve wondered out loud with others and ruminated about it’s contents as well as the state of industry/culture.

To my mind… current convention holds that quick profit is a premium and primary goal. Therefore convention nearly always chooses the path of least resistance for design and manufacturing. As a result, the machines that make things have become nearly, if not the only, primary audience for the design of many products. Design in this system is focused on what the machines can make. Users are after thoughts. In the common case then, marketing enters the picture as something that happens ABOUT a product or ON BEHALF of it after it’s made and most often in order to get people to buy up stock of it.

Baked In provides a conceptual framework for flipping convention on it’s head. It’s about marketing being something that happens TO products and BY products on their own behalf. As an example, what if the designers played a significant role in deciding what gets made? What if marketing was a first thing considered in product development? Baked In argues that creativity and marketing should be intimately in the mix. Marketing then would become an essential characteristic of a product. Without marketing the product would cease to be the product by definition. In fact, products not designed with marketing in mind might in the future be doomed to a warehouse stock existence.

The middle chunk of the book gets practical and offers a series of “recipes” for baking marketing in. Clever. They’re insightful and articulate. Taken together they seem like firm ground to stand on when designing/marketing products. My favorite at the moment is “Get Out Of Whatever Business You Think You’re In.”

To my mind each of the recipes can fit in to one of three categories. Inside Culture includes recipes for teams and organizations to think and work together by. Outside Culture focuses on the macro culture for a time and product and how to make the most of it all. And finally recipes for Disposition which focus on thoughts/values/approaches to be considered when baking marketing into products.

The last section of the book argues that systems are a major way forward. I agree for a couple reasons. First, I am reminded here of the work of Daniel Pink and Roger Martin. Daniel argues in A Whole New Mind that where the left brain has dominated business the right brain’s ability to consider empathy and inventiveness as it relates to value creation is becoming and will become increasingly sought after. Roger, Dean at the Rotman School of Management and author of The Opposable Mind, argues that an integrative approach that includes both business (left brain) and design (right brain) are where value will come from going forward. I see both arguments lending well to systems thinking for designing/marketing products. Let’s integrate thinking and doing and sharing (marketing).

Second, systems seem to be a logical conclusion to the argument the book is making. By that I mean that if marketing and product design are to be integrated, which would its self be a sort of system, then it stands to reason that systematic approaches to the contexts in which those products exist are also in order. Moreover, systems seem appropriate ways to build for expanding and sustaining value.

So… Baked In. It claims creativity is an ultimate business weapon. To my mind it’s not a stretch to suggest that systems are it’s ammunition. It’s time to make them.

Maybe, a next step is to bake marketing into our thoughts. Maybe we’re all idea merchants. Maybe that’s the goal of this all. How do we think things should be? The question then is how good are we at that thinking and doing. Maybe it’s about spreading ideas. Maybe it’s about prototyping and building things. After all, everything that exists is an argument in a way about how things should be. Are we happy with how things will be on our current trajectory? Wither your answer is yes or no both suggest that we get to work and make things.

Sell many small ideas before you go for the BIG one.

Selling ideas can be dramatically easier if it starts with small ideas on a measurable schedule that get’s better and more complicated over time. The big idea does not win alone. It needs a context. Start with something the client already has. Make it a bit better. Lead them toward the big idea.

It’s not unlike lawn maintenance. You got to have upkeep. With focused intention and simple action on a schedule with discipline. The weeds go away and the grass gets thicker and greener. The state of the upkeep says something about the owner for all to see. It also says something about you. Rest assured, the client sees. Or in the very least their ROI likely will, over time.

If I come to you and talk all day about the “fantastical” equipment and chemicals and pedigree of the lawn operator in my company and process virtues, and on and on, does that make you want to buy? Maybe. Likely not.

Certainly! You could mow your lawn yourself. But if I can do it better and you don’t have the time but you got the cash, all that’s left is trust. Do you trust I could make your lawn better? Have I given you reason too? If I have, you’ll give me a try. If all I’ve given is theory you’ll likely be reluctant. But if I’ve been working on a 10×10 patch in the corner that now looks great, you’re in for it, right? It’s easy to buy results.

Selling ideas in a way that is initially like tending to a little section of a yard provides an easy way to build trust. Low risk. When your work is reevaluated it’s easy to see success (or failure).

Weed and edge and feed your ideas and relationships with clients. Sell the big idea after you’ve built trust. It’s like lawn maintenance.

image via dugglesworth

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

First, it seems to me that innovation can not be separated from context. Innovations are context based because they grow out of them and are defined in relation to them. Think of the paper clip. The paper clip is innovative at minimum because the context had a problem with loose papers and the design of the paperclip is so simple to use and cheap to produce and deliver. The paper clip solves a problem more preferably than other methods.

Second, my mind often connects things seemingly suddenly. I call them flashes. Those around me will get calls, me on the other line with immediacy in my voice and a eager excitement for a solution to a problem they might not even care about… yet. My mind has just connected things and like an explosion it wants to expand and spread.

Most times these flashes occur when I am walking, driving or showering. So, now you know I move and smell good, a lot. But what is it about these things, do you think, that makes them great for fostering the flash? I think they are particularly hot for innovation because in each of them the mind is in a process of improvement or change that it knows and has done many times, like walking. This is important because then, at least my brain knows something is getting done so I am much more interested in taking the extra brain power direct it to work on other things. This may also be why it feels flashy. As the subconscious presses into the conscious and delivers a connection the conscious reaction tends to be to wonder where it came from.

Third, I find that dialogical conversation with diligent co-creators spurns tons of insight that, complied over time and taken together, act as a powerful fertilizer for deep insights and therefore innovative ideas and solution building. These teams are based on trust. I refer to them as diligent because of the discipline it takes to continue to return to the conversation over and over together, to ask questions again and again and to methodically entice insights and innovations to appear. In a way its about creating space for new ideas to fill. I refer to co-creators because the dialogue is often where the magic of wondering is made real and tangible. Here I am thinking of speech act theory where we together create reality when we speak. Maybe I’ll interact with that that specifically in a future post.

So, to get innovative ideas you could try as I do to pay attention to context. I actively consume context with special attention to processing it cognitively. You could build into your routine purposeful opportunities for flashes. Try driving without the radio and rather engage in intentional wonder. You could develop and invest in relationships you have with co-creators. Build trust with them and protect the dialogue while fostering it.

What reactions do you have to these tactics? Where do your ideas come from?

So, while my hope is this space is for ideas and their expression I want to take a step to make it about what you, the reader… the user, are interested in. If you have an inclination as to what you might like me to address I would be happy to give my shot at it.

UGC stands for User Generated Content. I am not there as robustly as I see the future to be but I will start with a list of topics to address. Generate a list of topics… ready, go.

Lets have a digital, collaborative and visual extension of the classroom.

How can we extend the conversations happening in the classroom so that students have higher retention and greater social interaction with the material? How can we do what iTunes has done with select university content and do it for whatever content we’re compelled to do so?

I submit to you that it does not have to take a ton of time nor does it have to take a pile of money. The tools for video recording are cheap (e.g. viddler.com or vimeo.com), as in free and easy to use. The tools for conversations online are cheap (e.g. wiki’s or blogs, etc.), as in free and easy to use.

What are we waiting for? Teachers have the intuition to share. That is part of why they teach. Social media and certainly students in the current media climate are compelled to interact and ideate in the digital space. Further, they are online almost all the time. Lets use the tools they are already using to assist in learning and retention and conversation.

Let’s start giving this stuff away for free! Lets have the conversations with the people interested in having them regardless of the topic. Teachers, share your content in video form. Students, start sharing what you are learning in school in the social space. The people interested will find your stuff and we’ll all be better off for it.

Toss your stuff my way. I’d love to know about it.

Check these links as some, but not all, of the resources I know of that could help the endeavor.

http://www.youtube.com/user/tbrunelle

http://www.timbrunelle.com/

http://www.mcad.edu

http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english

http://www.37signals.com/