“Good business is the best art”, Andy Warhol once said. It’s a sentiment that may well have formed an ill-advised strap line to Tate Modern’s much lauded Pop Life: Art in a Material World.

Can design thinking make you a happier? A recently published book by author Warren Berger says it can.

Living in Boise. Idaho, one of the things I really look forward to is my daily New York Times. Yes, I can get it online, but I’m enough of an old fart that I like to relax with a hard copy over my morning coffee. The problem is, it has to be flown in from Seattle and doesn’t get here until almost midday, sometimes not even then as it is delivered by a notorious local family of drug addicts!

Local First, a Grand Rapids. Michigan based organization that encourages sustainable, locally-based economies has made a simple but effective illustration of how money flows if it’s spent at a locally owned business versus a non-local business.
They explain their top ten reasons to shop local first:
1. Significantly More Money Re-circulates In Greater Grand Rapids.
When you purchase at locally owned businesses rather than nationally owned, more money is kept in the community because locally-owned businesses often purchase from other local businesses, service providers and farms. Purchasing local helps grow other businesses as well as the Greater Grand Rapids tax base.
2. Non Profits [...]

For quite some time now, global warming has inspired designers to make conscious choices and use sustainable materials. It’s interesting then, to see this frozen yogurt shack in Jakarta that is inspired by melting ice floes. As the world heats up, the Indonesian architects of Budi Padono probably think you should cool down with some icy treats, while pondering the state of the earth.
The Blu Apple Frozen Yogurt Café is schedule to open next month.
[via: Dezeen]

Business Pundit has compiled a list of 20 different brands and products that “died” in 2009, including Kodachrome, Pontiac, and the 150 year old Rocky Mountain News.
An interesting point they bring up:
It’s worth noting that when a brand dies, it doesn’t necessarily get buried, the way humans do. Some brands, like Circuit City, are resurrected in a different form. Others, like Saab, go dormant, then reemerge in a new form. Still others find themselves gobbled up by bigger fish.
What can we learn from their passing, and how can dead (or dying) brands be revived, and made relevant?
Business Pundit: 20 Brands [...]

We’ve recently wrote about LEGO being used as tools to inspire creative thinking and solutions to various societal or business challenges. Christopher W. Totten’s thesis proposes that playing (not necessarily of the Lego kind) can also be used to influence the architectural design process. Ultimately, Totten created a design method for architects based on game design.
The highlights of his method are:

Creating a “core mechanic”, the basic action a player takes within a game, as the design generator for an architectural space (the basic action someone takes within the building.)
Using game engines to playtest building designs with clients and other designers [...]

In light of today’s competitive business climate and more conspicuous consumption, conversations are increasingly focused on innovation as a means to deliver a differentiated experience and capture customers’ attention, loyalty and disposable income. Speaking to that notion, Business Week has showcased 10 examples of product innovation, shaped in part by designer Hartmut Esslinger.
Esslinger, founder of the 40-year-old San Francisco firm Frog Design, has worked with many companies including Apple, Louis Vuitton, and HP.  He shares with Business Week 10 tips for successfully and consistently innovating, including, among others:

“If it isn’t somehow good for the world, it’s not going to be [...]

At this years PSFK Conference NYC, I moderated the panel ‘Brand New Rules’, a discussion about whether new rules are needed to govern the behavior of brands in a world increasingly defined by changing social, cultural, technological and economic forces.
Which got me thinking. Hasn’t it always been the role of brands to break rules and create new ones?
And doesn’t that come from brand strategy ideas that create change in culture?
Is ‘new’ just another way of saying ‘good’?
I think we’d all agree that there’s no shortage of good creative thinking in our industry. So why is it often difficult to [...]

USA Today reports that due to shrinking job opportunities, a growing number of teens are starting their own business. The young entrepreneurs interviewed for the article say that they are learning far more about business (and often making more money) by going out on their own than they would have by taking on a traditional job.
Bo Fishback, vice president of entrepreneurship at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, explains the value of getting an early start in business:
Of course, selling can be tough work, Fishback says. But it teaches lessons. “If you get rejected 50 times as a 13-year-old, you get [...]

At PSFK Conference NYC, Colin Nagy (PSFK/Attention) led a discussion with Help Remedies‘ founder Richard Fine and Hello Health’s Dr. Jay Parkinson and Dr. Sean Khozin about “Building Healthy Brands With Heart”. The panel touched upon the different ways their ventures were setting out to innovate an industry resistant to change. Richard Fine talked about how Help Remedies is attempting to change the way we think about medicine and first aid. Richard’s aim with creating Help was to simplify medication, from packaging to ingredients. His range stands apart from the myriad “dual-action”/”24-hr relief”/”fast-acting” products on the market – most recognizably, [...]

OK, here we are, a week after the Domino’s YouTube “BoogerVision” disaster and we are deep into the various analyses of whether or not Domino’s handled this major fuck up well from a PR point of view. It’s been re-hashed and bashed more times than whether or not the singing Scottish lady with the retro-fashion sense and bushy eyebrows represents the end of flash and glam on prime time television… And I wouldn’t put money on that either!
In a Monday AdAge article, all the usual pundits are trotted out to give their take on it; Rob Weisberg, VP-multimedia marketing at [...]

For some, Easter-time means stuffing yourself with chocolate, jellybeans, and marshmellowy delights. But it’s not just the recent holiday that has crowded the candy aisle. The economic downturn appears to have a distinct sweet tooth. Candy stores around the country are reporting a jump in sales since the slowdown last fall, as people everywhere rush to fill up on sugary snacks.
No one knows exactly why the recession inspires candy cravings. A recent New York Times article pondered possibilities for the candy craze: Penny pinchers looking for an affordable pleasure? Stressed adults nostalgic for their childhood? The [...]

Since we treat people like an audience, not just a consumer, it changes the way we think about how to create ideas for our brands. But at the same time it must also change the way we think about measuring these ideas — particularly with the growing significance of social media. Audiences are not just exposed to marketing messages. They react, reject, discuss, share, contribute, create — a ripple effect of responses that conventional models for measuring advertising effectiveness tend to ignore. To truly measure the impact of our ideas, we need to shift from campaign metrics to customer motivations, [...]

Already, more than 20,000 people across the UK have been attending courses provided by an emerging, secretive organization called Common Purpose, a company that claims to provide advice and guidance for the country’s next leaders and high fliers. Whilst the company is non-profit, it has support from businesses and people like BBC business editor Robert Peston and Cressida Dick – the Assistant Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. People who attend the courses are asked to explore the dark corners of their own psyches, confessing to their own strengths and weaknesses, and are also taken on workshops to mental hospitals, [...]