One of the social media trends for 2011 continues to be the gathering and leveraging of opinions. Not just opinions of those who like one brand over another, but of those who are so influential as to change the minds of the folks who very well could be your new customers.

Klout, a network that allows users track the impact of opinions, is becoming a powerful tool for companies who want to collect large amounts of data about how people interact with their brands, services, products and overall image. You can use this tool to identify key influencers and keep track of their online influence.

Here’s an interesting case study from a few months back: Virgin America used Klout to  hand-pick a key group of influencers and then took them on a free flight to Toronto–their newest destination—from either San Francisco or Los Angeles.

What did the airline company ask in return? Nothing but a simple online acknowledgement – good or bad – about the flight they had just received. Of course the recipients blogged, tweeted and posted their good fortune and even now the ROI is producing great results!

The  Bureau of Labor Statistics says as our US labor force grows older, our percent of 55+ workers will be four times that of the overall labor force.

I see this happening in the corporations of many of our Innovationedge clients and certainly in many of our Fortune 500 companies. It’s projected to be the largest generational turnover we’ve ever seen in our job force.But hopefully those companies are heeding the statistics and making sure their retiring Baby boomers aren’t taking their years of knowledge and subject matter expertise with them.

What does this mean for companies continuing their focus on growth and innovation?  How is your company retaining knowledge and capturing best practices for future generations?

Photo courtesy NasaImages.org

Before our current recession we saw many people dismissing the discounts, citing they were too much trouble. But the tough economic climate isn’t the only thing bringing them back into popularity. Internet coupons and discount codes that smartphone users can download are making deal-seeking hot again.

I just read an article over at Advertising Age about how many companies are copying the Groupon model for offering their fans and followers great deals. Groupon was launched just two years ago and quickly got 25 million subscribers.

The article cites two major brands, Wal-mart and Healthy Choice foods,  offering incredible deals to their shoppers. Last week Wal-mart launched a Facebook app that offered a whopping 18 percent off of a plasma television set once 5,000 people “liked” the ad.

Healthy Choice offered a similar coupon on Facebook that increased in value the more people clicked “like.” A few weeks ago Healthy Choice launched a coupon that increased from 75 cents to $1.50 off a two-for-one deal as more people liked it on Facebook.

Groupon was the first to try this model based on likes, and of course it encourages people to share it with their friends in order to unlock the savings faster.

What I find fascinating is that unlike paper coupons, social media coupons greatly increase the brand’s fan base without costing much money.  I think you’re going to see a lot more of this model in the future. Imagine how this type of internet marketing will impact the consumer spending habits on hotels, restaurants, toys, electronics and just about every industry you can think of.

We first saw these machines appear this spring in Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace Hotel and in Germany. I remember wondering about the kind of investors who would seek out these machines.

As it turns out, the response has been so overwhelming that the company that makes Gold to Go is planning to install these vending machines in a Florida resort as well as a casino in Las Vegas.

Gold To Go dispenses gold bars and coins up to an ounce at a time. But because the price of the precious metal fluctuates, the machine has to adjust every ten minutes.   The machine offers ten different products and buyers can get their gold in their own country’s identity—such as a Canadian maple leaf coin.

Users simply insert their cash or credit card, but the machine limits the purchase amount to prevent misuse like money laundering.

This isn’t for just any investor. As I write this, gold is priced at just over $1,300 an ounce!  What do you think? Would you buy gold from a Gold To Go machine?

I was drawn to a particular example in my own back yard of how GE Healthcare’s R&D center in Milwaukee helped its innovation team in India innovate a portable ECG machine last year.

Innovation teams in your core business can optimize knowledge as long as your leaders inspire that culture throughout the organization. It can be accomplished by articulating and motivating a vision of victory, communicating that your teams are mutually dependent on each other for success, and by creating a common enemy: the competition!

There are ten tips in total. Check them out!

If you want to create a strategy around hiring people who mesh with your organization’s culture and values, keep it real and keep it clear.

How your people come to know your culture and values depends on your authenticity–the way that you communicate. If you are a leader with any role in retaining employees, you absolutely must be able to clearly articulate a your company’s culture, business strategy and goals not only to your people but to your shareholders and the marketplace.  (I’ve got more to say on this here.)

We all need employees who have the energy, passion and creativity to bring innovative new ideas to the table. And what they need to keep that spark going is authentic leadership from you. Have you created an environment that inspires or detracts from innovation? Are you providing ample and exciting opportunities to be a part of the team?

Employees will continually weigh and consider these elements  along with the monetary and psychological rewards.

Enjoy!

About a billion people in emerging countries have cell coverage, and those people could communicate via mobile phone very inexpensively in the near future—without the need for electricity.

A new device called the H3 charger is promising on-the-go charging even when you are away from a wall outlet. You can read about the H3 here and here.

Innovators at Stockholm-based myFC, came up with the H3 charger, which relies on portable fuel cells. I checked out their web site, and was impressed to learn the company was awarded as one of the top ten fastest growing clean tech companies in Europe at the Cleantech Connect Awards in November. (Cleantech Connect brings together Europe’s’ leaders in the clean and green technology space, recognizing growth and innovation in the sector.)

The H3 charger is nearing commercial release in Scandinavia this year and will eventually make its way to the U.S. next year. The price tag is around $40 to $50, and is about the size of a sandwich.

So if you are planning a wilderness trek next year, you’ll need some water, the charger and a few small tea bag-sized fuel packets containing hydrogen fuel.  Then simply pour water into the reaction chamber, add the packet and wait for the chemical reaction between the water and the fuel pellets.

So what is Inventables and why are so many designers and engineers excited about this company? Inventables is a no-frills website that was launched this month where vendors of raw materials and technologies can create online profiles for their products in order to generate qualified sales leads worth their time. Inventables makes it very easy for vendors of materials and technologies to get an initial introduction to potential buyers.

Microsoft X-Box, PING Golf Clubs, and Kraft Foods are examples of buyer companies using the marketplace. Dupont, 3M, and Eastman are examples of companies participating as vendors.

I’ve been serving as an advisor to Inventables, and couldn’t be more pleased and excited for its future.

Says Zach:

“We founded Inventables to help companies innovate by sharing our excitement for what technology makes possible with the world’s innovators. We’ve opened up our once proprietary research for free to the world so that information and access to new materials that was once only available to the largest companies in the world is now available to anyone with an internet connection.”

The information-rich world of the film Minority Report is becoming closer to reality each day, with some practical twists. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that Intel and Microsoft are teaming up to provide smart digital displays in retail stores that can look back at the viewer, identify gender and other information using cameras and image processing, and then automatically offer information about products that may be of interest to the viewer, including instant coupons, directions to the product in the store, etc. The article, “Intel, Microsoft Offer Smart-Sign technology” by Don Clark and Nick Wingfield (p. B6, Jan. 12, 2010), describes smart-signs as a way for retailers to fight back against online sellers. The technology builds upon the embedded computing capabilities that Microsoft and Intel have applied to point-of-sale systems, office equipment, car entertainment, and other systems. They are now collaborating to specify hardware and software components that could become a standard platform for other developers. They will seek to offer features similar to those provided by Amazon.com, which can identify returning customers and tailor promotions to them based on their history. It’s all about personalizing the shopping experience–but doing that without infringing upon consumer privacy may be a complex issue. A spokesman stated that the current technology does not identify individuals, only gender. Perhaps the future may involve an opt-in system for those who want to be identified and receive discounts or other benefits in return.

Meanwhile, a variety of companies are developing flexible thin-film displays. One interesting technology space is electronic paper, which reflects light like ordinary printed paper to create images or text. Rigid versions of electronic paper are in use in some popular portable readers, while flexible versions are being developed by companies like E-Ink. A variety of technologies that have been used for electronic paper are summarized at Wikipedia, including electrophoresis, electrowetting, and electrofluidic displays.

What could your business model do with flexible smart displays, if they become inexpensive and easy to program or control? What could you do by adding sensors (perhaps sensors that respond to pressure, temperature, or capacitance to detect touch, or micro-electronic devices such as accelerometers or level indicators)? If you could track and interpret the actions a customer takes with a smart tag, for example, could that help you? What could you do if your smart tags or smart panels could communicate with each other and a network?

Will flexible displays become integrated with smart-sign technology to provide, say, magazines that can read you?

There is a growing body of publications and patents addressing creative aspects of what can be done with these emerging technologies. What will it mean for you–or for your competitors? What will these technologies mean for your supply chain? What do they mean for packaging, for shelf management, for inventor management, for market research, or for product safety? Are you aware of the future and how it might impact the business? At Innovationedge, we’re ready to work with you to find these answers for your company and to generate the intellectual assets that you will need to be prepared for a smarter, information-rich future. We’re ready to help you develop strategies and tools to reduce the impact of competitive disruptive innovation, while increasing your own opportunities to create intellectual assets and benefit from the emerging capabilities of the future.

In fact, there is one other very cool technology from Asia that you ought to be thinking about when you start exploring a world with smart, flexible display technology. If that doesn’t ring a bell, maybe you should give us a ring and let us show you how to do targeted innovation to help you go beyond mere brainstorming by generating the intellectual assets you need for the future. We tailor our approaches to each client, but in this case, we are likely to apply some of the insights from our recent book, Conquering Innovation Fatigue: Overcoming the Barriers to Personal and Corporate Success, a John Wiley & Sons book by Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins, and Mukund Karanjikar. Call us at 920-967-0470.

May your innovations be flexible and smart!