I’m passing along some ideas from Harvard Business Review that emerged in 2011 as powerful “innovation invitations.” HBR says these seem certain to intensify in global power and influence, and I do agree that they will spark innovation differentiation in the months ahead:

1. The Slacktivism Co-Opt

As much a term of derision as global sociological phenomenon, slacktivism has emerged as social media’s way of making support for a cause as easy as a re-tweet or clicking Facebook’s “like” button. Critics insist that this “path of least resistance” mechanism for saving the whales/the earth/indigenous tribes or supporting the fight against breast cancer/prostate cancer/muscular dystrophy better represents an impulsive twitch of a finger than thoughtful commitment. But that doesn’t mean savvy marketers aren’t supremely well-positioned to embrace slacktivism as an innovative outreach to customers and communities alike. The growing desire of large organizations and global brands to align with — or be seen to be aligned with — causes that matter assures that we’ll start seeing market leaders seek a higher profile in making it easy for their communities of customers to show their support.

2. Counting on Self-Quantifiers for Growth

Mobile, digital and networked devices have created a global sub-culture of self-quantifiers — that is, individuals who rigorously count every step they take, ever calorie they eat, every minute they sleep, every email/text they send/receive and every schedule change they make. The even quantify how often they self-quantify. Some think of this as networked narcissism. But individuals hewing to Thales’ admonition to “Know thyself” believe self-quantification the greatest innovation in the history of introspection. Organizations like Weight Watchers and LiveStrong already offer calorie counter apps for overweight SQers but it’s clear that self-quantification offers a remarkable marketing opportunity for firms that want their customers to count on — and up — the value they get. Health care, nutrition and energy consumption are only the most obvious marketing opportunities for Innovative Self Quantification Marketing Opportunities. Transportation, mobile communications professional development and — yes — parenting are also rife with opportunity. Given ongoing trends, consumers will soon find self-quantification apps and options as ubiquitous as “Like” buttons and QR codes.

3. Gerontabletification

Demography is, indeed, destiny. The world — particularly the wealthy OECD countries — is growing older. This creates enormous fiscal strains for social welfare states but fantastic market opportunities for device-driven innovators. Mobile phones are too small; their screens too tiny and keyboards too minute. But tablets have emerged as ideal media platforms for those requiring larger fonts and bigger keys. The iPad — originally marketed as the hip & cool media consumption device — has ceased to be a symbol of youth and vitality. It’s now how silver haired executives — and 75 year old grandmas — read the news, manage their email and play games with the kids. When this reality is linked to emerging medical research indicating that mental exercise can delay the onset and impact of cognitive diminution, it’s clear that there are more reasons for the aged population to have tablets than not. Any company with older customers that doesn’t customize apps and offerings for their 60+ users are guilty of brand-destructive age discrimination.

4. Globalizing Grand Challenges

The X Prize Foundation has transformed commercial space entrepreneurship with its innovative X Prizes. DARPA — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — has transformed robotics, autonomous vehicle design and real-time social media network utilization with a series of provocatively produced “Grand Challenges.” Over the past decade, America has been a leader in the design, development and marketing of competitions and prizes for technical innovation. But it’s time the so-called emerging economies stepped up. Brazil is a vibrant, eco-conscious, increasingly entrepreneurial and innovative economy that has the money and the brains to design a Grand Challenge that inspires attention and excitement from innovators worldwide. Should it be Amazon or Flex Fuels related? Or might agro-biotech be the better offer? India desperately needs more innovative ways of handling education, health care and — especially — infrastructure. Which Indian state or ministry — or billionaire! — will design the right kind of stimulative competition or prize? China, of course, is China. Who is better positioned to exploit “not-quite-market” mechanisms to bring high impact innovation to the middle kingdom? China wants to spur innovation. This is one dramatically cost-effective way to do it.

5. Handheld Augmented Reality

Even in an increasingly virtual environments, physical space matters. The rise of accessible augmented reality technologies makes physical location matter more. Place-based social media like Foursquare have done tremendously well in attracting both users and attention. Who, or what, will be the Foursquare of Augmented Visualization and Interaction? Companies like Layar are taking an active stab at it. But Apple’s IOS and appstore ecosystem — as well as Android’s and Microsoft/Nokia’s new innovation efforts — now makes it far easier to link visual overlays, “enotations” and virtual Post-It notes to geo-spatial coordinates. In other words, don’t just read the Foursquare comments but “see” graffiti, sketches, maps and comments simply by peering through your tablet or mobile phone. Instead of “taking” pictures and images, it lets you “see” them as a function of the “augmented reality” layer of data and information stored in the digisphere.

A store like Macy’s or Home Depot could use augmented reality layers to let people see underlying details of clothes or tools that a simple tag or QR code might not. Indeed, expect a tussle between retailers and product suppliers over whose “augmented reality” deserves in-store primacy. We may see “augmented reality” fees replace stocking fees as part of physical retailing business models. But that’s a battle for beyond 2012. What’s next is the first wave of mobile devices becoming augmented reality viewers for their users. Expect to see QR code/augmented reality mashups as a 2012 investment to facilitate the virtual transition.

6. The Greenlash Arrives

The ban on incandescent light bulb sales in America is delayed. The costs — and unwieldiness — associated with energy efficient devices turn out to be greater than expected. BP’s solar shut down and solar power company bankruptcies in Silicon Valley and Berlin surprise. The failure of Spanish and Scottish wind farms to deliver disappoints. The economic opportunities from “tight” gas and oil finds in America and China impress. The rate of technical innovation in horizontal drilling and fracking continues unabated. The Chevy Volt is a hot car (but in the wrong way.) The economic growth debates around the proposed Keystone pipeline intensify.

Is there a Greenlash emerging that’s pushing populations worldwide to reconsider so-called fossil fuels as better, safer and more reliable than their renewable counterparts? There’s little doubt that they’re proving to be cheaper.

Vibrant innovation worldwide in natural gas and petrochemical technologies has come to rival — both in perception and reality — innovation associated by Greentech. Certainly, the global oil industry seems more excited by its most recent advances than the “green VCs” see in theirs. Instead of being technologically moribund and creatively dull, an established industry has challenged the eco-myth of “Peak Oil.” Conversely, the green promises of eco-tech are taking longer and costing more than many of its champions promised. As energy-dependent economies chug along with growth far lower than expected or desired, green options are looking rather gray. Fossil fuels are being rebranded as organic. Expect 2012 and its associated elections in America and Europe to spark vicious debate about which industries are more innovative, cost-effective and best for the environment.

Related articles

• Innovative Ideas to Watch in 2012 (blogs.hbr.org)
• New report shows the growth of the mobile augmented reality market | QR Code Press | Logicamp (logicamp.wordpress.com)
• The Transportation Security Administration’s QR code flub (radar.oreilly.com)
• Mystery Solved: With So Few People Familiar with QR Codes, Why Do Marketers Use Them? (marketingvox.com)

Throughout the year I will continue to blog about trends I see in innovation. Here’s a few of them I saw today in a Washington Post article, and how they’ll impact the business landscape in the months to come. Do you agree?

1. Strategy and entrepreneurship will have ever-greater interdependence. A trend I’ve been watching for some time is the tendency for what we used to put in the “strategy” bucket to converge with what we used to call “entrepreneurship.” With companies needing to continuously reinvent themselves and innovation becoming the watchword for success, practices formerly associated with entrepreneurship are going mainstream; companies will ignore the constant renewal of their advantages at their peril. This changes the nature of innovation. Many companies will maintain their competitiveness by acquiring small, entrepreneurial firms in new markets where building competencies themselves would simply take too long. Companies are finding that they need to be innovative just to keep their core businesses relevant. Berlitz is an interesting case in point. The company had a rather tired, inflexible business model and was being beaten by organizations such as Rosetta Stone at capturing the imagination (and money) of people who needed language training. The company’s new strategy is to become more innovative and more flexible, and to use new technologies to make possible services that never existed before. For instance, Berlitz can now cost-effectively offer Arabic lessons by electronically creating classes, where before classes weren’t practical, because not enough Arabic-seeking students were physically near one another.

2. Access to assets will be replacing ownership of assets. When times are uncertain, the last thing you want to do is make fixed-amount commitments to specific assets and capabilities. Moreover, often we don’t really need to own an asset to meet our needs. For example, most of us need a chainsaw very infrequently (let’s hope!). So why buy one, if you can borrow it just for one project? From the car-rental service Zipcar to couch-sharing sites like airbnb and the cloud services available from Amazon, we can have just-in-time access to the outputs that goods and services provide, rather than actually owning them. The same applies to people. More and more real work is being done by people on a freelance or part-time basis. The fundamental driver is that in uncertain times you preserve your flexibility by not owning a lot of assets. This will be a boon to companies like Amazon (which can provide computing power on demand) or Accenture (which can get you a change management team that will go away when its job is done). It will upend the business of organizations that depend on selling services and goods rather than leasing them.

3. The tradeoff between reach and richness will continually diminish. It is a classic truth of information technology that for a message to reach a lot of people, it has to be stripped of a great deal of rich contextual information. Thus a bond trader can connect instantly with a global network of other bond traders, but the information they exchange is very bare-bones. We will increasingly see companies develop technologies that can help re-enrich far-flung communications. Apple’s Siri voice-command personal assistant is an example. It’s still a computer talking, but it is helping to create a much fuller context for our interactions with our handheld technology. We’re going to see more advances in making remote communication feel more real, and that will change how businesses and virtual teams interact, adding in some of the texture and emotion that gets squeezed out. Technologies such as 3D imaging, the ability to use better voice recognition, and price drops for various kinds of telepresence may well make it much easier to work in virtual teams.

4. Mass markets will be micro-fragmenting. More and more, markets and market segments will shatter, making life very difficult for companies accustomed to dealing with mass or blockbuster markets. In health care, the rise of gene sequencing and more specific diagnostics means that smaller and smaller numbers of customers are likely to respond to a given therapy. That means, in turn, that companies must profit by serving niches rather than broad markets. In consumer products we see people looking for personalized offers just for themselves. Lulu.com is an on-demand publisher that appeals to authors with very small audiences, because they incur virtually no fixed costs and can therefore choose to publish books only when sales are assured. PC makers increasingly allow their customers to customize their devices. App developers can make enough money to pay off development costs even when their target markets are small. This fracturing of mass markets will favor companies that can sense customers’ particular desires and tailor production accordingly.

5. Oblique competition will become ubiquitous. Finally, the nature of competition has changed. Traditionally businesses competed within industries; today competition can come from nowhere and take over whole market segments. That is a seismic shift. A company’s most important competitors may not even be in the same industry. Who would have imagined that telecom companies would be competing with banks and credit card issuers for consumer payment streams? Moreover, customers judge across their entire set of experiences rather than just comparing your organization to others like it. We want our technology to be as intuitive and user-friendly as Apple products, the service we receive to be as thoughtful as we might get from Nordstrom, and personalization and ease of payment as good as Amazon’s. This expands the range of what a typical strategist will have to pay attention to.

What does all this mean for company leaders today? I think three overarching themes deserve time and attention. First, we must consciously and aggressively compare our existing assumptions with unfolding reality. Most of the time, today’s strategies are a response to constraints from the past. Relax the constraints, and all kinds of new possibilities become feasible. Second, regular time-outs from day-to-day concerns to pay attention to early warnings are crucial. All too many leaders stay so busy operationalizing today’s strategy that they miss the obvious. It isn’t usually the unthinkable that undoes companies; it’s the possible that nobody paid attention to. Finally, consider where leaders get most of the information they use to make decisions. If they aren’t tapping into different sources of data and insight, they are increasingly likely to overlook some crucial trend—until it’s too late.

Related articles

• Top Ten Small Business Trends for 2012 (smallbizlabs.com)
• 2012′s Top Cloud Trend: IT Delivers Platforms (informationweek.com)
• Deloitte Predicts the Top 10 Technology Trends for 2012 (prnewswire.com)
• Tips For Developing An Entrepreneurial Mindset (alltopstartups.com)

Image via Wikipedia

The Jawbone Up is available for the iPad, the iPod Touch (4th generation) and the iPhone (3GS, 4 and 4S), comes in many different colors and sells for about $100. Could this technology be under your tree in December?

Here’s a great chart that shows us how we are now spending more time using mobile apps than we do on our desktops or laptops:

Chart courtesy of Flurry.com

The chart comes from an analysis firm, according to Flurry, a company that breaks down mobile usage in the U.S. Notice that from June of last year to this June, both mobile app usage and computer internet usage have increased–just not at the same rate.

“For the first time ever, daily time spent in mobile apps surpasses desktop and mobile web consumption,” Flurry reports.

Flurry says most of the time we spend using the mobile apps is in gaming or social networking. These two activities alone take up about 80 percent of our time online, leaving the other 20 percent on entertainment and news. I find that very interesting, don’t you?

How does this chart square up with your own mobile usage?

Image via Wikipedia

Even in this tough economic reality we live in, rising food prices aren’t souring our hunger for food that is healthy, satisfying and tasty. I’ve been writing about grocery shopping trends and some innovative consumer solutions from the food and beverage industry. Here’s more consumer insight from an article I published yesterday:

Several trends in the food industry are prompting innovation leaders to serve up new ways to appeal to shoppers feeling the pinch at the checkout aisle.

While grocery retailers are still struggling in this down market, we’re seeing a new kind of consumer who demands a great value. But if you think it’s all about the bottom line at the checkout line, you might not be getting the full flavor of what grocery shoppers really want.

Value in today’s economy is not just about price. We’re finding that consumers aren’t willing to sacrifice quality and taste just to squeeze a few more dollars from their grocery budget. That’s good news for private label food manufacturers, as grocery shoppers are eating up brands that deliver value.

Enjoy the rest of the article here.  Are you part of the trend to put quality and taste over price?

Courtesy Barnes & Noble.com

If you’ve been waiting to get an e-reader upgrade (or your very first one), Barnes & Noble unveiled its newest e-reader today: a smaller, black-and-white touchscreen device called the Nook Simple Touch Reader. It is selling for $139, the same suggested retail price as Amazon’s Kindle. How do the two compare?

Both devices have built-in Wi-Fi, 6-inch display screens and are priced at $139. But the Nook is buttonless, is 1.5 inches shorter and is one ounce lighter.

Another plus for the Nook is the battery longevity. You can read for two months with the Barnes & Noble model, compared to less than four weeks with a Kindle.   Additionally, you can share your favorite books and weigh in on book reviews with the Nook Friends app. The social media component helps drive recommendations in a way that regular reviews from strangers can’t touch.

Courtesy: Amazon.com

One of the cooler aspects of the Nook is in how you turn pages. The Kindle screen appears to blink before the next page appears. Readers have reported seeing a lingering word or two from the previous page. But the Nook seems to turn pages smoothly and without the black screen.

Not to be outdone, Amazon announced a few hours later it is launching its new 3G version of its ad-supported Kindle for $164, called the Kindle 3G With Special Offers. If you can put up with an occasional advertisement popping up on your screen, you’ll get special offers and coupons for books and electronics.

The rivalry so far seems to be giving Barnes & Noble the upper hand, claiming it controls 25% of the e-book market.

These days, we all have those punch cards good toward a free cup of coffee, or a “points” card good for coupons on electronics.  It’s the same customer loyalty idea that S&H had years ago when my parents’ generation saved the stamps. For decades, companies have been trying to figure out how to engage their customers and gage their loyalty.

Unfortunately, these reward programs can backfire. It takes a lot more than a punchcard to get your customers coming back for your goods and services.  If you want to read a great article on this, check out author and business strategist Carol Roth’s article titled, Leading a New Era of Customer Engagement with Customer Loyalty 3.0. Carol discusses three levels in customer engagement, and helps companies understand how both they and their brands can make spenders feel cared for and important by taking a holistic approach.

But because not all customers have the same wants or needs, we need to know who they are and we need to listen to their conversations to understand what is important to them. Like anything, it takes time and a lot of effort to do this, but I think it is time well spent to build solid, loyal relationships.

I think you’ll find this conference features the best-of-best elements and people, and we’ve designed it so you’ll be able to exchange ideas, forge new connections and fuel sustainable innovation within your organization that drives growth. Among the highlights is a how-to guide to build a co-creative enterprise from the co-author of leading business book “The Power of Co-creation.”

Social product development is key, and you’ll discover how communities can be used to solve some of your toughest innovation problems, as well as how to build your business around an existing crowd of passionate people. In other words–crowdsourcing for real results.

It all happens on June 27 & 28, and I hope you can join us as we bring together an unprecedented group of thinkers, makers and doers to help you understand and apply co-creative approaches  to your work. This event is for anyone who wants to drive breakthrough results in product development and innovation.

We’re featuring more than 20 keynote speakers across a variety of industries representing companies like LEGO Group, InnoCentive, Harvard Business School, Wired Magazine, American Express, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Hallmark Cards, Intuit Labs and Microsoft 
Design Studio, plus many more.

Be sure to register by May 20th for a huge savings. See you in June!

Courtesy: Vision Expo 2011

The International Vision Expo kicked off today in New York City, focusing on the most innovative eyewear technology of this year.

I’m among the nearly 150 million adults who wear glasses, and 50 million Americans carry multiple pairs – perhaps for reading, working, driving, or just watching TV. But soon you’ll need just one pair.Today attendees at the exhibit got an up-close look at a new all-in-one technology known as the “Superfocus” glasses, that can change the strength of their liquid lenses, enabling you to see different distances by moving a tiny, adjustable lever. The Superfocus allows you to customize your prescription for whatever you’re looking at. You can change the prescription at the push of a slider.

Another new development is in the weight of the glasses. PURE glasses by Legacie promise to be strong yet very light so that you hardly know they’re there. The innovation comes from a new alloy, Xandium, treaded through the glasses as a frame. The flexible frame has memory so it pops back into place if you bend them. The cost will be about $275.

Another trend we’re seeing is that people are hoping to be eco-friendly with their eyewear. You can donate used glasses to those in need when you update your style, or, you can purchase vintage specs. MODO Eco Glasses debuts an Eco line of glasses that are made out of recycled materials. MODO ships its glasses in sturdy, corrugated cardboard, and you can still mail your old pair in to get recycled into a new pair of glasses. For every pair of glasses they sell, they’re going to plant a tree. Prices range from $150 to $250 dollars.

There are more interesting glasses to see! Check out the big spectacle here.

I’ve not played too many games on social media, but I know a lot of people who do. And this year social gaming is predicted to become a $1 Billion  industry.

That’s according to a new study from eMarketer. The group says more than 62 million Internet  users in the United States — that’s almost a third of us — will play at least one game on a social network each month this year. That’s a huge surge from last year, when only a tenth of us used social media gaming to pass the time.

Check out the article and some very interesting statistics here. One thing the study does not touch on is the increase in mobile phone apps for gamers.

Here is a terrific video I found on YouTube from JWT. It has several interesting elements I found particularly comforting, like the fact that human downtime and relationships still matter even as we become more and more attached to technology. (There’s even a mini-trend to de-tech!)

Comments are always welcomed! I’d love to hear your thoughts.

An article titled Global Media Habits 2010, by Greg Lindsay, shows us how different types of media are being consumed around the globe, from television to newspapers to cell phones.

Among the trends is this fact: Even the most poor nations consider television a necessity. Lindsay writes,

In 2010, nearly half of Indian households have TV, up from less than one-third in 2001. But in urban areas, that figure jumps to 96%. (Compare that to 7% of Indians who use the internet.) In Kenya, the TV-penetration rate rose from roughly 60% to 70% from 2005 to 2009, even as the number of households measured increased by nearly half. Even in the slums of Sao Paulo, TVs are the top seller of Brazilian retail chain Casas Bahia, despite the fact that residents tend not to have electricity or running water.

Another interesting trend is in newspaper consumption. We know that in the U.S. newspaper circulation is declining, but not so in the rest of the world where the newspaper business is booming. There are 44 percent more paid dailys in India, with Asia, Africa and Latin America not far behind.

Facebook is another big media demand in emerging markets. Facebook’s user base is 517 million people, 70% of whom live outside the U.S. Interestingly, these users follow brands just as much as American users do:

According to a DDB study of 1,642 international Facebook users, the average self-avowed fan is 31 years old and follows nine brands. Three-quarters (76%) have already pressed “like” to signal they are a fan of a brand. In return, they expect special treatment (95%) and are willing to advocate for the brand if necessary (94%).

The invention of “cyber cafés” has been instrumental in online usage in emerging markets. But while access costs are often too high for the poorest of people to afford, cell phone costs are very reasonable, especially among the up and coming generation.

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!

Do a search of Food and Restaurant industry trends for 2011, and you’ll see hundreds of hot trends from forecasters around the globe.  I’ve put together a list of what I think are the most interesting predictions:

An increase in Mom and Pop shops. A growing number of people are following their dreams and financing their own unique family restaurants.

One-item restaurants. Like gourmet burgers, many restaurants are opening with one menu item and building on that. Look for hot dog restaurants, grilled cheese restaurants — you get the idea.

Mini everything. Mini is the 2011 buzzword it seems. Look for mini plates, mini portions, mini desserts and more, thanks to our shrinking budgets.

Hearth-healthy. The emphasis is on whole foods and healthy preparation techniques, like using wood-fired ovens.

Smoking. Cigarettes are still banned, but you’ll see more smoke flavoring in your food, such as smoked olive oil, cumin and butter.

Kumquats. Most people didn’t know what a pomegranate was until a few years ago. Look for Kumquats to be the new “it” fruit in salads, relishes and desserts.

Honey. Many chefs are developing partnerships with local beekeepers and using honey in their unique dressings and dishes.

Neck. You’ll find more parts of the animal being used to create dishes. Look for lamb, beef, goat and pork neck on the menu.

Bellies. Like necks, goat and lamb bellies are appearing on more menus in 2011.

Coconut. This flavor is increasing its popularity, and more consumers will ask for it in their coffee and desserts as well as in main dishes.

High-end junk food. Look for creative chefs to add their unique spin to our favorite comfort junk like cheese puffs, chips and beef sticks.

Gourmet popsicles. Forget cherry and grape. Look for carrot, beef and sugar-snap pea treats on a stick.

And my favorite quirky trend: Dirt! Some chefs are ditching sauces and instead using dried or powdered ingredients to add texture and flavor. One chef is planning on opening a Noma restaurant in San Francisco this month using dishes like his sister restaurant in Denmark:  Toasted malt dirt-covered radishes, anyone?

One of the bigger trends of course is our quest to understand how social media can grow and expand our business. I’ve noticed that this past year many more companies have used social media in their pursuit of useful ideas than ever before.  I enjoyed reading a report from Greener World Media about crowdsourcing when it comes to sustainability projects.

The article looks at three efforts by GE’s Smart Grid challenge, eBay’s Green Team, and a leading European retailer’s green customer foray and how those leaders used crowdsourcing to generate sustainability ideas. Check it out.

One example that stood out to me was this summer’s “GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid.”The company and other firms spent $200 million to grab ideas from society via a new website. Nearly 4,000 ideas were submitted over a three-month period, and at the end there were more than 70,000 comments to sift through. GE held a contest for the best ideas and announced the winners earlier this month.

If you want to try something similar, the article suggests three rules to make your campaign successful:

1. Be painfully clear about the results you want from your campaign.

2. Embrace transparency.

3. Link the campaign to co-value creation.

In GE’s case, it asked participants to send forth their best thinking to create initiatives that would enhance an aspect of their own lives. Making it personal was the evident key in this crowdsourcing experiment.

There are dozens of consumer trends we’re watching for 2011, and soon you’ll see some brand new lists of projections from the futurists and news articles about how corporations need to adjust and embrace these new trends.

One particularly interesting list I found on Consumertrendwatching.com covers everything from pricing, coupons and country of origin to how kind we are to our customers.  Check it out and let me know which ones resonate with you:

Eleven Consumer Trends for 2011

1. RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS

In 2011, expect companies to monitor consumers’ public moods and act upon them with random acts of kindness…marketing may never be the same

2. URBANOMICS

Are you ready for hundreds of millions of more daring, more experienced consumers? Oh, and that’s just one side effect of rapid global urbanization…

3. PRICING PANDEMONIUM

Flash sales, group buying, GPS-driven deals: in 2011 pricing will never be the same…

4. MADE FOR CHINA (IF NOT BRIC)

In 2011, expect an increasing number of ‘Western’ brands to launch new products or even new brands dedicated (if not paying proper respect) to consumers in emerging markets…

5. ONLINE STATUS SYMBOLS

In 2011, you can’t go wrong supplying your (online-loving) customers with any kind of symbol, virtual or ‘real world’, that helps them display to peers their online contributions, creations or popularity…

6. WELLTHY

As good health is now as important to some consumers as having the biggest, newest or shiniest status symbols, growing numbers of consumers will expect health products and services in 2011 to prevent misery (if not improve their quality of life), rather than merely treating illnesses and ailments…

7. SOCIAL-LITES AND TWINSUMERS

Expect even more consumers to become curators: broadcasting, compiling, commenting, sharing and recommending content, products, purchases, and experiences to both their friends and wider audiences…

8. EMERGING GENEROSITY

In 2011, brands and wealthy individuals from emerging markets (yes, especially China) will increasingly be expected to give, donate, care and sympathize versus just sell and take. And not just in their home countries, but on a global scale…

9. PLANNED SPONTANEITY

With lifestyles having become fragmented, with dense urban environments offering consumers any number of instantly available options, and with cell/smartphones having created a generation who have little experience of making (or sticking to) rigid plans, 2011 will see full-on PLANNED SPONTANEITY…

10. ECO SUPERIOR

When it comes to ‘green consumption’ in 2011, expect a rise in ECO-SUPERIOR products: products that are not only eco-friendly, but superior to polluting incumbents in every possible way…

11. OWNER-LESS

2011 could be the year when sharing and renting really tips into mainstream consumer consciousness as big brands and governments put their weight behind this cultural shift…

Check out the complete explanation here.

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

Many of these new kit-style classrooms can save up to 30 percent in materials costs. One builder says its structures are about $40 to $50 per square feet as opposed to new construction at $250 to $300 per square foot. And they’re actually quicker and easier to construct. Modular classroom contractors say there is typically a two- to -four-month install time.

Many contractors turn the project into a lesson in green technology, as students learn why a greener school is better for their community and the environment. Some of these classrooms are said to generate enough solar energy to be 100 percent sustainable. Check out Project Frog classrooms in San Francisco and the Gen7 from American Modular Systems.

At the moment most of these schools are being built in southern climates like California and Florida. But some in the U.K. are able to withstand cooler temps. No doubt we’ll be seeing more of these eco-friendly moduals coming to school as the younger population increases.

(Photo courtesy of American Modular Systems)