The Art of Manufacturing Feelings

It's Not All About the Stats

Americans love statistics, they love to see their results and understand logically and mathematically how they were achieved. It's why we wear heart rate monitors and love fantasty football leagues. I'm one of those people too, I use garminconnect.com to track every bike ride I take so I know my training zones, it's like each ride is a carefully mapped time trial. And I recently used mapmyride.com to compare my cycling rides with riders around the US and the elite riders in the Tour.

I guess that's why it was refreshing to see something new from the sporting industry. I really like the way Versus disrupts the stereotypical approach the US has towards sports - it's about passion, not the stats. It's aspirational and if I hadn't dropped cable like a bad habit I'd probably watch Versus a bit more.

How to Sell yourself

So check this out, Allison Weiss is looking for some funding for her new EP. She's using kickstart, an initiative where creative people can try to fund their artistic endeavors by creating customized products and provide them for the people who donate to their cause. She's breaking from convention and trying to become a successful musician without the help of big media conglomerates. According to Faris she's already raised $6G.

I think it's smart because she's branding herself and allowing her fans to get what they want most, a little piece of her. It helps that she's succint, funny, easy on the eyes and edits her short well. I like her approach because she's targeting her niche on the longtail by making herself available to the people who like her and her music most.

Alternative Uses

Alternative Uses isn't exactly the most design savvy website but the concept is a smart one. The premise is creating a community around devising ways to find alternative uses for existing products. Can you get by using your drill as an electric mixer or how about using coffee grounds instead of fertilizer, what about using olive oil to lubricate your bike chain; why not consult Alternative Uses and see what the community says? Much like Instructables it's a great way to propogate smart ideas. You can search by uses or by products and of course submit your own if you have a great idea.

Waste = Food

A designer and chemist who are taking sustainability to the next level. This documentary is about true recycling and up-cycling, a way to reuse products that restores them to their raw form. Check out the Nike Consider that snaps apart and other products that are made to be fully biodegradable. Some of the key attributes are:
- these products can be fully disassembled
- made from non-toxic chemicals
- are designed to be cradle to cradle.

Entrepreneurship 3.0

Today's mashup consists of a talk on innovation by Charles Leadbeater and an idea I read in "The Four Hour Workweek," by Timothy Ferris. We live in a world where innovation is just as likely to come about from a professional amateur (someone who is passionate about their "hobby") as it is to come from an innovation or R&D department. Just watch Klunkerz (a doucmentary about the origins of mountainbiking) to get an idea of how this happens. The mountain bike was created out of a real need by a bunch of guys who loved biking in the woods out in Marin, not by the R&D division of Trek.

So how is the approach to business evolving, well I think there is a shift in how a business interacts with the market place and all of it's users/consumers. An entrepreneur can provide people with a platform, tools and some rules and then orchestrate a conversation that stimulates creativity; it doesn't seem like a new idea but it's disruptive to the conventional work place. It's a bit analagous to the open source movement because when passionate people are empowered they are extrememly productive. Even less conventional is allowing the consumer to create content linking the community of users with the company and in essence creating a two way relationship between business and consumer. It's a concept that has made Threadless, Etsy and the Apple iPhone application store a huge success. This is a business model that I think is going to continue becoming increasingly popular.

Quirky

Quirky has some great implications for entrepreneurial minded designers. As a designer and entrepreneur I know that production & communications are a significant part of the equation if you want to make a profit from your product. If you're more an idea person, a creative mind who's time is best spent thinking up an idea and moving on to the next one then Quirky could be a great way to make your creativity come to life.