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“Often the persuasion of a business is more important than the quality of the product.” At a conference for TED, a non-profit association that promotes and spreads innovative ideas, advertising guru Rory Sutherland demonstrates how advertising alone is an effective means of modifying a consumer’s perception of a product.

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In order to explain his idea of successful marketing to his audience, Rory Sutherland uses the weapon of irony: Why spend millions of dollars on tracks for high-velocity trains from Paris to London, when you could spend half of the money employing top supermodels to walk up and down the trains throughout the journey? It would cost less, and people would actually request that the train slow down. With a series of entertaining and provocative examples, Rory explains the importance of advertising and the extraordinary effects that it can have on the perception of a product.

Rory Sutherland begun his career as a teacher and successfully became a copy writer for Microsoft. He was a pioneer of the Internet, as he was one of the first in the field of advertising who strongly believed in the web’s potential. He foresaw the advantages for advertising that would arise from the internet’s success. His intuition played a large role in his success. Social networking was his new frontier: he is the author of a blog, he has a column “The Wiki Man” at The Spectator, and his Twitter account is constantly being updated.

“The tangible values of a product require many elements: planning, expenditure of money, and the use of sometimes limited resources”. Advertising, according to Sutherland, does not have to be considered a solution to all of these problems, but it is at least a great opportunity to simplify them. Sutherland uses breakfast cereal as an example: in order to re-launch a breakfast cereal as an entirely new product on the market, all that had to be done was to change the image on the box and the name of the cereal. The consumers, who were interviewed after a taste test, swore that the “new” product was more appealing and appetizing.

According to the research done by the Advertising Man, as his colleagues like to call him, the advertisements that are the most effective as the ones that amuse the public, and through content originality, make a product more desirable to the public. Rory Sutherland believes that the future of marketing will be pure entertainment.

More info:

• http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/rory_sutherland_life_lessons_from_an_ad_man.html
• http://rorysutherland.blogspot.com/

We’ve all heard the terms ‘generation Y’ and ‘millennium generation’ be used to explain this technology-savvy generation. Don Tapscott, the author of Wikinomics, has a new term to describe this phenomenon: the smartest generation. In an interview conducted at the Innovation Forum in Milan, Italy, Tapscott explains the key points of his famous book, as well as our relationship with technology.

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During the Innovation Forum 2008, which is held every year in Milan, Italy in March, Tapscott explains the key points of Wikinomics and the “smartest generation”.

When the internet was born, it was a platform for content. Today, it has become a platform that creates services for the mass public, a giant network that updates itself constantly. Today, the digital native have a close relationship with this technology and many use it without thinking of the ingenuity behind it. Some call them the millennium generation, others generation Y. For Tapscott, it has become the “smartest generation”.

Don Tapscott is a Canadian author and consultant specializing in business strategy, organizational transformation and the role of technology in business and society.

Tapscott has authored or co-authored thirteen books on the application of technology in business and society. His most famous book, co-authored with Anthony Williams and published is Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, the best selling Management book in the US of 2007.

More Info:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQbaGT6PkM
• http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/

It is important to think smart and read smart. Helen Walters, the editor of BusinessWeek, has already done half of the work for us, by outlining the 19 best innovation and design books written in 2009. Our top 10 list highlights the best of the best in innovation and design thinking.

What do contemporary T-shirt graphics, Brooklyn-based design companies, and animated short films have in common? For one thing, they’ve each grabbed the attention of Helen Walters, editor of Innovation and Design at BusinessWeek Magazine. Helen has used each of these diverse topics to illustrate the ability innovative design techniques have to change the world around us.

Recently, Helen has shifted her focus from producing original work to publicizing and critiquing the work of others. Her survey of the 19 best innovation and design books written in 2009 is a helpful guide for anyone looking to become more informed on this year’s innovation innovations, for lack of a better phrase. 10 of these books stood out to us as especially interesting or unique:

1. Change by Design by Tim Brown – a persuasive argument for the necessity of maintaining a well-functioning design department to succeed in tomorrow’s business climate.
2. The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger Martin – a practically applicable guide to creating and maintaining a quality design department written by one of the most respected people in the field.
3. A Fine Line: How Design Strategies are Shaping the Future of Business by Hartmut Esslinger – Frog Design’s founder’s personal entertaining and informative anecdotes of his time spent at companies including Apple, Disney, and SAP.
4. Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean by Roberto Verganti – a revolutionary look at the field that focuses on companies’ ability to manipulate markets by using innovative design to alter customer expectations.
5. I Miss My Pencil by Martin Bone and Kara Johnson – an exercise in innovative design itself, this uniquely formatted book emphasizes the non-traditional aspects of the field in a very interesting and accessible manner
6. Discovery-Driven Growth: A Breakthrough Process to Reduce Risk and Seize Opportunity by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan – an executive’s handy-book to implementing innovative designs without creating excessive risk written by professors from Columbia and Wharton.
7. The Age of the Unthinkable, Why the New World Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It by Joshua Cooper Ramo – a survey of disruptive innovation as it has manifested itself in the business community and the world at large, emphasizing its inevitability and potential to be positive.
8. Innovation Tournaments: Creating and Selecting Exceptional Opportunities by Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich – two Wharton professors’ academic look at the way innovation can be encouraged and managed through the use of certain business practices.
9. Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones – a persuasion piece arguing that brilliant, difficult people are going to be the primary source of innovative and economic growth in tomorrow’s economy.
10. Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life and Maybe Even the World by Warren Berger – a look at individuals that the author sees as important to changing the field of innovative design, and consequently the world, that pays special attention to designer Bruce Mao

More Info:

• http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/12/1216_best_design_innovation_books/1.htm
• http://www.helenwalters.com

Roger Harrop directs Speakers With Content, an American group that connects audiences with experts and specialists who provide practical information, solutions, and materials in an inspiring and insightful manner. Based on experiences and personal observations, Roger Harrop outlines the 10 key concepts of a successful entrepreneur.

As the Group Chief Executive of Servomex for seven years, Roger Harrop helped the company become the world leader in gas analysis. Now the President and Fellow of the Professional Speakers Association, Harrop is a keynote speaker for international corporations, business leaders groups, and associations. Here are his ten tips for our leaders:

1. Know what your weaknesses are, and always have a number 2, someone that can complement you and your weaknesses.
2. Know what your purpose is. What is it that you want to achieve? Knowing one’s purpose can help direct people in the right direction.
3. Belief is of upmost importance. If you don’t believe in yourself and your work, people will see right through you.
4. Passion is key. If you don’t have passion for your work, it will never be as good as it could be.
5. Demonstrate courage by taking risks in order to move the business forward.
6. Respect people. There aren’t any successful entrepreneurs who treat people badly.
7. Always have a Plan B. Never forget Murphy’s law: if a project takes a bad turn, be ready with another plan.
8. Keep it simple.
9. Work smart, not hard. Clever people know how to get the job done in the most efficient way possible.
10. Enjoy what you are doing, and above all, make the most of life.

You can hear all about Roger Harrop’s tips from the man himself in the following interview:

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More Info.:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh7c_o9xI6s

This video explains a new trend of “try-vertising” in which consumers are able to try new products for free. It’s a win-win situation: buyers get to use the products for free before they hit store shelves, and companies gain valuable market research.

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In the last few years we have directly, or implicitly, experienced and assisted to the creative freedom of art directors, advertisers, and copywriters. In Japan and Korea, the presence of advanced technology and an innovative culture for excellence, has opened the doors for all sorts of experimentation, with the realization of interactive windows, holographic displays, or women window displays (dressed by automatic product distributors).

In the meantime, the exposition of the internet to its business models, it is not beyond contributing further to this scenario.

Contrastingly in the United States, the concept of “sampling” is back in style, or rather free product trials. But this time inaugurating a new era of advertising: “Try advertising”.

With the Alliant International University campus in San Diego, “Sample U” has arrived: a laboratory dedicated to the study of marketing consumer products. “Sample U” offers products that are virtually unavailable, available directly from the manufacturer, in exchange for some information about the identity of the user and their experience.

More Info.:

• http://www.alliant.edu/wps/wcm/connect/website
• http://www.campusexplorer.com/colleges/75652149/California/San-Diego/Alliant-International-University-San-Diego/
• http://www.sampleu.com/Welcome.html