A new year, a new business?
Commercialisation strategies for the green market
There is an ever growing focus on green business due to increasing consumer demand. Events like the recent Climate Conference in Copenhagen create an even greater world wide awareness.
Large American enterprises like Wal-Mart and DELL have recognised that green business is the future and are joining projects to help consumers identify “green” electronics (source: http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/19627). Scott O’Connell, environmental strategist at Dell recently said: “Customers tell us they want to purchase electronics that have a minimal impact on our planet. This is an effort to help them do that using a common methodology that manufacturers across the industry participate in”.
SME’s (small and medium sized enterprises) have an advantage in this race, being more agile and hence able to change strategy and processes within a shorter time span. This being said, it is not an easy process to re-structure your whole business concept. But since major retailers are re-structuring, why shouldn’t you?
On Friday, February 12th you have the opportunity to participate in a workshop, that can dress you for climbing the ladder towards the green market.
These are some of the questions that will be brought up by the people behind the workshop: consultant company in sustainable business, futurestrategy, the “green” PR agency sieben&siebzig and agency for consumer sociology, OC EO CONSULT.
Throughout the one-day workshop core themes of the process of succesfull commercialisation of green products and services will be presented and discussed.
- Trade innovation
- Concierge Retailing & Pop Up Retailing
- Bottom-up-approach – best practices
- Open Source & Bazaar Marketing
- Public Relations for Green Lifestyle
- The Foundation of Sustainable Communication (PR)
- Guerilla-Marketing
The workshop participants will gain insight in green business and be provided with the proper tools for entering the green market. Learn how to create new business concepts, approach a new target group and develop commercialisation strategies.
Find more information and sign up for the event here.
Innovation in Greece?
From mid July, my family and I will be situated mainly on Kythera, Greece for a period of 6 months. Since Kythera is located only 40 minutes by plane from Athens regular trips to see clients and partners while away is not a problem.
Everybody knows Greece as a great place for vacation. Simple pleasures like sunny weather, picturesque villages, delicious food at reasonable prices and a seemingly endless coastline attract visitors worldwide. But what does Greece have to offer when it comes to business?
It is no secret that the economy isn’t doing so well and The European Commission even predicts a greek recession this year. So what can be done to change things?
Together with the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) the Kokkalis Foundation has pointed out three main factors responsible for Greece’s innovation underperformance: 1) venture capital creation, 2) legal framework and business start up requirements, 3) the relationships between the university and industry. In order to support and guide investors who show interest to the greek market Invest in Greece was founded in 2008. It is the official Investment Promotion Agency of Greece that promotes and facilitates private investment and support and it does so free of charge. They have initiated networks, services and events in order to attract investors over the next years. It seems like Greece is getting around to create the framework for innovation but do they have the potential to develop an actual innovation culture? I’m excited to get a closer view on the greek market and see for myself where the potential lies.
Innovative summer plans
Sunbathing at one of the many lakes in and around Berlin or gaining new knowledge and meeting innovative people for refreshing input and inspiration? If you feel more attracted to the second option, we suggest you join us at the summer camp at Berlin University of the Arts*
Many organisations are challenged by the rapid changes of today’s market and the increasingly high expactations of their stakeholders. To continiously generate and implement new ideas and market opportunities gives you a head start to your competitiors. Most managers are aware of this fact but are challenged in their everyday lifes because of structural and cultural boundaries.
For the Berlin University of the Arts Pia Betton and Prof. Peter Friedrich Stephan facilitate a three day seminar where Radical Innovation – design of concepts, processes and systems, ethnographic field work and cognitive design are on the agenda. Through talks, workshops and coaching you will gain new insight in how to embrace change. You will be introduced to methods and tools that can help you overcome organisational obstacles and actively and efficiently work with innovation in your organisation.
*Read more about the seminar here or contact Berlin University of the Arts for more information!
Designing a sustainable society
3rd International Future Center Summit
In May we are participating in a summit in Stockholm, together with our network partners from Strandgaard & Co and The International Center for Innovation.
The participants will be an inspiring, international group of practitioners and thinkers – people from existing and up-coming so called future and innovation centers. Future Centers are open innovation environments where concepts are developed to support organisations in becoming more systematic in their process of user involvement.
At the summit professionals with shared interests and visions will have the opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience and participate in workshops on social entrepreneurship, intercultural collaboration and society design. The summit is highly relevant for us and our work with both the International Center for Innovation, Future Strategy and 180° Academy where user-driven innovation plays a big role. We hope to extend our network and gain new knowledge that we can integrate in our work with our network partners.
More information about the summit can be found here
Summit Leaders
Prof. Leif Edvinsson – UNIC & University of Lund & The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Per Östling – Dalenum Development
Henrik Danckwardt – IC Community
Create with your audience
This week around 70 representatives from leading cultural organisations in Denmark met in the theatre Camp X in Copenhagen to discuss and share their experiences around people-centred innovation. The Danish Ministry of Culture have recently published a report about involvement of the audience in creating or improving cultural offers. Johannes and I participated in the conference and got the chance to meet the people behind 5 of the 29 cases presented in the report – very inspiring.
A student from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture told about a project, where she was given the assignment to develop something for homeless people. She decided to do observations and went to live with the homeless people for 24 hours. She found that they are not interested in material things. She also found that in the public space the homeless see the bench as their couch, the public rest rooms as their bathrooms, the phone booth as their office etc. At the end, she decided to improve their couch and created a cover for the bench that made it into a comfortable couch. The homeless people loved it.
A developer at the Danish Radio (public broardcaster) develops a number of online products to create traffic on their website. Among others he described an online game/virtual world, which was hacked by lead users. They hacked their way to optimize the game. He turned the hackers into important co-creators of the game.
I’m convinced, that there are many more success stories to come, when more cultural institutions invite their audience to challenge them and give their input. It works very well in the business world. Some people raised the question: Who is to decide which cultural offers the population should be exposed for? Who are the experts? I believe the questions to raise is: How do we re-new ourselves and make excisting or new offers even more relevant and attractive for the audience?