reveries.com :: marketing insights + ideas

“Hard wooden chairs don’t do it anymore,” says Bruce MacMillan, who credits Starbucks with “the rise of the casual meeting room,” reports Elaine Glusac in the New York Times (4/30/08). Others point to books such as Dan Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” and Richard Florida’s “Rise of the Creative Class,” but whatever the drivers it’s clear that the old “coffee urn” approach to meetings is giving way to things like “wheat-grass shots on breaks.” Executive coach Leslie Marquard is making a business out of the trend toward these so-called “right-brain meetings,” where “better brainstorming” is encouraged via “comfortable, colorful furnishings and accessories ranging from Slinkys to … Guitar Hero.”

Leslie set up Catalyst Ranch, one such “alternative meeting space in a former sausage factory, near the loop in Chicago.” The only problem is that clients have to come to her, and when she has to facilitate meetings at “endothermic hotel rooms with no windows and natural air.” Fortunately, this appears to be changing. For example, the W Hotels in New York provide Etch A Sketches and other toys in meeting rooms, while the W Seattle offers a ’sensory setup’ for meeting rooms, furnishing aromatherapy candles, stress balls and puzzles, mood music and black notepads with white lead pencils.” Wow.

The Hotel Sax in Chicago meanwhile “has opened irregularly shaped meeting rooms with few right angels, including an oval foyer with a video wall and a room with a curved wall, low armchairs and an electric fireplace. One L-shaped space features a recessed bank of white leather seat pods opposite a water wall.” As for the payoff, Diana Peterson says a “right-brain meeting” worked its magic for her at a recent sales meeting at the Curtis Hotel in Denver, saying the “fun energy” resulted in “an increase in sales of 40 to 50 percent after the conference, versus flatter results from similar events in traditional settings.” ~ Tim Manners, editor

Susanne M. Jaeggi has co-authored a paper that says it is possible to train people to increase their brainpower, reports Nicholas Bakalar in The New York Times (4/29/08). Susanne is a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Michigan who conducted a test showing that so-called “fluid intelligence” — the kind of intelligence considered to be innate and that can’t be taught — can, in fact, be improved upon with practice. Since fluid intelligence is basically the ability to “solve new problems without having any relevant previous experience,” training centers on “working memory — the kind that allows memorization of a telephone number just long enough to dial it.”

According to Susanne and her research team, this works because working memory is “closely related” to fluid intelligence, basically relying “on the same brain circuitry.” So, after measuring their research subjects for fluid intelligence, the researchers “trained each in a complicated memory task, an elaborate variation on Concentration, the child’s card game, in which they memorized simultaneously presented auditory and visual stimuli that had to recall later.” A total of four groups participated for a half-hour “for “8, 12, 17 and 19 days, respectively,” with the level of difficultly continuously adjusted based on each individual’s success rate.

Results were compared with a control group that did not receive the training, to ensure that the test participants weren’t just getting better at taking the test. While the control group did, in fact, improve, the trained groups improved far more. In addition, those who trained longer, improved more — regardless of how weak or strong their fluid intelligence was prior to the training. According to the study (link here) the training helped strengthen the ability to solve new problems, specifically “ignoring irrelevant items, monitoring ongoing performance, managing two tasks simultaneously and connecting related items to one another in space and time.” ~ Tim Manners, editor

It was 30 years ago May 3rd that Gary Thuerk sent the first known unsolicited bulk e-mail message, reports Ben Worthen in the Wall Street Journal (5/6/08). The message was an invitation to an open house event for a new computer “that he sent to 400 of the 2,600 or so people who had email accounts at the time” on the Arpanet, the predecessor to the Internet. Gary’s little email innovation was a success, leading to about $12 million in sales, he figures.

However, he also came under fire, because at the time there was an “unwritten rule” not to “use the Arpanet to sell things.” Gary says he didn’t think he had done anything wrong since technically the email was an invitation, not a direct sales pitch. But someone from the Department of Defense called him and told him never to send another email like that again, and Gary didn’t. His feat does, however, maintain a place “in the Guinness Book of World Records, and he does promotional work for anti-spam companies from time to time.”

And although he says he gets mixed reactions from people — some are excited when they learn of his claim to fame/infamy, while others “want to beat him up on the spot” — he thinks he doesn’t deserve any blame. “If the airline loses your luggage do you blame the Wright Brothers?” he asks. As for his own relationship with his innovation, he doesn’t have one. Gary says when he began receiving a flood of emails he simply changed his email address and “stopped filling out forms online.” He says he only gives out his phone number. ~ Tim Manners, editor

The best way to burn new circuits in your brain is to develop some new habits, reports Janet Rae-Dupree in the New York Times (5/4/08). It’s not so much about ending old habits, because that’s just about impossible anyway — “once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they’re there to stay.” It’s more a matter of creating “parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.” The quickest route, says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind,” is to avoid the tendency to “decide,” because “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”

That’s not so easy, because even though we were “born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways … the brain shuts down half of that capacity” after adolescence, “preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.” That means we settle in either as more analytical and procedural or more collaborative and innovative in our thinking. Most of us tend toward the analytical and procedural, because of the educational “emphasis on standardized testing.” In either case, Dawna and her business partner, author M.J. Ryan (”This Year I Will …) say you need to stretch your brain if you want to be more innovative.

This can be as simple as listening to a different radio station, or as challenging as listening to someone who disagrees with you. “Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain, says M.J. ” If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do.” She suggests the “Japanese technique called kaizen, which calls for tiny, continuous improvements,” because its incrementalism avoids “fight or flight” and keeps “us in the thinking brain.” Meanwhile, researchers have also found that those who “do something different every day” tend to lose and keep off weight. New habits can also decrease risk of dementia, since an active brain is less likely to atrophy. ~ Tim Manners, editor

Target wants to show it is eco-friendly while Barneys wants to show it supports young designers, so both retailers are collaborating to introduce the “Rogan for Target” line, reports Ann Zimmerman in the Wall Street Journal (5/5/08). “Rogan” is Rogan Gregory, “a designer at the forefront of the eco-fashion movement,” who “uses 100 percent certified organic cotton and other natural fibers … in his collections that are typically sold at Barneys and Bloomingdale’s.” Under the Target-Barneys collaboration, this new line of 60 Rogan pieces (images here) will go on sale at Barney’s for a few days before taking up residence in Target’s stores for about six weeks.

Julie Gilhart, a Barney’s fashion director, says the collaboration with Target is partly because Barney’s likes to do what’s “new and novel” and also to support Target’s efforts to lend support to new designers. “A lot of up-and-coming designers live hand to mouth, especially when they start out, and this gives them a project that helps them fund their own business,” she says. Target, meanwhile, positions the Barneys deal as part of its “Go International” program, which features a line of moderately priced apparel from cutting-edge designers” on a short-term basis. One thing’s for sure, the Target items sell for a lot less than what Rogan normally sells for at Barneys.

Where Rogan’s Loomstate line at Barneys features T-shirts for $68 and hoodies at $235, the Target items range from $15 to $45. Rogan says it’s Target’s buying power that enables these low prices. “Target leveraged its volume to get what it wanted,” he says. He also says he used “dyamic fabrics” as well as “less hardware, sophisticated construction and embellishments.” Some question whether such fashions are little more than “greenwashing,” however. “For example, fast-growing bamboo is touted as an eco-friendly material,” but the process of converting bamboo into fabric, “takes a significant amount of energy and chemicals.” In any case, the unusual Target-Barneys alliance will no doubt generate plenty of energy in the form of buzz. ~ Tim Manners, editor