Idealog celebrated New Zealand’s wide array of creative individual last year when it launched ‘Idealog’s Most Creative’. This year it’s showcasing New Zealand’s most forward-thinking companies through ‘Idealog’s Most Innovative’.
Everyone loves a list (even if it’s about the worst lists) and, after more than 1000 nominations, a number of New Zealand companies have managed to impress our neighbours and earn places and special awards in the Australian Financial Review’s Most Innovative Companies
TRA cultural strategist Antonia Mann reflects on Frances Valintine’s talk at TRA’s recent Mindframe Breakfast and the importance of being future-focused when it comes to innovation.
As the New Yorker’s editor David Remnick recently said, readers don’t want dumber, cheaper versions of legacy media. So how are magazines embracing new channels, creating new revenue streams, developing new products, working creatively with advertisers and generally showing an elasticity in their view of what media is, all while keeping their souls in tact? Jihee Junn looks at some of the best local examples.
An app, still in its infancy, called Sidekicker is looking to use technology to well and truly disrupt the temping industry. Here’s its story.
AUT’s Colab and Spark Ventures have joined forces to solve real life problems with the innovative solutions of creative minds.
Innovation is often revered as an esoteric art form, which only a few geniuses are privy to. But Andrew Lewis argues that everything isn’t as mystical as it seems.
This year marked the last that Land Rover’s Series One Defender was to be produced. Luckily the brand stumbled across the perfect love story to spread the word and won the Innovation and Automotive categories.
SelfieJobs, a Stockholm-based startup, is shaking up the recruitment industry with an app that approaches recruitment and job hunting in much the same way that millennials are going about dating. The app requires users to pitch a 22-second pitch video and then swipe through available jobs in their region.
Massey University graduate Jason Khoo has taken out first place in the New Zealand leg of the 15th James Dyson Awards with his tree house platform called Tree Mount, designed to encourage Kiwi families to spend more time together and get back to nature.
Ahhhhh, the desk. That thing many of us spend far too much time sitting at (and slowly dying). And that thing that has been completely transformed by the technological revolution of the past few decades, as a clip from the Harvard Innovation Lab shows.
Since normal companies tend to be dissatisfied with their levels of innovation, it might be time to take a slightly more abnormal approach, argues James Hurman.
Increasingly, big businesses need to start acting like start-ups, writes Simon Wedde. And that means being brutally honest about how customers experience your products or services—and then improving it.
There’s so much talk about innovation today and at Spikes Asia held in Singapore last week, innovation and technology were overwhelming seminar themes, says FCB’s James Mok. But what is the relationship between innovation and creativity? And is innovation always creative? What should come first?
The country’s most innovative companies are due to be celebrated next month at the New Zealand Innovators Awards. And a number of businesses from the marketing, media and digital realms will be gunning for a prize.
Nike is rightfully renowned as one of the world’s most innovative companies, and its approach to marketing those innovations is similarly creative. The company kicked off in 1964 and it released its first swoosh-enabled shoe in 1971 and since then it has released a huge array of footwear. So, as part of its Genealogy of Innovation campaign, 200 pairs have been brought together in a two minute film that charts “seven, game-changing eras”: Genesis, Reformation, Golden Age, Enlightenment, Rennaissance, Transformation and Revolution.
Incremental innovation might actually be hindering, not helping growth, says Andrew Lewis. So brands need to start acting like entrepreneurs if they want to find those breakthrough insights.
Colenso BBDO has partnered with Mountain Dew to develop a novel range of skateboard decks that reveal a hidden message as the skater grinds away the bottom. And what makes this project even more interesting is that Colenso owns a share of the IP that comes with the innovation, meaning that the agency could stand to profit if the concept attracts interest from players in the skating industry (production company Finch officially owns the IP and Colenso shares in it).
Inspired by a conversation with Al Brown on the new-found optimisim surrounding Auckland, James Hurman set out to discover why people were feeling so good about the city. Then, after speaking to 50 leading Aucklanders, he compiled a report that aims to create a shared understanding of ‘New Auckland’. These are some of the main insights.
Following on from its Australian branch, DDB New Zealand has now also launched an in-house innovation lab called Shaper. Established with the bold goal to “solve real human problems and create new revenue streams”, the new addition to the DDB offering will aim to “own and monetise ideas developed in the lab”. In a release, DDB’s chief operating officer Chris Riley says that the creative skills available at the agency provide the potential of delivering more than just advertising. PLUS: find out why author Leif Abraham thinks ad agencies struggle to innovate.
There will be no Lions awarded to Kiwi agencies in the Innovation category at this year’s Cannes Festival of Creativity, as it was revealed that all three entrants from New Zealand failed to make the shortlist.
DDB NY has teamed up with not-for-profit organisation Water Is Life to produce the drinkable book, a short publication printed on specially designed filter paper capable of removing life-threatening bacteria from unclean water.
After a couple of years as managing director at Y&R NZ, James Hurman has taken the best bits from his life in advertising and started up an innovation consultancy called Previously Unavailable that aims to help Kiwi companies create better products and services. So why did he do it and what will he be doing?
DDB’s Hadyn Kerr shares five observations about day three at SXSW 2014.
AJ Park patent specialists Anton Blijlevens and Jillian Lim touch on some of the interesting patents to look out for on the shelves.
BNZ’s rapid development of an online banking platform that ‘works like your brain does’, attracted the difficult to impress youth market to the brand.
Dunedin-based biotech company Pacific Edge is this year’s supreme winner of the New Zealand Innovators Awards thanks to its novel cancer detection test Cxbladder. The awards also honoured several individuals and companies, including Fonterra for its Alternative Make Cheese process used to produce premium Mozzarella on a commercial scale; StretchSense, which has created a sensor for measuring human body deformation and movement; and 14-year-old Ayla Hutchinson, who developed Kindling Cracker – a device used for making wood kindling.
While the judges deliberate on who will take home the other categories of this year’s Innovators Awards, it is time for you to decide who should win the People’s Choice. The finalists are in and voting starts… NOW!
Dunedin-based company Animation Research Limited is behind the amazing on-screen graphics and very popular mobile apps for the America’s Cup and while the chatter about the event is mostly positive, its chief executive Ian Taylor has penned a strongly worded missive saying that certain media commentators, politicians and, by extension, the general public are missing the point of the America’s Cup. Plus: Animation Research’s visual gift, ‘Kia Kaha San Francisco’.
AJ Park patent specialists Anton Blijlevens and Jillian Lim touch on some of the interesting patents to look out for on the shelves.