Innovation of the week as reported in The Guardian weekend mag by Lucy Mangan
“Many urban Japanese live stressful lives in apartments too small to allow them to keep their own pets, so cafes have started to spring up that supply kittens to play with while you are drinking your coffee and eating your cake”
This neatly combines sociability, a return to childhood and physical pleasure- a sweet spot if ever there was one in the world of innovation.
It puts me in mind of those innovation exercises in Edward de Bono’s How to have creative ideas in which you draw out of a hat two random and seemingly unconnected words and see if you can link the two with an innovation or idea. The modern word for this is a mashup but as a way of innovating it is quite old- many innovations simply being a new combination of old element
For Example in an ideas session once I drew out once the words “Fruit” and “Lighting” and ending up inventing a range of fruit shaped lights especially for childrens’ bedrooms- Glowing little strawberries and bananas and apples to hang over the cot at night.
Rubbish idea or a lateral way of inculcating health eating from the word go ?