You can now download a free chapter from our book The Business Playground: Where Creativity and Commerce Collide.

Reap what you sow. Or, in this case, is it sow what you reap…? Whatever, it’s a good idea to have business cards that do more than clog up your wallet.

Businesses that give two hoots about innovation are finding novel ways to collaborate with artists who have ideas coming out of their ears. Artists for instance, like Dave Stewart, my co-author on The Business Playground. I recently asked him about his advisory role to Nokia. Dave was stranded in London on the [...]

From Yahoo.
Here’s a fairy tale that could only happen in the movies. Man makes YouTube video. Goes to Hollywood. Gets pots of money and a movie deal. Except this story is true.
An unknown producer from Uruguay, Fede Alvarez, shelled out about $300 to create a cool video of a robot invasion in Montevideo, the capitol [...]

Probably the best speech on creativity I’ve seen

When announcing an effort to launch Googly TV head of engineering, Vic Gundotra, was making an obvious reference to Apple when he said at the press conference: “If you believe that the only way to get a good smartphone is to bet on one man, one device, one carrier, and one choice, that is [...]

Fro the New York Times magazine 9th annual year in ideas.

Nature may well be the art of God, but that isn’t keeping mere mortals from trying their hand at it. This year, a group of British engineers recommended building a forest of artificial carbon-filtering “trees” across the United Kingdom to combat climate change; and a [...]

A great way to advertise Copenhagen zoo.

Howard Gossage, an icon of 1960’s advertising, talking about “mammanoids” and “tediophobes.”
mammonoids and tediophobes

A single use toilet for slums in the developing world where there are no permanent toilets .

Developed by Swedish architect Anders Wilhelmson who told the New York Times “Not only is it sanitary, they can reuse this to grow crops.” Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea [...]

From the New York Times 9th annual year in ideas

The Great Depression inspired American fashion this year, from men’s wear by John Bartlett that looked like a stylized version of Lewis Hine’s New York to frocks by Ralph Lauren that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Dorothea Lange photograph. Meanwhile, off the runways, [...]

One company has made swimming safer and more fun.

Ask any parent about trying to teach their kids to swim and they’ll most likely tell you a story of their child being too afraid to get in the water. Whether it’s a river, the ocean, or even just the shallow end of a pool, the water [...]

Looks like a regular business card but when you break of ac couple of pieces it becomes a USB flash drive.

Job seeker Ramiro Pareja Veredas, a telecommunications engineer from Spain, created this PCB business card to set himself apart from other job seekers  and it houses his resume, cover letter, [...]

Half chair, half Vespa. And that’s all there is to it.

With the flick of a switch, Philips Electronics may have just dramatically lowered America’s electric bill. In September the Dutch electronics giant became the first to enter the U.S. Department of Energy’s L Prize competition, which seeks an LED alternative to the common 60-watt bulb. Sixty-watt lights account for 50% of the domestic incandescent market; [...]

The homes will be made of recycled materials – pallet flooring and framing, waterproofed cardboard walls, aluminum can roofing – and some donated materials.
Architect Arthur Dyson is working with construction management students at Fresno State to create an unprecedented “Eco-Village” of tiny homes for homeless folks. If successful, it seems [...]

When you’re done with this cardboard box you can tear it up and plant it.

Seeds embedded in the recycled card will grow up to 100 trees. See more here.

Mind maps are a good way of visualizing solutions to challenging problems.

From the New York Times 9th annual year in ideas

April, the world was introduced to Ruppy, the first known fluorescent dog. In natural light, Ruppy seems to be an almost-normal beagle — though his paws look as if he has stepped in pink ink. Under ultraviolet light, the effect is quite evident: he emits an [...]

This an online video for driving direction device Tom Tom’s new selection of voices, including the Dark Lord himself.

This ad for free WiFi in McDonald’s gets the idea across through a simple visual that sells the brand.

Ozzy Osbourne pretended to be his own waxwork figure at Madame Tussauds in New York as a way to promote his new album, “Scream” which is out on June 22nd.

Plenty of people’s Twitter feeds appear to be connected directly to their egos, but one scientist’s is actually wired to his brain. In April, University of Wisconsin doctoral student Adam Wilson — working with adviser Justin Williams, above — tweeted 23 characters just by thinking. He focused his attention on one flashing letter after another [...]

Or is the other way around. Fuse Project out of San Francisco developed this revolutionary  solution to reduce use of packaging materials.

The Information Architects have plotted the top 140 Twitter influencers on a map akin to those showing how the universe began. The blobs are placed according to name, handle, category, influence, activity and when they joined the service. Full story here.

I liked this blog post from entrepreneur Chris Dixon and decided to reproduce it in its entirety. Thanks Chris.
Developing new startup ideas
March 14th, 2010 | careers, product design, startups
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// ]]>If you want to start a company and are working on new ideas, here’s how I’ve always done it and how I [...]

Hunch is an interesting new business idea
It helps people make decisions by asking you 10 questions and using the collective knowledge of the community to give advice. this is how they describe it on the website…..
Look. Decision-making is difficult, and decisions have to be made constantly.
What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a [...]

Nokia has unveiled the first pedal-powered phone battery charger. According to the Financial Times cyclists will be able to plug their handsets into a charger mounted on their handlebars and connected to a dynamo that harnesses electricity from the wheels. It would take two-and-a- half hours for a cyclist riding at 15km an [...]

It took Kutiman just two months to finish ThruYOU, the project that would make him both a musical pioneer and an Internet celebrity. Kutiman — a.k.a. Ophir Kutiel, an Israeli musician — took footage posted on YouTube by amateur musicians and mixed it together (drums, piano, synth, theremin, vocals, whatever he could find) into video [...]

You will have seen the announcement earlier this year that pop sensation Lady Gaga has become the creative director for instant camera company Polaroid. The cynical amongst us might view this as a publicity stunt that won’t translate into anything more than a few column inches. After all, now that all pictures are pretty much [...]

Punk band Anti-Flag and useless.org released a limited edition tee shirt for Earth Day. The shirts are unwanted shirts that were gathering dust in Anti-Flag’s warehouse, that have now been repurposed with a new message. All proceeds fund a water and sanitation project in Sierra Leone.
See more details here.

This weekend saw the release of the latest film in the Lady Dior series starring the French Oscar winning actress, Marion Cotillard, and her Dior handbag.  The latest film is directed by David Lynch and has a distinctly Twin Peaks feel to it. The previous film directed by Jonas Akerlund has the gorgeous Ms Cotillard [...]