Swarm Creativity Blog

Today's New York Times has an article by Steve Lohr " Who Says innovation Belongs to the Small? " which makes the argument that "These days, more than ever, size matters in the innovation game". I beg to differ. While it might be true that it takes the resources of large companies to implement fundamentally new things, large companies are extremely bad in recognizing the value of these fundamentally new things. Managers like to preserve the status quo, which means that new ideas inside a large company have a much harder time to succeed than if they are set free in the ecosystem of small startups reminiscent of the wild wild west. Other articles in today's NYT give compelling examples, such as bestselling author Jim Collins and Daniel Carasso , founder of Yoghurt giant Danone. It would be hard to envision for both Carasso and Collins to have found any traction for their groundbreaking ideas in large organizations. People with radically new ideas have a hard ...

...while you shop. For avid clothing shoppers, todays New York Times describes the latest virtual/real mirror at Bloomingdale's in Manhattan. A shopper stands in front of the mirror situated in the store, which doubles up as a large computer monitor. While the person looks in the mirror, other people make suggestions from an online dress inventory over the internet. The live shopper at Bloomingdale's can then view the suggested piece of clothing in the mirror, overlaid with her/his own image. It seems it has become popular to ask for shopping advice by snapping a picture with a mobile phone camera and sending it to friends, before buying that expensive Gucci handbag. This virtual mirror takes the shopping experience one step further, blurring together the real and the virtual world. Shopping still is a social experience, even in the virtual world.