Articles by Peter

Scott Dutton’s wife complained that the semi-circular struts would slip out from under the cups of her bra.

Instead of mumbling, “Oh, really?” and continuing to focus on whatever guy-thing he was doing at the time, Scott came up with a permanent fix for his wife and scored a gold medal for Invention of the Year at the British Invention Show.

The Bra Angel bra repair kit was also selected from more than 200 other inventions to be included in the GMTV show and the BBC’s The One Show.

So much for the applause. If Scott wants to make a success of his invention, he’ll have to support his creative brilliance with cool, marketing smarts.

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A colleague wrote to me today.

I wanted to bounce a premise off you. The Ad Club asked me to lead a workshop in December around a topic. I proposed “Better Brainstorming in Today’s Idea Economy.”

What I like is that brainstorming is something everyone takes for granted and something everyone believes they’re good at. But as we know, there are good sessions and bad sessions. If you had to list the top 3-5 factors in successful brainstorming sessions, what would they be?

I gave my friend my first-thing-in-the-morning, top-of-my-head response. I’ve polished it up a bit and it’s below. Read the rest of this entry »

Most of us were taught to share at a very early age. What happened? A big chunk of the world’s population still starves every day, even though we know that when we do share, we all benefit. Especially when it comes to scientific learning.

Sharing among professionals is called collaboration. And as the world gets more complex and our challenges more daunting, services like our own IdeaConnection arise to enable and encourage collaboration among scientific minds around the world.

Likewise, the more we discover and invent, the more critical it becomes that we not only help each other solve problems but that we share what we learn. Recent advances in the highly complex field of genetics illustrate the need for an open-door policy of collaboration. Read the rest of this entry »