The Duttons with their Bra Angel repair kit

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.

From all the descriptions I could find, the world’s first underwire bra repair kit seems to work like this: You remove the offending underwire, slip on a cap that is barbed like a fishhook, and slip the capped wire back into its channel. It can’t slip out now, because the barbs hold it in place.

I wonder if Barry Dutton is a fisherman, because his invention reminds me of something that popped up a few years ago called the Wunder Boner. Look carefully at its commercial and you’ll see that both inventions involve pushing a hooked device through an opening.

The Duttons of Barry, South Wales, will be able to sell their Bra Angel repair kit for only a limited time. If it catches on, smart bra-makers will incorporate a version of it into all their bras, or at least into their “no-slip underwire” versions.

So to make the most of their brief window of opportunity, the Duttons need an unforgettable TV commercial. The Wunder Boner spot has all the necessary elements of marketing success:

1. a slice of life
2. a clear product demonstration
3. just the right amount of adolescent humor

There’s gold in life’s little annoyances, when you get up and do something about them. But you have to stick with it. Invention is only the first half of the deal. Luckily we have benchmark work like the Wunder Boner to point us in the right direction.

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.

Since IdeaConnection is all about collaboration, I invite anyone to comment and add thoughts, amplify or amend mine. By December my friend should have quite a presentation!

1. Preparation. Every brainstorm participant should be prepared. That is, give everybody who will attend the session some homework. They need to prepare their minds. “Chance favors the prepared mind,” say Louis Pasteur.

Michale Michalko talks about the success he’s had with mind popping–writing a message to his subconscious, sealing it, and finding that solutions appear after a night or two of sleep. As you know I advocate a Brainline in advance of a session in order to seed the eventual session with ideas, to hit the ground running. But Brainline also prepares the participants just like mind-popping.

2. Diversity. The more diverse the group, the greater your chances of pulling some really unexpected results out of your hat. Cross-pollination is responsible for the greatest ideas. I’ll think of some examples. Wait a minute! This is a collaborative effort. Give me some examples.

Now that you can collaborate with people all over the world, please recommend that your audience get online and do so. Read “The Wisdom of Collaboration.”

3. Crossing the Bridge. The group has to make a clean break with their typical environment. I once got all kinds of feathers ruffled with a client insisted on brainstorming in their corporate boardroom and I advised that the boardroom was the worst possible place to brainstorm.

Okay, so I could use some tact, but I was right. The space has to say, “Today is different.” See my article Creative Space.

If possible, ban cellphones and other interruptions. Everyone in the session should be totally out of touch with the outside world, as if they were going under for an operation.

If there’s no way to go away to an off-the-beaten-path site, at least go through a bridge exercise. Like this: play some music, unfamiliar and exotic, relaxing, and go through a “close your eyes, imagine a good place…” yoga-like break for about 15 or more minutes. The purpose is to get everyone cleared, to wipe their slates clean, and to prepare them for doing something different. To prevent typical thinking habits from persisting, especially if they are in a familiar space!

Now you can begin brainstorming. You know the rules. It’s good to support them with tangible reminders. For example, I used to give out whistles and noise makers, which anyone could use to call out anyone who broke the “muzzle your judge” rule. Thinking hats to remind them they were thinking divergently all day. Rewards for the first idea, the first “dumb idea,” the first probing rather than critical question, etc.

My speaker-to-be followed up with another question:

As a sub-theme, I’m developing “how to create better ideas, faster.” Feel free to use as a jump-off.

Okay, I will:

Make sure you advise your audience to consider online collaboration. Naturally, here at IdeaConnection. To understand the tremendous advantages of our ThinkSpace and having our experts solving your problems for your or with you, read Access Thousand of Brilliant Innovators.

I’ve connected this blog with a discussion Top Three Brainstorming Tips on The Hub.

Peter Lloyd writes Right Brain Workouts for IdeaConnection.

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.

Can you do this?

DNA, the code that makes us who we are, determines also how we are. The same arrangements of As, Cs, Ts, and Gs that decide our height, hair color, and visual acuity also have a lot to say about how intelligent we become, whether or not we will ever play the French horn, or if we can roll our tongue into a loop or not.

Evan Eichler at the University of Washington in Seattle knows a whole lot more about what DNA determines than I or, most likely, anyone reading this. He and his colleagues study the small DNA defects in patients with a wide range of abnormalities. They use DNA microarrays—glass slides embedded with genetic material that reveal the inner workings of DNA.

DNA Microarray

Lately scientists have used microarrays to zoom in on genetic features never before visible. As usual, as they see more, they learn more, but as they learn, they confront even greater complexity. For example, the same tiny genetic variation in one person with an abnormality can also appear in another person without the problem.

As scientists pool their microarray findings, they hope to sort out just what causes what, which will make genetic therapies and prenatal diagnostics all the more effective and reliable.

Ahead for Eichler and his team—thousands of studies with thousands of patients. It also means that US geneticists will have to learn how to share. According to Eichler, his European collaborators are eager to collaborate, but his US colleagues have shown some reluctance.

We’re on the threshold of introducing wonders that will dramatically transform our lives and the lives of our descendants. The greater the promise of technologies like genetic microarrays, the greater the demand for open and generous collaboration.

Peter Lloyd writes Right Brain Workouts for IdeaConnection.

Crosley Icy Ball

In an earlier post, Old invention deserves a new life, I dug up the Crosley icy ball–a way to refrigerate without electricity. Since then, I’ve found some even cooler approaches to refrigeration. They also deserve some life.

Science News reports a Chip-size refrigerator that could fit inside future laptops. It still runs on electricity, but a lot less, and it removes a lot more heat than the current fans system in your laptop. How it works:

<br<A tiny compressor contains an ultra-thin diaphragm about the size of a penny driven by electrical charges. The inventors call this approach “electrostatic diaphragm compression.”

Chip Size Frig

Still in the tiny category, Chip-scale Refrigerators sandwich metal, an insulator, and a superconducting metal. Add some juice and the the hottest electrons move from the metal to the superconductor, through the insulator. Which dramatically cools the metal that loses its electrons.

In the everyday order of magnitude, coolers are coming that go beyond conventional compression, used in your kitchen refrigerator or air conditioner, which compress and decompress coolants. Compressors eat up energy and your refrigerator makes heat, which the cat may like in the winter, but makes no sense in a kitchen you’re trying to cool.

Even more intriguing–it may be possible to one day turn in your compressor-refrigerator for a lighter version with no moving parts. Researchers at Penn State University recently announced a compressor-free frig in their Engineering News. It uses ferroelectric polymers that exploits the way some polarpolymers, when placed in an electric field, organize and disorganize.

According to the article:

“The natural state of these materials is disorganized with the various molecules randomly positioned. When electricity is applied, the molecules become highly ordered and the material gives off heat and becomes colder. When the electricity is turned off, the material reverts to its disordered state and absorbs heat.”

Finally, there’s Magnetic Refrigeration. In experiments at CERN1′s large hadron collider, scientists have realized extremely low temperatures–as low as 1.9 K. Too cold for frozen vegetables!

Peter Lloyd writes Right Brain Workouts for IdeaConnection.

Crowd Sourcing by Jeff Howe

Warning: It’s coming. Whatever you do to make money, no matter how innovative, crowdsourcing will deliver it cheaper from the world at large. If not today, soon.

Just ask any professional photographer who has labored to peddle pics to stock photo houses. What they used to get paid $300 a shot for, buyers now can get for a dollar.

Crowdsourcing is sort of like outsourcing with a captialistic vengence and technological superpowers. So it goes with innovation.

Peter Lloyd: WILL WRITE FOR FOOD

As a writer, one who writes for food, I can tell you what a commodity punching the keyboard has become. Visit any freelance-for-hire site and check out the prices word-buyers are offering for our services. More disturbing, notice the bids writers make for 350-word articles. Four dollars! It’s right there in Mechanical Turk. For all kinds of personal and professional services. 

Luckily most of what the crowd is able to deliver smells like caca. You still get what you pay for. These days you  usually get more. It’s a buyer’s market with an auction-house chip on its shoulder.

Of course, if you’re really smart, like Jeff Howe, you write a book about the phenomenon that otherwise might kill you. Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business And while you’re at it, a blog about Crowdsourcing on Wired.

But isn’t this the way of the world? “Thar’s gold in them thar hills!” The first to get to the gold strike it big. Then those less quick to abandon their lives of quiet desperation arrive in time to scrape up the crumbs. In a few years, another once-wild cluster of boom towns has settled into comfortable conformity.

Innovation and invention need this rough-and-tumble free-for-all scramble. Watch for an interview with Jeff Howe here on the Idea Connection. If it’s not too late, he might be able to help us all make the most of the latest rush–crowdsourcing.

Peter Lloyd writes Right Brain Workouts for IdeaConnection.

Kanak Das

I’m tempted to make this post one of those “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade” lessons. But I won’t, because there’s so much more to the story. It begins this way: a poor, yong man in India realizes that the bumps on the rugged, rural roads he travels might be converted–literally–into foward motion.

So Kanak Das retrofitted his bicycle. Now the shock absorbers convert the energy they absorb, when the moving bike hits bumps in the road, into force that assists the pedals.

Bump Converter

The bigger story behind Kanak’s bike is the Innovation Database of India’s National Innovation Foundation  and another similar database in the Honeybee Network “a global initiative to give voice to creative and innovative people at grassroots.” Both archives are brimming with do-or-die ingenuity.

While we, in the comfort of our labs and brainstorming salons, struggle to find better ways to come up with more and better flavors of sugar water and pizza toppings, people in less comfortable situations live in the real “innovate or die” world.

Okay, so you lose your job if you and your team don’t increase sales by such and such a percentage this year. There’s a ricksha driver described in the Honeybee Network working on a gearbox that might reduce the number of premature deaths his mates endure.

But it’s not all toil and trouble. You’ll also find satisfying follow-up stories. For example, Kanak Das is working with an professional group to secure his patent and bring his innovation to market.

Does anybody know anybody who knows Lance Armstrong?

Peter Lloyd writes Right Brain Workouts for IdeaConnection.

More recently an enterprising Adam Grosser proposed re-introducing his redesigned version Carré’s invention to parts of the world where refrigeraion is not available and where it could save lives.

Crosley Icy Ball

According to Grosser, he has made the Crosley device safe and workable. Apparently, as invented, the original would be dangerous in underdeveloped countries, because it runs the risk of exploding. Not just exploding but exploding amonia.

Grosser’s adaptation can be fired up with available fuel, even camel dung. After an hour or so of heating the device, put it in an insulated box, and it keeps its surroundings just above freezing.

The icy ball has a cool history. Crosley marketed it as a referating device and even tried making a go of a refrigerated or air-conditioned bed.

Crosley Air-Conditioned Bed

In the interests of saving energy and the planet, some of us keep our homes cooler in the winter and do like grandma with lots of down and a night cap. Seems there might be a market for opening the windows on hot summer nights, letting the house get a litter warmer than we’d like, while sleeping in an efficiently air-conditioned bed.

Video: Adam Grosser: A new vision for refrigeration

Peter Lloyd writes Right Brain Workouts for IdeaConnection.

Why did it take so long to put wheels on luggage? Why did we have to go through so many seat-belt contraptions before we settled on the current, easy-pull, easy-stow version? Remember passive restraints?

The most recent example that strikes me this way is the dispensing measuring funnel.

Dispensing Measuring Funnel
It works like a measuring cup. Pour liquid into the funnel top while holding it over your target container. The funnel holds the liquid until you fill it with just the right amount. Then you turn the valve at the base of the funnel and voilà!

Let me quote the abstract of US patent no. 5228488 just for fun, or in case my description wasn’t clear enough.

A funnel including measurement indicia discernible in relation to the contents therein, such funnel having a lower neck portion with an aperture therein and a collar member rotatably positioned on the neck portion with an aperture defined therein, such collar member in a first mode misaligning such apertures to retain the contents in the funnel and in a second mode rotated to align such apertures, to release the contents of the funnel through a spout member affixed below the collar member.

Automatic Valve Funnel

Automatic Valve Funnel
Searching for a picture of this “where have you been all my life” invention, I found another interesting funnel with a different kind of valve. It stops filling an opaque container when it’s full, before the liquid comes gushing out. The diagram tells the whold story and links to a description, if you need one. It also explains how to make one.

Now when you run out of gas, and you’re filling up the container you have to carry back to your stalled car, you don’t have to worry about spilling distilled gold all over the asphalt.

Peter Lloyd writes Right Brain Workouts for IdeaConnection.

Usain Bolt

When the unexpected jumps out and smacks you in the face, it usually means, “Pay attention! A great innovation waits to be found.” So we just might look for a connection between Usain Bolt’s record-smashing 100-meter, gold-medal dash and the fact that he could be called a 200-meter specialist.

Is this akin to the Ali Shuffle or the Fosbury Flop or Sam Wyche’s No-Huddle offense? Has Usain’s coach Glen Mills invented a way to build a better 100-meter runner with 200-meter preparation?

Probably not. It seems he has actually discouraged Lightning from running the shorter distance. Or was that part of Mills’s plan? According to the Olympic announcers, the runner had to beg his coach to let him go for the 100-meter gold. Another story says Mills allowed Bolt to run the 100 at one point only if he broke the 200 record.

If every sensation holds the key to an innovation, there’s gold in this world record.

Flag of the Netherlands

In the Dutch province of Overijssel, a stretch of road has been paved with a surface of air-purifying concrete. Meant to fight pollution, the road consists of concrete paving stones spiked with a titanium dioxide-based additive. In sunlight, this additive should bind to nitrogen oxide particles spewed from car exhausts and converts them into friendly nitrates.

Read more.