Innovative Brain Food from New & Improved

VW Innovates by Looking Back

No, not another New Beetle.  VW has just launched a viral marketing campaign based on the popular road-trip game of "Punch-bug" *(also known as "Punch-buggy" or "Slug-bug").

In case you don't know, the game works like this: when you spot, say, a red VW Beetle (or "Bug" as they're sometimes known in the U.S.), you punch the person next to you in the bicep and say, "punch-bug red," or whatever color the car is.  I've been playing since I was a little kid, and have the bruises to prove it. That means the game has been around at least 40 years (Wikipedia notes that consensus has it invented in the 1960's)

Now VW claims to have found "Sluggy," the inventor of the game.  They even have an "interview" with him that documents the game's creation.  I found it amusing.

I wonder who will claim to have found the inventor of "shotgun," the rule-based game that determines who sits in the front passenger seat?

The Most Under-Appreciated Approach to Idea-Generation

It's a key source of humor. It makes people crazy. It's scary when it involves your fortune. And it's a great source of new ideas that make people go, "Wow!"

Through the joys of the Twitterverse (yup, we're on Twitter at NewAndImproved_), I found out about "Dictator Goods," which has a line of "greeting cards" featuring some rather dark quotes from some even darker historical figures.  The cover seems normal and benign enough.  "Gratitude" it says, elegantly letter-pressed on rich cotton stock. Then you open it up to see the rest of a quote attributed to Joseph Stalin: "...is a sickness suffered by dogs."

"Wow," indeed.  That gets your attention!

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Haiti Crumbled And Innovators Create Solutions So You Can Help

Amid the news stories and images of the devastation in Haiti as a result of the magnitute 7.0 earthquake that caused such death and destruction, creative thinking is abundant.  Whether it's the air traffic controllers working on the lawn to guide in planes carrying aid (since the control tower toppled), the rescuers on-site working in the rubble to find and pull out survivors, or those working to get resources and aid to survivors, great minds are firing on all eight cylinders.

My latest favorite example is that Hilton Hotels is stepping up.  Members of their Hilton Honors rewards program can transfer their hotel points to be converted to donations to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.  Ten thousand points turns into $25 to help save lives, deliver aid, and provide food, water, and shelter for survivors. 

Got some spare HHonors points? Go to: http://bit.ly/5uXFuO

Got other good examples of how to help? Please leave a comment!

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Innovation Health Care, the Next Olympic Sport
and a Revolutionary Ride
with Bob Eckert, Garrett Watkins, and Dr. David Kraus, PhD 
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Two Lessons on Creative Thinking from The Bathroom

My father, a retired high school teacher, sent me this story that he's received via email:

"According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington was recently faced with a unique problem.   A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

"Every night the maintenance man would remove them and the next day the girls would create new lip prints.  Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man.  She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night.

"To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the school custodian to show the girls how much effort was required.  He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.   Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror."

Brilliant. Simply brilliant!  And it provides a few lessons.