innovation playground Idris Mootee

Spend A Few Hours Here Should Earn You 2 Credits For Your BA In Design. i Want To Make This Place My Office.

Whenever I go I love to hand around cool places ..and cool people. As the last stop of the 5 countires business trip (Germany,Italy,Japan,China and Korea), I get half a day to visit a few cool places. Seoul is not Paris or London, but I still manage to find a few unique places to do some work. This is aA Design Musem/Cafe, and it is a must see in Seoul, you need places like this to remind you there is life beyond concrete buildings.

It is not so easy to find but it is worth the trouble. It is located in a side street between HAPJEONG and HONGDAE, you will see an old three storied building and go up stairs you will see the entrance. Everywhere is full of chairs and I love chairs and I have collected a few dozens over the years, but this guy the owner is a chair lunatic. You can practically find any chairs you can imagine (except the electric one) from different periods from modern vintage to modern Bauhaus to Scandinavian and art nouveau.

The café is nice with both small tables and a few communal tables and there is a parquet floor (like a raised ‘study area’ in a library) for people to sit and work with their laptops and provides the best view of the entrance and main seating area below. The café floor is a cavernous, double height room with exposed cement walls; there is also an outdoor space that is roughly half the size of the ground level and covered with a solid canopy.

The place is not busy, I am not sure becaue I was visiting in a Monday or because the museum hasn't yet opened. Their plan is to have shop, bookstore and exhibition space. This is no Dean and Deluca, this is one of the coolest cafés I’ve seen in the world, yes I’ve seen many. The menu is small but good enough.

This is not a place that wants to be famous for its food. The basement will be used for the museum space, which won’t open until June 2011. The curator Jung Kyung Suh gave me a quick tour and it is a treasure room, everywhere scattered with funky furniture pieces and there is a giant hanging shark in the middle of the space. Unfortunately it was dark there so I couldn’t take more photos.

This will be my hang out place in Seoul just as Ace in New York. My social space is getting smaller and smaller, we’re talking about a dozen of places in major cities. What do I care, as long as there is Facebook.

It Is A Stupid Idea To Tax Soda, Banks Or Fast Food. It Won't Discourage Consumption Without Acceptable Alternatives.

There are a lot of debates around new tax on banks, sodas and eventually fast food. They hope these taxes can help provide an emergency fund for failing banks in the case of banks or in the case of sodas to help with healthcare costs. They are talking about a 3 cents tax on a $25 billion dollar industry.

A good policy to promote health living is one thing, taxing products is a different one. Too much sodas cause diabetes, too much hot dogs cause cancer, too much time on your cell phone cause brain cancer, too much fast good burgers cause obesity, too much alcohol causes liver problems and too much medication causes god knows what. Too much anything is bad. How much do we want government to tell us what to eat? Or it is just another way to expand tax base?

This is not a fair tax, it is almost like lottery, as the regressive tax will mostly contributed by lower income families. It is a tax for those who can least afford it or don't have any better options. Believe me, these taxes will end up not subsidizing healthcare but misapplied for other purposes. Just look at the tobacco tax governments collected, what percentage of those are used for funding healthcare?

The better approach is to work with these companies and making sure they provide healthier alternative to expand the choices available. You can ask them to subsidize these healthier products from the profit pool. They use the argument for a soda tax the same as the argument for a tax on tobacco, plastic bags etc. The logic was if an activity imposes costs on society, economists believe that the activity should be taxed hoping to achieve two objectives: discourage consumption, and it raises money to help pay for society’s costs. The reality these little tax won’t change consumer behavior; unless the tax is so high that makes soda unaffordable. This tax is a very stupid idea.

So what’s next? Let’s tax those invest in high risk (hedge funds) investments as these activities increase volatility in the market and hurt many longer-term investors/savers? Now this one won’t affect the quality of lower income families.

Or let’s tax video game purchases so the tax could go towards helping under privileged children for their education? Or taxing high-income rock stars with a special tax to support good TV educational programming to offset their negative influences? And are we going to tax every large appliance that people purchase for their dream kitchen? Or should we tax the fashion stores that encourage people to buy the latest style every week? Are these considered “addiction”? Some economist uses the phrase "addiction" to describe certain behavior and believe more tax is the answer. Let me tell you, it is not.They think people will buy that?

What's The Next Big Innovation In Soft Drinks? Here's What I've Got From My Dream.

Soft drinks makes have been pushing for innovation to create new categories, expand new markets or help push up prices, many are betting on increased demand for adult targeted higher quality soft drink. Research indicates that 5 or 6 out of 10 now think it is “worth paying extra for quality goods”. Also expect to see continuous legislative pressure limiting advertising marketing to kids under age16.

What drives premium pricing? I think energy-infused (functional) products and those with real health benefits are most likely to get people to pay more, while carbonates are still slowly losing share to fruit juices and bottled waters in established markets.

So what’s the latest innovation in soft drinks? I have some ideas here. I had a weird dream the other night, I dreamt about working with my team in our lab creating the next coolest soft drink ideas. When I wrote about it in Facebook, here are what my friend from Germany was saying: “You guys at IC should come over to Germany some time: we’re the masters in mixing soda. We’re even crazy enough to buy all readmixed: bionade, mezzomix, fritzkola just to name a few.” That's my friend Gunter Wehmeyer in Germany. And Jesse Diephuis (IC co-head of design) suggested: lychee, coconut Jelly + Soda + Vodka = SakuraSoho.

So here are my top few ideas from my dream, but I can’t remember the rest. I wish there is a way to store and archive our dreams. Anyway I will share 4 or 5 out of the 8 that I remember. I guess I am selling the other ideas.

Exotic Fruits Anti-toxidant Soft Drinks. There are so many antioxidant-rich berries that we have never heard of, such as aronia, yumberry and maqui berry to become the next acai berry. Take a few weeks traveling in Africa you can fund a dozen of these berries to help you with diet and fitness, anti-depression and stress. With so much toxic from our daily food intake, now that’s worth paying a premium for.

Anime Soft Drrinks. Not sure you’ve heard of Akikan. It is a romantic comedy slated for a about a boy who went to a vending machine to get a can of melon soda and ends up with the can transforming into a bishoujo (babe). Don’t you love that? This new category of soft drink is a crossover from the world of anime into our real world. The cool ideas is that they need to be fused with carbon dioxide from kissing to survive. This can really make soft drinks consumption experiential.

Exotic Spicy Soft Drinks. Okay now you know what I am talking about. Imagine masala flavored water? Wasabi and curry flavored sodas? Satay and basil sodas? You can add to the list.

Faith-based Soft Drinks. This is obvious. How about Kosher sodas or Halah Colas? Call it Peace Cola created for two of the world's oldest and greatest religions. Faith brings people together, politics draw them apart. So the idea of the Peace Cola can be very inspirational.

Or we can do Dalai Lama Tibet Soda (endorsed by Richard Gere naturally)? And what about sodas from the the Church of Scientology. I can imagine a series of futuristic sodas, made from California naturally.

iTouch Jumbo, Large Soda and Magnum Condom. What Do They Have In Common? It Is All About Size.

Size is always a big factor in product design and marketing. The iPad essential becomes an iTouch for the tallest man in the world. I always have a problem with oversized drinks in this part of the world, but I also have a problem with the undersized drinks in Europe and Japan. A cup of tea in London is really too small for me and I almost needed to order two. A cup of tea in New York is usually way too big and I have to pour away 30% of it right away.

Oversized cold beverage sales is maxing out at 32 oz., in the eyes of the marketers they generally views "bigger" as "better," field data us telling us that gigunda 44 oz. size fountain beverages have very little appeal. Marketers love to sell large drink because of economic reasons and they are mostly targeted to blue collar workers. Some locations push 20-oz. and 32 oz. fountain beverages and people really prefer 20 oz drinks. Big is not always better many people now realize, at least when it comes to soft drinks.

Small is an easy sell for cellphones or laptops, but not in the case of selling condoms. But small condoms are a marketing challenge, even though small size condom does fulfill a customer unmet needs, but you can’t really based your marketing around the product feature. I am believe what they are selling fits the average man, but according to a medical journal, 45% of men reported that they had experienced an ill-fitting condom within the last three months. The misfits were significantly more likely to report breakage and slippage, along with difficulty reaching the goal. Not surprisingly, men with ill-fitting condoms were more likely to end up taking them off which becomes a massive product failure for the job a condom exists to fulfill. What good is a product when the user ended giving up on it.

If you hit the store, you will find many labeled as ‘large’ or ‘extra large’ even though they are just normal size. To be fair, collecting accurate market data is a problem too. LifeStyles has by far the most direct code, called "Snugger Fit." I think there is a lot they can learn from Starbucks. Call them ‘tall’ or ‘grande’ etc. And there is no indication of which product are ‘green’ or manufactured from ‘reused material’. Or throw in some new ideas of how you can use a condom and save the world. 

Even ignore the fit problem, duration is probably the biggest sexual anxiety of the average man, we can use some innovation in rethinking the product design and experience and even packaging and labeling. This is an ignored product category and seriously needing innovation.

And what about custom fit condom? Or even designers condom? There is no reason that you can custom order them with your preference of size, shape, color, material, favor, packaging and any other special features. What happen to the idea of mass customization? I have never consulted for this industry, may be this is the big idea I have for them. We always start any project with field research. Who’s up for it?

Talking about product research and testing, a while back a condom manufacturer was looking for a few product testers. I am sure some of you will be interested in that job. I am not sure the recruitment criteria or what special activities you need to perform. Sorry this job is only for men only. For this job, they do have instruction for the ‘positions.’ The first box to be checked in the document to be filled after field test is ‘your positions’. You might think it is great job, but the pay sucks. The 200 selected product testers would only get a free pack of Durex condoms (cheap), plus a bonus prize of $425 for one lucky winner but not sure based on what to determine who the winner is. I’ll pass.