Unleashing creativity and innovation - a great presentation by Jeremy Gutsche, the Trendhunter

Judging from comments heard after Jeremy Gutsche's presentation, his has been the best yet. Jeremy has a very engaging presentation style (similar but not as dynamic as Lessig's) and a briliant grasp of his content. In a nutshell, he gave us a great talk on risk taking (reward failure for it may lead to innovation), creativity, and trendhunting. One of his first statements was "Culture eats Strategy for Lunch," a phrase that is important to remember and refers to how people and organizations get so set in their ways (their culture) that they stifle innovation and miss opportunities that may come their way. Jeremy reminded us of the concept of wei-ji which means that every crisis comes with opportunity. He quickly walked us through the ingredients that can lead to innovation and ultimately great marketing as well. Failure, Customer Obsession, Creativity and Story Obsession. When you're telling your story to the consumer make it simple, direct and super charged. He illustrated his talk with several examples like the $5,000 hamburger in Las Vegas. He said, that if you wanted to create buzz around this story, instead of saying "the most expensive hamburger in the world," you should say "the $5,000 hamburger." One can see how the reaction is much stronger with the latter statement. Jeremy is the CEO of Trendunter

Happy hunting,

Jaime