Growth for growth’s sake? Come on, fire up that creaky imagination…

It’s been a long week so you’re not going to any original thinking out of me tonight… But here’s a nugget from Paul Hawken (who wrote Blessed Unrest) via Outside magazine to tide you over:

“Our best thinking got us here, and part of that is our addiction to growth. We do need to grow, the question is, Grow what? When we’re adults, no one wants to grow physically, but we do want our wisdom, our understanding, our compassion to grow. Those same things are true of the economy. We do need to grow - we need to reimagine mobility, we need to reimagine our agriculture, we need to reimagine our cities, we need to reimagine our buildings as systems. Do we need to grow our Starbucks? No.” [my bolding]

Happy Friday. And don’t forget to take a photo for our nascent flickr pool if you see a “Responsible? Brand” in action this weekend!

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Photo credit: Oliver S. [taken @ recent art fair in NYC... artist's name is?]

Valuable business/life insights from a big artist

What can an artist teach us about working across mediums, pushing boundaries, the importance of failure, enjoying the process and innovation? A great deal, it seems, based on this incisive obituary in today’s IHT by Michael Kimmelman on Robert Rauschenberg.

Excerpts:

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

The process — an improvisatory, counterintuitive way of doing things — was always what mattered most to him. “Screwing things up is a virtue,” he said when he was 74. “Being correct is never the point… Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”

Mix it up to spark personal growth and innovation

Here’s an illuminating snippet from today’s IHT about the importance of forging new habits to foster personal growth and innovation:

“… Brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.”

Wired to innovate

Merriam-Webster defines innovation as: “the introduction of something new… a new idea, method, or device”.

Really? New for new’s sake sounds like novelty to me, not something to build a company around.

Anyway, I define innovation as creating incremental value for the end-user, using the same or fewer resources.

Not surprisingly, the best indies are good innovators:

• they’re passionate about what they do
• they’re close to their customers, often deeply immersed in the sub-culture (software development, coffee roasting, barbering, etc)
• they have a clear, compelling vision
• they’re cohesive and aligned

Richard Florida, “creative class” expert, calls for density vs. sprawl

Interesting POV from Richard Florida (author of the seminal work, The Rise of the Creative Class) in today’s WSJ re: the need for density to spur innovation:

“Nearly every expert on the subject agrees that innovation and productivity are driven by density. For the better part of a century, we’ve subsidized suburbanization. That stimulated consumption of cars and appliances, which drove the industrial economy and allowed families to buy affordable homes. But it also diffused the density that is increasingly required for innovation and growth. Of course, every place does not have to be like Tokyo or Manhattan. Silicon Valley-style density would probably be sufficient. We can still have suburbs, but our economic policy has to start to encourage density, not sprawl.”

I would like to do a Q&A with Mr. Florida here soon about innovation, density, sustainability… let’s see if we can swing that.

Some tips from a retail master

We pay attention when Mickey Drexler, Ralph Lauren, Georgio Armani and Renzo Rosso talk about running a successful lifestyle retail business, for obvious reasons.

J. Crew just reported a strong fourth quarter ‘07, with revenues, same-store sales, gross margin and operating income up nicely over the prior period.

What’s driving this excellent performance at J. Crew in a souring retail market? Here’s some insight from Drexler, Chairman and CEO:

“It’s all about inventory today and differentiation… It’s about the quality of goods, service and innovation. We are in a game right now of beating the competition. The winners will win not because they’re cutting expense. Long term, they’re winning because they are innovating their product.”

Drexler said the key to J. Crew’s continued success has been being “obsessively focused on our customers and our product,” down to the stitching, the buttons, the colors and all the details.

And further on, another telling excerpt re: Madewell, J. Crew’s fledgling new retail concept:

“New businesses are really hard to start. They only work if there is strong long-term vision and tremendous passion and a product that’s focused on the consumer… I can’t emphasize the importance of having a store about 10 blocks away… We are in there every day looking at it and we’re living and breathing it…”

Enough said. My underlines.

Photo: detail of work by Kon Trubkovich, Marianne Boesky Gallery