Perspectives on Innovation

I never really thought much about toothpaste.  But at the last two innovation conferences where I spoke, toothpaste was one of the hot topics.

At the FT Innovate conference in London, Unilever discussed their “Signal White Now” (and other brands) toothpaste.  Instead of using harsh bleaches and abrasives, they borrowed an optical-effect technology from their laundry team.  This toothpaste uses a blue pigment to make yellow teeth instantly appear whiter.  This same ingredient is used to make white clothes look even whiter.

At the Open Innovation Summit in Orlando, GSK discussed how their “Aquafresh iso-active” toothpaste borrowed an idea from Edge shaving cream (now a division of Energizer Holdings, Inc).  The toothpaste comes out like a gel, but foams in the mouth, much like the shaving cream.  This formulation, according to the can I was given, removes 25% more bacteria than regular toothpaste – or 3x more according to the picture left.

This got me thinking.  If toothpaste manufacturers can get ideas from shaving cream and laundry detergent, where else could they get ideas?  Within 5 minutes, I thought up a few ideas of how to gain inspiration from other products:

1. Pop Rocks:  As a kid, I loved how Pop Rocks, the carbonated candy, exploded in your mouth.  What if you added Pop Rock-like crystals to toothpaste?  Not only would the toothpaste foam, it would fizz and explode.  Maybe this would blast the plaque off your teeth.  Of course, it might blast off your teeth like Pop Rocks reputedly did a few times.
2. Shampoo: Shampoos are infused with vitamins and minerals to give your hair bounce and shine.  What if you infused toothpaste with these ingredients? Or maybe you could add some homeopathic remedies – for those who believe in these alternative “medicines.”  Sublingual administration (under the tongue) is a common and effective way of delivering drugs directly into the bloodstream.
3. Conditioner: We use shampoo to clean and conditioner to protect.  Maybe they can create a tooth conditioner; a special toothpaste that you use after your regular toothpaste.  It could coat your teeth to prevent staining, bad breath, or split ends.  Even better, they could borrow the “technology” used by shampoos like “Pearl” that combine shampoo and conditioner into one formulation.
4. Moisturizers: Several moisturizers have an AM and a PM formulation.  One is used in the morning and the other at night before you go to sleep.  The AM formula of toothpaste could be infused with caffeine that would be absorbed into the bloodstream sublingually (see idea #2 above).  And the PM formulation could be infused with melatonin to help you sleep better at night.
5. Weight Loss Products:  I’m not sure how this would work, but what if you could create a toothpaste that somehow made certain foods taste bad?  This might cause you to reduce the amount of food you eat.  Or maybe there is another way to make toothpaste a weight loss product.  OK, this one is a stretch, but there might be a kernel of an idea there!

Ideas can indeed come from anywhere. (Read more to find out how!)

If you have other toothpaste innovation ideas, I would love for you to post them as comments!

InnoCentive was recently mentioned in the Stanford Social Innovation Review article titled Design Thinking for Social Innovation by Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt. This is an interesting read; it talks about the value of “Design Thinking” for nonprofits to help them develop solutions for social problems.

Design Thinking is an approach to designing products and services that takes into account not just needs of the consumers, but also their social and cultural infrastructure. Socially, it can be about addressing the needs of women in third world villages collecting their daily water, or observing the ways in which “very, very poor” families keep their children healthy in areas where children were usually malnourished. It asks that the designer be “open” to seeing the flaws within systems and use their creativity, experience and open-mindedness to fill in the gaps.

InnoCentive is referenced as a good example of how design thinking can result in hundreds of ideas. CEO Dwayne Spradlin defines this “process [as] a prime example of design thinking contributing to social innovation” and cites our partnership with the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development. If you remember, the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development was looking for ways to simplify the current TB treatment regime, and selected a theoretical solution from a Solver who lives in India, Dr. Kana Sureshan. Dr. Sureshan’s mother developed TB when he was 14 years old. Since she was the sole breadwinner in his family, he had to take on the financial responsibility through his high-school and college years. Dr. Sureshan’s drive is palpable, and through his experience and education, he has been able to make a positive impact in the lives of people going through this treatment. As Dwayne says, it is these “projects within the InnoCentive community [that] benefit from such deep and motivating connections.”

Have a read; you will be inspired at how a conceptual approach that is fundamentally “optimistic, constructive, and experiential” can lead to some pretty cool solutions that help to create better lives for people.

A guest blog post by Jennifer Moebius, uTest

Having grilled some of the top minds in the software business, this installment of Testing the Limits will deviate slightly from the norm. With us this month is John Winsor – author, entrepreneur and crowdsourcing expert.

After a successful career as a journalist and magazine publisher, John founded Radar Communications in 1998, where he implemented a variety of academic-based market intelligence tools to help some of the country’s most progressive companies learn from key voices in their communities. Today, he offers that same advice as the VP/Executive Director of Strategy and Product Innovation at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky.

John has written extensively on the subject of crowdsourcing, having published the popular 2005 book Spark: Be more Innovative through Co-Creation. With his latest book Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses That Market Themselves now hitting the shelves, John was kind enough to sit down with us to discuss the future of crowdsourcing, the premise of his new book, and the best (or worst) rock-climbing movies of all-time.

uTest: The hottest debate in crowdsourcing right now is the “fall” of traditional advertising or design firms and the “rise” of crowdsourced services. In your opinion, what does the future of crowdsourcing look like? Is the world ready for what you call the “digital tsunami?”

JW: Well the future of crowdsourcing is definitely bright, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions in people’s minds. Those who are skeptical of crowdsourcing question its ability to truly connect people. With crowdsourcing, you no longer have all of these professionals working together in the same building – that alone is often too much for some people to come to terms with. The idea of a crowd aggregating to solve business problems in a virtual environment is entirely new to most people, even though the underlying trend has been developing for years. The difference now is that it simply can’t be ignored.

uTest: So you see crowdsourcing as eventually obtaining mainstream acceptance?

JW: Absolutely. People are starting to see the full potential of this model, especially on the client side of the equation. There was a time when most people viewed crowdsourcing as chaos – like the inmates running the asylum, and that’s no longer the case for a growing number of people. So I think we’re just getting started.

Let me give you an example. When I started blogging, people would say to me, “Oh that desktop publishing thing is never going to work out. It’s just not going happen. Amateurs will never rise to rank and status of newsprint.”

That was in 2003! So crowdsourcing, like blogging, is an evolving market. I suspect that we’ll look back in a few years and have a laugh over the naysayers the same way we laugh at those who thought blogging was a “fad.” I’d categorize many of today’s crowdsourcing companies as “Crowdsourcing 1.0.” In other words, there’s still a long way to go – and too many great ideas for this trend to fail or even fall short.

uTest: Your new book Baked In just hit the shelves and it’s getting some great reviews. What’s it about and where did the idea for this book come from?

JW: I wrote the book with Alex Bogusky. It is largely based on our personal observations. Over the last few years we’ve seen many clients enter a market with almost identical products, so it was almost impossible for them to differentiate themselves from their competitors. We started to see how this situation was reducing marketing as little more than a way to lie about their products or services. In other words, if there’s no difference between your product or service from that of your competitors, then what other options do marketers have? This obviously led to some very poor marketing strategies.

Social media is changing all that – and that’s what a big part of this book is all about. Social media lends itself to transparency. You’ve got to live up to what you’re saying, because if you don’t, someone else will. The simplest way to summarize the book would be to say that marketing shouldn’t be separate from your product or service – they have to be one and the same. Hence the title.

The basic premise of the book is that the future lies with those who embrace creativity. I’m convinced that crowdsourcing will play a major part in this evolution….

Read the rest of this John Winsor crowdsourcing interview at the uTest blog