Inspiration and Innovation in the Small Shops

By Christopher Hire On May 26th, 2007

Building on our practical observations and my personal experience which lead to the Innovation pockets model, the modern gathering place is the shops.

The modern source of innovation is ideas that are inspired (by art, culture, cultural exchange, music, friends, multi-cultural hotspots, food, travel, border towns, cultural artefacts. books, museums). One key source is small cafes, shops, and service businesses where retailers can afford to experiment.

So in other words they have a low enough cost base, as well as cultural permission to innovate, as well as incentives these can be financial or cultural. Among other implementation conditions this allows their good ideas to be put in place.

Then their must be a market for innovators to be rewarded. This is my 3 stage Innovation Loop, and each stage reinforces the others, creating a loop.

Shops (not the over-priced rent MALL variety) but CBD shops, small shops, craft markets, small non-franchised retailers, these are a key source of inspiration. The lexicon of products forms a modern artgallery of modern crafts of fashion, jewellery, silver ware, crystal, design and other arts/crafts/design.

Anyway, I’m writing this from Marvellous Melbourne, Home again (as much as global innovators can be home anywhere)…

Take care folks, (and yes I’m upbeat again. Blame Sydn-ay)

Christopher

PS. Many of you would be unaware I have an arts degree… se my post-post-modernist views here on Women in Art on Technorati. You can vote too if you like…!

As you can see I’m trying to bring some intellectual debate whilst killing off all those fried chicken innovations of the past in art and culture. Da Vinci - realist! PAH. Warhols soupcans or Duchamps urinal equal to Sistine Chapel… I DON’T THINK SO. And boy oh boy, is anyone who belived that missing the emerging cultural zeitgeist I have been seeing as I travelled the world in search of global innovation. Think!!! Post-modernist and the end of history are intellectual simplifications, and miss the point.

My cultural travels in writing the Global innovation Review 2007, unearthed a different story from all the arts and culture and eductaed people I spoke to… Very Different.

Connect to Christopher Hire.

Speaker. Author. Editor-In-Chief. Executive Director of Innovation, 2thinknow.