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NPR (@NPR) is now co-producing the TED Radio Hour (@tedtalks), a weekly program of interviews and presentations centered on a common theme. A recent program featured the topic of ideas and innovation. Take a break to be creatively inspired.

Is The 'Eureka' Moment A Myth?

People often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments, but author Steven Johnson (@stevenbjohnson) says the lightbulb moment is greatly overrated. He says ideas initially take form as hunches. They don't come into the world fully realized.

How Do Introverts Share Ideas?

In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. But, as author Susan Cain (@susancain) argues, introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world, and should be encouraged and celebrated.

What Happens When Ideas Have Sex?

Author Matt Ridley (@mattwridley) says, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas — basically "ideas having sex with each other." The sophistication of the modern world lies not in individual intelligence or imagination, he says, instead it's a collective enterprise. That means it's not important how clever individuals are; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help inspire creativity for your branding initiatives.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Innovation tab.

Who says branding isn’t valuable? Yesterday, Ford reacquired its logo. Back in 2006, when other automakers in financial distress accepted government bailouts, Ford Motor Company pledged its assets as collateral – including its historic Ford blue oval logo – in a loan agreement with banks. The New York Times says:

Ford put up its logo, headquarters, factories and other assets to qualify for $23.5 billion in loans that helped it survive the recession without needing a government bailout like General Motors and Chrysler.

Read the Ford news release.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek offers a brief history of the logo:

The carmaker’s emblem first appeared in 1927 on the nose of Henry Ford’s new Model A. The cursive script inside it dates to at least 1906, when it appeared on the radiator of the Model N and later on the more famous Model T, according to automotive historian John Wolkonowicz. It was trademarked in 1909, the company says.

The script logo is not, as often thought, based on the founder’s signature. Rather, it was created by Childe Harold Wills, a draftsman for Henry Ford. “The font was similar enough to Henry’s own signature that it looked as if he was signing every car,” says Bob Casey, senior curator of transportation at the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Mich. “But that was more happy coincidence than by design.”

So what’s a logo worth as a guarantee for a multi-billion dollar loan? Ford hasn't placed a value on the trustmark. But Interbrand (@Interbrand), which tracks brand values, says the Ford brand is worth $7.5 billion, and it ranked Ford 50th out of its top 100 brands in a recent survey.

What are you doing to add value to your brand?

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strengthen and effectively communicate your brand’s message.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Here’s the latest disrupter in the education field. TED (@TEDNews & @tedtalks) curator Chris Anderson (@TEDchris) announced yesterday that “after more than a year of planning and dreaming, we're finally launching our new TED-Ed website (@TED_ED), whose goal is to offer teachers a thrilling new way to use video.”

...the goal is to allow any teacher to take a video of their choice (yes, any video on YouTube, not just ours) and make it the heart of a “lesson” that can easily be assigned in class or as homework, complete with context, follow-up questions, and further resources.

This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED’s, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. Users can distribute the lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student.

In recent years at TED, we've become enamored of a strategy we call “radical openness”: Don't try to do big things yourself. Instead empower others to do them with you.

This has served us well. Sharing TEDTalks free online has built a global community of idea seekers and spreaders. Opening up our transcripts has allowed 7500 volunteers to translate the talks into 80+ languages. And giving away the TEDx brand in the form of free licenses, has spawned more than 4000 TEDx events around the world.

So it's natural that we would look to this approach as we embark on our education initiative.

Read this in full.

Also see The Atlantic’s (@TheAtlantic) article by Megan Garber (@megangarber), “The Digital Education Revolution, Cont’d: Meet TED-Ed’s New Online Learning Platform.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you take advantage of new technology to publish and market your brand’s message.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Could Disney’s expertise with customer service help bookstores stem their decline? According to this feature in The New York Times (@NYTimesAd), the Disney Institute (@DisneyInstitute) is the “low-profile consulting division of the Walt Disney Company.” Disney is undeniably an expert in customer relationship management.

For instance, the company has spent so much time studying its park customers — more than 120 million of them globally last year — that it places trash cans every 27 paces, the average distance a visitor carries a candy wrapper before discarding it.

When clients send their employees to Disney for training,...some time is spent in seminars on topics like “purpose before task.” They also get tours of the parks, where Disney managers demonstrate their tricks in action, like giving directions by pointing with two fingers instead of one (it’s more polite).

Disney-led workshops emphasize 5 principles: leadership, training, customer experience, brand loyalty, and creativity. Sessions are custom tailored.

Examples of Disney’s attention to detail with its clients:

Maryland teachers were instructed to engage children by crouching and speaking to them at eye level. Chevrolet dealers were taught to think in theater metaphors: onstage, where smiles greet potential buyers, and offstage, where sales representatives can take out-of-sight cigarette breaks.

A Florida children’s hospital was advised to welcome patients in an entertaining way, prompting it to employ a ukulele-playing greeter dressed in safari gear.

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost, “A Growing Trend: Retailers Perfuming Stores.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically communicate your brand and effectively reach consumers.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

The Vancouver Sun (@VanSunReporters) features this photo gallery of bookstores around the world that have décor stunning enough to make them repeated destination places. If only more stores were as beautiful.

See all the photos.

See our previous blogposts, “The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores In The World” and “20 More Beautiful Bookstores from Around the World.”

If you’re a book lover like we (@smrsault) are, bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Somersault (@smrsault) is attending Q’s (@Qideas) 5th annual Gathering (#QDC) today through Thursday in Washington, DC. According to its own description, “Q was birthed out of Gabe Lyons’ (@GabeLyons) vision to see Christians, especially leaders, recover a vision for their historic responsibility to renew and restore cultures.”

Q explores topics that fall into 4 broad themes: culture, future, church, and gospel. Q facilitates the investigation of deeper engagement and responsibility in each of these areas. As we continue to work through these ideas on a deeper level, so grows our commitment to equipping innovators, social entrepreneurs, entertainers, artists, church-shapers, futurists, scientists, educators, historians, environmentalists and everyday people to do extraordinary things. At Q Ideas, you'll see a broad spectrum of content represented in our small group curriculum, videos, and articles. These are all contributed and commissioned to shed light on unique areas of culture and the church.

Q is a place where leaders from every sphere of society gather to learn, reflect, collaborate and take action to renew culture. We share a common commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ and an awareness of our calling by God to join him in his redeeming work throughout every channel of culture.

Free live streaming of the opening and closing presentations is available this morning and tonight. Speakers and their topics include

·         Gabe Lyons, Founder of Q: “Ideas for the Common Good”

·         Andy Crouch (@ahc), Author: “Power”

·         Mark Batterson (@MarkBatterson), Pastor of National Community Church: “Church & Place”

·         David Brooks (@DavidBrooksNYT), Columnist, The New York Times: “Humility”

·         Jonathan Merritt (@JonathanMerritt), Author and Columnist: “Faith of Our Own”

Depend on Somersault to help you develop strategy to effectively communicate your brand message in today’s culture.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

The Startup Daily (@thestartupdaily) highlights some of the elements of strong presentations by gleaning tips from 5 books:

·         Skip the stand-up, and start your presentation by talking about the audience (from How to Give a Pretty Good Presentation: A Speaking Survival Guide for the Rest of Us by T.J. Walker (@tjwalker))

·         Blank the presentation screen at key moments to force the audience to focus on you (from The Naked Presenter: Delivering Powerful Presentations With or Without Slides by Garr Reynolds (@presentationzen))

·         Effortless presentations are the result of deliberate practice (from The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo (@carminegallo))

·         If a slide is not contributing to the main argument of your presentation, take it out (from The Art of the Pitch: Persuasion and Presentation Skills that Win Business by Peter Coughter (@Coughter))

·         Each slide should be simple enough to be processed in 3 seconds (from Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte (@nancyduarte))

The following slide deck by Alexei Kapterev (@kapterev) explains (and shows) the components of a compelling PowerPoint^® presentation.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you clearly communicate your message (your content) to your audience.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

57% of US consumers say that they’re increasingly checking product labels to see what company is behind the product they’re buying, and the same proportion say they get annoyed when it’s not obvious what company is behind a product, according the study The Company Behind the Brand: In Reputation We Trust by Weber Shandwick (@WeberShandwick). Roughly 2 in 5 US consumers also say they hesitate to buy products when it’s not clear what company makes them, and that they do research to learn about the companies that make the products they buy.

Our study identified 6 New Realities of Corporate Reputation. Each reality serves as a reminder to business leaders that they cannot view their company’s reputation and their product brands as separately as they once did. Aligning and integrating both optimizes their respective strengths to achieve strong business results.

1.    Corporate brand is as important as the product brand(s).

2.    Corporate reputation provides product quality assurance.

3.    Any disconnect between corporate and product reputation triggers sharp consumer reaction.

4.    Products drive discussion, with reputation close behind.

5.    Consumers shape reputation instantly.

6.    Corporate reputation contributes to company market value.

“In this fast-moving information age, consumers can now readily connect the dots between the brand they buy and the company behind the brand,” says Leslie Gaines-Ross, Chief Reputation Strategist, Weber Shandwick. “Whereas it has long been known that a strong brand shines a light on a company’s reputation, it is now clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that a strong company reputation adds an undeniable brilliance to the brand.”

What impacts consumers’ opinion of a company?

·         Word of mouth (88%)

·         Online reviews (83%)

·         Online search results (81%)

·         News sources (79%)

·         Company websites (74%)

·         Awards and rankings (63%)

·         Leadership communications (59%)

·         Advertising (56%)

·         Social networks (49%) (are companies not embracing social media in a way that fully resonates with the public?)

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify blue ocean strategy for your brand.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.; especially the Branding and Marketing/Public Relations tabs.

This article in The Economist (@TheEconomist) explains how Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon (@amazon), values innovation and risk-taking. It begins with the example of Bezos’ major investment in “a gargantuan clock” being built inside the Sierra Diablo Mountain Range in Texas by The Long Now Foundation (@longnow). This 10,000-year clock, designed “to be a symbol, an icon for long-term thinking,” will tick once a year, its century hand will advance once every 100 years, and its cuckoo will come out on the millennium.

Mr. Bezos’s willingness to take a long-term view also explains his fascination with space travel, and his decision to found a secretive company called Blue Origin, one of several start-ups now building spacecraft with private funding. It might seem like a risky bet, but the same was said of many of Amazon’s unusual moves in the past. Successful firms, he says, tend to be the ones that are willing to explore uncharted territories. “Me-too companies have not done that well over time,” he observes.

Eyebrows were raised, for example, when Amazon moved into the business of providing cloud-computing services to technology firms—which seemed an odd choice for an online retailer. But the company has since established itself as a leader in the field. “A big piece of the story we tell ourselves about who we are is that we are willing to invent,” Mr. Bezos told shareholders at Amazon’s annual meeting last year. “And very importantly, we are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”

...[Criticism does] nothing to sway Mr. Bezos, who is convinced that rapid technological change creates huge opportunities for companies bold enough to seize them. “There is room for many winners here,” he says. But he believes Amazon can be one of the biggest thanks to its unique culture and capacity for reinventing itself. Even in its original incarnation as an internet retailer, it pioneered features that have since become commonplace, such as allowing customers to leave reviews of books and other products (a move that shocked literary critics at the time), or using a customer’s past purchasing history to recommend other products, often with astonishing accuracy.

Read this in full.

Also see Bezos' long view approach in "Bezos team finds Apollo 11 rocket engines on Atlantic floor."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you set your leadership vision and take advantage of technology to advance your brand.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Innovation and Leadership tabs.

Emily Temple, editor of flavorpill (@flavorpill), has compiled more photos of more gorgeous bookstores “from Slovakia to Brazil to West Chester, PA” (see our previous blogpost). Enjoy these (and maybe even plan to visit them) while appreciating the fact that not all bookstores are bereft of customers these days.

See the photos and read this in full.

If you’re a book lover like we (@smrsault) are, bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.