Coolhunting - Introduction

"Coolhunting" and "coolfarming" are about identifying emerging and cutting-edge trends and discovering the trendsetters. They are about uncovering hidden innovation and innovators. They are about converting new ideas and new knowledge into products and services that correspond to the collective - and too often undervalued - human mindset.

New ideas can come from anywhere. So many of the best ideas come not from the individual inventor tinkering away in his garage, or even in a large corporate research laboratory, but from the collective efforts of groups of people. We see these groups of idea creators motivated by their love of the idea itself and by their devotion to a process of working with ideas that is predicated on nothing more than the great feeling that comes with success. They set out initially not with the thought of making millions (although this happens in plenty of cases), but to meet a challenge, solve a puzzle, and make the world a better place.

"Swarm," for us, is an ideal word to describe that collective mindset. We take the word from the bees, and we return to the bees again and again in this book as exemplars of our ideas. In biology, the term swarm is used to describe the behavior of a group of animals traveling in the same direction. We find the creativity unleashed by groups of human animals swarming together to be particularly compelling. So often, humans traveling together in the same creative, innovative direction produce the trends that are most interesting and exciting. Hence, "swarm creativity."

Swarms have been around for as long as there have been human beings. With the advent and expansion of the Internet in recent years, they have gotten an immense boost. As Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs), swarms can form instantaneously and collaborate on innovative tasks from almost anywhere on the planet.

The swarm is central to our story, and we use as a yardstick for swarm creativity the behavior of bees in a hive. We contend that in almost every instance, if you can find people working like the bees, or get people to follow the example of the bees, you will reap great benefits. If you can grow an innovation beehive, going beyond where the bees themselves have gone, you will succeed.

The behavior of the bees connects to the examples from the business world we use to illustrate our ideas. For now, we'll give you a taste of what the bees offer as a model. It comes from an unlikely source for a business book, but eloquently makes our case.

In the writing of the Dalai Lama, we find his take on the bees. " When I consider the lack of cooperation in human society," he writes, "I can only conclude that it stems from ignorance of our interdependent nature. I am often moved by the example of small insects, such as bees. The laws of nature dictate that bees work together in order to survive. As a result, they possess an instinctive sense of social responsibility. They have no constitution, laws, police, religion or moral training, but because of their nature they labour faithfully together. Occasionally they may fight, but in general the whole colony survives on the basis of cooperation. Human beings, on the other hand, have constitutions, vast legal systems and police forces; we have religion, remarkable intelligence and a heart with great capacity to love. But despite our many extraordinary qualities, in actual practice we lag behind those small insects; in some ways, I feel we are poorer than the bees."

We quote the Dalai Lama not only for his concise description of bee behavior, but also for his notable last point -that "we are poorer than the bees." Why shouldn't we enrich ourselves in the way of the bees?

Slowly but surely, some business leaders are recognizing that the collective mind has a lot to offer when it comes to innovation. We see a promising trend: companies tapping into the swirling network of ideas around the globe that may not even correspond directly to the business the executives think they're in. They are seeing that innovation can come from the collaboration of people who share interests but not necessarily job descriptions, departments, disciplines, or other pigeon-holes. They view an expanded collective mindset that reaches well beyond the walls of their offices and into every corner of the virtual world.

This is a welcome development, but there's a long way to go. More companies need to give up their closely held, internal innovation models and get out there and find what the swarm is creating. The innovation process will be served best when businesses realize that people motivated to collaborate and innovate because of shared interests, without specific regard for personal gain, creates compelling new opportunities. This is the way to unleash the power of the innovation beehive.

Indeed, as we hope to convince you through this book, knowledge and innovation are often more valuable precisely because they are the product of the collective mindset. We define "cool" according to this idea in Chapter 1, and show where the concept of coolhunting comes from. We argue that the coolest - and thus most desirable - trends are the ones that feed off of this collectivity, this collaboration. We demonstrate how the process through which innovation reaches great numbers of people is, itself, an example of swarm creativity at work. One example we offer is that of the CEO of Continental Airlines coolhunting for trends in an online forum of frequent fliers.

Throughout the book, we offer examples of cool trends. In Chapter 2, we show how swarm creativity creates cool trends, based on giving power away, sharing knowledge, and self-organizing. Google, Amazon, and eBay have demonstrated just how rewarding such an approach can be. We also show, in Chapter 3, how the behavior of swarms working collaboratively can be predictors of the future - often in rather counterintuitive ways. Who would have thought that the survivors of the dot-com bust in one country would have been the competitors who most shared during the height of the e-business craze?

Our book is not only a description of coolhunting, coolfarming, and swarm creativity, but also a guide for readers who want to employ these tools. In Chapter 4, we model the behavior not only of trendsetters but also of those who can find the trends and run with them. Our role models for what we call coolhunters and coolfarmers come not only from the modern world of technological innovation, like the famous venture capitalist John Doerr, but also from hundreds of years ago. You'll learn just how cool that old, stodgy Ben Franklin really was. We also illustrate that the ways in which people behave with other innovators can spell the difference between success and failure.

In Chapter 5, we pull the principles together and begin to elaborate what you can do to be a coolhunter and a coolfarmer. Real cases from the business world and beyond put the principles in context: Robert Langer, the biotech entrepreneur on the MIT faculty; Netscape's Jim Clark; and the director of a high school theatre group, among others. And we show just how important all the principles are with an example of coolfarming gone horribly wrong - because while those involved did some of what we're advocating, they did not do so for the reasons we lay out. This leads to Chapter 6, in which we amplify the importance of the principles through several more negative examples - including NASA.

Beginning in Chapters 7 and 8, we introduce tools and examples of social network analysis (SNA) at work in the coolhunting and coolfarming process. We look at a number of applications of blogs, "smart" tracking using RFID tags, and other new technologies. Chapter 9 includes detailed cases of online coolhunting that show the value of our approach. We show how one mobile phone company found the trendsetters among high school students using its new product. We explore how SNA can be used to uncover collaborative networks within a larger online community, with Wikinews as a positive example and Enron as a negative example.

In Chapter 10, we even walk you through an experiment to hone your skills. We provide you with an online software tool you can use and with which some coolhunting and coolfarming can be automated.

We end in Chapter 11 with a manifesto for a future of swarm creativity that lays out the axioms by which great innovations - ones that truly benefit us - can be coolhunted and coolfarmed. We show how Cisco, by following our axioms, has built great success and how the U.S. automobile industry, having rejected nearly every one of our ideas, teeters on the brink of oblivion.

Which path will you take?