INNOVATION INSANITY | There will never be a shortage of smart new ventures, brands, goods and services that deliver on consumers’ wants and needs. In fact, with the entire world now engaged in creative destruction, INNOVATION INSANITY is upon us. So yes, the dozens of innovations we’ve rounded up for this briefing, courtesy of our sister-site Springwise, are just the tip of the iceberg. Invent, improve, copy… or perish.

Our recent STATUSPHERE Trend Briefing gave you a taste of some of the ways in which consumers are now getting their status fix.  Here are a few more innovative examples, related to skills and status:

Hotels | Dubbed “Night School,” the Seattle Sorrento Hotel offers a collaboration with chef Michael Hebb and “an array of intellectuals, artists, writers, filmmakers, mixologists, chefs and the leading cultural institutions in the Northwest”. The Night School’s Midnight Symposium series, for example, invites guests to gather and discuss a particular reading, while the Drinking Lessons series in the hotel’s Hunt Club bar offers two-hour lessons in the preparation and history of three distinct cocktails. More »

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Bars and Restaurants | Spanish restaurant chain Fresc Co offers free English language lessons to its patrons. Fresc Co operates 40 restaurants in 11 Spanish cities, focusing on fresh ingredients and Mediterranean dishes. Last February, two of its Barcelona locations began offering two-hour sessions targeting professional workers with a focus primarily on everyday language and work situations. More »

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Food & Beverage | British brewer Tom Wood’s recently launched a mobile bottling operation for DIY brewers in the form of a well-equipped truck that can drive to virtually any UK location. Services include everything from pre-production bottle washing through a range of bottle capping options, labelling and finally shrink-wrapping. More »

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While globalism is a given, the vast majority of consumers continue to live and work in their local area. So, whether it’s producing goods locally, celebrating an urban area, or providing location-specific services, the potential of these innovations continues to grow:

Food & Beverage | Taking a local approach to candy bars, Nestlé recently launched 19 new Kit Kat flavours in Japan that reflect food specialties of specific districts. Each flavor is sold exclusively in the region for which it was created. The Japanese Kit Kat varieties include yubari melon and baked corn from Hokkaido island; strawberry cheesecake from Yokohama; cherries from Yamagata Prefecture; and sweet potato, blueberry and soybean from the Kanto region. More »

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Food & Beverage | Oregon-based SoupCycle offers organic soup, made from locally grown produce and delivered each week to subscribers. Consumers who live or work in the company’s delivery area order their soup a week in advance. SoupCycle then buys the necessary produce from local farmers and cooks the week’s soup, which is delivered by bicycle over the following days. More »

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It’s a long time since we covered CURATED CONSUMPTION, but as consumers are still spoiled for choice (if not overwhelmed), and there is still a growing demand for trusted curators across every B2C sector:

Fashion | Panty by Post is a Canadian venture that offers women’s underwear by monthly subscription. The company has an exclusive agreement with Montreal’s Blush Lingerie for its signature and bridal lines. Customers can order panties individually, or they can sign up for subscriptions lasting two, three, six or 12 months. A different panty is then sent every month, with prices ranging from CDN 16 for a single pair to CDN 240 for a year’s worth of premium deliveries. More »

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Publishing | IndieReader offers a marketplace for independent, self-published books. The books sold on the site are curated by IndieReader to ensure that the cream of the indie “crop” is well-represented. Self-published authors begin by sending their books for vetting, if accepted they then pay an annual fee of USD 149 for their first book, which goes up for sale on IndieReader. When a consumer makes a purchase, IndieReader notifies the author by email and the author ships the book out. IndieReader pays authors 75 percent of the sales of their books at the end of each month, plus the shipping fees paid by buyers.
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Consumers will always feel the need for DAILY LUBRICANTS: products that make their lives simpler and easier. Of course, brands will forever be happy to oblige:

Travel & Transport | ANWB, the Dutch motorists association, has launched a mobile store that will tour France this summer. The ANWB’s store on wheels will stop at campgrounds across France, selling tourists items they forgot to pack, from toothbrushes and sunblock to its own maps and travel guides. It will be joined by motor care teams who’ll check tire pressure, give traffic updates and clean car windows and mirrors. When drivers have finally reached their destination, the ANWB’s ‘Helping Hands’ will pitch tents, fill jerry cans and even dry dishes. More »

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Retail | Fragrance retailer Sephora installed a series of machines at various Paris Métro stations dedicated to selling Calvin Klein’s CK One scent in a special, portable size. In February 2010, visitors to the Métro’s La Défense, Charles de Gaulle-Étoile, Montparnasse and Miromesnil stations could buy a special 15ml size of CK One at an on-site “CK One Pocket Store” by Sephora. More »

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Retail | With three stores in Northern Spain, butcher Izarzugaza has installed a vending machine outside its Mundaka shop that sells a variety of meats, sausages, sandwiches and other goods around the clock. Products sold within the machine vary with the season, so summer offerings might include pasta salads while the emphasis is more on meatballs and sausages in the wintertime. More »

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Fashion | Belgian OrgaSizer offers an online place to check the sizes and preferences of loved ones and friends. Users of OrgaSizer can then enter all their sizes and preferences for a variety of different types of clothing, deciding what information they’d like to share with others, and exactly whom they’d like to share it with. Users can also create wish lists and request reminders about important gift-giving dates. Ultimately, the idea is that shoppers hoping to purchase a gift can then check the site from wherever they happen to be to see what the recipient wants, and in what sizes or variations. More »

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Bikes | German startup MyBikeNumber, launched in December 2009, is a free online service that lets consumers register their bicycle and components, or search for them worldwide. Users register their bike on the MyBikeNumber site using the frame number, and add photos to the profile page to help visually identify their bike. Registered bikes are allocated a unique QR code, which can be printed as a sticker and affixed to the frame. More »

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Public Transport | Tube Refund helps consumers get compensated for the 40 or so delays that occur each week on the London Underground. Each time a train is delayed by more than 15 minutes, riders are entitled to a full refund of a single-journey fare. Priced at GBP 0.59, the Tube Refund app can be used to register where and when a delay occurred and how long it lasted. Tube Refund then submits that information to the London Underground website, which generates a refund voucher for the user. More »

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Personal Care | New York-based 3floz offers a range of luxury skin and hair care products for men and women, all in travel-friendly sizes of 3 fluid ounces (100 ml) or less. 3floz is also marketing itself as a sample site, catering to consumers who want to try out high-end beauty products without committing to pricey full-sized versions. International shipping is available, including delivery direct to hotels, as well as a same-day courier delivery service within Manhattan. More »

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Insurance | AccidentSketch is a free online tool that allows users to graphically document car accidents using a drag and drop template system. Road ‘pieces’ are added to a grid to create an accurate depiction of the road, before vehicles are placed on the road map. Final details are then added, such as bicycles, pedestrians, traffic signs, lights, arrows and braking marks. The finished sketch can be printed out or downloaded as a PDF file. More »

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Consumers crave (relevant, timely) information, and it’s never been easier to satisfy this INFOLUST (with a heavy dose of NOWISM thrown in, too):

Travel & Transport | DailyRoads Voyager is a free application for Android-powered mobile phones that enables continuous video recording from moving vehicles. DailyRoads Voyager is intended to serve as what’s essentially a video black box for cars, recording everything but allowing users to keep only what they’re really interested in. Whether it’s an encounter with unusual wildlife in the road or the sequence of events leading to an accident, the application works in the background to timestamp, geotag and save all videos on the SD card. More »

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Funerals | RosettaStone is a palm-sized stone tablet with an embedded microchip and up to six engraved symbols that can be selected to represent key milestones or affiliations in the deceased’s life. The RosettaStone can be preinstalled in a new gravestone or added to an existing one to create a technologically enhanced memorial that will allow future site visitors to read the deceased’s story from a mobile device. More »

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Bars & Restaurants | With two restaurants in New York and London, Australia-based Otarian bills itself as “the first ever low-carbon restaurant chain, using a cradle-to-grave analysis in the carbon footprinting of every menu item.” Almost everything in Otarian’s restaurants—from the floor to the tables and chairs—is made from recycled materials. Its “Eco2tarian Labelling” shows the difference in greenhouse gas emissions between its veggie meals and similar dishes containing meat, fish or egg. More »

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Navigation | Guatemala-based mapmaking company Where To Go Maps is working towards creating a globalised mapping system that would see their free artistic city maps available to travellers for all major tourist destinations worldwide. The maps present tourists with the best hotels, restaurants, bars, shops, attractions and sightseeing highlights that each city has to offer, as well as illustrating the specific locations of local businesses who advertise on the maps. More »

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Social Media | Stickybits lets anyone scan any product barcode and append their own music, text, photos or video content. Users first download the free Stickybits app, then scan a barcode and attach content. When the geo-tagged barcode is scanned again by someone else, they’ll see whatever was attached to it along with who else has scanned it along the way. Also available from Stickybits, meanwhile, are downloadable, printable barcodes that can be glued, ironed, printed, tattooed or otherwise stuck onto anything in the real world. Thanks to a partnership with Zazzle, Stickybits also offers birthday cards, business cards, mugs and shirts with unique, content-enabled barcodes printed on them. More »

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Last year, our Trend Briefing on ECO-BOUNTY featured plenty of eco-cool innovations; it won’t come as a surprise that this trend continues to give:

Automotive | Ford has developed technology that helps “coach” drivers on the road to optimize their miles per gallon. MyFord Touch enables drivers to monitor and track their vehicle’s real-time fuel economy performance and mile-per-gallon averages for the past five, 10 and 30 minutes. MyFord Touch’s map-based navigation system, meanwhile, offers an EcoRoute option that quickly calculates the most fuel efficient route a driver can take to get from point A to point B. The feature will be available globally on the 2012 Ford Focus. More »

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Mobile & Telecoms | Orange Power Wellies use the heat in festival-goers’ feet to charge their mobile phones. Created by Orange in collaboration with GotWind, Orange Power Wellies target Glastonbury Festival attendees with a power-generating sole that converts heat from the wearer’s feet into an electrical current that can be used to charge a mobile phone. More »

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Solar Energy | Smart Energy Glass is an innovation from Dutch Peer+ that turns windows into solar energy collectors with a customizable appearance. The windows are available in several colors and can switch between three modes: dark, bright and privacy, which scatters the light passing through. The glass also serves to collect solar energy, which can then be used directly or fed back to the grid. More »

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Shipping | The Life Box offers a replacement for the traditional cardboard box that is impregnated with seeds. Within the corrugations of the box are hundreds of tree seeds and thousands of spores of beneficial mycorrhizal fungi. The box can be planted after use and in about two months, tree seedlings will emerge, nurtured by the mycorrhizal fungi. In about two years, the young trees can be planted in the ground where they’ll ultimately reside. Those who planted them, meanwhile, can visit the Life Box site and enter their GPS coordinates, making it possible to see the emerging trees and track carbon credits or offsets for generations to come. More »

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Furniture | Finnish Powerkiss has developed an approach that imbues everyday furniture with wireless charging capabilities. Powerkiss’s technology consists of two parts: a charging transmitter that gets integrated into furniture, and a charging receiver that gets plugged into the electronic device. To charge a phone, users simply attach the small receiver stick to their phone and place it on the surface of the enabled object. More »

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We covered TRYVERTISING ages ago, yet with rampant TRANSPARENCY further affecting purchasing decisions, the value of getting products into consumers’ hands and letting them try them out in a relevant setting, at a relevant moment, is more acute than ever:

Marketing & Advertising | Clube Amostra Grátis offers consumers in São Paulo an assortment of new products to take home and try before they become available on the shelves. Consumers register online and pay a yearly fee of BRL 50, which entitles them to visit the store and take home up to five different products each month. Members fill out online surveys about the products they choose. More »

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More on status and innovation: STATUS STORIES are now well established as a means for consumers to find their status fix, so the need for true innovation is greater than ever. Some recent spottings:

Fashion | Describing itself as being ‘on tour’, Munich-based Clemens en August’s only offline sales are through temporary outlets, twice a year. Each season, Clemens en August travels to an assortment of fashion-minded cities to sell its current collections in contemporary art galleries for only three days at a time. While it also sells through its online store, Clemens en August maintains a sense of scarcity: the ‘third floor’ of its webshop is reserved for customers who’ve visited the most recent tour. More »

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Home & Garden | Meine Ernte —German for My Harvest—rents out vegetable gardens for a season, and takes care of soil preparation and planting. Once the plants start growing, members come in and spend 1-2 hours a week caring for their plants and harvesting their crops. In advance, Meine Ernte sows and plants over 20 varieties of vegetables, while a section of each plot is left open for gardeners to add varieties of their own choosing and a professional is available onsite once a week to answer any questions the amateur gardeners may have. More »

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Travel & Transport | California-based Executive Tours offers a series of what it calls Crack of Noon Tours, designed “for those who don’t consider themselves ‘morning people’.” Rather, in its guided excursions to Italy and France, the company ensures that it never schedules any activities before noon. Executive Tours explains: “We firmly believe that travel is enjoyed much more when one is rested and relaxed — not herded and rushed. With Crack of Noon Tours, you will never hear the phrase, ‘bags out by six AM’.” More »

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Bags | Nature Bags aim to benefit the ancient Khmu culture on Laos’s steep mountainsides by using wild-growing JungleVine, also known as tropical kudzu, to produce reusable and sustainable organic bags that are compact, lightweight, minimalistic and highly durable. Eight variations on the Nature Bag are available, varying in both style and size—prices begin at USD 15 for a small bag in the Pahk style. Iowa-based Hawkflight has purchased some 10,000 Nature Bags from Khmu families, and is running the operation with the help of a 22 year-old Laotian student. More »

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It’s easier than ever for consumers to reveal their purchasing intentions (in exchange for bids and offers from eager suitors). Here are some fresh examples:

E-commerce | Preorder.It is a website based out of Saint Petersburg that allows customers to preorder the latest devices in advance, before official sale starts. Consumers can browse through company press releases or search products by brand or category to locate whatever soon-to-be released device they want, and register their interest with the merchant. Merchants then peruse the unbinding preorders left by customers and send them offers. Preorder.It sends a notification email the moment a device of interest is available for purchase, giving site users early access to online bargains. More »

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Travel & Transport | OfferMeaTrip (still in development) aims to provide a service in which consumers dictate what they want from a trip and agents bid for their business. Users of London-based OfferMeaTrip will begin by telling the service what kind of trip they’d like to take and how much they want to spend. The company’s network of approved travel agents will then choose to make offers on a corresponding trip, which are presented in personalized online holiday brochures. The consumer in question then chooses the offer that’s most appealing to them. More »

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As the online world plays an ever-larger role in consumers’ lives, we are seeing more and more ‘online’ and digital manifestations in the offline world. We featured plenty of examples in our OFF = ON briefing, and they keep coming:

Social Media | UK-based Yourshack offers leasing and house-share services with a focus on community socialization. Yourshack aims to help people in its community find the right property, give them the option to share, and offer the chance to join a vibrant social scene in and around Manchester. The company’s social efforts include a free social membership program for clients, city discounts, a regular events guide and a rapidly growing Facebook group. More »

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Financial Services | Kwedit offers a payment service in the United States that enables consumers over the age of 13 to make cash payments for their online purchases at participating offline retail stores. Kwedit issues users with a “Kwedit Score” which measures how reliably they pay when using Kwedit. The company takes a small percentage of each transaction, as do participating retailers, which include 7-Eleven. More »

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Fashion | French WTFjeans are designed specifically with gadget fans in mind. iPods, iPhones, USB sticks and more can all be accommodated in the jeans, which feature “Twitter bloo” stitching and microfiber lining for extra gadget protection. Along with the mobile-device compartments, there’s a special USB stick pocket on the front of the pants, which are sold in men’s sizes. WTF plans to make only 1,000 pairs and it’s conducting all its promotion through online social media. More »

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Serving well-established demographics, ethnograpics and other ‘graphics’ (and their well-documented desires) in novel ways is an endless source of innovation. In fact, if your next trend brainstorm fails to produce a few smart new products for kids, lads gays, and so on, then you might as well stop reading now: you will sadly never be a trend innovator It just doesn’t come easier than this. A few spottings:

Publishing | The Story Book inColor lets kids enjoy a variety of illustrated audio stories without the risks or distractions of an internet connection. With a book-like form factor including fold-back cover, Story Book inColor comes preloaded with 20 built-in stories including both illustrations and narration. More stories for Story Book inColor are also available on AIPTEK’s site, including English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese contents as well as motion formats. More »

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Toys | Lucky Duck Toy Box provides a wide assortment of toys for rental aimed at kids aged newborn through five years old. Parents or grandparents simply choose a subscription plan and pick out which toys they’d like to start with. Lucky Duck then delivers those, and a month later customers login once more to choose their next set. More »

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Domestic Care | Dutch electronics giant Philips has created a clothes iron for men. The company felt that men wanted a more robust, heavy-duty tool to tackle hampers of laundry, something with a larger grip and a more masculine look. The result is the GC4490, which offers ‘more power, more steam, more performance’ and is sold in a solid case, retailing for EUR 79,99. More »

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Food & Beverage | New York’s Butch Bakery offers cupcakes for men, aiming to be the place where “butch meets buttercream”. Butch Bakery’s cupcakes are specially crafted confections designed specifically for a man’s palate. Varieties include a Rum & Coke version, the ‘Beer Run’, and the ‘Jackhammer’, while designs include woodland camo, wood grain, houndstooth, plaid, checkerboard and marble. More »

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Fashion | Manpacks offers Men’s undergarments, including socks, T-shirts and underwear, available for delivery every three months. Consumers can choose one of four subscription packages. The JustSocks package, for instance, provides three pairs of socks every three months for USD 7 per shipment, while the MachoPack includes three shirts, three pairs of underwear and three pairs of socks every three months for USD 33 per shipment. More »

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Shipping | Indian Mirakle Couriers is a service provider that hires only deaf workers, offering a pickup and delivery service in Mumbai. The company puts a heavy emphasis on the training of employees—right down to the finer points of professional grooming. Its client list includes Johnson Controls, Bain Capital and the Indian Hotels Company, among many others. More »

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Publishing | Online publication Equally Wed gives gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender couples inspiration, ideas and trends for planning their engagements, weddings and honeymoons. Features include articles and photo galleries spotlighting real weddings of GLBT couples, engagement ideas, a Q&A section, and a section on honeymoon destinations. A community forum lets readers interact, while a vetted marketplace features gay-friendly wedding vendors throughout the US. More »