The latest on digital design trends and consumer behavior from Avenue A | RazorfishPatents, Podcasts & Wild Postings: Tales from the Avenue A | Razorfish IdeaLab
October 23rd, 2007 by Garrick SchmittTags: Media + Entertainment, Social Media, Web 2.0
Why an innovation lab at an interactive agency?
I’ve gotten several questions like that over the last few days. So, I’m going to provide some context around the Avenue A | Razorfish IdeaLab. Namely, what it is and why do we do it. And, perhaps, tease out a few reasons that every agency should.
The easiest way to do this is to start at the beginning:
We started the IdeaLab at the tail-end of ‘05, as both a reaction to the Web 2.0 start-up frenzy and as a way to grow innovation organically inside of Avenuea A | Razorfish. There was so much innovation happening in the industry and the cost of production via new light-weight technologies was so low, it would have almost been criminal to not participate in this new wave of ideation.
So, as TechCrunch was cataloging the latest and greatest Web 2.0 start-ups and Google was touting its staff-spends-20%-of-their-time-on-personal-projects approach, we created the Avenue A | Razorfish IdeaLab to try to concept and produce great ideas that our clients had not yet asked us to deliver. Everything was focused on creating some type of far-reaching IP that we could bring back to our clients.
To do this, we simply asked our teams to submit any type of next-generation digital product or service idea and then put it to a vote. We then funded the winning concept — typically staffing a small team (designer, developer, UX, etc.) for 90-days and setting up the appropriate technical infrastructure. It was a throw-back approach to the days when a designer and developer would quickly prototype something and then serve it up to the web world from a box under someone’s desk.
The results were both inspiring and frustrating — we scored kudos from clients and press for our mobile project, Smartpox.com, and had to take down others, MMOD, because the processing power required quickly blew through our budgets . Over the past year and half, we were able to launch several projects (some internally and some externally), plus put some smaller ideas (widgets, video players, etc.) into practice. Here’s some of the highlights:
1. Smartpox (http://www.smartpox.com) – Community site built around the creation and distribution of mobile bar codes.
2. MMOD (internal URL) — Internal prototype of a dynamic ad-insertion platform for podcasts, videocasts and other downloadble media.
3. Newsbreakr (http://www.newsbreakr.com) — Community journalism site that allows contributors to post text, image and video via mobile devices.
4. Digiboard (http://digiboard.aa-rflabs.com) — The Twitter of photo-sharing created desktop and physical billboards of photos submitted via mobile device.
5. BuzzMap (http://www.buzzmap.net) — An RSS subscription service focused on subscribing to people versus content.
Smartpox was one of our most successful releases and now boasts a sizable international community and has received raves in Wired by Bruce Sterling, Read/Write Web, Mashable, Lifehacker and more. Better yet, we built out a number of mobile pilots for a few clients. The most memorable included a streaming video triggered by a 2D barcode.
Now almost two years into this experiment, I can’t say enough about the transformational effect it’s had on our agency. Staff who may have been tempted to fly to some fledgling start-up stayed to see their ideas come to life. Our small team development approach reinvigorated some groups who suddenly found that they could do more with less (and have fun!). And our clients benefited from being able to test out some next-gen ideas in an “off-the-record” capacity.
Ultimately, it’s the type of thing every interactive agency should try and do — it’s almost a disservice not to.
6 Responses to “Patents, Podcasts & Wild Postings: Tales from the Avenue A | Razorfish IdeaLab”
Wow… Those are some pretty cool ideas you guys have going on at AARF. I shall sumbit this to the higher up about… would love to get this at my shop.
nice to see the fish still pushing out new ideas. And AARF is just a funny word.
Anyway, the challenge is to tie cool ideas to actionable business solutions. Interactive agencies are in the business of finding intuitive ways for customers and producers to meet. The projects you’re talking about here are a headstart. How they work within the context of your clients’ businesses is nearly as important as whether they are fun ideas to put together.
as a former fish (razf boston) i’m glad to see not only that this forum exists but that there’s still a fire to create new ways to make the world more connected. everything that can be connected will be, as they say.
schwartz
Great post gschmitt, we had a similar group at Viant when I was there called the Innovation Lab. One thing I wish Viant had actually done was to create some products that could have gone out in the marketplace, just like the examples you have given. There is so much design and business talent in interactive agencies the idea that they could actually produce their own products has always appealed to me. In my mind consulting and only getting paid for your time is a risky business model, it would be even better if you could derive some revenue from products.
I’m very pleased to see that some agencies are actually doing it. Indeed, every agency should.
Thanks, Karl. Ultimately, we had a similar goal but quickly came to realize that developing a product is much different than developing an idea. The sheer resource requirements, both in terms of people and technical infrastructure, is dramatically different. Driving the ideas back to our clients seemed like the best model then and still does now.