Greetings from England, again. This time I visited Lego and had a wonderful possibility to interview their experience and innovation manager Cecilia Weckström. Lego truely is an exceptional case in using crowdsourcing or open source innovation. They use in their product development lego fans that construct all possible stuff with their software Lego Designer. Lego also uses help of their adult fans when designing new concepts and products.

What really astonished me positively in Lego facilities in Slough was that their officerooms were full of all possible lego stuff. Also the employees had a new task to do: to build dozens of packages of lego stuff. Actually, I think that is wrong that people get payed for doing such a nice job

Well, anyway, I managed to spot some weak signals in England. One of them is a gift package in a bookstore. You could buy there a, adopt-a-pony pack. By buying the package you will donate the money for taking care of one pony. You had also possibilities to plant a tree, save the wild life etc. Is this one of the first signs of growing trend of ethical consumption and intangible goods.

Today I have visited British Telecom facilities in Ipswich, England and I had a wonderful opportunity to interview futurist Dave Brown about anticipation of futures in BT. Dave told me BT’s ways to look at to the future and their tasks inside the company. This information is very valuable for me, because currently I am working on a book about anticipating customers’ needs. So thank you Dave for the interview and your hospitality!

While being in England I have used my extra time for spotting weak signals. Here are some images about things that I found extraordinary to me. From these images you can see, that things that are new to me are probably every-day life for Englishman.

a couple of ways to increase your mass (Tesco)

A sign in a Taxi

The original SPAM

Liquieise for sale in the health section in Tesco

Well packed suitcase, Heathrow Express