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.

It seems that you do not have to be a genius to fly an airoplane. Actually you do not have to be at all: it is enought just to take a pieces of rat brain, turn them to neurons and plug it into the computer. After a while this system learns to fly a jet, when taught so. If you do not believe, check this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jeV77dSyMI

via paras chorpa’s blog

I like to walk in cities with my camera or cameraphone with me. What I specially look for is small stickers in walls, escalators, streetlights, or where-ever. These stickers have usually some story to tell. Speccially interesting stickers are the ones that speak out for some important issue. Here are some examples of stickers that I managed to spot last week in Helsinki.

Image: Sticker with text: Your drugs can be from somebody’s butt (Youth Against Drugs)

images: stickers talking about animal rights:

chicken: So people would think about the origin of food.

The dog: There is no difference if the fur is made from fox or a dog

What is going to happen to libraries in the future when the books will be available in electric form and music can be found as bits from Internet?

Well, libraries will lend other stuff like clothes, toys, handbags, babyclothes- and even dogs. If you think that I might be just dreaming just look at these services already available: International toy-library association, Flexpetz- a dog rental service, Library for clothes for job interviews. In Finland you can even lend pieces of art like a painting to your wall for some sum of money. Maybe future library will be something like a supermarket today. Except instead of paying you just show your library card and lend stuff for certain time period. Ecologically friendly solution!

Image: This dog is not for rent!!

I was reading a very local news paper called Avaalehti. It is focused on telling small events about my home town and some of the cities nearby here in Southern Finland. I was very surprised to notice an ad about Hollywood Tailor shop in the news paper. The issue here was that this tailor shop locates in Thailand Hua Hin, which is located about 8000 kilometers from Finland. That is a long way to get a suit for you!  The ad was written in perfect Finnish and it promised that the customers are picked for free from the hotel to the tailor shop.

Well, this is tru case of globalization: get your business cards from China and suits from Thailand.