by Willy Franzen on June 12, 2009
Considering that I do this nearly every day, I see a lot of companies and a lot of jobs, but today I came across something that I’ve never seen before. It’s called Agency Nil, and it’s an full-service advertising agency, except it’s nothing like any ad agency that you’ve ever seen. They don’t have a physical location, they don’t have a salaried staff, and they don’t have set fees. It’s almost as they don’t exist (I think that’s where the “nil” comes in), but they do. As PSFK puts it, Agency Nil “hopes to channelize the skills of experienced but laid-off talents from the advertising industry, as well as that of graduate students from advertising programs – people who just can’t seem to lay their hands on that elusive job.” In other words, they’re trying to put the glut of available talent to good use. It’s brilliant.
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Tagged as:
advertising,
arts,
copywriting,
design,
entry-level jobs,
innovation,
marketing,
product development,
social media,
virtual
by Willy Franzen on June 10, 2009
A lot of people think inventing is easy. You see those guys like Billy Mays screaming on tv, and you think to yourself, “I could have thought of that.” Believe it or not, even those stupid infomercial products aren’t easy to come up with, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the world of invention. Inventing a new product is a long, arduous process that requires a ton of resources. Invention Machine is a Boston based software developer that “drives sustainable innovation by enabling global organizations to consistently generate breakthrough ideas that accelerate product development.” It’s hard for a non-inventor to understand how software can help the inventing process, but judging from the number of large corporations that are using Invention Machine’s software, there’s something there.
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design,
entry-level jobs,
Germany,
innovation,
international,
Massachusetts,
sales,
software development,
user experience
by Willy Franzen on June 7, 2009
If there’s one criticism that I often hear about the non-profit world, it’s that they’re plagued by inefficiency. It’s certainly not true across the board, but taking the profit motives out of an organization can certainly create efficiency issues. Additionally, things like organizational structure, egos, and political agendas can disrupt for-profits and non-profits alike. Root Cause is a Cambridge, MA based non-profit strategy consulting service that “envisions a world in which the public, private, and nonprofit sectors work together to invest and re-invest in the most efficient, effective, and sustainable solutions to social problems.” In other words, they want to find the absolute best way to solve the world’s social problems, and then work with social innovators and social impact investors to make things happen.
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Tagged as:
consulting,
entry-level jobs,
innovation,
Massachusetts,
non-profit,
research
by Willy Franzen on May 7, 2009
We’ve seen some companies with funky names. Weird made up words. All upper case or lower case. Odd punctuation. And then there’s ?What If!. It kind of looks like someone’s software project gone wrong. It’s definitely not a software project, and I’d say ?What If! is more like a consulting firm gone right. Their business is built on 5 key values: freshness, passion, action, love, and bravery, which sounds a bit different from the values of most companies. The reason that ?What If! deviates from the norms both in name and values is that they’re an innovation company. It’s all about developing new ideas and putting them into action, whether the ideas be products or customer experiences. ?What If! has a long and impressive list of clients, so they’re not just some off the wall company that is all ideas and no action. They’re based in the UK, but they also have offices in New York and Shanghai.
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China,
consulting,
entry-level jobs,
innovation,
international,
New York,
United Kingdom
by Willy Franzen on April 2, 2009
If you Google “gravity tank,” one result tells you that “A simple, inexpensive gravity tank in a swine manure liquid-solid separation process will help producers control hog odors.” Another says that in a rooftop water gravity tank the gravity pressure is .434 times the height of the bottom of the tank from the fixture in feet. The Gravity Tank that we’re looking for is very different. It’s a Chicago based innovation consulting firm that combines research, strategy, and design to push their clients in new directions. Their staff consists of “anthropologists, former architects, filmmakers, engineers, graphic designers, industrail designers, MBAs, quant researchers, professors, brand strategists, and more.” They’re small, with only 35 employees, but they’ve already some very cool work with some very big names.
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administrative,
consulting,
design,
entry-level jobs,
events,
flash,
Illinois,
innovation,
research
by Willy Franzen on January 28, 2009
Over the weekend I was having a conversation with some friends about what kind of bagged lunches we used to take to school. A common theme was the popularity of Lunchables and how it was a rare occasion for most of us to have our parents actually buy Lunchables at the supermarket (I didn’t care for Lunchables, so I was scorned by the group). Lunchables have absolutely nothing to do with today’s company, except that whenever I hear the name Inventables, I immediately think of Lunchables. Inventables is a Chicago based (I think that I can actually see their office from my window) company that helps companies innovate by making sourcing and selling materials and technologies easy. In other words they go out and find the newest, most innovative materials and provide a subscription service that provides information to companies that are looking for new materials to use in their products. They look for materials like we look for entry level jobs.
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customer service,
engineering,
entry-level jobs,
Illinois,
innovation,
research,
sales
by Willy Franzen on November 21, 2008
We’re big on innovation here. We don’t like talking about companies that are doing things the way that they’ve always done. They’re not only boring, but they’re also destined for failure. Look at the auto industry. You can blame the downfall of the Big 3 on a lot of things, but a lack of innovation has to be a big part of your argument. We’re trying to bring innovation to the way that you find jobs, and there are hundreds of startups out there that are defined by innovation. It’s all around us. frog design is a global innovation firm. They “work with the world’s leading companies, helping them create and bring to market meaningful products, services, and experiences,” and they’ve been doing it for almost 40 years. They’ve worked with clients as vaired as Disney, GE, HP, Logitech, Microsoft, MTV, Seagate, Yahoo!, which goes to show you that they’re not easy to pigeonhole. frog design is based out of San Francisco, and they have offices (or as they call them, studios) in Austin, New York, San Jose, Seattle, Milan, Amsterdam, Stuttgart, and Shanghai
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California,
China,
design,
entry-level jobs,
Germany,
innovation,
Italy,
marketing,
Netherlands,
New York,
Texas,
Washington,
web development
by Willy Franzen on September 22, 2008
When we review companies, we always like to look at their client lists. It’s a good way to see what a company has done and what kind of reputation they have. Visde’s client list speaks for itself. It includes Apple, Boeing, Disney, Intel, Macromedia, and Yahoo!. If Visde were an accounting firm or a waste management company, you’d probably nod your head and say something like, “Oh, that’s nice.” The reason this client list is so impressive is that Visde is a product experience design firm. They help some of the biggest names in product design with… product design. Some of their latest projects include a personal hearing aid remote control and a national ethnographic study of parents, teachers, and school administrators for online standardized testing. These are just two types of things that you might end up doing at Visde. Their main areas of expertise are Innovation Strategy, Design Strategy, Conceptual Explorations, User Research, User Experience Design, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Visual Design, Industrial Design, Package Design, Web + Software, and Kiosks.
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California,
design,
entry-level jobs,
Illinois,
innovation,
research,
software development,
user experience,
web development
by Willy Franzen on August 14, 2008
A company’s home page should make it instantly clear what the company is about. For many companies this is not the case. There’s all kinds of fluff that fails to give potential customers a proper brand introduction. Menlo Innovations doesn’t make this mistake. Their home page introduces a problem: “In 2004, the U.S. wasted over $55 billion on failed and poorly run software projects.” Then it identifies the cause: “These failures can be traced to a lack of understanding of the business issues being addressed and the wrong implementation methodologies being used.” Finally the home page poses their solution:
Menlo Innovations applies High-Tech Anthropology® to help our clients fully understand their business problems and opportunities. If the solution requires software, Menlo either develops the software within our Menlo Software Factory or The Menlo Institute trains your staff to use proven methodologies to develop the software themselves.
It’s clear. It’s concise, and it gets to the point. There’s no misunderstanding about what The Menlo Institute does.
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Tagged as:
analyst,
business development,
entry-level jobs,
innovation,
Michigan,
project management,
quality assurance,
software development,
user experience
by Willy Franzen on July 25, 2008
The other day, we came across an article about a toy design studio that has come up with technology to create variable-speed bullets. They’re called Lund and Company Invention, but they eerily remind us of Zevo Toys from the movie TOYS with Robin Williams and LL Cool J. Ok, they haven’t been taken over by a military general who is using child labor to fight wars through video games, but Lund and Company did create a toy rocket that is so technologically advanced that it has the Army drooling. We have no idea what kind of jobs Lund and Company offers, nor do we know if they ever hire recent graduates, but it’s Friday, and we like giving you research projects on Fridays.
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Tagged as:
entry-level jobs,
Illinois,
innovation,
toys
by Willy Franzen on June 13, 2008
Judging from the attention that our post about IDEO’s jobs received, a lot college students must be fascinated by process of innovation and its reliance on design. We certainly are. Whether it’s the way the office is laid out at your first entry-level job or the comfort of the chair at your first desk, design will have a huge effect on your productivity in life. In fact, good design is often what separates what you like from what you don’t like. Ziba Design is a Portland, OR based company that is obsessed with “understanding people, brands and technology.” That actually sound a lot like yesterday’s company MindShare’s mission statement, but don’t worry, Ziba is looking to do something very different with this understanding.
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Tagged as:
California,
communications,
consulting,
design,
entry-level jobs,
innovation,
Oregon,
product development,
research
by Willy Franzen on November 28, 2007
Are you fascinated by innovation? Do you run out to the store when BusinessWeek publishes their issue on the 50 Most Innovative Companies? (Blatant Self-Promotion: Read our new article on how magazine lists can help you find a job.) Almost all of the companies on BusinesWeek’s list are companies that deal directly with consumers, whether they provide products or services, but IDEO is different. They serve businesses by helping them innovate through design. You’ve probably bought many products that IDEO has had a hand in, but you likely attributed the innovations in the product to the manufacturer. Think again.
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Tagged as:
business development,
California,
China,
design,
entry-level jobs,
Illinois,
innovation,
international,
Massachusetts
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