Connecting Business, People and Technology from ‘Best of Dutch Design’ in Discover Benelux Magazine September 2015

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to give an interview about my company CREATIVE COMPANION. You can find the results of this talk in the September Issue of Discover Benelux in the section ‘Best of Dutch Design’.

CREATIVE COMPANION  on page 29:

Quote:
I work like a jazz musician: great music comes from great collaboration! Christof Zürn

Google is using music thinking to promote YouTube with insights and infographics | #EDM #MusicThinking

EDM electronic dance music

Think with Google the research and insights portal of Google posted a new article using music (in this case EDM electronic dans music) to show their compelling data and drive brands to YouTube to connect with their audience. They do this with a very nice infographic in the form of a decision tree.

The Biggest Music Genre You’ve Never Heard Of

How much do you know about EDM, or electronic dance music? Whether it’s a lot, a little or none at all, you’ll want to tune in to this profile of EDM fans. What you see might just surprise you: For example, while millennials under 25 view the most EDM content on YouTube, older audiences are becoming increasingly interested as well. And it turns out that EDM fans are more likely than their peers to be online, engaging in tech-savvy behaviors such as buying music online or following a brand on a social network. See how fans are increasingly turning to YouTube to learn more about music genres such as EDM and the opportunities this creates for brands.

Download PDF: EDM electronic dance music

This is a nice example of Music Thinking

Oh what a year – Thank you 2014!

This was a year with many faces and to summarize these 12 months in one sentence would be something like this: a Year of Empathy, Collaboration, Music Thinking and Brand Development from a Service Design point of view.

For the fashion brand Olsen in Hamburg (Germany) I developed and designed the reality persona’s, based on research in Canada and Germany. We also worked with my brand strategy framework The Company Real Score to map the most essential brand assets as input for the brand deck.

The Übersee-Museum in Bremen (Germany) asked me to do a persona workshop with information on a one year visitors research to make strategic decisions.

Together with Design Thinkers Academy I developed a one day course of Service Design Thinking Fundamentals, a crash course with the basic instruments like stakeholder mapping, value network mapping, persona and customer journey. The next course will be in march 2015.

A sonic branding project: Massive Music in Amsterdam (Netherlands) asked me to help the team with my expertise in musicology and brand strategy. A nice combination of skills.

But there were more music and brand related activities: this year I started in Nijmegen (Netherlands) with a 20×20 (pecha kucha) presentation about Music Thinking and the platform MusicThinking.com, followed by a presentation in Cologne (Germany) about the same subject.
Together with Lutz Hempel from ICG, I did a short Music Thinking exercise during the ICG Change Management Seminar in Düsseldorf (Germany) and a full Music Thinking / Jazz it! workshop presentation in Copenhagen (Denmark) during the Art of Management in Organization conference.

For Bovemij I did the keynote presentation on their connect event in Utrecht. I showed the development of the last 30 years in the music business and how this connects with the challenges of the world we are living in today. The event was organized by my network partner Gerard Scheenstra of Innovatie Vitamine.

With my friend and network partner from the Witten School of Management Stefan Günther I did a workshop based on agile project management for Heraeus in Hanau (Germany); we also advised the board in taking steps towards a scrum framework. For Simon Weber and Friends, Berlin (Germany) I facilitated the alumni meeting with 150 people in Berlin with 10 iPads for the workshop presentations and created the Systemiker-Map  to visualize the region they work and their expertise.

The Efteling – the Dutch love brand number one – asked me to help them translate their massive research activities in a decision making instrument for a better way of collaboration between marketing and design. We worked with reality personas based on a big amount of research data and also worked with the design team on aspirational personas to strengthen the brand perspective in daily decisions. I did the design of the reality personas and all workshops and work sessions with the creative team and strategic marketing.

For De Rechtspraak in Utrecht (the Dutch Judiciary / Council for the Judiciary) I worked as UX Lead on a quality and innovation project about digital accessibility with a user-centered design approach to let different parties work together in building a user interface with a great user experience. Here are some steps we took: defining ux principles, persona development, customer journey mapping, facilitating creatives and management, usability testing.

Thanks a lot to everyone who made this year a fantastic and pleasurable time. I enjoyed to work with you together and I am looking forward to a very nice next encounter.

A Music Thinking Week

Last week was a week full of Music Thinking for me.

A new microsite about Music Thinking was launched, I had the pleasure to do a 20×20 (formerly known as pecha kucha) presentation in Nijmegen (The Netherlands) about My Inspirations and Music Thinking and a presentation about the Company Real Score  / Die Firmenpartitur  the strategy-framework  for business innovation with a music thinking approach two days later in Cologne (Germany). Looks like there is some kind of momentum for strategic inspirations from the big world of music.

Christof Zürn talking about Music Thinking at Nijmegen NOP 20×20

My intentions were:

• to make people aware that there are many interesting findings behind the obvious side of music and that there are rich patterns of inspiration that can be used for business or private use
• to encourage people to use the hashtag #musicthinking for tweets they find interesting in the context of music thinking
• to find partners, clients, ‘co-thinkers’ and evangelists
• to promote my framework for ‘brand minded & people centered strategy’ called The Company Real Score or in German Die Firmenpartitur

Here are the slides of the 20×20 to give you an impression of my ‘6 Minutes and 40 Seconds of fame’, unfortunately there is no footage.

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If you are interested in Music Thinking please go to the microsite and drop me a note. I would also be happy to talk about Music Thinking on a seminar, conference or to use it in a strategy session or project.

cheers
Christof

The Company Real Score a music thinking approach to business innovation

The Company Real Score – a music thinking approach to business innovation

I am working with many tools and methods. There are some I like more. Now I have compiled the, in my opinion, most important tools and instruments to start with for brand minded & people centered innovations, I call it ‘The Company Real Score’, have a look!

What is it?
The company real score is a collection of business tools and instruments to map and visualize your brand. It is a collection of core elements for orchestrating and conducting ‘brand minded & people centered’ innovations.

Why should you use it?
1. To visualize and communicate what is most important for your brand.
2. To identify strategic paradoxes that can be used in innovation projects.
3. To use it as a ‘brand minded & people centered’ starting point.

See a short presentation

 

The Company Real Score – a music thinking approach to business innovation from CREATIVE COMPANION

You can download the original score – 2,50 meters – via this link: http://goo.gl/IkwkTM

Brand Patterns and Leitmotives – Music Thinking Inspirations for Branding and Design

When designing a brand it is necessary to have a shared understanding about the why, what and how of a brand. This can be written down and visualized in a manifesto together with the brand DNA, vision, mission, ambition and the brand values, personality, promis and expressions. But this is just like the musical score. To really ‘live the brand’ it has to be performed and adapted everyday together with  your audience.

Music Thinking:
Here are two musical concepts that could inspire and engage brand professionals to think about the brand consumer relation to add value to both sides: first to the consumer, then it will pay back to the brand.

Pattern

Marc Shillum is approaching the filed of branding from a pattern thinking perspective:  Brand as Patterns. He states the most important feature of a successful brand is not just consistency, but rather the ability to continually reinvent the brand image according to what is most relevant at the time. In short, a successful brand must have a long term goal, but the short term strategy of how to get there must be continually reworked to remain coherent and relevant in a contemporary context.

Besides patterns there are more concepts that can bring context and meaning. In the Wagner Year it is worth to have a look on the contextual building blocks Wagner is using in his compositions: ‘das Leitmotiv’.

Leitmotiv

Leitmotives are musical phrases like story elements that does not imitate the sound of – for example – ‘crackling logs’, but make you feel the heat, thread and magic of fire. If you want to enjoy the music you don’t have to necessarily know everything about it, but ‘the more you know, the more beautiful it gets’.

Watch a great ‘musical introduction’ to Wagner’s Götterdämmerung with Kurt Masur and Jessy Norman and learn everything about the coding and decoding with Leitmotivs in film music like star wars and Wagner’s music.

From a branding point of view many different elements should make a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ so that the consumer can enjoy, be engaged and get an emotional bond with the brand without knowing exactly every detail.

But to create a brand it takes a lot of listening skills and contextual vision. Maybe the most importing thing: the music is not ready when the score is written. It has to be performed with real people for real people – again and again.

‘There is joy in repetition’ Prince