The DIY lifestyle movement continues to gain momentum. Neatorama profiles a new book from Tsia Carson called Craftivity: 40 Projects for the DIY Lifestyle. The book is basically a primer on how to turn everyday, household items into designer goods:

“Have a pile of extra buttons and don’t know what to do with them? Make a cool bracelet. Need some pillows for your new couch, and have a bunch of old wool sweaters? Turn those sweaters into felt and make pillows so beautiful you could sell them at any store. Knitting, felting, glass, and woodwork—it’s all here. Craftivity is filled with 40 amazing DIY projects that show you how to take everyday objects and turn them into functional, fabulous art.”

In Craftivity, you can learn how to make a unique coffee table out of a vintage suitcase, use a simple picture frame to construct a back-painted glass backgammon board, and transform plastic grocery bags into a durable tote. Oh, yeah, and if you want to learn how to transform a simple t-shirt into fashionable underwear, you can learn that too.

What is Google’s secret formula for innovation success? According to Amy Rowell of Innovate Forum, it is the company’s willingness to experiment with “wild, ambitious” ideas, while at the same time, understanding that failure can be a catalyst for innovation success. Also, it doesn’t hurt that the company has created “a sort of playground for adults” to get the innovation juices flowing:

“Google is one of those companies that just seems to keep getting it right. But as even its management team will tell you, that’s in large part because it’s not afraid to get it wrong – at least some of the time. In fact, Google’s innovation process leaves plenty of room for experimentation and failure, and does so by having a rather novel workplace environment.

By design, Google’s product development environment is a sort of playground for adults. In a campus setting, Google employees can, for example, reportedly enjoy the benefits of an outdoor wave pool, an indoor gym, free meals and the use of company-provided scooters to transport them between buildings.”

[image: Life in the Googleplex]

In a one-hour video presentation for MIT World, Novartis Chairman and CEO Daniel Vasella explains the innovation process behind one of his company’s flagship pharmaceuticals, Gleevec. The discovery, development and marketing of this drug, which fights the rare chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), highlights some of the things Novartis does right. For example, during an important period of coordinating clinical trials and winning FDA approval for the drug, employees at Novartis volunteered to work in 24-hour shifts, seven days a week. In summarizing the success of the innovation process at Novartis, Vasella cites “intrinsic motivation in each Novartis staff member, high standards, savvy risk-taking and persistence in both research and marketing, and a company culture that brings out the best in everyone.”

As always, MIT World provides excellent show notes for the one-hour presentation. There’s also a brief bio sketch for Vasella and a short history of how Gleevec started out as an untested idea and emerged as a multi-billion-dollar blockbuster drug.

[image: Daniel Vasella of Novartis]