The holy grail for environmentally conscious manufacturers and consumers is truly bio-degradable effective packaging.  While the biggest threat is in plastic bottles and packaging materials that overwhelm our landfills, even small wrappers add up.

The challenge to manufacturers is that the very things that make wrappers good - impermeability, sealing out oxygen to prevent oxidation and decomposition - are also what makes the wrappers hard to decompose.  And if you try to use corn-based bio-degradable wrappers, exposure to moisture can make the wrapper protection degrade and be ineffective.  At KIND we keep looking for solutions that could enable us to use bio-degradable wrappers but have yet to find the answer (if anyone has any technology or ideas, please let me know).

Frito-Lay just announced that the outer layer of its Sun Chips will use compostable packaging.  That is nice, but what is really interesting is their commitment that within 1 year, they aim to also use compostable packaging for the bags’ interior.  If they really achieve it, that will be a remarkable step.

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Tags: New Product Development, Science and Technology, Innovation, Environment, KIND Snacks by daniel
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There are some people in the world that you are just grateful for them being around.  Jeff Skoll is one of them.  He is the most unassuming, down-to-earth, self-effacing guy, and at the same time among the most accomplished, brilliant, strategic, successful and deeply committed to make this a better world.

I have been following him for a few years and wish we could clone him, or at least learn what in his upbringing made him into a person that is so truly committed to human betterment.  Is it Canadian education and society? Jewish family values? Parental role models? Genes? Childhood influences - positive or negative? Socio-cultural exposure?

In his TED talk, he mentions how his Father’s health challenges were a wake up call to him.  But there has to be more.

Anyway, Jeff has now created his next venture: the Urgent Threats Fund, designed to tackle the 5 greatest challenges facing humanity: Global Pandemics, Nuclear Proliferation, Mideast Conflict, Water Scarcity, and Climate Change.

The New York Times reports about it here.

Sally Osberg, President of the Skoll Foundation, shared a note with Skoll Social Entrepreneurs explaining:

I also write to let you know that we will announce today the launch of the Skoll Urgent Threats Fund, which will be led by our dear friend and an extraordinary human being, Larry Brilliant. Larry’s new role will be Senior Adviser to Jeff Skoll and President of the new organization, which Jeff will chair and on whose board both Larry and I will sit. This newest venture joins the portfolio of creations—including the Foundation, Capricorn, and Participant Media—that Jeff has founded to advance his vision of a more peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. Together with the Foundation’s board and staff, I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities ahead for us all!

You can learn more at the Skoll Foundation site.

Tags: Health, Philanthropy, Innovation, Environment, Mideast Negotiations, Leadership, Middle East by daniel
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Check out the below!

A while back I blogged about a hilarious controversy pitting two churches against each other - on the question whether Dogs go to heaven.  Each affirmed they did - or didn’t - in church signs.  I actually thought these were real - and I guess a few commentators did also.

Well, it turns out I was fooled by this ultra-cool website that can help you generate Church Signs!  http://www.churchsigngenerator.com/

How creative is that?!

Tags: Innovation, Advertising (good vs misleading), Religion, KIND Snacks, Funnies, Marketing by daniel
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Here is an article about a neat re-discovery of a "Miracle Fruit" that makes sour things sweet, and alters the taste buds to make things seem far sweeter.  It could have applications for cancer patients to regain appetite, for dieting, or just for fun.

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Tags: Health, Innovation, Interesting Random Stuff by daniel
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Often in life I am sure you wonder if you had met a person before. Have our lives crossed paths before a more recent episode? When was the first time we met? Where we together in a particular place – whether at school, or at a conference, or talk, or during our childhoods? Could you even rewind a part of your brain and see what you said to that person when you first met them? I daydreamed about a sci-fi future where the “grid” could keep all your information about every place you’ve been, and what your thoughts and experiences and interactions were like.

Then I realized that a lot of this could already be done rather easily NOW.

All you need is a GPS mapping device with a time-mapping database. Your iphone or blackberry could have an application that every 5 minutes or every hour or every day (depending on your preferred settings and subscription/storage capacity) could store your GPS location at that particular time.

Three or thirty years later, you could wonder openly with your date, or an employee or a colleague if you had met before, or where your lives had intersected before, and you’d just sync your databases to find the crossing points, if any, that exist. You could make some pieces private or public, open or closed. But you’d have the ability to trace back steps at important points, quite simply.

At a formative moment, you could even connect a blog journal or video entry to your geo-time-map.

This would not only be fun and functional, but also existentially transformative.

We always are “surprised” at how small this world is, and how enormous a coincidence it is that you find a friend in a far away random place.

In fact, I have always thought that the laws of numbers make these encounters quite probable, and most likely there are many more opportunities for interactions among people you know, whose paths you cross by milliseconds without knowing it. If you could look at your grid and compare it with a friend’s, or with all your universe of friends, how many amazing “coincidences” wouldn’t you find – when you opted to?

Perhaps Doppler or GoogleMaps or Facebook or a new web/business platform you have could take advantage of this idea.

Tags: New Product Development, Anthropology, Science and Technology, Innovation, Introspection, Interesting Random Stuff by daniel
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Naif Al Mutawa is a dear friend who defines social entrepreneurship.  He is creating positive role models for young Muslims a la Hollywood. Like Marvel and Action Comics before him, Naif created a set of iconic super-heroes - but they each are Muslims who embody one powerful benevolent trait drawn from Islam’s 99 characteristics attributed to G’d.  One has extraordinary kindness.  The other exhibits exceptional creativity.  Beyond cartoons, they now just opened The 99 Entertainment Village!

Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Middle East, Funnies, Marketing by daniel
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Steven Heydt from Elite Island Resorts came up with a creative promotion that not only aligns investors’ depressed moods to the plus of a vacation in his chain, but also landed them broad media coverage, like this story in the New York Times.

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Tags: Advertising (good vs misleading), Entrepreneurship and Management, Innovation, Marketing by daniel
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Only one food product was selected from among thousands at the Natural Products Expo East in Boston last weekend as the Best Product of the Year: PeaceWorks’ KIND PLUS Mango Macadamia nutritional bar.

Here is a report from Gourmet Retailer:

The Mango Macadamia flavor of KIND Plus – the first new line of products since the launch of PeaceWorks’ original KIND Fruit + Nut Bars – was singled out at the massive tradeshow’s New Product Showcase as the best new food item. Introducing six new distinctive flavors like Cranberry & Almond, Almond & Cashew, and Passion Fruit Macadamia, KIND Plus brings enhanced nutrition to the delicious taste consumers have come to expect from KIND by adding targeted supplements like calcium, antioxidants, protein, and Omega-3.  Learn more about KIND by visiting www.kindsnacks.com.

The Gourmet Retailer

Tags: New Product Development, Innovation, KIND Snacks, Marketing by daniel
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News gathering and the media world did not change much for decades - till the internet started transforming them. 

One of the disadvantages of the old media model is that to get greater revenues through greater circulation, media has favored conflict - blood, controversy, negative news in short.  Positive news, even if truly newsworthy are under-reported.  Stories are less and less deep, and more and more biased - designed to affirm beliefs rather than to inform.

But new forms of journalism and data-gathering promise to re-arrange incentives and market dynamics, and some really cool and creative new models are popping up with a lot of promise to empower ordinary citizens.

Spot.Us is an experimental-phase platform for community-based journalism.  People can suggest stories they want covered, and donate funds to enable an investigative journalist to research the story.  Others in the community who like a proposed pitch can get behind it to fund it - which is referred to as crowd-funding.

Pro Publica, another innovative platform, aims to build an independent roster of investigative journalists who will sell their stories to media organs across the world.

Indeed, in an age where data can be easily aggregated, it is not efficient or natural to have hundreds of redundant journalists reporting on the same story for their respective local communities.  It makes more sense to aggregate their efforts.  That, of course, is part of the premise of agencies like the Associated Press and Reuters, which should at least theoretically gain in prominence as more local news teams get thinned out.

It also explains why it is likely that when the dust settles there will only be a few giant national or international media entities dominating the news (New York Times, USA Today, Wall St Journal, CNN/Time, Sky, Al Jazeerah) - each distinguished by their angle and intended partisan audience.

But with the internet you can create a citizen-driven platform where investigative journalists are accountable directly to the people and their interests - no political, national, ethnic or partisan angles.

Will their interests be enlightened?

Judging from the blogosphere, not always.  But while the internet may also offer much more static and narrow biased coverage, it should also increase variety and provide opportunities for greater depth and nuance - for those who look for it.

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Tags: Innovation, Media and Alternative Media by daniel
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Pom Wonderful just came out with a new product that seems sooo weird to me - coffee drinks with pomegranate juice - but you can’t say they are not extraordinarily innovative and that their marketing is not at the cutting edge and refreshing.

Copywriters will admire the site: http://healthybuzz.com/

The product reminds me of when we launched many years ago at PeaceWorks the Raging Raspberry Chipotle sauce from Azteca Trading Company - which flopped for many reasons including that the flavors were a bit too "ahead of their time" (a year or two later a ton more Chipotle-infused spreads came into the market, but they eventually also died out).

But POM has such an awesome marketing muscle, has been such a remarkable leader in the food industry, and consumers seem to be looking for "buzz (energy) plus health," that this could be a big hit.  On the other side it could hurt POM’s parent brand - which I associate with all natural fruit, not with coffee.

I am curious how consumers will react

Tags: New Product Development, Innovation, Marketing, PeaceWorks Business by daniel
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