Innovation in Denmark

I spent a wonderful week at MMD in Denmark as a guest lecturer for their week long event called Innoevent. It was so much fun! The students had just 1 week to produce new prototype ideas to be used in hospitals, and there was a lot of innovation and creativity. Here is a video, in Danish (but with English subtitles):

I gave a total of 3 lectures. Here is a quote from the student website that describes my mid-week presentation:

Last night at the conference hall was an inspiring evening; Adam Montandon showed us a world without grounds and limits, one with bright ideas, innovation and just a little bit of insanity (the good kind). His work has taken him all over the world working on different projects in different surroundings and in his opinion; different is good. It seemed like most people that had not seen him before got inspired and it was obvious that those who liked his presentation on Monday came back last night. The hall was filled with students and business people. After the presentation everyone got a chance to talk to Adam.

Silly ideas are ok!

Here are some highlights from an interview session:

We wanted to know a little bit about you and how you got to start HMC?
- I started 6 years ago with some friends from university. We all worked really really well together and we created a computer game called Hardcore Monkey Crash, which is where HMC comes from. We liked the game so much that we wanted to turn it into a real company and we started doing more fun and unusual things with technology and as the years went by we made more and more exiting things to work on projects all over the world.

We heard that you have left HMC. Are you working on your own?
Thats right – after 6 years I decided it was time to do something different. I love encouraging young people to get involved with technology so maybe you will see me around a little bit more.

What is your role here in the project this week?
-This week I have been doing lots of presentations, one on Monday, one on Wednesday and then one on Saturday. So far it has been a lot of fun inspiring everyone and getting people very interested in the possibilities of technology.

What do you think is the biggest challenge when you are trying to combine technology into health care?
-The biggest problem that you guys are having is the time span. You are being asked to do things so fast and so quick that it means you are really going to have to make some quick decisions. The other challenge is that everybody is different and just because we, as multimedia designers, are used to deal with multitouch interfaces, screens and iphones than it does not mean that the people that work the health care world are used to using those things. They may not want all the excitement of the fancy interfaces that we like, so that is also a big challenge to look out for.

So what are your expectations for this week? What do you hope that you/we get out of this project week?
-My expectations are very very high. I really want to see a lot of fantastic new concepts and I really really hope that some of the best ones will be selected and be put in to production. And then maybe in the few years time we will see these ideas being used in hospitals in Denmark.

What do you think of the project so far? We are still just getting started, but how do you think we are doing so far?
-There is a lot of excitement and you can feel the buzz. Everyone is working really hard and I am very excited to see how the projects end up on Saturday. I am really looking forward to that.

Have you ever participated in a similar project?
-Actually nothing quite as crazy as this. This is really fun to just have a short amount of time to create a solution to a really important problem. I have never worked with this many students that are working this intensely on something so I am excited.

I know you have some crazy ideas on how you inspire people to work together and to get them a little out of their shell. Could you give us an example of that?
-One of the things that we did, in our studios in the UK, is that when we wanted to inspire people and make them try new things while having fun then we had this bright yellow inflatable bouncy ball that was really really huge. We insisted that anyone that would come into the office had to throw himself at this big yellow ball and hang on for dear life. We call it the ball of fame so anybody that successfully manages to hang on to the ball for 5 seconds gets to write their name on it. The nice thing about this is that when you let someone do something that is fun and playful all of their previous ideas of boring business stuff sort of drift away and they start to think that it is okay to have fun and it is okay to experiment. It is perfectly okay to do something even if you think it is the silliest idea in the world because you will never know where it will take you.

So is that your best advice to the students here?
-Be as creative as you possibly can and believe in your ideas. That is really important because you need to believe in your ideas and you need to be able to see them in your mind from start to finish. I you can do that and if they are new then you could become a great success.

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