In my estimation, the humble Bourbon cream is one of the finest British biscuits in existence. Like the red squirrel and the domestic crayfish before them, we may have been over-powered by Yank imposters in recent years, with the ‘cookie’ now dominating our biscuit choices, but there will always be a place in my heart for the simple Bourbon cream … whether it’s the organoleptic delight of crunching through the delicate chocolate biscuit sandwich into the mild chocolate cream, or the deeply deviant behaviour of biting off the top biscuit layer to expose the soft cream centre, before licking it away to reveal the biscuit base, it’s a true pleasure every time.

Except now it’s even better.

Today in the Costa Coffee at Toddington Services on the M1, I discovered a new Bourbon biscuit … their super-sized, maxi, mega, Utlimae Bourbon, complete with piped chocolate cream between two whacking great slabs of chocolate biscuit. It’s a simple twist on a familiar classic, but one that gave me a genuine rush of pleasure to see (and to eat).

They’ve done a Custard Cream version too, but who cares? … with their new Bourbon cream my biscuit world will simply never be the same again…

M+S prides itself on the quality of its food. Even as the rest of the business has suffered from being boring and tawdry, M+S Food has gone from strength to strength, with highly successful small format stores popping up on BP forecourts and across high streets.

So, the opportunity to showcase the quality of the M+S food offer in the in-store ‘Deli’ cafe in the Westfield branch should be one that they’ve exploited to the max, right? … An opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to fabulous ingredients, great quality recipes and superlative service in an inspiring environment?

It should be. But it’s not.

The reality is very different. It’s cold, the lighting is harsh, the marble counter is anaemic and there’s no feast for your eyes, just a row of stainless steel fridges containing unopened packets of M+S food, straight out of the food hall next door. It’s a tragedy, a crying shame and a wasted opportunity on the grandest scale.

Rather than getting the ‘Fresh Lemonade’ I’d been expecting, the waitress pours it from a bottle in a fridge (that sits next to tetrapaks of M+S milkshake and orange juice). My ‘Spanish sun-dried tomato flatbread’ is hurriedly smuggled from a fridge into the back kitchen, still in its packet, to be heated up quickly. The chicken in my stew has spray-on chargrill markings (but tastes chargrilled … how does that happen?!).

How hard would it have been, I wonder, to have used this as a stage for creating a sense of wonderment around M+S’ food offer? To inspire customers with some of that passion which we love to imagine goes into the development of some of their wonderful prepared meals? …even a vibrant display of ingredients on the central counter would have helped to create some appetite appeal.

… because, as the famous M+S ‘food porn’ ads demonstrated so well, fundamentally, we eat with our eyes.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then we were suitably wowed to see the approach to the Central Saint Martins Degree Shows last weekend decorated in The Value Engineers’ red, blue and green colours … they even got the interlinking ribbons working perfectly too!

We’re not sure if the intent of these was also to provide a visual metaphor for the path from complexity to clarity (or simply to be a visually arresting reference to the basic RGB colour palette) but either way, they brought a fabulous splash of colour and inspiration to the regenerated area behind Kings X St Pancras and acted as an excellent lead-in to the show.

In the brilliant newly converted warehouse space that CSM now occupies, the work of the BA and MA grads looked amazing – exciting textiles, challenging fashion ideas and some interesting papers from the Innovation Management MA that act as a pretty good reflection of current thinking in this area, albeit with a deliberately design-led angle.

All the fun is over now for another year, but we’re looking forward to see how we can inspire them next year too

If schadenfreude is ‘the pleasure taken in the misfortune of others’, surely there must be a word for ‘coming up with a witty, powerful comeback line too late for it to have any discernable impact’? It’s a feeling we’ve all had, in a meeting or at a dinner party, perhaps, when we’ve been the brunt of a bit of witty banter or even a more scathing, personal attack … “if only I’d said…”.

Diderot, the French philosopher, coined a phrase, ‘L’esprit de l’escalier’ (literally ‘staircase wit’) to describe this situation,  asserting that a sensitive man like himself is so shocked by the attack he has suffered that he is not able to clearly think of a suitable riposte until he has reached the bottom of the staircase.

In 1984, Apple responded to IBM’s proposition of ‘Think’ with an iconic advertising execution that ran during the main World Series commercial break of that year, urging America to ‘Think Different’.

Now, a mere 28 years later, Blackberry have responded with billboards in London asking smartphone users not to ‘Think Different’, but to ‘Do Different’ …

Diderot would be proud.

I love a gadget.  I especially love taking things to pieces to see how they work, then trying to piece them back together afterwards.  It’s one of the things that drew me to innovation like a moth to a flame.

It struck me this morning, while absent-mindedly contemplating my new Gillette Power razor, that there are now more gadgets in my life than ever before.  It’s not just the obvious ones like the iPod, satnav, Kindle, Blackberry and so on, but a new breed of gadgets that has begun to spring up.  They not only offer time-saving convenience, but also new, bigger, brighter benefits too: better performance, better quality, better effectiveness… everything is being motorised, electrified and powered up.

So, as of last week, my partner no longer uses a flannel and cleanser to remove her make up.  She now has a bright pink Clarisonic Mia Skin Cleansing System (a large round, soft brush that oscillates on a shower-proof handle), which claims to use gentle sonic vibrations to “ensure you can enjoy smoother and more balanced skin, firmer skin with improved texture and less blemishes”.

If I want to whiten my teeth I no longer have to brush them with a whitening toothpaste; I can use a Rapid White Blue Light Tooth Whitening System, claiming to be “clinically proven to whiten teeth up to five shades in just two hours”.  If I want to make coffee I no longer have to boil a kettle and dissolve some instant coffee; I can use any number of surface-top devices to replicate the in-home coffee shop experience.  The list goes on, with hay fever relief products, cigarette alternatives, sexual pleasure enhancers, home decorating systems like the Dulux Paint Pod and Weathershield BackPack, room fragrance diffusers and even a new in-home hand soap dispenser… and we haven’t even touched on kids’ toys.

What does this mean for your innovation strategy?  If you haven’t already gadgetised, now is the time to start exploring new ways in which the existing benefits of your products can be further enhanced with a gadget.