R&D Summary – week 2

Greeting from a chilly Stockholm!

We're back from the holidays – ready to take on the challenges (and opportunities!) of a new decennium.

This is my first week at Bonnier R&D. My name is Jonas Olofsson and I'm the new junior analyst in the team. As expected, it's been a busy week – a lot of briefings and meetings. A lot of scribbling down notes in Bonnier-branded notebooks, trying to get the hang of it. Initially, I will be working mainly on internal trend report. And all the ad hoc projects that tends to pop up (so far, there's three). I've studied marketing, design management and consumer behavior, and worked in market research and as a freelance researcher/planner. I hope to bring the different aspects of consumption into the innovation process. The driving forces behind consumption are individual, social as well as cultural – different combinations of these is what makes it meaningful. I believe that using this perspective as a analytic tool in the research process will lead to a better consumer experience when the product is released to the market.

Overall this week's been all about planning – mainly for the research project and for our trip to San Francisco later this month.

Paulina started the year planning for Bonnier Hack Day, which will be held on March 11-12. Paulina also had a great discussion with Anders Malmsten of Bonnier International Magazines (BIM) about 2010 magazine trends. In between, she found the time to write this year's first SPARK, R&D's bi-monthly trend newsletter. Interested? It's free – sign up here.

Björn's back from San Francisco – where he picked up a new management style. This came in handy right away, greeting his new colleague (me) with the humble message pictured above on my first day. Much of his week consisted of briefing me on the different R&D projects and planning the 2010 MediaMap. He met with Danish and American colleagues to discuss taking common projects to the next level. He rounds off the working week with a meeting with Jyri Engström, of Jaiku fame, tonight.

Sara is still in San Francisco, where she had a busy week together with our collaboration partners Kicker Studio and BERG. They've worked hard on developing the 2.0 version of the Mag+ concept (the video now has more than 330 000 views!). She also attended the CES conference, read her report here. Sara also met with Creative Commons this week. This sparked an interesting discussion about rights over here at the R&D headquarters.

Emil spent the main part of the week starting a new project. But he's secretive and hard to catch off guard. When I ask him about it – trying to get some juicy stuff to share with you, dear readers – all I get is a sneaky smile and "No comments".  I have to get back to you on this one.

All the best,
Jonas Olofsson
Junior Analyst, Bonnier R&D