We Are Adjacent Possible

As part of our approach to explore the adjacent possible of new or already existing products, today we would like to have a look at an interesting approach of Amazon, to bring their one click buy functionality into the physical world:

Source: Gizmag / Amazon

It is basically a small, wi-fi-enabled push-button device that can be either hung or stuck at any household appliance to trigger an automatic (re)buy on any related, regularly used convenience good from a range of popular household products on Amazon.

Source: Gizmag / Amazon

While the improvement on the consumer convenience side - by ordering via a pushbutton compared to clicking a few buttons on any other device - seems rather marginal, rendering Amazon’s primary goal of this “innovation” - to increase online sales - pretty obvious, there is another layer to this idea, which is not immediately obvious from a sales oriented perspective.

Source: Gizmag / Amazon

The creative aspect of this otherwise rather blunt attempt to boost sales of frequently used household items relates to the elegant way in which such a simple device actually transforms any classic, non-connected household appliance into a (potentially) smart piece of connected technology - enabling it to become part of a new network of (social) internet of things.

The most important factor in this exciting transformation is however not the relatively simple technological setup but the challenge of finding the most meaningful context for this device - to create the greatest social value possible. Using our creative storytelling approach to explore the adjacent possible of the dash button, we have come up with the following use cases, that hopefully show an interesting route for possible new applications of this concept:

Put a pushbutton next to your bookshelf to prompt a diary of your latest readings, suggestions for new books based on your interests and reading habits or generate a full inventory of all your digital & physical literature - being automatically sent to you via email.

Or put it next to your radio or TV to prompt an email or message with suggestions for new music or movies based on your interests or past listening/watching habits. 

Or put it on your fridge or microwave to trigger an email with random recipes by scraping recipe websites and returning random suggestions to inspire your cooking - or rather random suggestions for high-rated restaurants, take-aways or order-in places if you are not the cooking type.

But the best applications we can think of are social ones, where you might give such a pushbutton to your best friends to let them push it whenever they think of you, automatically triggering a friendly email / sms / whatsapp message to you - maybe asking to meet you while giving a random suggestion for a nice location.

We are a company to analyse, explore and expand the adjacent possible of your company‘s brands and products.  We use crowdsourcing techniques to apply creative storytelling mechanics in a multiple agent setting to deliver reliable insights that allow your company to grow bigger – faster. We invest in our own ideas by cofounding new ventures with our clients.

What is THE ADJACENT POSSIBLE?

The “adjacent possible” is a concept termed by the theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman as one of four principles describing the self-organising nature of life, ultimately leading to the emergence of complex living systems. It basically entails everything that lies inside the circle of current possibilities of any biological system - including autonomous agents like ourselves. We may understand it as a possible future or the next evolutionary state that awaits on the ultimate margins of any current system’s setup. It is the sum of all possible ways in which a new future can be created based on the present state of things.

Kauffman himself puts it on Edge this way:

“It just may be the case that biospheres on average keep expanding into the adjacent possible. By doing so they increase the diversity of what can happen next. It may be that biospheres, as a secular trend, maximize the rate of exploration of the adjacent possible. ... they explore the adjacent possible as fast as they can get away with it.”

Steven Johnson nicely grasps the essence of the adjacent possible in his essay on The Wall Street Journal “The Genius of the Tinkerer” when he states that it “captures both the limits and the creative potential of change and innovation”, and also realises that the latter is based on its exploration as “its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations”.

Who we are: ADJACENT AGENTS coordinated by two “identical innovators”

We are a community of autonomous agents you can hire to explore the adjacent possible of your company‘s brands and products. We found(ed) ourselves 2012 in Boston (MA), based on the serendipitous concourse of two innovators with the same name who henceforth expanded each other‘s adjacent possible by duplicating their identity. You can contact us either via our Toronto- or our London-based hub - the name will be the same :)

What we deliver: ADJACENT INSIGHTS discovered through a crowdsourced storytelling approach

We set our creative community in motion to analyse and explore the adjacent possible of your existing products and brands. Our approach involves a fast, three-step process in which we (1) identify the most relevant problems around your current products and brands, (2) engage our community to map the adjacent possible around the respective products/brands and (3) evaluate our results to distinguish the most promising ideas as strategic basis for the next steps of  your business‘ development.

What we build: ADJACENT VENTURES, a new model of growth both for our clients and us

We are not like any other business consulting agency, we believe and invest in our own ideas. Any idea we propose, we are ready to set up as a new venture together with our clients. We believe in the growth potential of our creative approach and help our clients unleash the full power of it. At the same time we are not like standard venture capitalists, who don‘t associate themselves with anything else than the mere monetary interest of maximising the likelihood of their return on investment. We understand all of our ideas and ventures as part of our aggregated body of creative experience which helps us and our clients to continuously increase our learning, add new insights and combine more and more ideas in new and unexptected ways.