NEW YORK, United States — Last Friday, The Business of Fashion attended the second annual L2 Innovation Forum, hosted by Professor Scott Galloway of NYU’s Stern School of Business. Featuring startup CEOs, academics, authors and bloggers, the forum examined innovation from a wide variety of angles.

Over the course of the day, three important themes emerged: the power of disruptive thinking, the power of listening and the power of iterative development.

The Power of Disruptive Thinking

“Disruptive Thinking” was the title of a talk by Luke Williams, a fellow at global innovation firm Frog Design, author of Disrupt, and one of the event’s most interesting speakers. Beginning his talk by tracing the origin of the word “competition” to the Latin word competere, meaning to “sit together,” Mr. Williams implied that competitors are a group that’s agreed to appear at the same time and play by the same rules. Competition leads to incremental change, while real innovation is about “disruptive thinking” that breaks previous patterns of thought, he said, identifying Red Bull, Zipcar and Seinfeld as examples of innovative products that challenged fundamental assumptions in their respective markets — soft drinks, rental cars and sitcoms — and earned tremendous success.

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Digital IQ Ranking 2010 | Source: LuxuryLab

NEW YORK, United States — Last year BoF reported on the first ever ranking of luxury brands’ digital competence, and today the second ranking, published by New York-based LuxuryLab, was released first to a small number of global media outlets, including BoF.

The adoption of digital media has been explosive. Longtime readers from the very beginnings of BoF may recall our first ever post on Fashion 2.0 back in April 2007 when CEOs, Creative Directors and Managing Directors insisted to me that they would never use such tools as Facebook to engage their fans and customers. How things have changed in three short years!

According to Scott Galloway, founder of Luxury Lab, the “combination of the economic crisis, the emergence of a more digitally native Gen Y consumer, and several brands  getting huge ROI — sales and press — due to digital leadership, inspired a massive investment in both human and financial capital in digital in 2010.”

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NEW YORK, United States — Making economic predictions isn’t easy these days, what with key indicators slumping one day and then bouncing back the next. But even as the global economy keeps market observers and analysts on their toes, there is one thing that everyone seems to agree on: the pre-eminence of the Chinese economy.

Last month, the Chinese government announced that it was depegging its currency from the US dollar, allowing the Yuan to appreciate within a defined band, slowly abandoning the exports-led growth strategy which has made Chinese goods cheaper in the global market in recent years. But now, as Western economies stop and start, the Chinese government is looking to sustain its growth by stimulating demand at home. Last week the IMF made projections that China’s growth rate will slow somewhat next year from over 9.9 percent in 2010, to 9.6 percent in 2011.

But still, for luxury goods companies, China offers the biggest opportunity for luxury brands in a generation.

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Mobile Internet Adoption | Source: Morgan Stanley

NEW YORK, United States — Now that most luxury brands have come to accept that the internet is a powerful tool for commerce and that social media provides an opportunity for a new kind of brand engagement, along comes another technological wave that will feed the ongoing digital revolution in fashion — and take it mobile.

Indeed, according to Internet analyst Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley, “more users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years.” What does this mean for luxury and fashion brands? And, as consumers continue to migrate to smart mobile devices, how does this change the dynamics for operating fashion commerce and communication in the mobile space, and the wider social web?

To provide the answers, I turned to Dinesh Moorjani, Senior Vice President of Mobile at IAC — the company that owns The Daily Beast, Evite, Urbanspoon and more than 40 other internet properties — and a speaker at the upcoming Luxury Lab Mobile Clinic to be held on 23 June in New York City.

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Tavi Gevinson at Generation Next | Source: Luxury Lab

NEW YORK, United States — With speakers including teenage blogging sensation, Tavi Gevinson and Teen Vogue publisher Laura McEwen, last Friday’s “Generation Next Forum,” organized by New York-based thinktank LuxuryLab, examined the unique characteristics and growing influence of a young generation of consumers that’s set to impact the luxury goods industry like no other generation since the Baby Boomers: Generation Y.

Wired and Influential

Opening the event, New York University professor and LuxuryLab founder Scott Galloway, underscored the importance of Generation Y with some simple, but astounding numbers. Born between 1977 and 1994, Gen Y currently spends $150 billion a year on consumer goods. That’s five times more than their parents did at their age. They also influence another $50 billion in purchases made by others. Indeed, according to a recent report by Harris Interactive, one in every three consumer dollars spent in the United States today is influenced by someone under the age of 18.

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