The Dream Cafe: Lessons in the Art of Radical Innovation

WWONDER

1. When was the last time you just sat and wondered?
2. When was the last time your mind and heart were full of wonder?
3. Is your brand full of wonder?
4. Is your Innovation strategy full of wonder?
5. Is your business full of wonder?
6. Will the world be more full of wonder when you get your next big brand innovation to market?

These are some of the questions that we ask ourselves and the clients of The Dream Café. We believe that any brand or individual that has lost the ability to possess and inspire wonder is unlikely to be a stakeholder in defining the future.

Our obsession with wonder began when we were thinking about the underlying concept for The Dream Café. We knew its role would be to act as a crucible for innovation that was built on the great disruptive historical moments inspired and facilitated by cafés. The idea of an ‘Age of Wonder’ is based on that revolutionary period during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which saw the birth of modernity that challenged – and substantially altered – almost every area of human endeavour.

It is no coincidence that the original ‘Age of Wonder’ was fuelled by the socialization opportunities and facilitation of British coffee houses, where art met science and wonder was born as the makers and shakers: ‘congregated in the coffee house of London where they drank, ate, smoked and did experiments’ (Jungnickel and McCormmach, ...