Mindshare

Marketers often use the term mindshare to illustrate the popularity of a brand. But its implications go much deeper than influencing purchase behavior. Mindshare is a gift—a form of creative commerce and collective intelligence. Told in a rich, lyrical style, Mindshare is a portrait of the modern creative mind and a narrative of its process, a practical guide, and a plea for ambition that captures the imagination by exploring the dynamic nature of creativity and innovation as a multifaceted, integrated craft and the creation of consciousness. This book explores innovation within the audacious scope and framework that truly illustrates its paradoxical and kaleidoscopic nature. It empowers us with the notion that innovation is an intrinsic collective power driven by the same creative instinct that fuels our desires, seeks pleasure, strives to be better, and dares to discover new worlds. This reveals a groundbreaking worldview—that the essence of life is not survival but creation. Building a remarkable brand, overcoming any challenge, and achieving anything in life are the result of design intelligence. Mindshare is about how organizations and individuals can use design strategies to be more innovative, distinctive, and successful. But it’s also about our essential nature, how to use our creative instinct to live a more fulfilling life, and how creativity shapes the modern world. The awareness of this process achieves mindshare—an intrinsic collective power that has the potential to help us design a better world.

The term mindshare has been used to illustrate consumer awareness or the popularity of a brand. It’s what all advertisers aim to achieve in order to drive sales. But there are more profound implications here that go deeper than influencing purchase behavior. Mindshare is a really form of creative commerce and collaborative innovation. When brands aim to connect with us through unspoken gestures and aspirations that enhance the human condition, mindshare becomes a gift—an instrument of optimal experience that ignites transformation. In this illuminating new perspective on how creativity shapes the modern world, Nikos Acuña—a creativity, innovation, and marketing thought leader, embarks on a personal journey to examine the inherent processes embedded in creativity and innovation from a variety of perspectives. You’ll learn how Apple’s design-driven innovation strategies create optimal brand experiences for their customers and how Chris Anderson and TED have created a revolutionary education platform that amplifies genius on a global scale. You’ll discover how Charles Darwin’s hunch led to the most important scientific discovery of the nineteenth century, and how Anthony Robbins uses alchemy and innovation psychology to create an indestructible state of mind. You’ll meet the neuro-anatomist who discovers the meaning of life while having a stroke. You’ll learn why your lizard brain sabotages you and how your Daemon inspires you to be visionary. Ultimately, you will learn how the essence of life is driven by a creative instinct that designed the universe itself and learn how this process is expressed through fractal patterns of experience. Told in a rich lyrical style, Mindshare is a portrait of the modern creative mind and a narrative of its process, a practical guide and a plea for ambition that captures the imagination by exploring the dynamic nature of creativity and innovation as a multi-faceted and integrated craft. Mindshare suggests that building a remarkable brand, overcoming any challenge, and achieving anything in life can be found in understanding one truth—that innovation is driven by the same inherent creative instinct that fuels our desires, seeks pleasure, strives to be better, and craves to discover new worlds. It’s a process that seeks optimal design, shifts from chaos to order, from that which is unconscious to that which is conscious—a metaphysical process of transformation that strives toward knowledge and a state of perfection. There are countless books about ideas but this is the only book that explores innovation within the audacious scope and framework that truly illustrates its paradoxical and kaleidoscopic nature—the fact is that innovation is both creative and destructive, optimal and disruptive, it’s a product and a process, stable and dynamic, personal and collective, chaotic, self-reflexive, physical, psychological, fragmented, and unified—all at the same time. In the tradition of Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From, Sir Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds, and Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine, Mindshare empowers you with the notion that creativity is an intrinsic collective power that reveals a groundbreaking worldview—that the essence of life is not to survive but to create.

Nikos Acuña is a creativity and innovation specialist, operations and marketing executive, media strategist, and entrepreneur. He is currently the SVP of operations and marketing at digitaladtech, a digital platform innovation company that connects brands and media companies with audiences in meaningful ways. He is also the creative director of Nioverse Media—a creativity, innovation, and design company. Nikos has spent the majority of his career with a focus on achieving mindshare for his clients and the companies he works for, with 15 years of experience in driving revenues through strategic communications: building value, branding, digital advertising, PR, and cross-platform integration, having worked on both the media and agency sides of the business across multiple vehicles, channels, and digital platforms to amplify brand and customer experiences.