Can Video Games Help Seniors Drive Better?

By Hans Eisenbeis

What’s Happening

• Allstate Insurance is launching a pilot program in Pennsylvania to see if playing video games can help improve the mental agility and reflexes of 100,000 car drivers between the ages of 50 and 75.

• If there’s measurable improvement, Allstate says it may offer discounted premiums to customers who play the special video games.

• Grand Theft Auto: Silver Edition? Don’t count on it. Some of the proposed games have nothing obvious to do with driving. One is an underwater adventure in which players follow visual cues to find jewels hidden by schools of fish. The game improves pattern recognition and visual alertness.

What This Means to Business

• Older consumers often go through a normal process of age-related cognitive decline. But it can be slowed and even reversed. Many companies and services are offering games, puzzles, and other forms of mental gymnastics to stave off the effects of aging.

• Tying mental health and hygiene to lower insurance premiums is a win-win for older drivers and their insurers.

• It’s a great time to offer thrifty options to hard-pressed consumers in a marketplace where insurance premiums are steadily increasing.

Instant Art Grants

By Hans Eisenbis

What’s Happening

• A troupe of 10 young artists and students have launched a quirky arts grant program in New York. The Generosity Foundation sets up shop in a city park, or other public place, and gives small “micro-grants”—between $10 and $50—to anyone passing by who will use the money to start an art project.

• Applications are filled out and reviewed instantly, and the foundation hands over the cash along with a fancy-looking certificate. Why do they do it? To give regular people a chance to think creatively and to feel special. The foundation members pooled their own money to provide the grants.

• So far, grants have been awarded to amateur writers, photographers, knitters, and an accordion player, who used his grant to repair his instrument.

What This Means to Business

• It’s performance art, granting program, and philanthropy all wrapped into one. Only Millennials could have thought this up.

• Spontaneous displays of public affection: the next big thing in Gross National Happiness?

Small Is Delicious

By Nina Elder

What’s Happening

• Forget small plates. These days, the entire restaurant is shrinking (think one table).

• This mini trend has sprouted in cities across the country. Ten Tables in Boston has put the idea right in its name. Beast, in Portland, Oregon, can serve a max of 24 people at two communal tables. And taking it even smaller is Talula’s Table in Philadelphia, where one table serves one group of eight to twelve people once a night.

What This Means to Business

• In this tough economy, businesses have to scale back. Starting small is a way to manage overhead and costs from the get-go.

• For foodies, exclusivity is a big draw. Getting a seat at the new (extra)-impossible-to-get-into restaurant in town means big bragging rights.

• Making food for such a small group of people means a more personal, intimate dining experience. It’s almost as if diners are going to the chef’s house for dinner.

Beershakes. Yes, Beershakes.

By Tory Davis

What’s Happening

• Though John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row mentioned beer shakes back in 1945, the reality of a milkshake made with a hopped-up bottle of brew has only recently begun to take hold.

• Klondike bars blenderized with stout or ale were a specialty at Brooklyn’s now-defunct bistro, Schnäck, though the owners now serve them at Harry’s at Water Taxi Beach in New York.

• We've also spotted recipes for mint chocolate chip ice cream + Fosters, and vanilla ice cream + McEwan's Scotch Ale.

What This Means to Business

• This is one more way for beer to be recognized as an ingredient; it continues to earn respect as more than just a beverage to watch the game with . . . though a beershake might be just the thing to drink at baseball stadiums on a hot summer day.

• Is it time for RTD beershakes in the refrigerator case at the market? Beer manufacturers may have found their wine cooler equivalent to lure in younger drinkers.

Experience Required: 52 jobs in 52 weeks

By Hillary Smith

What’s Happening

• Canadian Sean Aiken is not the first Millennial to struggle with the classic question, “What should I do with my life?” However, he may be one of the first to turn lack of direction into lifetime experience, as seen on his website OneWeekJob.com, which charts the course of his odyssey taking any week-long job offered to him over the course of a year.

• With jobs ranging from baker to stock trader, Sean wrote about his experience in a blog, and pal Ian Mackenzie recorded the experience on video. Since wrapping up in April 2008 as Mayor of his hometown, Sean has been working on turning the footage into a documentary while managing interviews on radio and TV.

What This Means to Business

• Millennials want to enter the job market with intention and purpose closely tied to their personal values. And they’re open to experimenting with those values even if it means putting off a career.

• Can’t find a job, don’t know what to do, not fitting the mold? Leave it to a Millennial to come up with a creative solution by leveraging tech skill and individual perseverance, resulting in an opportunity to be recognized as an individual.