I love to hear creative uses of technology, especially by Minnesota companies. Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal just reported on a very fun approach by Minneapolis-based furniture company Blu Dot…

The idea is pretty basic: Follow Blu Dot’s Twitter account for announcement of the next game, then go to a site to hear some music playing. When it stops, a secret phrase appears; go tweet the phrase to move onto next round. Winner gets a chair.

It reminds me of one of the very early innovations I remember from about 1996 when someone realized that you could post coloring book pages online for kids to print out. They are simple ideas, fairly easy to implement but so clever and fun. It’s a good reminder that innovation takes all forms – and sometimes it’s a little step forward in a different a fun direction.