“Clients think of the firm as a way to make long-shot bets without having to use their own research and development resources. “Samsung is a lean organization. We can’t afford to have people coming up with ideas that don’t work,” says Chief Marketing Officer Gregory Lee. “The people at Fahrenheit are very helpful because they are working on ideas that can fail–it allows you to experiment a bit.” What’s more, Fahrenheit ties much of its compensation to the success of the product, making it an even safer bet.”

I think the focus on innovation that the marketplace has been entertaining for the last several years presages more and more of these kinds of enterprises. Back when we were starting bigwidesky, my partner Mike told me of a survey of the clients of ad agencies he’d read in which the single biggest gripe was that the agencies weren’t bringing any powerful ideas. I, for one, am happy to sidle up and fill that hole with the most amazing ideas we can concoct. Clearly, we’re not the only ones with this ambition.