We present an alternative scenario for cosmic structure formation where initial fluctuations are due to Kalb-Ramond axions produced during a pre-big bang phase of inflation. We investigate whether this scenario, where the fluctuations are induced by seeds and therefore are of isocurvature nature, can be brought in agreement with present observations by a suitable choice of cosmological parameters. We also discuss several observational signatures which can distinguish axion seeds from standard inflationary models. We finally discuss the gravitational wave background induced in this model and we show that it may be well within the range of future observations.