Today is Swap Ideas Day and Lee has reluctantly handed over the blog to me this week, briefly swapping for my usual Saturday activities – eek!
It does seem quite an appropriate day for us to blog at IDEAlee, as we are passionate about ideas. But you may, like me, be thinking ‘What exactly is IDEAtion and why is it so important’, so I’ve done my research…and come up with a fun game for us all at the end too!
Ideation is the practice of innovating, conceptualising, designing, challenging and developing creative ideas. We can all get stuck in a rut and complacency can creep up on us, but then it starts to become obvious that our usual methods of creativity are outdated and unproductive.
Brainstorming usually springs to mind as a solution doesn’t it? I know that I certainly love getting out my board pens (multi-coloured of course) and scribbling everyone’s ideas on the biggest sheet of paper I can find, and going with the idea that we all like or we think will ‘do the job’.
If you brainstorm you are indeed getting some new ideas together, which may be sufficient for your purpose, but guaranteed these ideas will not be particularly interesting or innovative as you are likely using your unstimulated brain.
To be creative enough to come up with an ‘eureka idea’ that will make a huge difference to the status quo (love that band!), your brain needs a kick start of new, and sometimes pretty outlandish stimuli. A particular favourite of mine is dark chocolate (nom nom) which has been said by Siegel to lift people’s moods and improve their creative and analytical thinking, finally a good justification to eat chocolate!
Obviously there is a lot more to these sessions than getting together in a room and eating dark chocolate. Lee, Creative Director of IDEAlee, has run many a successful IDEAtion session leading to attendees having the skills and capacity to come up with new innovative pushing boundary level ideas, products, services and ultimately growing their company achievements. Read more here and if you would like to arrange a session like this, whether it be as an individual or a business, please drop us a line at hello@IDEAlee.co.uk.
--------------------
Before I go I thought it would be fun to have a little game – so grab a coffee/tea/tipple & a pen, print this dotty attachment, put your feet up and see how many different things you can draw in to this grid using each dot only once - you have 10 minutes (no cheating!)
Upload your entry to our facebook page by Friday 16 September and the person who draws the most different things, all of which have to be recognisable, will win a £10 Amazon voucher*!
Lee, Cooper and I are doing it for fun too (not to win the prize), so watch this space for ours - mine and Cooper's could be interesting and I have high hopes for Lee!
--------------------
Remember ‘A good idea becomes a great idea when you let it out’ (Aeolidia)
Thanks for reading and Lee will be back at the helm next week.
IDEA(La)
*I will judge this and my decision is final on who gets the voucher, I'm looking for some creativity folks and of course following the rules above!