The what?

The Idea Trampoline. You know, where you can bounce your good ideas and your perplexing challenges back and forth, up and down, tumbling them around. Boing one way then another to see if the idea comes back looking any different, any better, still viable.

Sound interesting?

I could have called this blog post The Idea Roundabout (like The Magic Roundabout, but for business). The Idea Roundabout is where ideas gather momentum, in a vortex of discussion, debate and energy. Good ideas get faster and faster, the weaker ideas fly off into the ether.

Doesn’t sound like business though, bit too much like having fun at a fairground…

Exactly.

Through our consulting services, I see quite often how businesses have removed the fun from taking good ideas to great solutions. When finding a solution is about nothing more than the bottom line savings, one crucial thing ends up missing – enthusiasm. Real, human aspiration to see, feel, touch, and hear the better way, the new situation. Working with ideas, problems, and solutions should have an element of fun, of emotion, as part of the process.

Over the years, I’ve pulled together a group of people I’m privileged to have met – ideas people, creative thinkers, folk able to criticise and enthuse at just the right time. None of them are famous (yet), all of them are fascinating, some are close friends, others acquaintances I deeply respect.

In just one hour in the company of such positive, empathetic, innovative, lively, argumentative, straightforward people, I can blast my way through a host of ideas to find the one nugget that I can focus on (The Idea Roundabout). Or, I can take one niggly road-block, and look at it from so many more angles than I would do so alone (The Idea Trampoline).

Who would you trust to bounce ideas back and forth? To laugh at the daft ideas and marvel at the crazy but brilliant ones?

Who do you know that will help you get ideas moving faster and faster, until only the strongest ones are left?

Sometimes it is surprising who will say yes to you if you ask them for an hour of their time to bounce ideas back and forth, or to give your ideas momentum.

Why not think of a few people who might be able to feed into your thought process, and get them together over some food, for some ideas-based fun and achievement?