Idea Factory

My company was in the middle of a creative session with a manufacturing client. He immediately stood up after about half an hour and told us, "I can't handle all this sitting and talking. I won't allow this in my company."

We were a little shocked. The creative session was going well, a lot of new ideas were being discussed. The client continued,

"I've taken the chairs out of my conference rooms at the factory. That way my people can't sit around and waste time. Meetings are quick and then we go out and do our work in the factory."

At first that sounded pretty impressive. Maybe it was for his group. But we had to remind our client of one thing.

Our "factory" is our conference room. That's where we do our "work." This is where we create what our clients value and buy from us.

Our client understood and sat down again, this time with more enthusiasm. It got me to thinking. In companies like LaBov and Beyond, where we have to think and create for a living, it's critical that our meetings are valuable, well-run and focused. If not, we're wasting our Idea Factory and its valuable resources.


Barry LaBov
LaBov & Beyond
www.labov.com

Ideas - don't stop when you're ahead

Keith is a buddy, as well as a business partner, of mine. He has a pet peeve. He hates - yes, hates - when creative people settle for the first good idea that comes into their mind. He's right.

It's been proven that we just don't know when a great idea will come into our head - it may be the first one, it may be the 200th one. One thing we do know is that if we only go far enough to get the first one we like that we'll rob ourselves of a lot of our best ideas.

When our company does a brainstorm session, we'll come up with at least 100 ideas to solve an issue. I admit that 60 or so of them may stink. But, then again, how do we know if we have the best idea until we wade through the murky mediocrity to get to some gems?

We were tasked with creating a slogan for a company. After a half-dozen sessions and more than 250 ideas, we settled on a list of five favorites. Where did they come from? One of them was in the first 10 we came up with. A couple were at No. 33 and No. 77 ; another was at No. 90, and the final one was our 177th idea. You never know when or where your best idea will come from.

Don't settle for the first one you like. It's probably not the best.


Barry LaBov
LaBov & Beyond
www.labov.com