How to have good ideas

[Jo Hill]

Have you seen this new website called www.ideavolcano.com - it is a place for entreprenuers to post spare ideas they have but don't have time to work up. Other people can browse the ideas list and develop any they like the look of.

[Jo Hill]

This reminds me of a NESTA seminar I went where Ron Burt from the University of Chicago was speaking. I filled my notebook with scribbling – here is some of it…

Ron talked about the social origins of good ideas. He argued that:

- you don’t own the value of your ideas – your audience does.

- creativity is an import-export game – finding a good idea where it works well and then finding a new target audience for it.

- people who live at the intersection of social worlds are more likely to spot good ideas working in one context and be able to seed that idea into another context. Malcolm Gladwell calls these people Connectors – “the closer an idea comes to a Connector the more power and opportunity it has”.

I agree completely. We have started up a group called Make Your Mark Connectors – people who run networks in different regions, industries and sectors bringing people and ideas together. These are the people who make things happen. People like Oli Barrett who started the www.ideasvolcano.com website, Raj Dey, Heather Wilkinson, Claudie Plen, Servane Mouazan, Jack Butler. (If you run a network, club or meetup and want to be part of this - get in touch with [e-mail])

Ron ended with a call to action – “When you have the opportunity to learn how someone in another group does what you do differently – go!”

[Mr Dave Good]

I would be interested to hear about any ideas that have been successful for schools to date. We would like to understand what the challenges have been for any Make Your Mark Clubs.

Dave Good
Collingwood