Ideas, Misc

How Different Human Societies Name Colours And the Not So Surprising Fact!

I recently saw this interesting video that shared some interesting facts on how names of colours evolve in different parts of the world independent of each other and how it still follows a similar pattern.  The thing that is surprising and what we can learn from it is that in some sense, all of the different cultures around the world evolved in a similar fashion.   Irrespective of which part of the world we grew up in, irrespective of what languages we speak, irrespective of what religion we follow or however different our culture might seem from the surface, deep down […]

Ideas, Innovation

Why Good Ideas Don’t Fly and What To Do About It?

Every leader talks about the importance of innovation to their business. In public, every leader talks about how they and their teams are at the fore front of innovation. In private, the very same leaders confess that they are nowhere near the level of innovation that they would like to be at.  On one hand, they confess that they are struggling to get the innovation process work as effectively as any of their other functions. On the other hand, there are good ideas that languish within their corporate boundaries with no support. This seems to be a dichotomy that needs […]

Marketing

Crafting an Effective Elevator Pitch

I am sure that at some point in time, you would have had the need to come up with an elevator pitch for an idea that you wanted to share with others to either inspire them to action or elicit a commitment. There are a lot of ways one can go about designing an elevator pitch but I came across Randy Olson‘s TEDMED speech where he shares this simple framework for crafting an elevator pitch.  “{Premise} and {premise} but {problem} therefore {Solution}”  This is a simple yet powerful framework for crafting an effective elevator pitch.  You can watch his entire […]

1000Entrepreneurs, Ideas, Innovation

Rocking Your Next Brainstorming Session!

I am sure that at some point in your career, you have been either invited to or hosted a brainstorming session to come up ideas. Ideas to either solve a specific problem or to create a new product or service or for something else altogether.  Most brainstorming sessions don’t work. They either don’t get the creative ideas that you expect to come up with or nothing happens after the brainstorming, which leads to a feeling of fun but wasted time. But it need not be like that. I’ve hosted more than 200 brainstorming sessions and what I have learnt is that these […]