No more BS.

Just so you know, BS in our world stands for Blue Sky. Interestingly, the ideas that come out of Blue Sky sessions tend to be BS, because people think there is no process for creative thinking, which is completely false too.

Part of our offering as an The Ideas Agency, is that we hold process-led creative workshops (we call them Idea Labs) that help large consumer brand companies, think like small companies, and build up their team’s Myelin.

For those of you who are not neurosurgeons, Myelin is the fatty substance which wraps itself around neurons in your brain which are most frequently used by the body.

Over time, this insulation builds up around neurons, meaning that the messages sent from the brain to the part of the body you wish to use are sent quicker and more efficiently.

The more you practise, the more Myelin wraps around those neurons, and over
time, it is this insulated network of superfast-connected neurons that allows Nadal to return
that 160mph tennis serve – or in your team's case – think of that next killer idea.

By working with companies to look at problems differently, we have enabled their teams to
react quicker to market shifts, to go beyond their own industry and disrupt others. The first step in the process is finding the right question to answer.

I know it may seem like a bit of a cliché, but smaller companies have the capacity,
appetite, flexibility and time to build up their Myelin. They are constantly looking at
ways to serve your customers more efficiently than you. They are well-versed in developing their own ideas, picking up new technologies and integrating them into their offering to solve customer problems, because they are not looking over their shoulder.

The world moves so fast that even the most innovative companies, like PayPal, are getting disrupted by two 20-year-old brothers from Ireland. Google, Stripe.

How can you keep up? Good news! It's really simple. You just have to look at your market in a different way in order to find the right question to answer.

We work with a number of consumer brands, and they are all trying to answer the question of how they can sell more product. This is what we call a 5+5 question - it has one answer, usually lowering prices, or offering loyalty points etc. All valid solutions, but will have very minimal impact on sales once competitors price match.

The question these brands should be asking themselves is a "What two numbers add up to 10" kind of question, which has many answers. "How can we better solve our customer life pains through our products and services" is an example of an open question. All solutions are more easily discovered when you frame a question from your customers perspective.

So, in closing...Innovation is not this esoteric, elusive, God-like process that only
the most creative coding geniuses working away in their bedrooms on the next Uber
will ever taste. It’s something that exists in all teams within all businesses. They start is
knowing the right question to answer.