Maximizing the Flow of Ideas for Your Organization. | Jeremy Utley & Perry Klebahn | 440

Too often when faced with a problem we rush to find a single solution – something safe, based on solutions we already know. These comfortable answers are nice, but what if you could create an opportunity to not only solve the problem, but excel? Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn are the co-authors of Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric that Matters. It is a book that explores how you and your team can generate a volume of ideas for any situation, by overcoming outdated, stagnant thinking traps. Jeremy Utley is a dynamic and engaging speaker who co-leads the d.school's Executive Education programs at Stanford University. Perry Klebahn is an Adjunct Professor and Director of Executive Education, also at Stanford's d.school. We start our conversation discussing Ideaflow, and how the creation of ideas can be summed up as a complex mathematical equation of ideas over time. Perry explains how, when rushing for a solution, we often fall short because we don't have a volume of ideas. More ideas means more potential directions to overcome a challenge, and even ideas that eventually get discarded may have something to offer our final solution. People often think that generating ideas is a task for a single, individual mind - but that's not the case. In fact, creating ideas with a team can create broader insights,by drawing on a wider pool of perspectives and backgrounds to create ideas that might be outside the experience of a single person.The more, the merrier! Much of the work Perry and Jeremy do is with entrepreneurs and students. For more than 10 years, they've been encouraging their students to use Launchpad, an accelerator which shows teams how to incorporate, develop prototypes, find customers, and prove their proposed offerings are viable. This kind of rigorous idea-testing is invaluable if you want to create solutions that make a real difference. If you want to increase the ideas moving through your organization at all levels this is one episode you won't want to skip! Three Key Takeaways: * To find great ideas, you have to let the unworkable and goofy ideas flow, as well. Don't stifle the process! * In the early stages of business, resist the urge to "lock in" on something just because it is working. Continue to generate ideas and innovate. * To become a better idea generator, ensure that you are working with a wide net of professionals and not the same small team every week.