What is an Idea?

My post to the Yahoo group on Ideas!

Hi All,

What is an Idea? I presume all of us have assumed that we know the answer. Believe me, we dont. Please try to answer this, "what is an idea?"

Here are what we have realized and since ideas are not cheap or easily available as mentioned by some of the posts before, we have designed IDEA CRAFTING Workshops. Believe me , idea crafting is very HARD. People have given us the feedback that we havent thought so much in a single day ever as we have done in these workshops.The reason why ideas dont come easy to us - is very simply - our minds are not designed to think! Thinking is a process - and biggest most baffling reason for not able to ideate or think is our increased expertise or what I call Psychological inertia of core competence.

IDEAS are those thoughts that bring in the genesis of change – many times fundamental. These are thoughts that one doesn’t get in regular run-of-the-mill thinking.

IDEAS can happen serendipitously in human mind. They can happen at any time. They can be fleeting glimpses of problem solutions, can be dreams of possible new opportunities, can be new design structures or simply new experiences.

IDEAS doesn’t happen just like that. They come to prepared minds. Only prepared minds can transform these thoughts into change. It requires an ability to generate and execute at the same time.

IDEAS need to be crafted through orchestrated immersion. Contrary to popular belief of organization having lots of ideas and it is all about execution, our experiences show ideas need to be crafted through orchestrated immersion of minds that work inside and with the enterprises.