Ideas, Seeds and Flower Pots

I was looking at the sorry spectacle of my son’s seed project from school this morning. He took it home over summer recess; the young plant was doing fine but it has obviously outgrown its little plastic pot. The fact that his Dad had bought a sack of earth doesn’t help, his Dad has ignorantly not helped him get a bigger pot and replant it to take it to the next level. Hmm, bad.

Ideation could be compared to the business of seeds. The worth of seeds can’t be realized until they are planted – unless you eat them as muesli, I guess. Sowing some seed can be a rather wasteful exercise if you look at the percentage of seeds that never make it. If you look at the seeds that actually make it to high yield crops, then you should  have no problem with arguing the value of the whole thing, and the seed wastage is not an issue.

I love ideation as a part of innovation. Ideation is great for freeing the mind to both find and analyze new potential value, and it’s a good start to any innovation initiative. Having said that – the big question for anyone with the bag of seeds

Know your soil – ie, your innovation budget. That defines what you can get to a certain level of ‘proof of value’ whether that’s a prototype or market validation. It defines how many pots you can have at the same time. Beyond those pots, the rest of your seed is irrelevant until you find a new pot and new soil to fill it. If you cannot identify a sack of earth, don’t waste too much time playing with seeds until you find one and get one.

There is another important aspect that comes from ideation. The process draws the people with “green fingers”, those passionate for an idea and who can drive it to commercialization. They are the first people to grab a pot given the chance and do something intelligent with their favorite seed. I have the sometimes irritating habit of saying ‘yes I’ve seen idea X, company Y are executing this’ which can be dangerous because you can dismiss stuff for the wrong reasons. I have also had the privilege of meeting leading entrepreneurs behind company Y – and the real value was understanding WHY they have succeeded with their pots, taking them through drought and storm.

The value of seeds comes with the sower, the soil, and the social interaction around the whole sowing process which helps you find the best sowers/gardeners, and helps you to decide who should get the soil (not just what). The flip side is to have a pile of seed with people saying ‘someone should come and plant this, it’s great seed’.  Have a look at the article from Brad Field (http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business/2011/06/14/note-to-entrepreneurs-your-idea-is-not-special/)

Now I still have to replant and save Exhibit A …

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