Get your business further, faster

The Idea Accelerator™ is a proprietary process that creates and accelerates business growth.

It does this because it gets breakthrough ideas further, faster.

We invented The Idea Accelerator™ because we were fed up with ideation processes that were too cumbersome, costly and time consuming; and ultimately didn’t deliver on what they promised.

So we took the process apart and re-built it.

The first thing we knew didn’t work were the ‘set-piece’ ideation sessions or workshops. All too often these sessions stall because when participants have most energy, creativity and ideas to give, there is someone presenting stuff that is sapping the creative energy out of the room. The presenter overruns, and so does the next. By the time ideating finally starts, energy levels are through the floor and time is short.

So we changed that.

When people eventually start ideating, there is never time to do it properly. Too often there is only a list of ideas, fuelled by M&Ms, coffee and a looming deadline to show for the day’s efforts. These ideas are never given the time nor the attention they need to develop into something that has the potential change a business.

So we changed that too.

We also questioned the ability of groups to come up with really breakthrough ideas on the spot. Having worked in world-class advertising, branding, digital and innovation agencies, we know that many of the best ideas are the result of people ruminating on a problem for a few days. There is an old adage about the best ideas happening in bed, in the bath or on a bike. The point being, they happen individually and often at times when the mind is wandering and not consciously thinking about the issue at hand. The current fashion is for co-creation and collaborative thinking, and while this type of thinking has a vital place in our process, it is not for generating the first glimpse of a breakthrough idea.

So that had to go.

We don’t think that a battery of creative exercises and workshop ‘gimmicks’ is necessarily the best way to unlock and accelerate the best ideas. We certainly don’t build our process on them. Sure, we can do them if you want: we’ve been trained in an ‘administering’ creative techniques, and we run courses in creative thinking if you want. But we believe that too often creative exercises are a gratuitous and showy distraction and end up taking too much valuable time from the real task at hand.

So we changed that too.

Too often we observed that participants showing up to ideation process or workshop were uncertain about the objectives or the process or the deliverable: or that different participants had different ideas about these things. Not only do we think that this was bad form, but that it is also conducive to a bad process.

So we changed that along with the other stuff.

We thought too many participants finished the process with different take-outs or a lack of clarity about ‘what next?’ Not having alignment over the deliverables or next steps is not good for such important work.

Guess what? Yep, that too.

And lastly, we felt that too many processes focused on making the client ‘feel creative’ and full of ideas, rather than the substantive job in hand of driving new opportunities as far as possible as quickly as possible.

Gone also.

In it’s place, we’ve built The Idea Accelerator™ as a robust and creative process that gets ideas further, faster and as a result can accelerate change and growth in our clients’ businesses.

It’s worked for start-ups, established businesses, businesses trying to re-establish themselves, not-for-profit organisations and high growth businesses.

Knowing where to create and accelerate growth in any business is about making an informed bet, and we’ve created The Idea Accelerator™ to help stack the odds in your favour.