journey and idea

#Expert Perspective: The Journey of an Idea

Featured faculty:.

Jill Perry-Smith

Creativity is the lifeblood of innovation and cutting-edge business. During a Goizueta Effect Podcast, Jill Perry-Smith, senior associate dean of strategic initiatives and professor of Organization & Management, spoke about her decades of work at the intersection of creativity, innovation, and business.

Creativity may come naturally for some, but everyone has the capacity to develop a creative skillset. When we think of creativity, we think of artistic expression. In the workplace, we think of breakthroughs in technology, but some of the most important creativity has to do with problem solving. In today’s flexible workspace, creativity is rewarded and encouraged.

Each new idea takes a bumpy journey as it evolves, often cycling back and forth as novelty wears, obstacles arise, and risks become clear. Though circumstances may be different, each idea journey shares distinct phases.

In the generation phase, innovators need inspiration. Sharing ideas with strangers rather than friends can be beneficial and can facilitate open-mindedness.

During the elaboration phase, creators need support and encouragement to develop their ideas. Deeply analyzing the idea with one or two other people as opposed to sharing it with a larger collective is most valuable.

While in the promotion phase, influence and reach are critical due to the risk associated with the idea and its lack of precedent. This is the time for resource gathering and professional networking.

For the implementation phase, shared vision and trust are needed. At this point, a cohesive team with a shared north star can drive success.

So how can a business facilitate workplace creativity? Perry-Smith recommends the following:

• Encourage creativity and innovation in your workplace. Make simple changes to the way your organization and teams operate, and always ask for more problem-solving alternatives. More alternatives lead to variety and creative solutions.
• Be collaboratively flexible and reduce conformity. Think of teams as a tool that is helpful when necessary.
• Always consider novel approaches. Don’t overlook the “creative nuggets” that arise from the idea journey.

Listen to “The Journey of an Idea” podcast on Goizueta Effect.

Looking to know more or connect with Jill Perry-Smith?

Simply click on her icon now to arrange an interview and a time.

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Terms of Service

Website Terms of Use

Last Modified: April 14, 2021

Acceptance of the Terms of Use

These terms of use are entered into by and between You and Tullopy (“ Company ,” “ we ,” or “ us “). The following terms and conditions[, together with any documents they expressly incorporate by reference] ([collectively, ] “ Terms of Use “)[,] govern your access to and use of [www. tullopy.com ], including any content, functionality, and services offered on or through [www.tullopy.com] (the “ Website “)[, whether as a guest or a registered user].

Please read the Terms of Use carefully before you start to use the Website.  By using the Website [or by clicking to accept or agree to the Terms of Use when this option is made available to you], you accept and agree to be bound and abide by these Terms of Use[ and our Privacy Policy, found at [ www.tullopy.com/privacy-policy incorporated herein by reference].  If you do not want to agree to these Terms of Use[ or the Privacy Policy], you must not access or use the Website. 

[This Website is offered and available to users who [are [18] years of age or older][,/ and] [reside in the United States or any of its territories or possessions][, and] [OTHER ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS]. By using this Website, you represent and warrant that you [are of legal age to form a binding contract with the Company and] meet all of the foregoing eligibility requirements. If you do not meet all of these requirements, you must not access or use the Website.]

Changes to the Terms of Use

We may revise and update these Terms of Use from time to time in our sole discretion. All changes are effective immediately when we post them[, and apply to all access to and use of the Website thereafter]. [However, any changes to the dispute resolution provisions set out in  Governing Law and Jurisdiction  will not apply to any disputes for which the parties have actual notice [on or] before the date the change is posted on the Website.] 

Your continued use of the Website following the posting of revised Terms of Use means that you accept and agree to the changes. You are expected to check this page [from time to time/frequently/each time you access this Website] so you are aware of any changes, as they are binding on you. 

Accessing the Website and Account Security

We reserve the right to withdraw or amend this Website, and any service or material we provide on the Website, in our sole discretion without notice. We will not be liable if for any reason all or any part of the Website is unavailable at any time or for any period. From time to time, we may restrict access to some parts of the Website, or the entire Website, to users, including registered users.

You are responsible for both:

• Making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to the Website.
• Ensuring that all persons who access the Website through your internet connection are aware of these Terms of Use and comply with them.

To access the Website or some of the resources it offers, you may be asked to provide certain registration details or other information. It is a condition of your use of the Website that all the information you provide on the Website is correct, current, and complete. You agree that all information you provide to register with this Website or otherwise, including, but not limited to, through the use of any interactive features on the Website, is governed by our  Privacy Policy  [www.tullopy.com/privacy-policy], and you consent to all actions we take with respect to your information consistent with our Privacy Policy.

If you choose or are provided with, a user name, password, or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential, and you must not disclose it to any other person or entity. You also acknowledge that your account is personal to you and agree not to provide any other person with access to this Website or portions of it using your user name, password, or other security information. You agree to notify us immediately of any unauthorized access to or use of your user name or password or any other breach of security. You also agree to ensure that you exit from your account at the end of each session. You should use particular caution when accessing your account from a public or shared computer so that others are not able to view or record your password or other personal information.

We have the right to disable any user name, password, or other identifier, whether chosen by you or provided by us, at any time [in our sole discretion for any or no reason, including] if, in our opinion, you have violated any provision of these Terms of Use.

Intellectual Property Rights

The Website and its entire contents, features, and functionality (including but not limited to all information, software, text, displays, images, video, and audio, and the design, selection, and arrangement thereof) are owned by the Company, its licensors, or other providers of such material and are protected by United States and international copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, and other intellectual property or proprietary rights laws.

These Terms of Use permit you to use the Website for your personal, non-commercial use only. You must not reproduce, distribute, modify, create derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, republish, download, store, or transmit any of the material on our Website, except as follows:

• Your computer may temporarily store copies of such materials in RAM incidental to your accessing and viewing those materials.
• You may store files that are automatically cached by your Web browser for display enhancement purposes.
• You may print [or download] one copy of a reasonable number of pages of the Website for your own personal, non-commercial use and not for further reproduction, publication, or distribution.
• If we provide desktop, mobile, or other applications for download, you may download a single copy to your computer or mobile device solely for your own personal, non-commercial use, provided you agree to be bound by our end user license agreement for such applications.
• If we provide  social media features  with certain content, you may take such actions as are enabled by such features.

You must not:

• Modify copies of any materials from this site.
• [Use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences, or any graphics separately from the accompanying text.]
• Delete or alter any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights notices from copies of materials from this site.

You must not access or use for any commercial purposes any part of the Website or any services or materials available through the Website. 

[If you wish to make any use of material on the Website other than that set out in this section, please address your request to: [[email protected]].]

If you print, copy, modify, download, or otherwise use or provide any other person with access to any part of the Website in breach of the Terms of Use, your right to use the Website will stop immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made. No right, title, or interest in or to the Website or any content on the Website is transferred to you, and all rights not expressly granted are reserved by the Company. Any use of the Website not expressly permitted by these Terms of Use is a breach of these Terms of Use and may violate copyright, trademark, and other laws.

The Company name, the terms [COMPANY TRADEMARKS], [the Company logo,] and all related names, logos, product and service names, designs, and slogans are trademarks of the Company or its affiliates or licensors. You must not use such marks without the prior written permission of the Company. All other names, logos, product and service names, designs, and slogans on this Website are the trademarks of their respective owners.

Prohibited Uses

You may use the Website only for lawful purposes and in accordance with these Terms of Use. You agree not to use the Website:

• In any way that violates any applicable federal, state, local, or international law or regulation (including, without limitation, any laws regarding the export of data or software to and from the US or other countries). 
• For the purpose of exploiting, harming, or attempting to exploit or harm minors in any way by exposing them to inappropriate content, asking for personally identifiable information, or otherwise.
• To send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use, or re-use any material that does not comply with the Content Standards [LINK TO CONTENT STANDARDS] set out in these Terms of Use.
• To transmit, or procure the sending of, any advertising or promotional material [without our prior written consent], including any “junk mail,” “chain letter,” “spam,” or any other similar solicitation.
• To impersonate or attempt to impersonate the Company, a Company employee, another user, or any other person or entity (including, without limitation, by using email addresses [or screen names] associated with any of the foregoing).
• To engage in any other conduct that restricts or inhibits anyone’s use or enjoyment of the Website, or which, as determined by us, may harm the Company or users of the Website, or expose them to liability.

Additionally, you agree not to:

• Use the Website in any manner that could disable, overburden, damage, or impair the site or interfere with any other party’s use of the Website, including their ability to engage in real time activities through the Website.
• Use any robot, spider, or other automatic device, process, or means to access the Website for any purpose, including monitoring or copying any of the material on the Website.
• Use any manual process to monitor or copy any of the material on the Website, or for any other purpose not expressly authorized in these Terms of Use, without our prior written consent.
• Use any device, software, or routine that interferes with the proper working of the Website.
• Introduce any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, logic bombs, or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful.
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to, interfere with, damage, or disrupt any parts of the Website, the server on which the Website is stored, or any server, computer, or database connected to the Website. 
• Attack the Website via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of-service attack.
• Otherwise attempt to interfere with the proper working of the Website.

User Contributions

The Website may contain message boards, chat rooms, personal web pages or profiles, forums, bulletin boards[, LIST ANY OTHER INTERACTIVE FEATURES], and other interactive features (collectively, “ Interactive Services “) that allow users to post, submit, publish, display, or transmit to other users or other persons (hereinafter, “ post “) content or materials (collectively, “ User Contributions “) on or through the Website.

All User Contributions must comply with the Content Standards set out in these Terms of Use.

Any User Contribution you post to the site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. By providing any User Contribution on the Website, you grant us and [our affiliates and service providers, and each of their and] our [respective] licensees, successors, and assigns the right to use, reproduce, modify, perform, display, distribute, and otherwise disclose to third parties any such material [for any purpose/according to your account settings]. 

You represent and warrant that: 

• You own or control all rights in and to the User Contributions and have the right to grant the license granted above to us and [our affiliates and service providers, and each of their and] our [respective] licensees, successors, and assigns.
• All of your User Contributions do and will comply with these Terms of Use. 

You understand and acknowledge that you are responsible for any User Contributions you submit or contribute, and you, not the Company, have full responsibility for such content, including its legality, reliability, accuracy, and appropriateness.

We are not responsible or liable to any third party for the content or accuracy of any User Contributions posted by you or any other user of the Website. 

Monitoring and Enforcement; Termination

We have the right to:

• Remove or refuse to post any User Contributions for any or no reason in our sole discretion.
• Take any action with respect to any User Contribution that we deem necessary or appropriate in our sole discretion, including if we believe that such User Contribution violates the Terms of Use, including the Content Standards, infringes any intellectual property right or other right of any person or entity, threatens the personal safety of users of the Website or the public, or could create liability for the Company.
• Disclose your identity or other information about you to any third party who claims that material posted by you violates their rights, including their intellectual property rights or their right to privacy.
• Take appropriate legal action, including without limitation, referral to law enforcement, for any illegal or unauthorized use of the Website. 
• Terminate or suspend your access to all or part of the Website for [any or no reason, including without limitation,] any violation of these Terms of Use.

Without limiting the foregoing, we have the right to cooperate fully with any law enforcement authorities or court order requesting or directing us to disclose the identity or other information of anyone posting any materials on or through the Website. YOU WAIVE AND HOLD HARMLESS THE COMPANY [AND ITS AFFILIATES, LICENSEES, AND SERVICE PROVIDERS] FROM ANY CLAIMS RESULTING FROM ANY ACTION TAKEN BY [THE COMPANY/ANY OF THE FOREGOING PARTIES] DURING, OR TAKEN AS A CONSEQUENCE OF, INVESTIGATIONS BY EITHER [THE COMPANY/SUCH PARTIES] OR LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES.

However, we [cannot/do not undertake to] review [all] material before it is posted on the Website, and cannot ensure prompt removal of objectionable material after it has been posted. Accordingly, we assume no liability for any action or inaction regarding transmissions, communications, or content provided by any user or third party. We have no liability or responsibility to anyone for performance or nonperformance of the activities described in this section. 

Content Standards

These content standards apply to any and all User Contributions and use of Interactive Services. User Contributions must in their entirety comply with all applicable federal, state, local, and international laws and regulations. Without limiting the foregoing, User Contributions must not:

• Contain any material that is defamatory, obscene, indecent, abusive, offensive, harassing, violent, hateful, inflammatory, or otherwise objectionable.
• Promote sexually explicit or pornographic material, violence, or discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age.
• Infringe any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other intellectual property or other rights of any other person.
• Violate the legal rights (including the rights of publicity and privacy) of others or contain any material that could give rise to any civil or criminal liability under applicable laws or regulations or that otherwise may be in conflict with these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy [LINK TO PRIVACY POLICY].
• Be likely to deceive any person.
• Promote any illegal activity, or advocate, promote, or assist any unlawful act.
• Cause annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety or be likely to upset, embarrass, alarm, or annoy any other person.
• Impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person or organization. 
• Involve commercial activities or sales, such as contests, sweepstakes, and other sales promotions, barter, or advertising.
• Give the impression that they emanate from or are endorsed by us or any other person or entity, if this is not the case.

Copyright Infringement

If you believe that any User Contributions violate your copyright, please see our Copyright Policy [LINK TO COPYRIGHT POLICY] for instructions on sending us a notice of copyright infringement. It is the policy of the Company to terminate the user accounts of repeat infringers. 

Reliance on Information Posted

The information presented on or through the Website is made available solely for general information purposes. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of this information. Any reliance you place on such information is strictly at your own risk. We disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such materials by you or any other visitor to the Website, or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents.

This Website [may include/includes] content provided by third parties, including materials provided by other users, bloggers, and third-party licensors, syndicators, aggregators, and/or reporting services. All statements and/or opinions expressed in these materials, and all articles and responses to questions and other content, other than the content provided by the Company, are solely the opinions and the responsibility of the person or entity providing those materials. These materials do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Company. We are not responsible, or liable to you or any third party, for the content or accuracy of any materials provided by any third parties.

Changes to the Website

We may update the content on this Website from time to time, but its content is not necessarily complete or up-to-date. Any of the material on the Website may be out of date at any given time, and we are under no obligation to update such material. 

Information About You and Your Visits to the Website

All information we collect on this Website is subject to our Privacy Policy [LINK TO PRIVACY POLICY]. By using the Website, you consent to all actions taken by us with respect to your information in compliance with the Privacy Policy. 

[Online Purchases and Other Terms and Conditions

All purchases through our site or other transactions for the sale of [goods][,/ or][services][,] [or][information] formed through the Website, or resulting from visits made by you, are governed by our Terms of Sale [LINK TO TERMS OF SALE], which are hereby incorporated into these Terms of Use.

[Additional terms and conditions may also apply to specific portions, services, or features of the Website. All such additional terms and conditions are hereby incorporated by this reference into these Terms of Use.]]

Linking to the Website and Social Media Features

You may link to our homepage, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it, but you must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval, or endorsement on our part[ without our express [written] consent]. 

This Website may provide certain social media features that enable you to:

• Link from your own or certain third-party websites to certain content on this Website.
• Send emails or other communications with certain content, or links to certain content, on this Website.
• Cause limited portions of content on this Website to be displayed or appear to be displayed on your own or certain third-party websites.

You may use these features solely as they are provided by us[,/ and] solely with respect to the content they are displayed with[,] [and otherwise in accordance with any additional terms and conditions we provide with respect to such features]. Subject to the foregoing, you must not:

• Establish a link from any website that is not owned by you.
• Cause the Website or portions of it to be displayed on, or appear to be displayed by, any other site, for example, framing, deep linking, or in-line linking.
• Link to any part of the Website other than the homepage.
• Otherwise take any action with respect to the materials on this Website that is inconsistent with any other provision of these Terms of Use.

[The website from which you are linking, or on which you make certain content accessible, must comply in all respects with the Content Standards set out in these Terms of Use.]

You agree to cooperate with us in causing any unauthorized framing or linking immediately to stop. We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.

We may disable all or any social media features and any links at any time without notice in our discretion. 

Links from the Website

If the Website contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your convenience only. This includes links contained in advertisements, including banner advertisements and sponsored links. We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources, and accept no responsibility for them or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them. If you decide to access any of the third-party websites linked to this Website, you do so entirely at your own risk and subject to the terms and conditions of use for such websites.

Geographic Restrictions

The owner of the Website is based in the State of [STATE] in the United States. We provide this Website for use only by persons located in the United States. We make no claims that the Website or any of its content is accessible or appropriate outside of the United States. Access to the Website may not be legal by certain persons or in certain countries. If you access the Website from outside the United States, you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for compliance with local laws.

Disclaimer of Warranties

You understand that we cannot and do not guarantee or warrant that files available for downloading from the internet or the Website will be free of viruses or other destructive code. You are responsible for implementing sufficient procedures and checkpoints to satisfy your particular requirements for anti-virus protection and accuracy of data input and output, and for maintaining a means external to our site for any reconstruction of any lost data. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PROVIDED BY LAW, WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE CAUSED BY A DISTRIBUTED DENIAL-OF-SERVICE ATTACK, VIRUSES, OR OTHER TECHNOLOGICALLY HARMFUL MATERIAL THAT MAY INFECT YOUR COMPUTER EQUIPMENT, COMPUTER PROGRAMS, DATA, OR OTHER PROPRIETARY MATERIAL DUE TO YOUR USE OF THE WEBSITE OR ANY SERVICES OR ITEMS OBTAINED THROUGH THE WEBSITE OR TO YOUR DOWNLOADING OF ANY MATERIAL POSTED ON IT, OR ON ANY WEBSITE LINKED TO IT.

YOUR USE OF THE WEBSITE, ITS CONTENT, AND ANY SERVICES OR ITEMS OBTAINED THROUGH THE WEBSITE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE WEBSITE, ITS CONTENT, AND ANY SERVICES OR ITEMS OBTAINED THROUGH THE WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” BASIS, WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. NEITHER THE COMPANY NOR ANY PERSON ASSOCIATED WITH THE COMPANY MAKES ANY WARRANTY OR REPRESENTATION WITH RESPECT TO THE COMPLETENESS, SECURITY, RELIABILITY, QUALITY, ACCURACY, OR AVAILABILITY OF THE WEBSITE. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, NEITHER THE COMPANY NOR ANYONE ASSOCIATED WITH THE COMPANY REPRESENTS OR WARRANTS THAT THE WEBSITE, ITS CONTENT, OR ANY SERVICES OR ITEMS OBTAINED THROUGH THE WEBSITE WILL BE ACCURATE, RELIABLE, ERROR-FREE, OR UNINTERRUPTED, THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED, THAT OUR SITE OR THE SERVER THAT MAKES IT AVAILABLE ARE FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS, OR THAT THE WEBSITE OR ANY SERVICES OR ITEMS OBTAINED THROUGH THE WEBSITE WILL OTHERWISE MEET YOUR NEEDS OR EXPECTATIONS. 

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PROVIDED BY LAW, THE COMPANY HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND FITNESS FOR PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

THE FOREGOING DOES NOT AFFECT ANY WARRANTIES THAT CANNOT BE EXCLUDED OR LIMITED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW.

Limitation on Liability

[TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PROVIDED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL THE COMPANY, ITS AFFILIATES, OR THEIR LICENSORS, SERVICE PROVIDERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, OFFICERS, OR DIRECTORS BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, UNDER ANY LEGAL THEORY, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE, OR INABILITY TO USE, THE WEBSITE, ANY WEBSITES LINKED TO IT, ANY CONTENT ON THE WEBSITE OR SUCH OTHER WEBSITES, INCLUDING ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PERSONAL INJURY, PAIN AND SUFFERING, EMOTIONAL DISTRESS, LOSS OF REVENUE, LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF BUSINESS OR ANTICIPATED SAVINGS, LOSS OF USE, LOSS OF GOODWILL, LOSS OF DATA, AND WHETHER CAUSED BY TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), BREACH OF CONTRACT, OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF FORESEEABLE. 

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PROVIDED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL THE COLLECTIVE LIABILITY OF THE COMPANY AND ITS SUBSIDIARIES AND AFFILIATES, AND THEIR LICENSORS, SERVICE PROVIDERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, OFFICERS, AND DIRECTORS, TO ANY PARTY (REGARDLESS OF THE FORM OF ACTION, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE) EXCEED [[$NUMBER]/[THE GREATER OF [$NUMBER] OR THE AMOUNT YOU HAVE PAID TO THE COMPANY FOR THE APPLICABLE [CONTENT[,]] [OR] [PRODUCT[,]] [OR] [SERVICE] [IN THE LAST [NUMBER] MONTHS]] OUT OF WHICH LIABILITY AROSE.

The limitation of liability set out above does not apply to liability resulting from our gross negligence or willful misconduct [or death or bodily injury caused by products you purchase through the site].]

THE FOREGOING DOES NOT AFFECT ANY LIABILITY THAT CANNOT BE EXCLUDED OR LIMITED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW.

Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Company, its affiliates, licensors, and service providers, and its and their respective officers, directors, employees, contractors, agents, licensors, suppliers, successors, and assigns from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, judgments, awards, losses, costs, expenses, or fees (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or relating to your violation of these Terms of Use or your use of the Website, including, but not limited to, your User Contributions, any use of the Website’s content, services, and products other than as expressly authorized in these Terms of Use, or your use of any information obtained from the Website.

Governing Law and Jurisdiction

All matters relating to the Website and these Terms of Use, and any dispute or claim arising therefrom or related thereto (in each case, including non-contractual disputes or claims), shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the internal laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria without giving effect to any choice or conflict of law provision or rule (whether of the State of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Any legal suit, action, or proceeding arising out of, or related to, these Terms of Use or the Website shall be instituted exclusively in the courts of the Federal Republic of Nigeria] [although we retain the right to bring any suit, action, or proceeding against you for breach of these Terms of Use in your country of residence or any other relevant country]. You waive any and all objections to the exercise of jurisdiction over you by such courts and to venue in such courts.

[Arbitration

At Company’s sole discretion, it may require You to submit any disputes arising from these Terms of Use or use of the Website, including disputes arising from or concerning their interpretation, violation, invalidity, non-performance, or termination, to final and binding arbitration under the Rules of Arbitration of the American Arbitration Association applying Lagos State Law.]

[Limitation on Time to File Claims

[ANY CAUSE OF ACTION OR CLAIM YOU MAY HAVE ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OF USE OR THE WEBSITE MUST BE COMMENCED WITHIN ONE (1) YEAR AFTER THE CAUSE OF ACTION ACCRUES; OTHERWISE, SUCH CAUSE OF ACTION OR CLAIM IS PERMANENTLY BARRED.]

Waiver and Severability

No waiver by the Company of any term or condition set out in these Terms of Use shall be deemed a further or continuing waiver of such term or condition or a waiver of any other term or condition, and any failure of the Company to assert a right or provision under these Terms of Use shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision.

If any provision of these Terms of Use is held by a court or other tribunal of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable for any reason, such provision shall be eliminated or limited to the minimum extent such that the remaining provisions of the Terms of Use will continue in full force and effect. 

Entire Agreement

The Terms of Use[, /and] our Privacy Policy[,]] [and] [Terms of Sale[,]] [and] [LIST OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS OR POLICIES]] constitute the sole and entire agreement between you and Tullopy regarding the Website and supersede all prior and contemporaneous understandings, agreements, representations, and warranties, both written and oral, regarding the Website. 

Your Comments and Concerns

This website is operated by Tullopy [4 Asa Street, Maitama).

All notices of copyright infringement claims should be sent to the copyright agent designated in our Copyright Policy in the manner and by the means set out therein.

All other feedback, comments, requests for technical support, and other communications relating to the Website should be directed to: [[email protected]].

Privacy Policy

Last modified: April 14, 2021

Introduction

Tullopy ( “Company”  or  “We” ) respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it through our compliance with this policy.

This policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you visit the website [www.tullopy.com] (our “ Website “) and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing that information.

This policy applies to information we collect:

• On this Website.
• In email, text, and other electronic messages between you and this Website.
• [Through mobile and desktop applications you download from this Website, which provide dedicated non-browser-based interaction between you and this Website.]
• [When you interact with our advertising and applications on third-party websites and services, if those applications or advertising include links to this policy.]
• [ANY OTHER SOURCES]

It does not apply to information collected by:

• Us offline or through any other means, including on any other website operated by Company or any third party[ (including our affiliates and subsidiaries)]; or 
• Any third party [(including our affiliates and subsidiaries)], including through any application or content (including advertising) that may link to or be accessible from [or on] the Website]

Please read this policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, your choice is not to use our Website. By accessing or using this Website, you agree to this privacy policy. This policy may change from time to time (see  Changes to Our Privacy Policy ). Your continued use of this Website after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the policy periodically for updates. 

Children Under the Age of [13/16]

Our Website is not intended for children under [13/16] years of age. No one under age [13/16] may provide any [personal] information to [or on] the Website. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under [13/16]. If you are under [13/16], do not use or provide any information on this Website [or] [through any of its features,] [register on the Website,] [make any purchases through the Website,] [use any of the interactive or public comment features of this Website,] [or provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, email address, or any screen name or user name you may use]. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under [13/16] without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under [13/16], please contact us at [CONTACT INFORMATION].

[California residents under 16 years of age may have additional rights regarding the collection and sale of their personal information. Please see  [Your California Privacy Rights]  for more information.]

Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It

We collect several types of information from and about users of our Website, including information:

• By which you may be personally identified, such as name, postal address, e-mail address, telephone number, [ social security number][ or [OTHER PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED]/any other identifier by which you may be contacted online or offline] (“ personal information “);
• That is about you but individually does not identify you, such as [INFORMATION EXAMPLES]; and/or
• About your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our Website, and usage details.

We collect this information:

• Directly from you when you provide it to us.
• Automatically as you navigate through the site. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies[, web beacons,] [and other tracking technologies].
• [From third parties, for example, our business partners.]

Information You Provide to Us   

The information we collect on or through our Website may include:

• Information that you provide by filling in forms on our Website. This includes information provided at the time of [registering to use our Website,] [subscribing to our service,] [posting material,] [or requesting further services]. We may also ask you for information [when you enter a contest or promotion sponsored by us, and] when you report a problem with our Website.
• Records and copies of your correspondence (including email addresses), if you contact us.
• [Your responses to surveys that we might ask you to complete for research purposes.]
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Idea Journey

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Idea Method

Your organization’s idea journey will be unique, focused around your challenge, your team, and your dream..

Your NetHope IDEA Journey will have four phases. You will imagine a range of innovative solutions to your challenge, you will design your chosen solution, you will execute it, bringing it to life in your context, and you will assess the impact.

The Imagine workshop phase is focused on solving a challenge in a human-centered way. It enables nonprofits to focus on the people who participate in the solution, designing with and for them. You will be pulling together what is desirable and useful from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. This leads to solutions that are adopted faster with less effort. When approaching the solutions to a challenge, the first question should always be, what is the human need behind it?

The Imagine workshop is delivered as a multi-day workshop, virtually or in person. It proceeds through three phases.

Define the current state

Imagine the future state, refine the concept.

During the Imagine workshop, your consulting partners will draw from a portfolio of design-thinking tools to achieve desired results. This will involve collaborating and writing on a lot of post-its, virtual or physical. This workshop experience has been written about extensively in this blog series .

Choose your own solution

The Dream Book, created through the Imagine workshop, presents multiple potential solutions. The first step of Design is to decide which to advance forward. This is because most nonprofits do not have enough funds to advance multiple solutions into Minimum Viable Products (MVP). A design team sets the parameters for selection and engages key stakeholders in the organization. The selected design is then analysed and a digital representation is planned. This phase is done with an implementation partner who guides you through the process and can build the MVP. A typical approach is to use a build-measure-learn feedback loop to prioritize the most valuable features.

Make dreams tangible

Design goes hand in glove with the Imagine workshop. It makes dreams tangible. It is through the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) outcome of the Design phase that people can interact with the solution and start to make it better. An MVP is a product which usually has one basic set of features. It is released to a handful of people to test a new solution and to gauge people's reaction to it through feedback. Design is an opportunity to re-validate the dreams documented in the Dream Book. It gives more definition to solutions by bringing them to life. Design allows more people to collaborate by interacting with the same reference implementation.

Test the solution

The goal of the Design phase is to learn through a MPV. This can be done by a nonprofit alone, or by co-creating a platform with multiple other NGOs. The MVP is tested as a solution to the initial challenge, data and feedback are collected and analysed, and the MVP continuously improved. Creating the MVP involves iteratively creating a model solution (eg, user flow, wireframe) that fits current architectures (eg, data, enterprise, process). A design budget and plan (eg, for technology and people) typically guide the scope and timeline of this phase.

Plans for adoption, training and support during the Execute phase are usually developed during Design. They are informed by users’ feedback.

Deliver impact

No solution has value unless it is practically adopted in regular workflows. Execution is where the designed solution encounters the reality of organizational culture and program operations. This is when usage and adoption take place and where impact can be measured over time.

Execution is continuous learning and adaptation in search of impact, the process of solving the initial challenge that started the IDEA Journey.

Deploying a solution stretches the best designs and plans to their limits. For example, infrastructure components, such as connectivity and power, can become limitations to cloud system operations, and so can inadequate cybersecurity jeopardize the best designs. Then, there is always the inevitable scenario that design did not plan for that comes up at the most inopportune moment, demanding urgent and undivided attention from the team.

However, it is human elements that are most often barriers to Execution progress. The two most frequently encountered human-centric challenges to execution are user inclusion and change management.

User inclusion

Change management.

Execution requires good planning such as defining sources of funds and budgeting. The right development methodology can also ensure integration with existing systems and be the difference between a system that is costly and complex to manage or one that fits in the existing digital ecosystem.

While program and geography play an important role in Execution, the team should ensure early on that the data needed to measure impact is collected and validated. Finally, communication, training, and support are critical complementary initiatives in technology implementation

Innovate for impact

The entire purpose of an IDEA Journey is to create innovation that leads to impact. Innovation can create significant and lasting social/environmental impact or enhance corporate/fundraising performance. To know, it must be evaluated.

The Assess phase enables nonprofits to account for the social performance of their IDEA Journey, the value of its contribution to society, and to generate greater credibility with the solution within programs and peer organizations. Therefore, assessing the impact of the initiative is extremely important – and it is often better when performed by an independent entity. Even if the innovation unlocked by the IDEA Journey makes no difference, there is value for the sector in knowing so. Understanding why a solution failed will lead to reduced waste of resources throughout the sector.

Measure impact

Impact assessment starts during the Design phase. This is when the team identifies the data that will be collected to measure impact. It then completes after the Execute phase when the solution has delivered benefits. In this way, impact measurement can be thought to have two phases:

Ante – throughout the Imagine and Design phases, envisioning the impact that will be achieved at the end of the Execute phase. This creates the right data set to collect during the Execute phase and the evaluation framework for the Assess phase.

Post –after the Execute phase, by analysis the information collected to evaluate what impact was achieved and how the effectiveness aligns with the initial IDEA Journey challenge. This evaluation also identifies how success may be replicated and scaled up.

Note that the evaluation during the Assess phase is distinct from performance measurement during the Execute phase, which is the ongoing process aimed at learning and improving the solutions that is typically conducted by the project team.

During the Design phase the team would have decided which modality of evaluation would be best suited for the IDEA Journey. For example, the organization will have decided to conduct the evaluation with internal resources or through independent third parties or by contracting evaluation experts. The team will have also decided if the assessment is an implementation study (ie, to prove the program was implemented as designed) or an impact study (ie, to establish whether the solution is generating the desired effects), or both.

While there are various degrees of rigor in these evaluations, the highest of which are randomized control trials to establish causality, they all depend on the good collection and management of data and planning for it during the Design phase.

It is recommended that all IDEA Journey include an impact report and that a version of this report be shared freely and openly to benefit the nonprofit sector.

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Introduction to the Essential Ideation Techniques which are the Heart of Design Thinking

Ideation is at the heart of the Design Thinking process. There are literally hundreds of ideation techniques, for example brainstorming , sketching , SCAMPER , and prototyping. Some techniques are merely renamed or slightly adapted versions of more foundational techniques. Here you’ll get an overview of the best techniques as well as when and why to use them.

“Ideation is the mode of the design process in which you concentrate on idea generation. Mentally it represents a process of “going wide” in terms of concepts and outcomes. Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and getting innovative solutions into the hands of your users.” – d.school, An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE

How to Ideate

You ideate by combining your conscious and unconscious mind. You combine your rational thoughts with your imagination. The following techniques are the most essential techniques, which can help you and your team ideate:

The Most Essential Ideation Techniques: Which Ideation Techniques Should You Choose?

Due to the nature of ideation, it is extremely important to make use of techniques that match the type of ideas you're trying to generate. The techniques you choose will also need to match the needs of the ideation team, their states of creative productivity and their experience in ideation sessions.Here is an overview of the most essential ideation techniques:

During a Brainstorm session, you leverage the synergy of the group to reach new ideas by building on others’ ideas. Ideas are blended to create one good idea as indicated by the slogan “1+1=3”. Participants should be able to discuss their ideas freely without fear of criticism. You should create an environment where all participants embrace wild ideas and misunderstanding, and which will allow you to reach further than you could by simply thinking logically about a problem.

Braindump is very similar to Brainstorm, however it’s done individually. The participants write down their ideas on post-it notes and share their ideas later with the group.

Brainwriting is also very similar to a Brainstorm session. However, the participants write down their ideas on paper and, after a few minutes, they pass on their own piece of paper to another participant who’ll then elaborate on the first person’s ideas and so forth. Another few minutes later, the individual participants will again pass their papers on to someone else and so the process continues. After about 15 minutes, you will collect the papers and post them for instant discussion.

Brainwriting is very similar to a Brainstorm session. However, the participants write down their ideas and then after a few minutes they pass on their own paper to another participant who’ll then elaborate on the first person’s ideas and so forth.

Brainwalk is similar to Brainwriting. However, instead of passing around the paper, the participants walk around in the room and continuously find new “ideation stations” where they can elaborate on other participants’ ideas.

Worst Possible Idea

Worst Possible Idea is a highly effective method that you can use to get the creative juices flowing and help those who are not so confident in expressing themselves by flipping the brainstorm on its head. It’s a lot of fun too. Instead of going for good ideas and putting the pressure on, call for the worst possible ideas your team can come up with. Doing this relieves any anxiety and self-confidence issues and allows people to be more playful and adventurous, as they know their ideas are most certainly not going to be scrutinised for missing the mark. It's way easier to say, “hey, no that's not bad enough” than the opposite. A great variation of this called the bad ideas method encourages you to generate a large quantity of bad ideas.

Challenge Assumptions

Take a step back from the challenge you're tackling and ask some important questions about the assumptions you have about the product, service, or situation where you're trying to innovate. It is particularly effective to challenge assumptions when you are stuck in current thinking paradigms or have run out of ideas. Therefore, it is good for re-booting a flagging session. Are the characteristics we take for granted about these things really crucial aspects, or are they just so because we've all become accustomed to them?

Mindmapping is a graphical technique in which participants build a web of relationships. To get started with the simplest form of mindmapping, the participants write a problem statement or key phrase in the middle of the page. Then, they write solutions and ideas that comes to their mind on the very same page. After that, participants connect their solutions and ideas by curves or lines to its minor or major (previous or following) fact or idea.

Sketch or Sketchstorm

Throughout ideation sessions, a valuable exercise is to express ideas and potential solutions in the form of diagrams and rough sketches instead of merely in words. Visuals have a way of provoking further ideas and providing a wider lens of thinking. The idea with sketching out ideas is not to develop beautiful drawings worthy of framing and mounting on the wall. The sketches should be as simple and rough as possible with just enough detail to convey meaning. This also helps preventing people from becoming attached to their little works of art.

You can rely on sketching, a proven design tool, to help you explore your design space more fully, and avoid the pitfalls of focusing on suboptimal design choices ahead of time. More particularly, sketches can assist you in the design process by helping you to think more openly and creatively about your ideas. They can help you create abundant ideas without worrying about their quality. Sketches will help you invent and explore concepts by being able to record ideas quickly. Sketches will make it easier for you to discuss, critique, and share your ideas with others. That’s why sketches are a great tool to help you and your team to choose which ideas are worth pursuing.

Sketches should be as simple and rough as possible with just enough detail to convey meaning.

Stories are a key medium for communication, learning, and exploring. Storyboarding is all about developing a visual story relating to the problem, design, or solution which you want to explain or explore. Storyboarding can help you bring a situation to life, it can show what happens over time, and explore the dynamics of a situation. You can use storyboarding after having empathised with people in order to better understand their lives. You can draw out their stories. Storyboards can help you represent information you gain during research. Create scenarios consisting of pictures and quotes from users. If you are developing ideas, you may then seek to play with different scenarios to see where they go. Develop a coherent storyline with actors and a plot. Try to build tension and include unexpected surprises in your story. Evoke emotions and show struggle and by the end learning and solving the tensions and leaving the user satisfied.

When you’re creating your storyboard you can seek inspiration in the method called “Aristotle’s seven elements of good storytelling ” which you can download, print and use as your guide.

Bodystorming is a technique in which participants physically act out situations they are trying to innovate within. It may involve expressing solutions to ideas through physical activity, or enacting some of the problem scenarios that we are attempting to solve. Physically acting out processes, scenarios and events helps get the ideation team physically involved instead of theorising about the problems. It combines aspects of empathy , brainstorming, and prototyping into one exercise with increased energy and movement, which helps stimulate higher energy and more meaningful experiences.

Bodystorming may include setting up the entire ideation space with props and artifacts, to recreate some semblance of the real environment in order to test out various scenarios and see how this may change the situation. The process may also include setting up various steps in a customer's journey.

Storytellers, journalists, artists, leaders and all kinds of other creative professions have relied on creating analogies as a powerful tool for communicating and sparking ideas. An analogy is a comparison between two things for instance a comparison of a heart and a pump. We communicate using analogies all the time as they allow us to express our idea or to explain complex matters in an understandable and motivating way.

Provocation

Provocation is a lateral thinking technique, which challenges the status quo and allows you to explore new realities to extreme degrees. Lateral thinking distances itself from the classic method for problem solving where we work out the solution step-by-step from the given data.

Creativity is all about journeying through stimuli with a possibly abstract or unseen destination in mind. The route of the journey is unknown and most often requires you to explore multiple paths in order to arrive at the unknown destination. Provocations provide this mechanism for injecting the unconventional into the thinking patterns and exploration process. Provocations do not themselves lead directly to a final solution in most cases, although they do provide the material from which the new idea may be formed.

SCAMPER is a lateral ideation technique that utilises action verbs as stimuli. It helps us ask seven kinds of questions to come up with ideas either for improvements of existing products or for making a new product.

The movement technique will also help you if you’re blocked in your idea generation. You can use this technique to step around the roadblocks in your thinking. As the Provocation technique Movement will help you force your team to question the status quo, shock yourself and your team into a new reality. This is the perfect “what if?” tool. Lateral thinking techniques do not always immediately result in concrete or usable ideas, but create a wide array of thinking stimuli, which you can leverage for piecing together practical ideas. To make use of the stimuli generated, it requires movement, or what some refer to as insight or principle mining. This tool will help you spot themes, principles, useful attributes or trends in your thinking, which you can use to build up a more viable and realistic ideas.

Gamestorming

Gamestorming is a set of ideation and problem-solving methods that are purposely gamified in order to dramatically increase levels of engagement, energy, and collaboration during group sessions. It involves some of the methods we've already mentioned, while adding gamification .

A few examples of gamified ideation sessions include:

Fishbowl: An ideation session in which participants sit in two circles, one smaller and one larger surrounding the smaller one. Participants in the inner circle discuss their ideas and brainstorm while participants in the outer circle listen, observe, and document the ideas and conversation points without saying anything. This forces some to listen and others to engage in brainstorming.

The Anti-Problem: The idea is based on flipping the problem. In the Anti-Problem is the opposite of the real problem that needs to be solved. In this session you seek to solve the anti-problem. This may provide inspiration that you could not have gotten access to by focusing purely on the real challenge, though it may generate ideas which are still related to the problem space . The ideas you generate can then be re-flipped to bring them back into the realm of the real problem.

Cover Story: This involves using a template that forces participants to create a cover story, including main image, headline, quotes, and sidebars with associated facts etc. It is a good method for vision generation sessions and helps create a cohesive picture of a broad subject area using the primary characteristics.

Cheatstorming is less about coming up with new ideas and more of an early ideation technique for taking existing pools of ideas and leveraging them as input or stimulus. Unlike other ideation methods where the bulk of ideas generated are discarded, cheatstorming is a bit like cognitive sustainability, reusing and not wasting previously ideated material.

Another storm to consider involves the target audience to generate or comment and approve generated ideas. Customer or user feedback is important at every stage of the process and involving them to pick and evaluate ideas can lead to identifying possible winners or losers, which the team might have missed due to blind spots. Social media , customer surveys , focus groups and co-design workshops are all methods of getting the crowd to share their thoughts on the generated ideas. This process may not provide an ultimate winner but it will reveal valuable insights that can assist in the daunting decision relating to which ideas to proceed with.

Co-Creation Workshops

There are times when combining customer or user empathy research, ideation, and prototyping might prove useful when rapidly combined.

There are times when combining customer or user empathy research, ideation and prototyping might prove useful when rapidly combined. Co-creation or Co-design workshops combine a number of Design Thinking methods over the course of a few hours to days or even weeks. They can be condensed into full day workshops and conducted a number of times at different locations in order to expedite findings and ideas from the target community. These sessions, if used as one-off workshops, usually follow a sequence that includes:

Introductions and Icebreakers

Vision and Values Exercises

Empathy Exercises

Insight Mining

Challenge Framing

Prototyping

Prototyping itself can be an ideation technique. When you create a physical object you need to make decisions and this encourages the generation of new ideas. You build to think.

Creative Pause

An important step in any ideation process or session is what Edward De Bono refers to in his book, Serious Creativity as the creative pause. When our neurons are firing away against a seemingly impenetrable brick wall challenge, we can easily get stuck into unconstructive thinking patterns. We become anchored to an early idea or stream of thought, or get caught up in negative thoughts surrounding the process. A creative pause gives us time to take a step back, reflect, extract ourselves from the traps we've cognitively set for ourselves, and re-approach the challenge with renewed freshness of the mind. We want proactive thinking to lead the way – not reactive thinking, which often has a negative orientated spin to it.

Creative pauses help us to not get anchored to an early idea or stream of thought or get caught up in negative thoughts surrounding the process. A creative pause gives us time to take a step back, reflect, extract ourselves from the traps we've cognitively set for ourselves, and re-approach the challenge with renewed freshness of the mind.

The Take Away

Ideation is at the heart of the Design Thinking process. There are literally hundreds of ideation techniques. Here we’ve provided you with an overview of the best techniques as well as when and why to use them. Due to the nature of ideation, it is extremely important to make use of techniques that match the type of ideas you're trying to generate. The techniques you choose will also need to match those of the ideation team members, their states of creative productivity, and their experience with ideation sessions.

References and Where to Learn More

Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Braden Kowitz. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0

Edward De Bono. Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas, 1993

Gabriela Goldschmidt. Chapter 9 Visual Analogy- a Strategy for Design Reasoning and Learning

Dave Gray. Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers, 2010

Creativity: Methods to Design Better Products and Services

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The Journey of an Idea

Creativity is the lifeblood of innovation and cutting-edge business. During a Goizueta Effect Podcast, Jill Perry-Smith , senior associate dean of strategic initiatives and professor of Organization & Management, spoke about her decades of work at the intersection of creativity, innovation, and business.

Creativity may come naturally for some, but everyone has the capacity to develop a creative skillset. When we think of creativity, we think of artistic expression. In the workplace, we think of breakthroughs in technology, but some of the most important creativity has to do with problem solving. In today’s flexible workspace, creativity is rewarded and encouraged.

Each new idea takes a bumpy journey as it evolves, often cycling back and forth as novelty wears, obstacles arise, and risks become clear. Though circumstances may be different, each idea journey shares distinct phases.

In the generation phase , innovators need inspiration. Sharing ideas with strangers rather than friends can be beneficial and can facilitate open-mindedness.

During the elaboration phase , creators need support and encouragement to develop their ideas. Deeply analyzing the idea with one or two other people as opposed to sharing it with a larger collective is most valuable.

While in the promotion phase , influence and reach are critical due to the risk associated with the idea and its lack of precedent. This is the time for resource gathering and professional networking.

For the implementation phase , shared vision and trust are needed. At this point, a cohesive team with a shared north star can drive success.

So how can a business facilitate workplace creativity? Perry-Smith recommends the following:

• Encourage creativity and innovation in your workplace. Make simple changes to the way your organization and teams operate, and always ask for more problem-solving alternatives. More alternatives lead to variety and creative solutions.
• Be collaboratively flexible and reduce conformity. Think of teams as a tool that is helpful when necessary.
• Always consider novel approaches. Don’t overlook the “creative nuggets” that arise from the idea journey.

Listen to “The Journey of an Idea” podcast on Goizueta Effect.

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Idea Generation Strategies For Driving Innovation and Growth

Published: 26 December, 2023

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Table of Contents

Idea Generation springs into existence where business acumen and raw creativity meet untamed creativity. Nestled at the junction of inspiration and innovation, it thrives in the domain where product development harmonizes with return on investment, constituting a pivotal component of a comprehensive innovation strategy. What does “Idea Generation” truly encompass, and how can enterprises nurture the nurturing of fresh concepts?

Within the confines of this article, we plunge into the myriad techniques employed by countless enterprises to generate ideas, develop existing ideas , and conquer the creative challenges that are inherent in achieving triumphant endeavours. These techniques bear relevance across diverse business pursuits, offering particular value when communication gaps loom within your product development and management teams.

By embracing these tried-and-tested techniques, you can foster an environment infused with creativity and exploration among your team members or within yourself. Let’s now embark on a comprehensive exploration of strategies that will ignite your imaginative faculties and propel the momentum of innovation.

What is Idea Generation?

Idea Generation serves as the foundational phase within the innovation process , tailored particularly for conceiving novel products, inventive solutions, and innovative business models. A diverse array of idea generation techniques stands ready to aid in the creation of fresh concepts. Among these techniques, brainstorming emerges as a well-recognized exemplar, joined by methods such as mind mapping, role-playing, and reverse thinking. In subsequent sections, we will delve comprehensively into the mechanics of each of these techniques.

The enigma of Idea Generation lies in its absence! A successful Idea Generation process thrives on challenging assumptions and unearthing new possibilities within established methodologies. Businesses identify idea generation activities that yield success, with each adopting a distinct approach. However, we posit that amidst this diversity, certain shared principles prevail among enterprises that transform potential ideas into remarkable innovations and great ideas.

Idea Generation Definition:

Idea generation can be defined as the act of conceiving, evolving, and expressing abstract, tangible, or visual concepts. Positioned at the initial stage of the idea management funnel, it revolves around generating potential answers to identified or real challenges and possibilities. This process aims to devise creative solutions for perceived or actual issues and opportunities.

Importance of Idea Generation

In the pursuit of business growth, the significance of cultivating innovative ideas cannot be overstated. While there are numerous compelling reasons to integrate idea management tools and schedule brainstorming sessions within your company, we’d like to underscore four particularly potent reasons that underscore the value of investing in the idea generation process.

1- Identify new opportunities

Leverage the collective wisdom of stakeholders across your organization to explore uncharted territories ripe with potential. Engaging in discussions can illuminate avenues for discovering new customer segments or uncovering innovative applications for your existing successes.

Related: Identifying Hidden Market Opportunities for Innovation through JTBD

2- Develop new ideas

In business ideas , fresh ideas are akin to vital sustenance, fueling the growth desired by every manager. Idea generation acts as the propulsion for continuous innovation , propelling your business forward by introducing ingenious approaches to age-old challenges and identifying novel problems that warrant your attention.

3- Refine old ideas

Challenge the status quo by subjecting your entrenched notions to deliberate scrutiny. Cultivate an environment where individuals feel secure in questioning conventional problem-solving paradigms. This safe space fosters the evolution of existing ideas, refining them into more potent solutions.

4- Update current practices

In the perpetual pursuit of progress, new ideas serve as catalysts for rejuvenating and modernizing your current operational methodologies. Not every new idea needs to come as a bolt from the blue; sometimes, the simple act of revitalizing existing practices can breathe new life into your endeavors.

Idea Generation Techniques

Numerous effective Idea Generation strategies come highly recommended. To embark on these strategies, allocate dedicated space and gather essential record-keeping supplies: whether it’s a whiteboard and markers, butcher paper, or alternative tools for capturing the journey from initial thoughts to the eventual output.

Approaching idea generation demands a novel perspective, treated with the same vigour as any other challenge your business encounters. Just as you address your business problems, the pursuit of innovative ideas requires a proactive stance, met with enthusiasm and an absence of ego. As a leader, your paramount duty lies in crafting an environment that fosters unrestrained inventiveness among your team members. This liberating space becomes the crucible for unbridled creativity.

1- Brainstorming

Brainstorming , a method for generating ideas, was initially conceived by Alex Osborn and subsequently refined by Charles Hutchison Clark . The core objective of brainstorming is to stimulate the creation of fresh and unconventional concepts within a collective of individuals.

Drawing inspiration from the Indian technique Prai-Barshana, which has a legacy spanning approximately 400 years, Alex Osborn crafted the brainstorming methodology. The term “ brainstorming ” was coined to encapsulate the essence of this approach, which revolves around the notion of using collective mental prowess to tackle problems.

The concept of Brainstorming receives further exploration in “Accidental Genius,” a book authored by Mark Levy. This book extensively highlights the efficacy of freewriting as a mechanism to birth novel ideas and liberate oneself from the constraints of old notions.

Brainstorming , while demanding resources, stands as an endeavour rich in potential. Gathering ample materials for recording the ideas generated within your team or focus groups is essential, albeit the investment is modest. Embracing a low-tech approach tends to yield optimal results in brainstorming sessions. Assemble your team, pose a question, and commence the process of documenting every thought that emerges.

Our strong recommendation is to employ Brainstorming when contemplating the distinctive qualities that set your company apart from its peers.

2- Creative Thinking

Generating ideas, particularly innovative ideas, necessitates a dose of creativity, which can be nurtured through specific creativity techniques like the SCAMPER method. This creative process operates within the realms of individuals, products, processes, and environments. In essence, creativity involves the orchestration of ingenious individuals who conceive exceptional ideas and novel products through a creative journey within an innovative setting.

Guided by these influencing factors, creativity processes serve as pillars supporting the exploration of ideas, the art of problem-solving , and the critical evaluation and selection of concepts. These processes are fueled by defined rules, the collective wisdom of groups, and a structured creative approach, including techniques like SCAMPER . Workshops are structured around creativity-enhancing idea generation techniques , meticulously navigating through individual steps. The SCAMPER technique , encompassing Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse, provides a structured framework to encourage innovative thinking. By systematically applying these prompts to existing ideas or concepts, individuals can uncover new possibilities, unexpected connections, and novel solutions. SCAMPER offers a methodical approach to embracing creativity within a defined structure.

But what exactly is the face of creative thinking, and doesn’t formal scheduling seemingly oppose our customary understanding of the creative process?

Indeed, one cannot simply mark “Be Innovative” in the datebook and anticipate a surge of inspiration. Yet, we possess the capacity to carve out space for diverse ideas by integrating incentives and avenues for creativity into our organizational fabric. A delightful strategy to ignite innovation within your team is to launch an “ Idea Challenge .” Internally promote a competition that seeks the most inventive solution to a shared issue or a challenge unique to your company, leveraging techniques like SCAMPER .

Allow the entire workforce to cast their votes, maintaining anonymity, and offer a compelling prize. Witness the ripple effect as the newfound zeal for innovative ideas, fostered by methods such as SCAMPER, cascades across your business solutions, fueled by the flexibility and fervor instilled through such initiatives.

3- Design Thinking

Design thinking presents itself as a dynamic approach to problem-solving and ideation, orchestrated through the interplay of four pivotal elements:

• Focusing on Customer Centricity : Placing the user at the epicentre, design thinking commences by delving into the user’s needs, experiences, and aspirations. This human-centric perspective lays the foundation for the entire process.
• Interdisciplinary Collaboration: The essence of design thinking thrives within a collaborative arena, where experts from diverse disciplines converge. This interdisciplinary amalgamation infuses multifaceted viewpoints, enriching the ideation process.
• Iterative Evolution: A hallmark of design thinking is its iterative nature. The process unfolds through cycles of exploration, iteration, and refinement, fostering the evolution of ideas and concepts in response to feedback and insights.
• Fostering Creativity: A creative environment serves as the breeding ground for design thinking. It nurtures a space where unbridled creativity flourishes, igniting the generation of innovative solutions.

In the design thinking process , the journey commences by unraveling the user’s requirements through an iterative process, leading to the crystallization of a guiding question. This lays the groundwork for the subsequent phase: the generation of inventive solutions and ideas. Techniques such as brainstorming and mind mapping are harnessed to foster these creative solutions . Visualizing concepts through prototypes becomes the conduit for soliciting user feedback, serving as a bridge between ideation and real-world implementation.

Depending on the feedback, process steps are repeated or a successful idea is implemented. Certain rules and an environment that promotes creativity are recommended for the workshops.

There exist specific rules within the Design Thinking process that we strongly recommend adhering to:

• Avoid Criticism and encourage a problem-solving approach.: Rather than critiquing, focus on offering solutions to challenges.
• Visualize via Mind Maps and Prototypes: Translate creative solutions into tangible forms through mind maps and prototypes.
• Champion Diverse Concepts through Brainstorming ideas: Safeguard and foster a variety of ideas via brainstorming sessions.
• Cultivate a Positive Mood and Mindset: Maintain a positive atmosphere and mindset throughout the ideation process.
• Embrace Quantity Over Quality: Prioritize generating a multitude of ideas over perfecting a few.
• Engage All Participants: Ensure the involvement of all participants in the creative journey.
• When conducting workshops, several key factors contribute to success: Choose a well-lit, spacious room equipped with whiteboards, flip charts, and an assortment of vibrant Post-it notes and markers. Employ materials like Lego or plasticine to craft small prototypes, aiding in idea visualization and refinement.

4- Complex Opportunity Recognition Techniques

Opportunity Recognition describes the identification of opportunities to generate growth for companies. The different idea generation techniques of opportunity recognition are based either on the market, the company, or the company’s environment.

In order for this approach to be suitable for young companies, it must meet the following requirements:

• Not too resource-intensive
• Suitable for workshops
• High growth potential
• Don’t require existing structures or a certain age of the company

Approaches that meet these criteria include the product trend approach, innovation mapping, and the business model innovation approach, which Digital Leadership will introduce below. Techniques for Recognizing Complex Opportunities

5- Techniques for Recognizing Complex Opportunities

Opportunity Recognition refers to the identification of growth-generating prospects for businesses. Various techniques for idea generation in opportunity recognition are grounded in market dynamics, organizational factors, and the business environment.

To be viable for nascent enterprises, this approach should satisfy the following prerequisites:

• Moderate Resource Requirements: Avoid excessive demands on resources.
• Workshop Compatibility: Capable of integration into workshop settings.
• High Growth Potential: Exhibiting promising growth prospects.
• Independence from Pre-existing Structures: Not reliant on pre-existing frameworks or company maturity.

Strategies aligning with these criteria encompass the product trend approach, innovation mapping, and business model innovation approach. Digital Leadership will delve into the details of these methodologies below.

A) Product Trend Approach

The product trend approach describes opportunities that arise from global trends. This idea-generation approach must fulfil several criteria in order to be sufficiently relevant.

The trend must be present in several areas of an individual’s life and must influence both private and professional life situations. It must have a strong influence on individuals, serve different market segments, and last several months to years.

Once this trend has been identified, companies can add features and attributes derived from the trend to their products, combine the products with trend products, or weaken negative features of the product from the trend point of view.

This approach to generating ideas can be interesting to start-ups and young companies as the resource expenditure is low and established companies often pick up on trends too slowly or not at all.

B) Innovation Mapping

Innovation mapping involves embracing opportunities within market segments that may seem unattractive to certain entities. This idea-generation method draws inspiration from the principles of disruptive innovations.

Disruptive innovations reduce the products to their basic features and functions.

There are three main points where these opportunities can be identified when looking at:

• Currently Non-Customers: Exploring individuals or groups who are not presently engaging with the market.
• Currently Not Relevant Customers : Addressing customers who are not being adequately served by current offerings.
• Unmet Customer Needs: Tackling products that customers desire but lack a viable solution for.

Innovation mapping serves as a conduit for establishing novel markets. Consequently, it holds significant relevance for startup enterprises, given the inherently robust growth potential inherent in generating ideas through an innovation mapping process.

Within established companies, this approach often necessitates a shift in values and a fundamental comprehension of distinct market segments. Among various idea-generation techniques, innovation mapping tends to be relatively resource-intensive.

However, for startups, the need for such a paradigm shift and the corresponding resource allocation is minimal. This approach boasts substantial growth potential due to its capacity to birth entirely new markets.

C) Business Model Innovation

The business model innovation approach engenders opportunities by channelling existing products to either new or established customers through a redefined customer benefit. This transformation could encompass new value propositions, novel revenue models, or innovative value creation mechanisms.

The Unite business model innovation patterns assume a crucial role in recognizing complex opportunities by promoting the fusion of varied components and stakeholders. This approach cultivates synergies, all-encompassing issue resolution, and distinctiveness, resulting in market upheaval and the establishment of innovation ecosystems. You can download it now.

Your download is now available!

You can now access the complete Business Model Innovation Patterns Package, including a full presentation, related models and instructions for use.

The UNITE Business Model Innovation Patterns

Enhancing customer value can be achieved through various avenues, including:

• Transitioning products into services (e.g., offering flying lessons in lieu of aircraft purchase)
• Introducing leasing or rental options instead of outright purchases (e.g., tool rentals)
• Establishing performance-based dependencies (e.g., performance-driven consulting)
• Offering freemium models (providing a free basic service alongside premium paid offerings)

This approach holds substantial promise for startups as it revolves around a fundamental overhaul of the entire business model. Implementation requires relatively modest resource allocation, making it an appealing avenue for newer enterprises with agility at their core.

With this approach, new markets are conquered and new customers can be acquired. This approach basically pre-supposes an existing product.

This is also interesting for company start-ups as the change of the complete business model is the main focus and the implementation is relatively low in resources.

5-Reverse Thinking

Reverse thinking presents a distinctive approach to invigorate a team grappling with stagnation or seeking a shift in perspective. It offers an element of amusement, to a certain extent, as it turns the conventional understanding of the world, as well as the team’s objectives, on its head.

In a collaborative setting, the team outlines its ultimate objective and then engages in brainstorming sessions to devise strategies for achieving the exact opposite.

While this might appear counterintuitive, the efficacy lies in its ability to jolt the team out of entrenched viewpoints. This reversal of approach often unearths unconventional ideas by approaching the goal from an entirely divergent angle.

These newly surfaced ideas can subsequently be explored to formulate actionable strategies aligned with the real goal.

6- Role Playing

If your team possesses a flair for the dramatic, role-playing can emerge as a remarkably effective brainstorming technique. In this scenario, your team is tasked with immersing themselves in the personas of target groups. These could range from potential customers to current users of your services, or even individuals interacting with your social media platforms—essentially, any group you aspire to engage.

The crux of this technique involves generating feedback from the perspective of these specific personas. To effectively execute this idea generation experiment , a profound understanding of the concerns and requirements of the target group is imperative.

Depending on your company’s needs, you might discover individuals within your organization who already align with these groups. This presents an invaluable opportunity to welcome fresh voices into your product development framework, voices that might not typically be prominently heard.

7- Forced Relationships

An alternate approach that injects an element of enjoyment into the quest for new ideas , particularly in the realm of product development, involves your team engaging in brainstorming sessions where they meld two seemingly unrelated items or concepts into a forced relationship.

For instance, consider the imaginative amalgamation of a microwave with a touchscreen, a remote control unit with a teddy bear, or even a botanical information library with a photo-sharing website.

The deliberate coupling of disparate elements stimulates creative innovative thinking and unlocks the realm of potential for creating innovative products.

Moreover, this technique holds the capacity to infuse an air of levity into your team’s dynamic. Encourage them to conjure truly whimsical, Seussian amalgamations—a tactic that can effectively unravel creative barriers and set imaginations free.

8- Storyboarding

What constitutes an ideal engagement with a potential client?

In the realm of storyboarding, teams draw inspiration from the realm of movie production, meticulously sketching out the progression of a scene. Through this approach, the team proactively anticipates potential hurdles and crafts well-rounded responses to customer inquiries, along with solutions to their problems.

Crucially, the focus isn’t on achieving the artistic prowess of professionals. Rather, it lies in crafting the storyboard and translating the visualization onto paper. Even stick figures can aptly serve this purpose if necessary.

Storyboarding fosters a proactive approach that aligns teams for successful interactions, equipping them with the tools needed to navigate customer queries and challenges.

Idea Generation Process

Initiating the Idea Generation Process necessitates resource allocation. While valuable ideas can manifest unexpectedly and should be embraced whenever they arise, creative thinking predominantly emerges from systematic groundwork and structure.

Leaders and decision-makers hold the responsibility of cultivating an environment conducive to idea generation and equipping teams with essential tools. A pivotal aspect involves carving out intentional space for specific generative processes, coupled with an open mindset that welcomes the exploration of optimal solutions whenever opportunities arise. This process revolves around humility, devoid of ego, with the primary objective being the unveiling of the next groundbreaking idea, regardless of its origin.

The idea-generation process is a systematic approach to creating new and innovative concepts, solutions, or possibilities. It involves various techniques and stages that encourage creative thinking and the exploration of novel ideas. Here is a general outline of the idea-generation process :

Emerging companies, particularly startups, seek innovative idea generation techniques that marry high growth potential with minimal key resource demands . Approaches rooted in opportunity recognition offer a promising avenue for sourcing and nurturing ideas driving company growth. However, any structured idea generation process has the potential to fuel organizational expansion.As expounded by Digital Leadership in this article, workshops stand out as an effective method to generate a multitude of ideas within a concise timeframe and with limited resources.

Workshops serve as a platform for participants to collectively explore diverse perspectives, experiment with varied idea generation techniques, and contribute their individual insights, thereby enhancing their grasp of the innovation process . The facilitator of the workshop should possess a clear grasp of the chosen idea generation technique, the ultimate goal, and the means to accurately account for the intellectual contributions of participants.

Ultimately, orchestrating collaborative sessions that unite minds from diverse departments, fostering brainstorming and mind mapping, while deeply involving them in idea management and idea generation process , not only fortifies your team but also yields creatively transformative innovations that often transcend solitary efforts.

Frequently Asked Questions

1- which idea generation method involves keeping ideas in sight and well-organized.

Mind Mapping is an idea generation method that involves keeping ideas in sight and well-organized. It visually represents ideas in a structured manner, allowing for connections and relationships between concepts to be easily understood.

2- How did Francesco Redi disprove the idea of spontaneous generation?

Francesco Redi, an Italian scientist, conducted an experiment in the 17th century to disprove the idea of spontaneous generation. He conducted an experiment involving jars of meat, some covered and some uncovered. The meat in the uncovered jars decayed, while the covered ones remained unaffected. This experiment demonstrated that life did not arise spontaneously from non-living matter, challenging the prevailing belief of spontaneous generation.

3- What is an example of idea generation?

An example of idea generation is brainstorming sessions where a group of individuals collaboratively generates a wide range of potential solutions or concepts for a specific challenge or opportunity.

4- What are the five sources of idea generation?

The five sources of idea generation are:

• Internal Sources : Ideas generated from within the organization.
• External Sources : Ideas obtained from customers, competitors, and other external entities.
• Collaborative Sources: Ideas emerging from partnerships, collaborations, or joint ventures.
• Market and Industry Trends : Ideas inspired by evolving market trends and industry developments.
• Research and Innovation : Ideas arising from research, technological advancements, and innovative breakthroughs.

5- What are the 4 types of idea development?

The four types of idea development include:

• Extending: Enhancing existing ideas by adding new features or elements.
• Complementing: Introducing related ideas to amplify the value of an existing concept.
• Modifying : Altering existing ideas to better suit specific requirements.
• Creating : Generating entirely new concepts from scratch.

6- What are the levels of ideas?

Ideas can be categorized into three levels:

• Core Ideas : Fundamental concepts forming the essence of innovation.
• Adjacent Ideas : Variations or enhancements of core ideas.
• Transformational Ideas : Radical departures from existing concepts, leading to groundbreaking innovations.

7- What does SCAMPER mean in creative thinking?

SCAMPER is a mnemonic device and a creative thinking technique that provides a structured framework for generating innovative ideas and solutions. Each letter in the word “ SCAMPER ” represents a different prompt that encourages you to approach an existing idea, product, or concept from various angles to uncover new possibilities. Here’s what each letter in SCAMPER stands for:

• S – Substitute : Replace or substitute components, materials, or elements of the idea with alternatives.
• C – Combine: Combine different aspects of the idea with each other or external concepts to create new synergies.
• A – Adapt : Modify the idea to fit a different context or purpose, expanding its potential applications.
• M – Modify/Magnify : Adjust specific attributes of the idea, such as size, shape, or colour, and consider magnifying certain aspects.
• P – Put to Another Use: Repurpose the idea for a different context or audience to discover new applications.
• E – Eliminate/Elongate: Identify elements that can be eliminated without sacrificing core functionality, or elongate aspects for added benefits.
• R – Reverse/Rearrange: Reverse steps or rearrange components to gain fresh insights and perspectives. Using the SCAMPER prompts can help you explore an idea thoroughly, stimulate creative thinking, and generate innovative solutions by encouraging you to consider different angles and possibilities.

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How to Use Journey Maps for Ideation

15 Minute Read

When do you use journey maps?

Journey maps are a great way to externalize and communicate the user's behavior and underlying motivation, and as a tool to humanize them. Journey maps help create empathy in teams to ideate against.

A journey map is useful at many stages during the design process to illustrate complicated ideas and processes in a simple, visual way.

• During research, a journey map can be created to represent the existing user experience and identify gaps, unnecessary complexity, and opportunities to simplify.
• During solution definition, a journey map can be a great way to illustrate the new and improved end-to-end experience.

What do you include on a journey map?

Character, setting, and plot.

When creating a journey map, start with information about the persona or user type you are putting through the journey, as well as a scenario to create context.

A good scenario for a journey map occurs over a period of time and includes:

• A realistic setting for people when they're engaging with your product/service.
• A situation that includes multiple touch points with people and technology relating to your product/service.
• A storytelling arc to either highlight a problem or showcase a solution.

Some questions your scenario should answer:

• How does it start?
• What's the rising action?
• What's the peak moment?
• What's the conflict?
• How does it resolve?

Head, Heart, Hand

For each step along the way in the scenario, consider vividly how your persona would respond. Incorporate the information gained from user research during this exercise, using even direct quotes and observations that fit the persona type you are mapping out.

The emphasis along the way should be focused on the human experience rather than the technology.

• Head : What are they thinking?
• Heart : How are they feeling?
• Hand : What are they doing?

Through this, we are representing the interconnectivity between a persons actions, thoughts, and external factors. Our information is making the leap to becoming applied knowledge.

Insights & Recommendations

Summarize the highs and lows in the persona's experience, potentially even probing at why you think they occurred. Offer insights and recommendations to make this summary actionable and thought provoking.

How much detail should a journey map have?

As the designer and person telling the user's story, it's up to you how much you want to zoom in or out. What's the ideal amount of detail needed for the goals of your project? You can choose to zoom in and be very focused and nuanced on this person's experience, or zoom out to provide high level context.

How do you use a journey map?

Now that you've created a journey map, don't let it collect dust in a repository somewhere. Print it out, and hang it up. Pin them in your slack channel. Keep them accessible for reference on a page in your design file.

Using research artifacts like Journey Maps are often a big sticking point for teams. Here are some exercises to get you unstuck:

Exercise 1: Opportunities to go after

Focus in on a high point in the journey map (or across several journey maps) and ask:

• How could we bring it higher in the experience?
• How might we bring it forward in the experience?

Exercise 02: Problems to solve for

Focus in on a low point in the journey map (or across several journey maps) and ask:

• How could it have been avoided altogether?
• How might we help them recover, faster?

Exercise 03: Greatest gifts & threats

Reflect on the journey maps and ask the team to create hypotheses that resolve the following questions:

• What would be the greatest gift to this persona during this experience? Then ideate around ways to give them those gifts.
• What is the greatest threat to this persona's experience? Then ideate around ways to keep this threat at bay.

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Journey vs destination: how to stay present.

• March 10, 2020
• Kendra Sand
• Social Science

Written by Tianna Zachariah

When I think of  journey , I immediately think of  destination . Think about it. Whenever a friend tells you they’re going on a vacation, a trip, or a journey of any kind, what’s the first question you ask? “Amazing! Where are you going ?” Then they usually respond with a destination. Hawaii, California, the mountains, maybe even Target. This also applies to other areas of our lives, from education to work, relationship status to self-help goals. Learn the difference between journey vs destination and ideas for how to stay present at any stage of the process.

So, how do we define and understand the relationship between journey vs destination? Which is more important? Which comes first? How can we enjoy and experience both at the same time? And, can we be more present and engaged in the now along the way?

If you think about any good story , we relate to it and we enjoy it because there is an end goal. There is always something clear that is needed or wanted. But if you look closely at those good stories, the destination is usually only one page or one chapter long, sometimes even one sentence. The juice of the story is in the quest. It’s in the journey. It’s the in-between stages that pave the road from where we are to where we want to be. 

Journey vs Destination: Don’t Overlook the Process

As great, important, and necessary as the destination is, I think too many times we get so caught up in where we want to end up that we completely overlook the process that gets us there. We want so badly to just be there that we forget about what it feels like to be here. Even though it’s so important where we want to go, it’s the journey that makes our stories great. It’s the process that prepares us in all the right ways for the vision that we see clearly at the beginning of every great venture. 

Also, when we are hyper-focused on the destination that can enable a rigid mentality within us. Sometimes as we go along a journey, the destination might change.

If we’re so focused on the destination we have in our minds, we don’t allow ourselves the flexibility and the openness to accept necessary detours that might, in the end, alter our destination.

I’ve heard it said that the journey is the destination. If that’s true, there could be nothing more in our favor than to hold this journey that we’re on with open hands—not only allowing changes that we didn’t expect but sometimes inviting them in. 

The Journey: How to Stay Present

Let’s explore this idea of the journey I’ve created a few challenges that remind us to stay present. These are things you can do every day to cultivate a little more presence on the journey you find yourself on.

1. Slow Down, On Purpose

We live in a time where we are constantly encouraged and admired when we struggle, strive, and live a busy life. But going from back-to-back activities without taking the time to breathe and relish in the moments, we are not allowing ourselves to live life. I truly believe that when we don’t take our time, we end up showing up for our commitments and our people at less than 100 percent. Since we live in a culture that glorifies exhaustion, it’s uncomfortable when we take things slow.

When we take our time, we feel like we’re doing something wrong, or we feel guilty because there is always so much to do. If there is time, we will find ways to fill it up. But what if we didn’t? How different would our world and personal lives look if we simply sat in the discomfort of leisure?

Right now, the world could use more people that slow down, on purpose. Stand in the long line at the grocery store, ride in the slow lane, walk to a favorite spot on the weekends. 

Do the things that force you into the pace that demands you be here, wherever here is. 

2. Recognize That You’re Living the Good Old Days, Right Now 

If we took some time to think, we all could come up with a moment in our lives that we look back on and remember with joy, even though at the time, it was a hard situation. We’re able to look back and realize the contribution it made to our now and see it as something we wouldn’t want to miss. We look back and see them as the good old days. But these don’t have to be the good old days someday, they can be the good old days today. 

We can choose to see hard situations as necessary grooves in the concrete that pave the road to our desired destinations. 

Alternatively, we can choose to truly enjoy the good days when they are upon us. 

3. Pack Light

A long journey requires endurance. Endurance demands lightness. We all know the textbook over-packer. Maybe that person is you. It’s important to remember that on any journey, you will have what you need when you need it. 

We cannot control everything, and we cannot prepare for things that are way out of our reach or the steps ahead on our timeline. Each step of the journey will change us, and in order for us to adapt to the changes well, we need to pack light—meaning that we can’t take everything with us on every journey. 

We must take only what we need right now and trust that what we need will be given to us the moment it’s needed. This demands that we stay present to what each step of the journey requires from us. 

If it’s something we must provide, we should give it willingly, and if it’s something that is gifted to us for the next step, we must receive it fully. In order to receive a gift well, we need to have the capacity to hold it, which means that we must not bring everything with us—only the essentials.

Get Curious 

The relationship between the journey and the destination is one that we must get curious about. Teju Ravilochan, in his talk titled “What Love Can Teach Us About Tackling the Impossible,”  shares this story about a mathematician that changed history. He tells about the destination and the three-year journey that led this man to his legacy-leaving destination. Teju mentions that this man had passion. Passion is Latin and it means suffering .

The journeys that we find ourselves on are often driven by passion. They are sometimes laborious and cause us unbearable suffering. 

I think that’s why so many times we choose to focus solely on the destination. In our dreams, the destination is not painful. Rather, it’s where we arrive once we’ve been through the pain. 

But, the three years that this man spent laboring and working and fighting for his goal, was just as important if not more important than the one day of glory that he lived, because it instilled in him a love of the journey. It created in him a joy of the process. And, if we choose to look at our journey’s this way, it can do the same for us.

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2.1 Overview of the Entrepreneurial Journey

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the entrepreneurial journey to explore and discover entrepreneurship as a career choice
• Identify the steps, decisions, and actions involved in the entrepreneurial journey
• Recognize the rewards and risks of the steps in the entrepreneurial journey

Self-Employment as an Entrepreneurial Journey

When the economy and the job market are strong, the entrepreneur has a safety net that decreases the risks in creating a new venture , a startup company or organization that conducts business or is created to satisfy a need, and allows for a quick recovery if the venture is not successful. There are more new startups when there are high levels of confidence in both the venture’s success and the entrepreneur’s confidence in finding employment if the venture fails. People over 40 years of age account for most new startup activity, in part because of the continuing trend in which a business may choose not to hire an employee but instead hire an independent contractor , a person who provides work similar to an employee without being part of the payroll for the contracting business, and who is responsible for paying their own taxes and providing their own benefits. With previous knowledge and expertise, this group of entrepreneurs recognizes opportunities created by this move away from hiring full-time employees to more outsourcing to independent contractors. One contributor is the gig economy , which involves using temporary and often transitional positions hired on a case-by-case basis, rather than keeping a full staff of hired employees. Advantages for the employer include a decrease in cost of benefits and loyalties to specific employees. Advantages for the hired worker or independent contractor (sometimes called a freelancer ) include no long-term commitment and flexibility in accepting contracts. From an entrepreneurial perspective, the creation of websites that support the gig economy offers opportunities for independent ventures. Many people today are becoming small entrepreneurs. This process goes by a variety of names, such as the sharing economy , the gig economy, the peer economy , or the collaborative economy . Maybe it means driving for a company such as Lyft , Uber , or GrubHub , or perhaps offering services through TaskRabbit , UpWork , or LivePerson . The projected numbers of independent contractors and on-demand workers are stated as 42 percent for small businesses by the year 2020, a growth of 8 percent from current figures. 1 And a projection of greater than 50 percent of the workforce will be independent contractors by 2027 if this trend continues at the current pace. 2 In the “Freelancing in America: 2019” report, the sixth annual study by UpWork and Freelancers Union, 57 million United States citizens are estimated to freelance, with income approaching 5 percent of US gross domestic product (GDP) at nearly $1 trillion and earning a median rate of $28.00 an hour, representing an hourly income greater than 70 percent of workers in the overall US economy. 3 One report found that 94 percent of net job growth from 2005 to 2015 was in alternative work categories, with 60 percent due to independent contractors and contract company workers. 4

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of self-employed Americans is growing, with 9.6 million self-employed people at the end of 2016. That number is expected to grow to 10.3 million by 2026. 5 A more recent study by FreshBooks’ second annual “Self-Employment” report predicts that 27 million US employees will leave traditional work in favor of self-employment by 2020, tripling the current population of full-time self-employed professionals to 42 million. The main driver for this change in the workforce is a greater desire for control over one’s career with the ability to have greater control over working hours and acceptance of work. 6 , 7 Of course, self-employment is a broad category that includes small-business owners as well as entrepreneurial startups and freelance gig employees. Since 2016, there has been a downward slide in the number of employees working for self-employed businesses, which results from a variety of factors, including difficulties in finding qualified employees, qualified employees having more employment options, such as employment through the gig economy, outsourcing activities, and technology actions that decrease the need for employees, with entrepreneurial activity remaining steady. 8

Entrepreneurship around the World

In a 2017 Business Insider article, “America Needs Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” David Jolley writes that immigrants constitute 15 percent of the US workforce and 25 percent of the country’s workforce of entrepreneurs. 9 Forty percent of startups include at least one immigrant. Jolley’s article cites a study that identified immigrants as twice as likely to start a business as people born in the United States. In 2016, 40.2 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by at least one immigrant or a child of immigrant parents. Dinah Brin, writing for Forbes , stated in a 2018 article that immigrants form 25 percent of new US businesses and that new immigrant-owned firms generated 4 to 5 million jobs. 10

These statistics and other findings have prompted countries such as Canada to revise their immigration policies to attract more entrepreneurial-minded immigrants. A World Bank report from May 2018 ranked the United States 53rd out of 190 countries for ease in starting a business, with higher scores representing greater ease. 11 The same report ranks the United States eighth for ease of doing business. The difference in these rankings indicates that once a business is established, factors such as regulations, permits, access to credit, and infrastructure support the business owner’s ability to continue the business, but actually starting the business is more challenging. For any given country, ease in starting a business and the country’s interest in supporting entrepreneurial activity are crucial in both attracting entrepreneurial people and supporting their ability to open a business. Imposing restrictive regulations and processes on new ventures significantly decreases the number of new ventures.

According to a 2018/2019 report, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity worldwide in 2018 was in Angola at 41 percent. 12 Angola’s low-income economy meant fewer employment opportunities, creating pressures to find other ways to earn an income. Guatemala and Chile reported 28 percent and 25 percent of entrepreneurial activity, respectively, with medium- and high-income economies. These percentages are quite high, considering that these economies offer employment opportunities in existing companies. In terms of innovation, India at 47 percent, and Luxembourg and Chile at 48 percent each, take the lead in offering new products and services not previously available. This entrepreneurial activity reflects the ease of starting a business. The Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden were reported as the easiest countries in which to start a new business, in part because many people in those countries view entrepreneurship as an attractive lifestyle. As you can see, both economic opportunities and a country’s specific support for entrepreneurial behavior contribute to the number of people who enter entrepreneurial activities.

From a gender perspective, there are currently over 11 million woman-owned businesses in the United States. This number includes both small business owners and entrepreneurs. Thirty years ago, there were only 4 million woman-owned businesses. 13 The number of woman-owned businesses has increased 45 percent between 2007 and 2016, five times faster than the national average, with 78 percent of new women-owned businesses started by women of color.

Starting Your Entrepreneurial Journey

How do you fit into this entrepreneurial journey? This chapter will help you to explore and discover your potential for entrepreneurship as a career choice. Think of this exploration and discovery experience as a way to map out a strategy to reach your goals or dreams. Let’s imagine that your dream vacation is a hiking trip to Glacier National Park in the US state of Montana. Just as hikers have different levels of experience, so do entrepreneurs. Just as your plan for a wilderness hike would involve many stages, your entrepreneurial journey involves multiple levels of self-discovery, exploration, experiences, and accomplishments on your way to success. For our purposes, the term entrepreneurial venture means any type of new business, organization, project, or operation of interest that includes a level of risk in acting on an opportunity that has not previously been established. For each story of entrepreneurial success that is shared—such as that of Facebook or Airbnb—there are even more lesser-known entrepreneurial success stories such as Zipline , a company that delivers medical supplies in Rwanda and Ghana by drone. These entrepreneurs faced the same dilemmas in pursuing their passion, or opportunities, which led them to their entrepreneurial destiny. They courageously stepped out of their comfort zones to explore the possibilities that lie ahead. What is the difference between entrepreneurs and you? The main difference is taking that first step. Many people have ideas that fit into the definition of an entrepreneurial idea but never take that first step. Just as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu suggests, every journey begins with a single step.

Are You Ready?

Taking the first step.

Go to Fire Nation’s website on taking the first step to learn more. Changing your mindset (your perception of yourself and your life situation) and encountering trigger events (significant external situations) can nudge you into taking the first step toward being an entrepreneur.

• Is there a venture you’ve always thought you should start but never did?
• Think about what factors are stopping you. Consider your mindset and how you might change your mindset so that your venture could become a reality.
• What are some possible trigger events that could make the difference between starting your venture and waiting to start your venture?

Opening your future to the possibility of starting your own venture brings new and exciting experiences ( Figure 2.2 ). Every entrepreneur moves through several steps in considering the entrepreneurial journey. Once you understand this journey, the steps will help you define your path toward creating and starting your new venture. Each step of this process offers another level of understanding that prepares you for long-term success. How will you achieve this success? By taking one step at a time, exploring and learning, considering new ideas and expectations, and applying these experiences to achieve your personal outcome. Think of the entrepreneurial journey as a guide to knowing what is in store for you as you start your new venture.

One benefit of outlining a step-by-step process is the opportunity to explore different paths or behaviors that may lead to an entrepreneurial venture. Think again of your dream visit to Glacier National Park. How would you get there? What equipment would you need? What kinds of experiences would you expect to have? Think of the Glacier National Park journey as your entrepreneurial journey, a metaphor intended to help you as you create your career as an entrepreneur.

What makes someone ready or willing to choose entrepreneurship over becoming an employee of an established business or a small business owner? It takes confidence, courage, determination, resilience, and some know-how to select entrepreneurship as a career as well as the recognition of the opportunity. An entrepreneur is defined as someone who not only recognizes an opportunity but who also is willing to act on that opportunity. Both actions are required. We might identify an opportunity, but many people do not act on the idea. Confidence, courage, and willingness are necessary to take that first step, as well as remembering the following:

• You are unique. Even if two similar people attempted to launch identical ventures, the results would likely not be the same. This is because each one of us has different ideas, approaches, available resources, and comfort levels, all of which influence the venture’s development and eventual success.
• Although there are no hard and fast rules or theories of the best way to launch into entrepreneurship, we can gain wisdom from the lessons learned by experienced entrepreneurs.
• Selecting an entrepreneurial career requires honesty, reflection, and a tendency to be action oriented. You will need to recognize your own strengths, limitations, and commitment as part of that honesty. Reflection is required for self-growth—seeking improvements in your own skills, interactions, and decision making—and commitment is required to maintain consistency in your willingness to make the new venture a top priority in your life. You will also need to understand that you cannot accomplish everything by yourself, and you may need to ask for help. It helps to be curious, open, and able to take calculated risks and to be resourceful and resilient when faced with challenges or obstacles.

Entrepreneurial Potential Self-Assessment

Take this quick Entrepreneurial Potential Self-Assessment to assess your potential to become an entrepreneur. After completing this self-assessment, what new information did you learn about yourself? Do you think your answers will change as you acquire more life experiences and education? Why or why not?

Optimizing Interest Areas

What are three areas that interest you? These could be hobbies, work activities, or entertainment activities. How would someone else describe your skills and interests, or what you are known for? Answering these questions provides insights into your strengths and interests. Next, what is one area that you are passionate about? What strengths could you bring to this passion to build your own business?

Keep an open mind in looking for an opportunity that fits your strengths and interests. If you decide to explore entrepreneurship, what would be your first step? What are your initial thoughts about being an entrepreneur? What would you review or search to find more information on your idea or area of interest? With whom would you first question or discuss this idea? Why?

The Entrepreneurial Journey as a Trip

The entrepreneurial journey is your exploration to discover if entrepreneurship is right for you. Every entrepreneurial journey is unique; no two individuals will experience it in the same way. Along the way, you will find opportunities and risks coupled with challenges and rewards. It’s useful to think about the entrepreneurial journey as an exciting trip or other adventure. Most of the preparations and steps involved with planning a trip are like those for starting a venture. Just as you would plan and prepare for a trip—starting with inspiration and leading up to finally traveling on the trip—you might follow similar steps to launch a venture. And just as you would prepare for any challenges that you might encounter on a trip—bad weather, lost luggage, or detours—so you should consider potential obstacles or barriers along your entrepreneurial journey ( Figure 2.3 ). Think of these difficulties as opportunities to learn more about the entrepreneurial process—and about yourself and how you manage challenges.

Developing a venture can be an exciting and active experience. It is also a lot of hard work, which can be equally rewarding and enjoyable. Here we present the entrepreneurial journey as seven specific steps, or experiences, which you will encounter along the road to becoming an entrepreneur. You’ll find more information about the entrepreneurial journey in other chapters in this book.

• Step 1: Inspiration – What is your motivation for becoming an entrepreneur?
• Step 2: Preparation – Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?
• Step 3: Assessment – What is the idea you plan to offer through your venture?
• Step 4: Exploring Resources – What resources and characteristics do you need to make this venture work?
• Step 5: Business Plan – What type of business structure and business model will your venture have?
• Step 6: Navigation – In what direction will you take your venture? Where will you go for guidance?
• Step 7: Launch – When and how will you launch your venture?

As you work through each step of the entrepreneurial journey you should prepare for significant aspects of this experience. You will meet with rewards and challenges, the consequences that result from the decisions made at various points along your journey. To visualize the steps of the entrepreneurial journey, imagine your possible hiking trip to Glacier National Park ( Table 2.1 ). Just as hikers have different levels of experience, so do entrepreneurs. Compare the following aspects of preparing for a hike with aspects of your entrepreneurial journey.

Step 1: Inspiration

When you think of being an entrepreneur, what is the inspiration for your venture? Just as you might have an inspiration for a hiking trip to Glacier National Park, you will have an inspiration behind the decision to become an entrepreneur. When you’re planning a trip to a new and exciting place, one thing you might do is to imagine what you will experience along the journey and on arriving at your destination ( Figure 2.4 ). This portion of the entrepreneurial journey includes imagining yourself as an entrepreneur or as part of an entrepreneurial team. For this stage, you need a creative, open, and innovative state of mind, also known as an entrepreneurial mindset , which is discussed in more detail in The Entrepreneurial Mindset and Creativity, Innovation, and Invention . Dream big about your potential future and opportunities ( Figure 2.5 ).

Step 2: Preparation

Just as when you are preparing for a trip, you need a plan ( Figure 2.6 ) to move forward on your entrepreneurial journey. Before your dream hiking trip, you might gather information about Glacier National Park from a trusted source, such as a good friend with travel experience, or you might conduct online research. Your friend’s feedback could be just the motivation you need to try this experience yourself. Or you might use your research to determine if the trip is possible. You will need to look at maps, either online or on paper. Either way, you might also consider travel and accommodation options, such as booking a flight and finding a place to stay. You might want to create benchmarks to align your journey with your available resources, such as the amount of time and the amount of money you have to spend on the trip. Benchmarking is a method of tracking target expectations with actionable results by comparing one’s own company’s performance with an industry average, a leader within the industry, or a market segment. Benchmarking can help design the trip to meet incremental goals and timelines. From both a travel plan and an entrepreneurial perspective, although benchmarking is used as a control mechanism, we know that situations can arise that require an alteration in the plan, causing the benchmarked items to also need adjustments.

Link to Learning

Which type of benchmarking will help you the most in beginning your entrepreneurial journey? Visit the American Society for Quality’s resource page on benchmarking for help.

To plan for an entrepreneurial journey, you should first conduct some preliminary research regarding your venture idea. Your research must be honest and objective if it is to give you a clear picture of the venture. Next, you might organize and prioritize your research and thoughts. For instance, you might see an idea like yours online or on television, and feel disappointed that someone stole your great idea or beat you to the punch. This is a common occurrence in entrepreneurship, but it should not discourage you. Instead, use that knowledge and energy to find an overlooked or different aspect of your original idea. The difference might even be the focus on a different target market , a specific group of consumers for whom you envision developing a product or service. Further, it is critical to maintain a fluid focus upon expanding the scope of a product or service to uniquely differentiate provisions of benefits apart from existing benefits or those offered by competitors. A focus on a different target market is exactly how the Jitterbug smartphone was created, because it targeted senior citizens. The Jitterbug smartphone offers a larger screen, larger buttons, and simpler features that make it easier for older people to make quick calls or send texts.

Preparation also includes opening space in your life to the time and energy commitment needed to support your new venture. Are the important people in your life willing to support the interest and passion you will need to dedicate the time, energy, and other resources to this new venture? Review the questions shown in ( Figure 2.7 ) to consider your answers to these questions. Preparation through research and other activities is discussed in more detail in Identifying Entrepreneurial Opportunity .

Step 3: Assessment

Now that you have decided where to go for your trip and have gathered information to prepare for it, the next action is to create and set your schedule. This action is simple but critical, because it involves connecting and coordinating information and resources that fit your lifestyle and needs. For example, you might schedule an early-morning Uber or Lyft to the airport and electronic delivery of your plane tickets to your smartphone. For the entrepreneurial journey, this phase might also include recognizing appropriate relationships and gathering needed resources. For many entrepreneurs, the opportunity to receive guidance from trusted advisors or mentors may provide valuable insights on how to manage the process. This step allows for reflection on your idea and intentions. After you’ve done your researching and gathering knowledge about your idea through the preparation step, is the idea still viable? Is the idea still interesting to you? With a better understanding of the industry, your idea, and your own interests that you gained in Step 2, is this idea something that you still want to explore? This step is discussed more fully in Problem Solving and Need Recognition Techniques with deeper coverage on the topic of opportunity recognition ( Figure 2.8 ).

Step 4: Exploring Resources

Regardless of where you might travel, you could not complete your trip without adequate resources such as available financing. There are many ways you might fund a hiking trip: savings, loan, pay-as-you-go, sponsorship (family or friends), or any combination of these options, to name a few. No matter how you finance your trip, it might help to have a balance of available credit and cash on hand to support your day-to-day expenses and any extracurricular activities or even unforeseen emergencies. As discussed in Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting , the US Small Business Administration (SBA) provides funding opportunities.

This scenario is mirrored in the entrepreneurial journey. Just as you wouldn’t begin a trip without adequate resources, including access to cash, you wouldn’t begin your entrepreneurial journey without the necessary resources, including cash. The options between funding a trip and funding a new venture are similar, but they have different names. For example, on a trip, you might use the cash you have on hand, from savings or a personal loan. For an entrepreneurial journey, you might address cash management —management of cash inflows and outflows to support cash needs of the venture—to include bootstrapping , a funding strategy that seeks to optimize use of personal funds and other creative strategies (such as bartering) to minimize cash outflows. (See Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting for more information on bootstrapping.) Bootstrapping includes ideas like leasing instead of purchasing, borrowing resources, or trading unneeded resources for needed ones. Another example of cash management includes a business model that offers subscriptions rather than a payment received for an item purchased. Subscriptions provide the entrepreneur with cash up front, with the buyer receiving benefits throughout the year. Consider the example of Amazon. Amazon offers Prime with a yearly subscription service, as well as Subscribe & Save , Amazon Instant Video , Amazon Mom , and Amazon Web Services , all based on a subscription business model.

According to Entrepreneur.com, other potential subscription-based models include services or products geared to older consumers, with 8,000 people turning sixty-five every day. A similar idea offers services to college students. Both ideas would offer family members a subscription that sends monthly gifts or products to either the elderly person or college student. We also see this model offered to pet owners who pay a monthly subscription to receive treats and toys for the family dog. Looking back at Amazon, we see the company offering the ease of repeat purchases for frequently used products such as vitamins and air filters.

Entrepreneur In Action

Prospurly is a subscription-based company that uses Cratejoy ’s subscription platform to sell small-batch artisanal products for bath, body, and home, marketing a natural lifestyle focused on the happiness of living a simple and appreciated life. Conduct your own research on Prospurly and other subscription-based businesses. Read the article, “How I Built a Subscription Business That’s Made over 50k in 6 Months,” on Cratejoy for more information about this company and Prospurly’s move from ideation to profitability.

Other ideas for finding funding include applying for grant funding. The importance of cash and cash management requires in-depth coverage, which is presented in Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting and Business Structure Options: Legal, Tax, and Risk Issues .

The idea of exploring resources includes many other options besides how to fund a new venture. In a trial run , you would offer your product or service for sale within a limited market on a test basis to evaluate what additional resources are needed to support the success of the venture ( Figure 2.9 ). Examples of places where a trial run fits well, depending on your product, include farmers markets, in-home sales, or through friends and family. The idea is to track the feedback you receive about your product or service. How do people react to the price, the quality of the product, the packaging? You can experiment by selecting one variable to adjust—changing the price, the packaging, the sales pitch, the presentation, or the quantity—to track reactions and make improvements based on this feedback. You may then decide to adjust other variables to gather more information, as well as considering what other resources are needed for the success of the new venture. Financing and ideas to preserve your financial stability are discussed more fully in Entrepreneurial Finance and Accounting .

Step 5: Business Plan

The ability to travel and visit new locations is a privilege and a great opportunity to gain exposure to new experiences and opportunities. In addition to the work involved in preparing for a trip, the act and process of traveling involves constant decision making to achieve your desired goals and outcomes. For instance, should you travel to one location in Glacier National Park and explore that area in depth? Or should you attempt to visit as many areas of the park as possible with your given resources and abilities?

The challenge at this step of your entrepreneurial journey is to remain focused on managing your resources to meet your goals and outcomes as you write your business plan for your new venture. You will need to focus on the skills, experience, and resources necessary for your venture, and the management and decision making required to ensure success and adjust your plan based on changes and new information. Just as you might find a location in Glacier National Park where you want to stay for a couple of nights, a deviation from your original business plan (discussed in Business Model and Plan ) will also require adjustments and changes based on new information and insights.

Be honest with yourself by running a reality check about your ability to manage a venture, especially from a personal-capacity perspective. For example, if you start a business, will it be a part-time or full-time venture? Will you start while in school? Or will you wait until after graduation? The timing of opening the venture can be the difference between success and failure. Consider the difference between hiking in Glacier National Park in the middle of winter, when the daytime temperature is thirteen degrees below zero, and hiking in the middle of summer, when the daytime temperature is seventy-nine degrees. The timing of your visit to the park is an important part of your enjoyment and success in reaching your destination. In planning for your trip, you would pay attention to your departure time to ensure enjoyment and success in your adventure. Similarly, as part of your business plan, you would also research the best time to open your venture.

Finally, during your travels, getting lost, overwhelmed, or sidetracked is always possible. If you get lost when traveling, you might refer to social navigation apps such as Google Maps , Waze , or HERE WeGo , to find turn-by-turn directions and information. Or you might refer to a weblink, a printed map, or a local expert or guide familiar with the area. The business plan is your map. You should identify decision points and milestones , significant key accomplishments, in your plan. Milestones could include points such as hitting your breakeven point , the point at which income from operations results in exactly enough revenue to cover costs. If the financial projections in your business plan are unattainable, what is your next move within the plan? If you don’t reach the milestones identified in your business plan, what alternative choices can you make to redirect your venture? The business plan, in its first draft, should inform you whether your venture has a chance at success. If there are negative areas, what can you change? Building this plan before starting the business provides you with knowledge and insights about your idea. Make any necessary changes to the plan to strengthen the possibility of success. Then when you open the venture, track whether the reality of the venture aligns with your business plan’s projections and expectations. The business plan functions as both a road map to help you see where you are going next in building your venture and as a checklist to track whether you are on course or need to make adjustments. When entrepreneurs get off track, they can check out self-help websites, speak with a business coach or counselor, or contact local agencies or organizations, including those affiliated with the federal SBA. Organizations that offer free (or low-cost) small business counseling, mentoring, and training, include:

• SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives): https://www.score.org/
• Small Business Development Center (SBDC): https://www.sba.gov/offices/headquarters/osbdc/resources
• Women’s Business Center (WBC): https://www.sba.gov/local-assistance/find/?type=Women%27s%20Business%20Center&pageNumber=1
• US Export Assistance Center: https://www.export.gov/welcome
• Veterans Business Outreach Center (VBOC): https://veteransoutreachcenter.org/
• Other organizations include locally organized support such as pop-up entrepreneurial schools like PopUp Business School (https://www.popupbusinessschool.co.uk/) and https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/this-free-program-trains-people-how-to-start-a-business-but-without-debt

These and other resources will be discussed in more depth in Building Networks and Foundations . Look at the review questions and the discussion questions at the end of this section to prepare for creating your business plan. Business plans ( Figure 2.10 ) are discussed more fully in Business Model and Plan .

Step 6: Navigation

Once you’ve completed your trip, reflect on the experiences you had. No matter how well you feel you have planned, there is no way you can prepare for all of the potential challenges, changes, and obstacles that may occur: missed or changed flights, poor weather, an unexpected illness, a trail or road closed for repairs, or sudden good fortune. What parts of the trip went well? If you ran into a problem, how did you handle it? Was the problem something you could have anticipated and planned for? Or was it unexpected? What did you learn from the experience? If you were planning a trip to another national park, what would you do differently in your planning stage? Just as seasoned travelers adjust to their circumstances and learn from their experiences, so should you, as an entrepreneur, learn to adjust by meeting and managing challenges head on.

After completing your business plan, you will probably need to adjust your plan ( Figure 2.11 ). You might decide that you will not have enough resources to survive the time until your venture reaches the breakeven point, or you might determine that the location you selected is no longer available. There are multiple variables that require further exploration and research.

By nurturing an entrepreneurial mindset , you will be better prepared when opportunities, challenges, or obstacles surface. Although you won’t be able to predict or plan for every potential scenario along the entrepreneurial journey, an entrepreneurial mindset helps you to be resourceful when opportunities, challenges, or disappointments occur. By unpacking, or by taking an inventory of your available resources, you can also get a better picture of what you may need to unload, retain, or discard, or even if a new direction is the best course of action. On your entrepreneurial journey, evaluating the experience or situation is a perfect opportunity for you to determine how realistic, overambitious, or shortsighted your dreams and goals for your venture may be. This chapter will explore your vision for your future and your venture. Does your vision include a level of flexibility when you discover new information that supports exploring a new area?

Step 7: Launch

The actual launch is the exciting event when you open your business. By this point, you have made improvements to your product through feedback received in your trial run; you’ve identified the value or benefits provided by your product; you’ve identified your target market; and you’ve identified the location of your launch, whether it is a geographical location or an Internet location.

Inc . magazine provides an analysis of the best locations to launch a new venture, with Austin, Texas, taking the lead (see “Surge Cities: These Are the 50 Best Places in America for Starting a Business,” in Suggested Resources ). Consider your target market and the resources necessary to support your venture when choosing the location for your launch. Advice from within the entrepreneurial world suggests that sometimes the launch should take place “under the radar,” meaning in a location where you can make mistakes, fine-tune your business model and offerings, and even become successful without competitors noticing that you have created a disruption within the industry. (You will learn more about this in Launch for Growth to Success ).

Even as you are launching your venture, many variables will require your attention, just as we covered in Step 7. Navigating through these variables as your venture grows requires constant attention as new potential opportunities arise.

Sixto Cancel and Think of Us

Sixto Cancel successfully faced the harsh challenges of aging out of the foster-care system without adult support or guidance. He imagined a better foster-care system for young people then cofounded the firm Think of Us. Think of Us is a platform that helps young people in foster care build their own personalized digital advisory board of supportive adults who act as a virtual life-coaching group. The adults guide the young people through the foster-care system and ensure that they are able to become independent when they leave the system at age eighteen. For more information about this venture, visit www.thinkof-us.org.

• 1 David Pridham. “Entrepreneurs: Here’s Good News for 2018.” Forbes . 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidpridham/2018/01/10/entrepreneurs-heres-good-news-for-2018/#660f5ebd6659
• 2 UpWork and Freelancers Union. “Freelancers Predicted to Become the U.S. Workforce Majority within a Decade, with Nearly 50% of Millennial Workers Already Freelancing, annual ‘Freelancing in America’ Study Finds.” UpWork . October 17, 2017. https://www.upwork.com/press/2017/10/17/freelancing-in-america-2017/
• 3 UpWork. “Sixth Annual ‘Freelancing in America’ Study Finds That More People Than Ever See Freelancing as a Long-Term Career Path.” UpWork . October 3, 2019. https://www.upwork.com/press/2019/10/03/freelancing-in-america-2019/
• 4 David Pridham. “Entrepreneurs: Here’s Good News for 2018.” Forbes . 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidpridham/2018/01/10/entrepreneurs-heres-good-news-for-2018/#660f5ebd6659; Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger. “The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995–2015.” 2016. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/katz_krueger_cws_final_nov2018.pdf.
• 5 Elka Torpey and Brian Roberts. “Small-Business Options: Occupational Outlook for Self-Employed Workers.” US Bureau of Labor Statistics . May 2018. https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2018/article/self-employment.htm
• 6 Carly Moulton and Dave Cosgrave. “Second Annual Self-Employment Report.” FreshBooks . 2017. https://www.freshbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/2018selfemploymentreport.pdf
• 7 OECD Data. “Self-employment Rate.” OECD.org . n.d. https://data.oecd.org/emp/self-employment-rate.htm.
• 8 Arnobio Molrelix. “The Biggest Reason the U.S. Needs Small Businesses to Thrive Has Nothing to Do with Taxes or the Economy.” Inc ., Dec. 20, 2018. https://www.inc.com/arnobio-morelix/inc-entrepreneurship-index-2018-q3.html
• 9 David Jolley. “America Needs Immigrant Entrepreneurs.” Business Insider . September 5, 2017. https://www.businessinsider.com/america-needs-immigrant-entrepreneurs-2017-9
• 10 Dinah Wisenberg Brin. “Immigrants Form 25% of New U.S. Businesses, Driving Entrepreneurship in ‘Gateway’ States.” Forbes . July 31, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dinahwisenberg/2018/07/31/immigrant-entrepreneurs-form-25-of-new-u-s-business-researchers/#10ee8099713b
• 11 “Ease of Doing Business Rankings.” Doing Business . May 2019. http://www.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings
• 12 Niels Bosma and Donna Kelley. “Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2018/2019 Global Report.” GEM Consortium . January 21, 2019. https://www.gemconsortium.org/report/50213
• 13 Gary Stockton. “Statistics and Obstacles Facing Women Entrepreneurs.” Experian . January 29, 2018. http://www.experian.com/blogs/small-business-matters/2018/01/29/statistics-and-obstacles-facing-women-entrepreneurs/

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• Authors: Michael Laverty, Chris Littel
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• Book title: Entrepreneurship
• Publication date: Jan 16, 2020
• Location: Houston, Texas
• Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/1-introduction
• Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/entrepreneurship/pages/2-1-overview-of-the-entrepreneurial-journey

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10 Ideas to Support Your Personal Growth Journey

Keep your growth and personal development on track with these key ideas..

Posted April 26, 2023 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

• What Does "Self Help" Mean?
• Take our Self-Esteem Test
• Find a therapist near me
• Humans have the desire and capacity to change, grow, and adapt.
• With so much expert advice available on what we should and could be doing, it can be hard to know where to begin.
• Navigating a personal growth journey begins with looking inward.

We are constantly bombarded with messages telling us that we need to be better, faster, healthier, smarter, richer, stronger, busier: everything “-er.” We find ourselves in a constant state of wanting to improve, to do more, and to be more at any given moment.

Our human condition desires change and growth. But seeking out self-improvement doesn’t always mean that you are unhappy with the person you already are; it’s just that life can feel stagnant without it. We may start to feel dissatisfied, unhappy, and even unfulfilled if we are not learning and changing. To be able to function in a world that is constantly evolving, we need to be able to grow and adapt.

Where do we begin?

In our efforts to improve our habits and behaviours, we often turn to experts for answers. We plow through books and articles on personal development, sign up for courses, attend workshops, and connect with coaches. There are more resources available than ever on personal development topics such as time management , relationship repair, organization, fitness, healthy eating, professional development, stress management , emotion regulation , and more. The self-help and personal development market has become a multibillion-dollar sector globally. This industry is anticipated to continue growing and it is on course to be one of the fastest-growing industries by 2030 (Grand View Research, 2022). This is huge. Yet, we still don’t have all the answers.

The way forward

It can be hard to figure out where to start. Change is complex and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. And we know that knowing better doesn’t equal doing better. It is important to prepare yourself for the journey ahead (and all its messiness and beauty) by building the proper foundation on which to base your change. Here are 10 ideas to keep in mind as you embark on your personal growth journey:

• Prioritize you. The reality is that true personal growth and development come from looking inward. It’s getting to know yourself. Personal development is just that—it’s personal. It’s between you and yourself. You are unique and your situation is unique. It’s not selfish, it is science. You need to look after yourself. No one is coming to fix this for you.
• Become aware using a holistic approach. A holistic approach to personal development recognizes all areas of wellness. I invite you to think about how you are doing and how you hope to grow in these eight dimensions: physical, emotional, intellectual, social, environmental, financial, occupational, and spiritual . Ask yourself what you can do to bring yourself closer to your goals and closer to the person you want to become in each of these areas. There is no one right balance that will benefit two people the same way.
• Make room for your past. Your way forward is not defined by your past. All the things that you have weathered in your life are events, not characteristics. Trust yourself that you handled your life the best you could in the moment with the tools and resources you had. You have not only gone through hard times, but you have also grown through them too.
• Limit social comparison. Most of us will have heard Theodore Roosevelt’s words, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” While it’s valuable to take inspiration from those who inspire you, we need to be mindful that the trajectory forward will not look the same for all of us.
• Build healthy habits consistently. Consistency compounds. Commit to doing one activity, every day, even for just five minutes, that will bring you closer to your goals and the person you want to be. Having goals and something to work towards helps to maintain our drive and gives us a sense of fulfillment.
• Build the team to support the dream. There are guaranteed to be roadblocks, times of low motivation , and other curveballs are thrown our way. Knowing this, we all need a champion. Someone who is in our corner. When our foundation is solid, we create the space needed for growth.
• Embrace the discomfort. Being comfortable doesn’t help us develop. If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you. As the popular saying goes, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” Change is hard and noticeable. It is supposed to be.
• Celebrate your progress. Are you proud of a recent accomplishment? Are you handling or approaching situations better today than you would have five, or even just one year ago? Celebrating even the small wins in our change journey brings awareness to our progress. And it feels good.
• Take it slow. In a fast-paced society, we are often urged to do more, be better, and excel no matter the cost, but this is not sustainable. You don’t need to do a Herculean overhaul of your life. Give yourself permission to rest along the way. After all, growth is a lifelong journey, not a destination.
• Notice your allies. When you commit to personal growth, some people may not support or agree with your choices. Don’t let that deter you. Real allies want to see you living your best life.

Working on making self-improvements can have a remarkable impact on how we show up in the world, and it’s not easy. Yet, we can find comfort in knowing that we will find out what works best for us. We can trust in the process and know that we have the tools and supports available to navigate our lives and reach our truest potential. In an episode of In Time , singer-songwriter Peter Katz captured the idea that we are in the driver’s seat of our own growth when he said, “At any moment we can choose, and we can find ourselves on a new path.”

On a final note, I wholeheartedly believe that we can all show ourselves a little more compassion and grace on our journeys. Instead of drowning in all the things you are told you should be doing and could be doing, my invitation is for you to pause and reflect. Take inventory of all the things you are already doing right.

Grand View Research. (2022). Personal development market size report, 2022-2030. Grand View Research, Inc. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/personal-development-market

Katz, P., & Hanley-Dafoe, R. (Hosts). (2023, Mar 14). Listening for the compassionate voice (No. 5) [Audio podcast episode]. In In Time. https://hereintime.ca/episodes/this-the-perfect-time-ssw3a-3etga-5kdw4-ck5ff

Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, Ed.D. , is a resiliency and wellness scholar and speaker, author of Calm Within the Storm and Stress Wisely , and award-winning instructor and adjunct professor at Trent University.

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Texts & Ideas | 2019-2020

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—The Body in Philosophy  Prof. Bianchi (Comparative Literature)      [ Syllabus ] What is a body, and how has the body been understood in the history of Western thought? In one sense a body is the most natural and self-evident thing in the world, in another it is the object of the most intense scrutiny and fashioning. Philosophy has often elevated soul, spirit, or mind at the expense of the body; but in more recent thought the body has come to center stage. We trace this devaluation of the body in the Western tradition and examine some of the ways it has returned in 20th and 21st century philosophical thought. How has the body been constituted in relation to its others—mind/spirit/soul? How does the body appear as an entity both natural and technological? How do bodies come to bear psychical, social, political and philosophical significance insofar as they are sexed, gendered, raced, abled and disabled, desiring and desired, bearers of ideality or sites of disgust? How are bodies fashioned and produced by personal, cultural and political practices such as dieting, body modification, imprisonment and torture, and medicine? Reading include Plato’s Phaedo, Aristotle’s Generation of Animals, Descartes’ Meditations, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks, Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and History of Sexuality, Young’s Throwing Like a Girl, Lorde’s Sister Outsider, Butler’s Bodies That Matter, and works by Elaine Scarry, Cressida Heyes, and Tobin Siebers.

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Doubles and Masks Prof. Miller (French)       [ Syllabus ] Among the more significant activities of human beings is that of giving shape to fears and desires through art. All cultures participate in this form of emotional exteriorization, including creating through myth and literature “doubles” and through sculpting in textures and words various types of “masks.”  Focusing on doubles and masks in several different cultures, we chart the meaning and impact of the archetypal masked figures of the commedia dell’arte in French and Italian theatre, the explosion of the “carnivalesque”  in South American magical realism, the obsessive concern with the grotesque (the monstrous mask) in French romanticism and Victorian novels,  animal doubles in fairy tales, and aspects of zombification and ghostly doubles in North American literature and ethnographic film.   Readings:  Sophocles’ Oedipus, Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters, Molière’s Imaginary Invalid, García Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude, Freud’s Uncanny, Rank’s Double, Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Morrison’s Playing in the Dark and Beloved, Mouawad’s Scorched.  Films:  Modern Times (1936), Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956, 1996), Les Maître Fous (1955), La Belle et la Bête/Beauty and the Beast (1946, 1991). 



FALL 2019 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Justice and Injustice in Biblical Narrative and Western Thought Prof. Weiler (School of Law)      [ Syllabus ] Issues of justice and injustice and other normative concerns. Each week pairs a core reading from the Hebrew Bible or the Christian New Testament with another work in the Western tradition to explore a broad range of complex normative issues. Often God will be “on trial”: Was the Deluge genocide? Is Abraham guilty of attempted murder and child abuse? Was Jesus guilty as charged? Was Socrates? The themes are all of relevance to contemporary issues: communal responsibility vs. individual autonomy, ecological crisis, ethics vs. religion, freedom of speech and thought, genocide, rule of law and civil disobedience, the Other, punishment and retribution, religious intolerance, sanctity of human life, sex and gender. Readings include: Aristophanes’ Clouds; Plato’s Apology; Xenophon’s Apology; Sophocles’ Antigone; selections from Hebrew Bible, Christian New Testament, Aristotle, Maimonides, Aquinas, Luther, Kant, Kierkegaard, Mill, Thoreau, Kafka, Camus.

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Utopias and Dystopias Prof. Kotsonis (History/Russian & Slavic Studies)       [ Syllabus ] Considers how writers and other artists over the past two millennia have imagined perfect and just societies and, more recently, how they imagined perfectly unjust and nightmarish societies and implied what would restore them. Readings: Plato’s Republic, Xenophon’s Anabasis, More’s Utopia, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Wells’ Time Machine, Bellamy’s Looking Backward, Sinclair’s The Jungle, Zamiatin’s We, Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog, Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984.  Films: Starship Troopers, Demolition Man.

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Attachment, Loss, and the Passage of Time Prof. Street (Philosophy)       [ Syllabus ] David Foster Wallace has written that “the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” One such reality is the fact that our lives unfold in and across time. We experience the events of our past as receding, the events of our future as approaching, and the present moment as where we inevitably are. We also experience time’s march as inexorable: whether we like it or not, the thought “This too shall pass” is always true. In difficult times, this thought can bring relief: whatever hardship one is facing, it won’t last. In times of joy, the same thought can bring pain: whatever people, places, and things one loves, these too will one day pass away. How should we think and feel about time’s passage and the fleeting nature of our lives and the people and things we love? Is it possible, without deceiving oneself or numbing out, to achieve peace with the losses and separations that the march of time guarantees? Is such peace desirable, or are there some losses we should never accept? Readings include the  Upanishads , the Pāli canon of Buddhism, Plato’s  Phaedo , Lucretius’s  On the Nature of Things , Whitman’s  Leaves of Grass , Proust’s  In Search of Lost Time , Woolf’s  To the Lighthouse , Hersey’s  Hiroshima ,   Vonnegut’s  Slaughterhouse-Five ,   Oliver’s  American Primitive , Ozick’s  The Shawl , Parfit’s  Reasons and Persons , and Amis’s  Time’s Arrow .

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Discovery and Recognition in Narrative, Film, and Drama Prof. Kennedy (Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies)       [ Syllabus ] Across all cultures, stories are fashioned to withhold information at first, holding our attention through suspense. They then produce disclosures at crucial moments of  denouement . This dynamic movement from ignorance to knowledge, which creates meaning, is deemed essential in the  Poetics  of Aristotle, especially when it takes the form of the the recognition of something previously unknown. It exists in all literatures independently of Aristotle’s prescriptions. This sort of discovery is essential to both high literature and low, across genres, epochs, and artistic media. Tracing an arc from the ancient world to the present day, we then see how the epistemology of modern storytelling, across cultures, disturbs the familiar patterns of clear and comforting revelation associated (often mistakenly, in fact) with classic genres. Reading: Aristotle’s Poetics; Homer’s Odyssey, Sophocles’ Oedipus; Genesis; Mark, Luke, John; Shakespeare’s King Lear; Arabian Nights; Kalidasa; Recognitions of Shakuntala; Voltaire’s Candide; Dickens’ Great Expectations; Auster’s City of Glass, Mahfouz’ Search; Barnes’ Sense of an Ending, excerpts from The Qur’an.  Films: Reed’s Third Man, Axel’s Babette’s Feast, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Altman’s Gosford Park, Nolan’s Memento.

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Meaning Prof. Barker (Linguistics)     [ Syllabus ] What is meaning? What has it, and how do the things that have it get it? How has our conception of meaning developed over the centuries? And how do our attitudes towards meaning shape who we think we are? The creation of meaning is one of the supreme activities of the human race. We study the meaning of texts, primarily, but not always, texts involving language, in two different ways: by engaging with philosophers and linguists who have introduced influential ways to think about meaning, from Aristotle to Francis Bacon to Wittgenstein to David Lewis; and by showing how these various conceptions of meaning provide new ways of interpreting important texts, from prehistoric cave paintings to music to comics and computer programs. Finally, we confront the implications of deep learning and neural nets (Siri, Alexa, and the like) for our conception of ourselves. Does the fact that these machines can answer questions accurately mean that the human race no longer has a monopoly on meaning?

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—On Objectivity Prof. Gitelman (English)      [ Syllabus ] Bias. Spin. Propaganda. Hype. Fake news. These are familiar pejoratives for citizens of the twenty-first century, and by implication they privilege the same alternative: objectivity. Objectivity is a concept—or an ideal—that frames our understanding of pursuits as diverse as politics, journalism, and science, realms in which we hope to be able to discern the right, the true, and the real. But what is objectivity? Whose discernment counts as objective? How can we tell? Questions like these ask us to consider not only what we know but also how, while the conditions of evolving, possessing, and assessing knowledge turn out to be remarkably available to cultural and historical change. We consider the origins and character of objectivity within and against the Western intellectual tradition by considering selected episodes in its emergence, both ancient and modern, asking how thinkers have thought about knowing. What are or have been the available routes to certainty? What standards exist or have existed for knowledge about the past, about the self or about others, and about the world around us? Is it possible that the twenty-first century will involve new forms of objectivity? Are algorithms objective? Readings: Matthew, Thucydides, Plato’s Protagoras and Meno, Descartes’ Discourse on Method, selections from Montaigne, Bird’s Sheppard Lee, Agee and Evan’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—The “Normal” Prof. Jarcho (English)       [ Syllabus ] Can we define "normal" without recourse to the “deviant”: the queer, the child(ish), the ill, the non-white, the unproductive or unprofitable? We explore the notion of the normal historically, understanding that what is perverse or abjected in one time and place may become valued or at least accepted in another. Our modes of inquiry will be literary, historical, philosophic and cultural, enabling students to engage with ideas across a range of disciplines and providing a strong basis for further humanistic inquiry. Topics include recent cultural theory on whiteness, fatness, sickness, and childhood; and a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art will help us frame some ideas about normal in various kinds of representations, portraits and still-lifes in particular.  Our goal is to make everyone and everything usefully strange, or newly weird: especially everything—from Normcore to normal se—that seems, well, normal.  Reading include works by Plato, Smith, Marx, Freud, Foucault, Stein, Woolf, Nella Larsen, George Schuyler.

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—The "Other" Prof. Sunder Rajan (English)      [ Syllabus ] Variously enigma, responsibility and alter ego of the self, or threat to it, the ‘other’ has been a major preoccupation of Western thought. We ask: Who is regarded as the ‘other’? How is the other known? Why is the other so often regarded negatively, as an object of fear, scorn, loathing, or curiosity? Must knowledge of the other always be a form of colonization, domination and violence, or can it be pursued as disinterested truth? Must self and other necessarily devolve into an ‘us’ and ‘them’? Can the other know/speak itself? We note that in recent times the figure of the other, hitherto silent and effaced, has made claims to speak, indeed to speak back, disrupting the realms of knowledge and the social in radical ways. Thus women, ‘natives’, minorities, ‘deviants’, or subalterns claim to speak as others. We engage questions of identity and representation in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality and species. Examining a range of theoretical and literary texts which have shaped the conceptual frameworks, the meanings, and the uses of the binary structure of ‘self’ and ‘other’ gives us a sense of their centrality to philosophical thought and social attitudes through history. Equally we are alert to developments that signal the slow but steady and progressive deconstruction of this structure. Readings include Pomerance’s Elephant Man, Walcott’s Pantomime, Shelley’s Frankenstein; selections from Shakespeare, Defoe, Hegel, Conrad, Beauvoir, Césaire, Ellison, Fanon, Achebe,  Plath, Said, Kincaid.

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Confrontations with the "Unknown" World Prof. Peachin (Classics)      [ Syllabus ]  Until recently, nearly all of our planet remained beyond the ken of most human beings. The typical person simply could not, and did not, travel beyond his or her immediate surroundings. Thus, the world was almost entirely unknown, a mysterious and often frightening place. Precisely this, however, excited the intellectual curiosity, or the greed, or the megalomania of some, and thus drew those individuals inexorably into the unknown. Nowadays, humans face precisely the opposite situation. There is pretty well nothing unknown left in this world, and the unknown world has arguably shifted from without to within: Now we are wont to go into a known wilderness to discover some unknown world within ourselves. This raises a question: Do human beings require a realm of the unknown? Must we, or will we, always seek out such a space? Starting in antiquity, we consider literature of travel, discovery, and exploration through the medieval period, pause in the 19th century, and then pass on to our own times, reading books by both men and women, and both eastern and western texts. Texts and authors include: Arrian, Alberuni’s India, Ibn Battutah, Marco Polo, Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Las Casas’ Destruction of the Indies, Burton’s Lake Regions of Central Africa, Pfeiffer’s Visit to the Holy Land, Hillary’s High Adventure, Moorhouse’s Fearful Void, Krakauer’s Into the Wild, Strayed’s Wild.

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 403, Texts and Ideas: Antiquity & the Enlightenment 
Prof. Chazan (Hebrew & Judaic Studies)
         [ Syllabus ] Focuses on the understanding of knowledge and truth in antiquity and the Enlightenment. Divergent perspectives on knowledge and truth have important implications for society and the individual. They lead to alternative notions of how society should be ordered, who should exercise power in society, the goals of individual endeavor, and the nature of individual fulfillment. Key texts from antiquity and the Enlightenment will be read and analyzed with these issues uppermost in mind. Readings: Genesis, Exodus, Luke, Acts, Galatians; Sophocles' Antigone; Euripides' Bacchae; Plato's Apology and Symposium; Augustine's Confessions; Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus; Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration; Lessing's Nathan the Wise.

FALL 2019 CORE-UA 404, Texts and Ideas: Antiquity & the 19th Century 
Prof. Renzi (College Core Curriculum)
             [ Syllabus ] Contemporary moral psychology: where it came from, where it’s brought us, how we might move beyond it. Readings: Book of J; Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah; Matthew, Galatians; Gospel of Mary; Euripides' Medea; Aristophanes' Clouds; Plato's Apology and Republic; Xenophon's Apology; Augustine's Confessions; Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto; Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling; Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality; Freud's "Case of Miss Lucy R." and Civilization and Its Discontents.

Spring 2020

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—The Arts of Noticing Prof. Freed-Thall (French)          [ Syllabus ] Can literature, art, and philosophy teach us to read the world differently? To approach spaces and objects with renewed intensity and care? To attend to subtle differences, variations, and nuances—not only on the page, but in everyday life? Inspired by the idea that there is a close relation between ecological and aesthetic ways of being present to the world, we ask whether it is possible to perform a “close reading” of the forest, the beach, or the city street. We also investigate the special arts of noticing—what W.E.B. Du Bois calls the gift of “second sight”—that stigma and marginalization sometimes enable. From Michel de Montaigne’s philosophy of embodied experience to Rachel Carson’s close reading of marine ecosystems, and from Impressionism’s haystacks to punk style’s safety pins and graffiti, the works we discuss imagine the ordinary as a source of enchantment and surprise.

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—The Body in the Ancient Mediterranean Prof. Bubb (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World)      [ Syllabus ] Modern understanding of the human body is built upon millennia of philosophical inquiry and scientific endeavor. Beginning with the pivotal social and scientific understanding of the body in the ancient Mediterranean, we trace the evolution of theories of human physiology and their reception in medieval Christian and Muslim thought. We also examine the concomitant cultural attitudes to the body, which both inform and are informed by the scientific theories. Are the soul and the body distinct? Do they have different fates in the afterlife? How should a corpse be handled? In what ways are the body and social status connected? How do these answers evolve over time and across cultures? How are differing beliefs and norms reconciled or superseded? Reading include ancient Egyptian medical texts, Homer’s Iliad, and works from the Hippocratic corpus and from Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Tertullian, Galen, Soranus, Ibn Tufayl, Hunayn ibn Ishaq, and Al-Razi.TI - Er

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Birth of the Human Prof. Geroulanos (History)         [ Syllabus ] We consider the history of a complex and highly popular fantasy that the idea that humanity and modernity can be traced to a prehistoric moment when “the human” was born out of the animal. Supposedly a moment when humanity can be glimpsed at its most basic, today it is most often identified with a movement “out of Africa,” but also with claims about the origin of language, nationalist theories of a communal purity, theories of representation in cave art, and theories about tool use and human posture. This obsession with reconstituting prehistory is closely tied to modern colonialism and racism, postwar universalism, and even anticolonialism, and also speaks ways that European and American intellectuals and scientists produce knowledge about humanity. Because their analytical tools and priorities project this highly speculative moment of a “cradle of humanity” backwards in time, it has often been synonymous, even identical, with the way thinkers have defined humanity, and suffers from ideological and usually fantastical components. Readings include: Genesis, Tacitus’ Germania, Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Montaigne’s “On Cannibals,” Condorcet’s Outline of a Historical View of the Progress of Mankind, Hegel’s Philosophy of History, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Darwin’s Origin of Species, Wagner’s Artwork of the Future, Frazer’s Golden Bough, Freud’s Totem and Taboo, Bataille’s Cradle of Humanity.

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—What is a good human life? Prof. Jauernig (Philosophy)      [ Syllabus ] Two of the most fundamental questions that are addressed, more or less explicitly, in many of the arts, humanities, and sciences are the questions of what it means to be human, and of how to live a good human life. Indeed, these questions arise naturally for every one of us who approaches life in a reflective way and thinks about how to make the best of it. We read and discuss important works of literature, philosophy, and political thought from the ancient world to the present that speak to these questions in some way or another. In some of these works, our questions are tackled in a fairly straightforward manner; in others, they are addressed more indirectly, through the presentation of a particular way of life or individual lived experiences. We examine these writings with the goal of broadening and deepening our understanding of possible answers to our questions in the hope that this brings us closer to answering them for ourselves. Readings: Plato’s Apology, Crito; Symposium; Sophocles’ Oedipus; Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics; Montaigne’s Essays; Shakespeare’s Tempest; Brecht’s Life of Galileo; Immanuel Kant, ‘An answer to the question: what is enlightenment?’; Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto; Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray; Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilych; Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own; Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz; Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle; Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus; Kafka’s Metamorphosis; Coetzee’s Lives of Animals.

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Visible and Invisible Cities Prof. Cox (Italian Studies)           [ Syllabus ] The experience of living in a city is one vital thread that connects us with our ancient, medieval, and early modern ancestors, and that continues to provide a unifying element in millions of our contemporaries’ disparate lives across the globe. Urban life is a constant environment and stimulus, whether you find yourself in New York, Florence, Accra, or Shanghai. Our aim is to supply conceptual frameworks and historical contexts for this experience by exploring the ways human communities have been theorized and imagined within the Western tradition from classical antiquity through to the Renaissance, particularly the city, conceived since Aristotle as the proper habitat of humankind, and the relationship between the family or household and the state. The primary texts encompass utopian writings and works of political theory, but also texts describing and analyzing real-world communities and visual and cartographic representations of cities and urban space. Readings include the canonical—from Plato, Aristotle, Vergil, Dante, Boccaccio, More, Shakespeare—to texts from Christine de Pizan and Moderata Fontelong, marginalized from the canon and only now becoming visible.

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Unbelief in Western Thought Prof. Guillory (English)           [ Syllabus ] For most of the Western tradition, people have believed in gods or God. Not until the nineteenth century was it socially or intellectually acceptable to express disbelief publicly, as in the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s notorious assertion, “God is dead.” Yet the expression of unbelief can be traced to the founding moments of Western philosophy, most famously with the execution of Socrates by the Athenian state for supposedly teaching atheism to his disciples. Beginning with the account of Socrates’ trail in Plato’s Apology, we examine what Nietzsche calls the “shadow” of Western thought, the condition of unbelief. How and why have people come to doubt the existence of God? What kinds of arguments have thinkers made in defense of unbelief? Can human society exist without religious belief? Or is it true, as a character declares in Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, that “without God, everything is permitted.” Readings from Plato, Lucretius, Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, Montaigne, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Bacon, Pascal, Hume, Diderot, Sade, Shelley, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Freud.

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Life as a Journey Prof. Momma (English)        [ Syllabus ] “Life is a journey” is a well-known metaphor and a subject common in literature. Reading a wide range of literary texts in which main characters experience growth and transformation through a journey, whether physical or spiritual, we have our own journey across time, focusing on antiquity (Homer’s Odyssey, Augustine’s Confessions) and the Middle Ages (Beowulf, Dante’s Divine Comedy). We also read modern and contemporary genres such as bildungsroman (coming-of-age literature) and children’s literature (Tolkien’s Hobbit).

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—God Prof. de Vries (German & Religious Studies)       [ Syllabus ] What or who is–or was–“God”? And what or who might “He” still–or yet again–become, for us, whether we consider ourselves true believers or not? We explore historical and contemporary efforts to name or define this at once most familiar and strangest of invocations or references: the Being called highest, by many, as eternal, perfectly good, and much else besides. We discuss etymologies and genealogies of this increasingly controversial term and concept, analyze different proofs for God’s existence, demonstrations of essential predicates, and differentiate between divine names and attributes. Since Aristotle, the philosophical concept of God–and, eventually, the idea of the infinite–has both substantiated and distorted or undermined the theological imagination, just as it has, indirectly, affected the sentiments of the common faithful, theologians, and mystics. A recurrent insight has been that there is, perhaps, an ineliminable distinction between the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, on the one hand, and the god of the philosophers and the learned scholars, on the other. While revelation and reason did not always seem to conflict, their sources and claims were not quite the same. And whereas recent critiques have questioned whether God even needs so much as to be–or suggest that He “may be” or, in any case, is still “to come”–the prominence which His name, concept or idea, suggests has nonetheless remained squarely in place. “God” is the alpha and omega of all thinking and discourse, religious or not, whether as the presumed carrier of all perfections or, rather, as the summum of all contradictions. Readings include works and selections from Clement of Alexandria, Damascius, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, al-Ghazali, Maimonides, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Spinoza, David Hume, William Paley, Immanuel Kant, Leo Tolstoy, Ludwig Feuerbach, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Henri Bergson, Richard Rorty, Edith Stein, Paul Celan, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Gwenaëlle Aubry, Quentin Meillassoux, Avishai Margalit, Moshe Halbertal, and John L. Mackey, and Garry Gutting. Carl Theodor Dreyer's  Ordet  and Ingmar Bergman's  Trilogy  will be screened and discussed as well. 

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 402, Texts and Ideas: Antiquity and the Renaissance 
Prof. Ertman (Sociology)          [ Syllabus ] We explore the ancient foundations of traditional Western culture, starting with the political and social institutions, religious beliefs and value systems of the Romans and early Christians, then turning to the world of the Italian Renaissance. “Renaissance” means rebirth, and during this period Italian intellectuals, writers, painters and sculptures saw themselves as contributing to a rebirth of Western culture by turning for inspiration to the philosophical, literary, and artistic legacy of the ancient world. Readings: Luke, Acts, Romans; Livy’s History of Rome; Plutarch’s Lives; Cicero; Vergil’s Aeneid; Apuleius’ Golden Ass; Augustine’s Confessions; Dante’s Inferno; Boccaccio’s Decameron; Vasari’s Lives; Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy and Prince; Cellini’s Life.

SPRING 2019 CORE-UA 402, Texts and Ideas: Antiquity & the Renaissance Prof. Gilman (English)           [ Syllabus ] The "Renaissance" understands itself as an age bearing witness to the "rebirth" of classical antiquity. In art, philosophy, and literature it also assumes the task of reconciling the cultural inheritance of Greece and Rome with the Christian tradition (itself entering into a moment of crisis as allegiances split between the Catholic church and the "reformed" church of Luther and Calvin). Our first task is to look at antiquity; our second, to explore the ways in which European culture between 1400 and 1700 invents the modern by making itself conversant with the past. Readings: Homer's Odyssey; Sophocles' Antigone; Plato's Phaedo and Symposium; Vergil's Aeneid; Genesis, Exodus, Job, Luke, Acts, John; Augustine's Confessions; Castiglione's Book of the Courtier; Machiavelli's Prince; Erasmus's Praise of Folly; Montaigne's Essays; More's Utopia; Shakespeare's Tempest.

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 403, Texts and Ideas: Anqituity & the Enlightenment Prof. Rubenstein (Hebrew & Judaic Studies)         [ Syllabus ] Beginning with the collision of the "Judeo-Christian" and Hellenistic traditions and their encounter in the Christian Scriptures and Augustine, we see Enlightenment thinkers grapple with the fusion of these traditions they had inherited, subjecting both to serious criticism and revising them as a new tradition—science and technology—rises to prominence. Reading from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, Sophocles, Plato, Augustine, Montesquieu, Pope, Voltaire, and Rousseau.

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 404, Texts and Ideas: Antiquity & the 19th Century Prof. Levene (Classics)            [ Syllabus ] Every society places demands on individuals:  it could not do otherwise and still remain a society. But what happens when those demands are inconsistent? Can—or should—an individual determine the right course of action by reason alone? Or should one simply obey—but then, whom should one obey? What happens when people’s moral judgements differ from the expectations of those around them? How can one maintain a society in the face of such conflicts? From the first moments of Western literature those questions are explored; they became all the more insistent in the unprecedented political, social, intellectual and economic upheavals of the 19th century. One effect was the increasingly central role given to art, seen as the dynamic force able to create a cohesive society. Our study includes Richard Wagner’s remarkable music-drama The Ring of the Nibelung, perhaps the most significant and influential art-work of the era (studied primarily as a text, though there will be opportunities to hear the music as well). Other readings include selections from the Hebrew Scriptures and Christian New Testament, Homer’s Iliad, Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s Gorgias, Vergil’s Aeneid, poetry by (among others) Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy, Wagner’s Art and Revolution, Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality.

SPRING 2020 CORE-UA 404, Texts and Ideas: Antiquity & the 19th Century 
Prof. Renzi (College Core Curriculum)
           [ Syllabus ] Contemporary moral psychology: where it came from, where it’s brought us, how we might move beyond it. Readings: Book of J; Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah; Matthew, Galatians; Gospel of Mary; Euripides' Medea; Aristophanes' Clouds; Plato's Apology and Republic; Xenophon's Apology; Augustine's Confessions; Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto; Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling; Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality; Freud's "Case of Miss Lucy R." and Civilization and Its Discontents.

Presentation: Customer journey transformation: The idea, the impact, and how to start

New analysis reveals that the entire customer journey--the series of interactions with a brand--is more important than any single touchpoint experience. Leading companies identify and effectively manage a few of the most important journeys .