The Marketplace of Ideas

Capturing and Leveraging Innovation

The Marketplace of Ideas is about idea generation and catalyzing efforts to act on the best ones. It’s an engaging and highly participative process that allows a large group of stakeholders to capture the collective perspectives and ideas on a targeted business challenge.

This is far from an ordinary brainstorm: there are designated sales agents presenting to venture capitalists who commit funds to the winning ideas. There’s an opening bell to signal that the marketplace is open. There’s a buzz of enthusiasm in the room.

The process guides the participants from a “high altitude” broad perspective down through a series of steps designed to create ever-increasing focus and eventually, a set of practical steps to address the issue. During this distillation process, the participants subdivide into teams and receive real time feedback from the rest of the group as their ideas develop and are refined.

Additionally, because the ideas are generated and refined collectively, there is an inherent alignment around the issues and strong ownership of the ideas as the participants work through the steps of the process.