What is The Ideas Machine?

I count myself as a social entrepreneur who is focussed on Social Return on Investment (SROI) over ROI; The Ideas Machine has been my method over the last 12 months of creating impact and here is how

This little blog is turning a year old (woo hoo!). The purpose and artistry of this blog has changed a little over time, but the overarching structure hasn’t and for good reason! Today I want to share with you what The Ideas Machine even is and how this works.

Ideate

The Ideas Machine came from having lots of ideas and nowhere to share them in the “right” way. It was about communicating with a new audience, sharing any wisdom that I may have gained in my twenty-something years in business and in life. I have, however, found a system that helps me to refine my ideas into actionable points that continue to serve me.

That system is to firstly Ideate, then Iterate, and finally Implement - sound familiar?! It’s a creative cycle where I can bounce ideas around, refine them and produce something that I am (hopefully) proud of.

So how does the process work?

Iterate

You’re looking at it in action!

To Ideate is to have ideas.

If you’re anything like me, that will mean having many and all at once. Some are flashes that come to us in dreams or moments of pure inspiration, some however come at inconvenient moments when you really should be doing something else…guilty as charged!

When I ideate, I give myself space to consider what I am thinking about. What does this idea mean? Where did it come from and how does it serve me?

The next step is arguably my favourite and it is to Iterate.

Another way of considering ideation is to consider you having a polite but passionate argument with yourself. How could this idea work? To evaluate the idea and critique it multiple times, I evaluate my own thoughts and preconceptions that have gone into them. Trying to knead them out as a baker would to impurities in a bread loaf. It’s the space where I challenge myself to think bigger, open my mind wider and consider new outlooks and opportunities.

Finally, we have Implement.

To truly implement something is to have come to a conclusion on your own idea, combining the magic of new thoughts with the challenge of old ideas, and to instead create something new. In this blog, this is where I want to challenge you to think in a new way and implement something new of your own each week.

Implement

So that’s the blog in a nutshell. I write weekly about design for positive social impact, and how my story impacts how I tell others stories. Hopefully all of this supports you to connect and grow communities in areas of your life that are important to you.

See you next week?

🧠 Do you have a system for managing all of your ideas?

🧠 How do you assess your ideas for weaknesses?

🧠 What enables you to enact new ideas?