5 tips for inspiring fresh ideas

Lynn Wood, founder of global ideas platform IdeaSpies, shares her top tips for coming up with new ideas.

In 2015, I was travelling to Vancouver Island on a ferry with my friend, Sabra Brock. The tour guide said to me, “You should promote what you love rather than bash what you hate.”

It struck a chord with me as I was sick of all the negative news around us because it saps our confidence.

That conversation gave us the idea for IdeaSpies. I thought what we needed was a platform to showcase positive, clever ideas. It needed to be easy to use and people could vote up the ideas. We tested it on Facebook, launched in 2016, then launched a private enterprise public version. We have more than 2000 ideas on the site and the numbers are growing every day.

People say we’re in the information revolution, but I call it the ideas revolution. We’ve found employees really want the opportunity to progress their ideas up the line, but the culture is not there to encourage them.

My five tips for getting fresh ideas:

• Slow down
• Walk more looking ahead and up
• Watch people
• Smile
• Listen more.

Lynn Wood is also a trustee at the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation.