Expert Financial & Business Insights for South Africa
Strategic analysis from Idea Accelerator and ready-to-publish content from Financial News Daily.
If you say outrageous things maybe you will get people to listen to you.
A fading, socially guilt-ridden poet wants us all to become like finely chopped up fried eggs.
Yet when the world she lives in is really like one broken ostrich egg with the pieces of shells impossible to put back, you realise she’s an idealistic dreamer, that’s all. Continue reading “Whose advice do you listen to in this attention-screaming information tsunami?”
I visited a solar farm and found out that one of the maintenance issues was the grass growing below the solar panel banks. In the winter the grass was low but when the summer rains come the grass grows quickly and has to be maintained. Various options or alternatives have been looked at but no new ideas have yet been implemented.
This is the thing: when you come up against a problem, you need to do some fact-finding beforehand to fully understand the nature of the problem. In this case what the owners could do is to do some fact-finding by bringing in a soil expert or a horticulturist. Either would give an accurate assessment of what can and can’t be done. The initial solutions about using grass poisons or even bringing in sheep to “mow” the lawn could have implications that are costly. Continue reading “Do your fact-finding before you start to generate new ideas”
If you want to increase your creativity, then it’s actually a good thing to learn speed thinking. The more ideas that you come up with, the more your creative mechanism begins to work. It’s similar to the muscles in your body: those that you build up and develop give you strength; those that you neglect or don’t use lie dormant.
In my book “Breakthrough Ideas, I give you tools and techniques that you can use to speed up your personal idea generation process. One of these tools is a simple list but with a twist (after you have completed this exercise you will come up with ideas and instantly recognise how powerful your creative mind is). One of the main things that this technique teaches is that by accelerating your thinking and generating more ideas, you simply have more options at your disposal. Continue reading “Instant creativity – good for getting you going but here’s what you really need”
Today I want to tell you how silly mistakes can turn your idea-generation to naught.
If you don’t know the right way to go about the creativity or innovation process you could fail every time.
It doesn’t help if you participated in group brainstorming sessions (in fact, if this is your only brainstorming experience you may set yourself up for disappointment). Continue reading “Do you make these mistakes in idea generation?”
Have you looked around your local community lately? Businesses are closing left and right. What may have been a cellular phone shop is now a plastics shop. And, in a few months could be a pool store or security shop.
Business sales are stagnant, margins are under pressure and employees are hanging onto their jobs almost as if they were about to fall from high atop a mountain ledge. Continue reading “If you make these mistakes in idea generation, your small business could suffer the same fate”
In Journey to Ixtlan Don Matus tells Carlos Castaneda, after running at night high up in the mountains, to focus on the shadows of the leaves on one single branch and then eventually work his way to the whole tree and not let his eyes go back to the leaves.
Don Matus says Carlos must learn “to not do what I know how to do”.
Where do you look for opportunities?
Where others have looked… but let’s face it, that doesn’t always work out as intended.
In these uncertain and hard times what worked a year ago won’t necessarily work now. Look at what’s happening to small business in your local shopping centres. A pet food shop opens up for six months and then shuts down. The old space is occupied by a new tenant, and enthusiastic “entrepreneur” who has started a pool care centre. It’s happening all the time. A gift shop shuts down after a year of trading and is replaced by a woman’s clothing store. Continue reading “Find opportunities in the “shadows of the leaves””
The other evening I met a man in his late 30s who wants to start something of his own. He has been working in the retail food and catering business. All of this valuable experience but he has no idea for starting something of his own. Not even one little idea. Nothing!
The man in his late 30s wants to go back home to his country in Africa and start something. But he has no seed capital. Not even a little. Nothing!
Now, he’s unfortunately a currency prisoner. He came here looking for work but now the currency here is lower than his home country. It’s difficult for him to save or even send money home. But he’s trying.
Where can he find his inspiration to action? Continue reading “One Mistake Successful People Don’t Make – Amazing, simple secret you should know”
Let’s be clear about one thing: Scepticism works to your favour in most instances. It helps you check out things that don’t add up, just don’t seem right.
Imagine the thousands who wish they had been more sceptical before they purchased loser schemes and products. Where was the scepticism? Why didn’t they use it? Continue reading “Scepticism can be your worst enemy”
Have you had a look around in your local neighbourhood and seen what’s happening? Look around. In your local neighbourhood the pet shop closes after six months and becomes a pool shop. A clothing store runs for little less than a year and closes down. A gift shop fills the same retail space and it too disappears after a few months.
What worked a year ago isn’t working anymore. Continue reading “New solutions needed for new problems as economy opens its jaws”
California landowners are planting orchards of truffles in the hopes of harvesting them because world demand is rising. Black truffles which come from Europe or Australia cost anything between $800 to $1 200 for 0.5kg but supplies are shrinking while appetites are expanding worldwide, according to AP report.
Black truffle hunting dogs such as the Italian Lagotto Romagnolo are some of the best to sniff out the “diamonds” of the culinary world. They sniff for signs of Perigord and burgundy truffles on the roots of oak and hazelnut trees planted next to vineyards. Winemakers started planting truffle orchards five years ago and want to harvest their truffles next year. Continue reading “Are you as good in sniffing for opportunities as these dogs are?”
