Problems spring up often in many organisations and to solve them, there are strategies employed to accomplish this. The forms in which they come are convergent thinking and divergent thinking, with the convergent type being about finding one well-defined solution to a problem, and the divergent type of thinking being the opposite: creating multiple, unique ideas to solve problems.
We discuss ‘Divergent Thinking, Eliminating Judgment and the Value of a Bad Idea this episode of the Gamers Change Lives Podcast with prolific author, Jeremy Utley.
About Jeremy Utley
Jeremy Utley is the Director of Executive Education at Stanford's renowned Hasso Plattner Institute of Design with his courses being experienced by nearly a million students of innovation worldwide. He advises corporate leaders on how to imbed the methods and mindsets of design thinking into their organizations. Jeremy addresses the aspects of developing skills from ideas, which can be highlighted in his new book “Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters” co-written with Perry Klebahn.
The book is an outlook on the concept of ideaflow, the number of ideas you and your team can generate in a set amount of time, and its applicability in the world of esports and the business of esports entrepreneurs.
On this episode, host Tom Leonard asks Jeremy about esports entrepreneurs and who they should be listening to, to help broaden their perspective in business. Jeremy advises that they listen to their customers, or the people whose lives they are trying to change. There are also supply chains, advertisers and team members from other verticals in the business that they can listen to. And they could consider people in unrelated fields as they can apply knowledge from there as well into their business.
Jeremy’s inflection of prioritizing his learning came from dissatisfaction; telling the same stories all the time and not being thoughtful about fresh input. But he realized that he had to be intentional about his learning being his own responsibility, and that gradually changed when he began talking to people – women especially because he had almost all his stories from men. Being intentional about your inspiration matters. Going out to speak or engage with people is a discipline — you get your best ideas from interacting with people. The more people you engage with, the more refined you get to have your ideas. So in the end you are finding the ideas and not painstakingly sitting to draft them from scratch.
"You know what about the box? Get out of the box. Very simple! Step 1? Get out of the box! Step 2? Think there!" — Jeremy Utley on the Gamers Change Lives Podcast
Jeremy makes it clear that no ideas are to be silenced and quantity is important to developing oneself on the individual level with idea generation. As many as ten ideas a day would do, and no it is not to find if all are great, because there would obviously be some that are not. Just to see how far you will be willing to go with generating ideas is what is needed.
Also noteworthy to generating ideas is keeping “bad ideas”, because they are incredibly valuable, and the lens they are to be viewed in is with the question “What does that make me think of?”. Spotting errors is equally important as seeing the value of absurd ideas and the possibility they can bring, because bad ideas can potentially trigger creativity in the next man, and should the risk be taken, it will be worth it.
The Ideaflow bonus chapter does well to help you as a reader and esports entrepreneur to make an outline on innovation: from time management and exploring the discipline of inspiration, serving as the right guide to help you navigate the business of esports and keep it going for as long as possible like the greats mentioned in this chapter – Bezos and Jobs. The chapter is meant to, however, lead to the acquisition of the entire book “Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters”.
Order Ideaflow here and enjoy reading!
Esports has helped create jobs for lots of people. Interested in knowing about the business side of esports? Listen to the Gamers Change Lives Podcast! We get experienced guests from all around the world featuring.
Written By Jeffrey Osei-Agyeman
