Champion ideas

The hardest part of creativity and coming up with ideas is the next step: finding a way to bring ideas to life. Whenever you got a big idea, they feel unlikely, risky and counterintuitive. Somebody needs to be the one carrying the torch.

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it. Now that doesn’t mean that every wild notion you come up with is gonna be genius. But if there is something that you feel is good, something you want to do, something that means something to you, try to do it.

Stan Lee

What to do when championing ideas

First of all, the goal of bringing an idea to life is all about learning. As soon as success is your most significant driver, your risk appetite will disappear and learning drops to zero. Whenever you focus on learning or simply the joy of doing it, championing becomes easier

Also, avoid groups. Don’t avoid groups to collaborate, though avoid groups when validating your ideas. A few studies show that groups tend to agree with the majority opinion, even when wrong. If your idea feels unlikely, don’t spend your energy on the people that need convincing. Invest it into those who are already interested.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

John Maynard Keynes

Try out the cornerstones of your ideas. The more you experiment, the less you become constrained by old ideas. The less you have constraints. The wider the imagination becomes, the more likely it will become to bring your ‘unlikely’ idea to life.

It is leadership

Ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.

Bari Weiss

Championing ideas is leadership. You do not have to be a “leader” in a matrix organisation to do it, but you need to be a leader for your idea. Your actions will create a ripple effect around you and might inspire others to bring great ideas forward.

Leadership drives excellent ideas forward and opens the door for innovation. Groupthink and consensus are the anti-conception for ideas and innovation.