I have just been reviewing my ‘ideas’ notebook that I used in the early days after my departure from my old organisation. It’s interesting, I look at new business strategy 6 months down the track and notice in my screeds of scribblings and mind maps that all the ideas were there from the start!  At the time I just didn’t put them together with the right formula.

Ideas that you have may already exist in your own mind (or someone else’s).  Often they are not observed in the right context, with the right integration or they are just ignored.

How can we speed up the time it takes for ideas to gel together in the right way?

We can think outside the box some say…, but what does that really mean though? I think we need to look at things from an objective context that is not time, technology, people, process or culture bound. So how can we get that objective perspective?

• Talk to (a lot) of other people.
• Read and learn
• Write stuff down (and review it)
• Use strategic thinking methods like de Bono’s 6 hats

Maybe you can even try meditation?  Let your mind be free of thought and make connections in your mind without prejudice… 

- Update
I just had another thought.  Perhaps you can post your ideas for discussion on a  Facebook forum. The ‘Convergence of social and business networking’ forum is an example.