Well.. several. If you ever get the pleasure of meeting my wife, you’ll have to ask her about LaundryTrak… “trak” is our family code for my poor marketing and branding skills. I have never really studied those valuable disciplines, and certainly not applied myself to improving in them. This is not to say I am without creativity. Many people would say quite the opposite. In 1985 I drew a system for digitizing music and transferring it (via 1200 baud modem) to jukeboxes so you could play any song you wanted on demand. A few years back, I started down the path to build a system where neighbors could use excess capacity of time to help each other in small ways. And I have a few others swirling around.

The problem with ideas, as Rudyard Kipling so clearly illustrated, is they are just that.. for an idea to become a product or service can take significant work. And this work takes resources that are generally scarce. And, if you don’t ever invest any resources in exploring new ideas, you are guaranteed to fall behind, both your customers and your competitors.

Having been an Agile coach for several years, I’ve become convinced a key value proposition of the entire Lean/Agile movement for business is developing a habit of experimenting. And like all habits, this one, can be hard to convert from good idea to habit.

I started Ideation Nation, in part, to help people and organizations who want to improve their ability to germinate, nurture, and select the best ideas to invest in. Feel free to follow along as I apply my ideas to Ideation Nation!