The ideas book

There is a great profile on US entrepreneur website Inc.com of a guy called Josh James, who is the founder of web analytics and online marketing company Omniture.

The story is one of those great what-I-learned pieces – and given James sold Omniture to Adobe last year for $US1.8 billion, there’s plenty of nice tidbits in there for any entrepreneurs.

One of the ones I really liked involved a tender than Omniture wasn’t invited to take part in. James realised that in a competitive sector, he needed to stand out and so he paid $US15,000 for a 10 minute “spot” at a trade show.

“We had this sales guy say, ‘Everyone stand up, because we are going to play rock, paper, scissors. And the winner gets a Hummer. But instead of saying ‘rock, paper, scissors,’ we’re going to say ‘Om-ni-ture.’ So you got 1,500 people chanting “Om-ni-ture.” Ever since that day, there really haven’t been any RFPs that we didn’t get an invite to.”

It’s a lovely anecdote that shows how a cleverly placed bit of marketing can really grab the attention of your sector.

James also has some great stories about the difficulties he had in the early days just paying his staff and tells how he used to lie on his floor crying at the thought – see, all entrepreneurs go through those harrowing cashflow crisis.

But the idea I really liked was about James’ idea book.

“One guy said, if you want to start a business, get an idea book, and whenever you have an idea, write it down. So, I was doing that every day. I ended up with a patent on a product. It was a way to get hair out of hairbrushes. My wife and I called it the Brush’s Groom. I never made a dime off of it, but I learned a lot about business plans, marketing and distribution.”

It might sound like a quaint idea in this very electronic age – the entrepreneurs I known favour the tactic of sending an email every time they came up with a brain wave – but I think the idea book could be a great way to spark, and more importantly, document, innovation in your business.

But what if you took it a step further – as well as having your own ideas book, what if you asked your key staff to keep their own ideas books? Every few weeks, or maybe once a week, you could meet and go through the ideas, pick the good ones, discuss them and take them further.

Not only will you find yourself with a fresh supply of innovative ideas, but you’ll also be able to see which staff are entrepreneurial and potentially make adjustments to your structure accordingly.

Go on, buy a few notebooks this weekend and give it a go.