You never get used to being ignored. Here's a way to think about it. Your ideas are analagous to your children. And you don't want them to go into the world in rags. So what you want to do is to be sure that you have techniques, mechanisms, thoughts about how to present ideas that you have so that they're recognized and remembered for the value in them.
So that's why it's a legitimate thing to concern yourself with the packaging of your ideas, and here is a heuristic for how you can be remembered.
If you want the presentation of your ideas to be remembered, one of the things you need to do is to make sure that you have some symbol associated with your work.
In the case of The Skills Studio, a pedagogical model for skills development, the symbol is the multi-colored, nine-cell matrix below. It's a nine-cell matrix because the model focuses on developing nine life skills.
Next thing you need is a slogan, a phrase that provides a handle on the work.
And in this case, the phrase is "Experiential Pathways Learning Initiative©", because the pedagogical model I devised is about developing skills through experiential learning. So leveraging the experiential learning pedagogical model creates pathways for expanding your life's potential.
We've covered a symbol and a slogan.
And now we need a surprise. Yeah, the surprise is you don't need a million examples of something to learn. You can do it with one example if you're smart enough to make use of that example appropriately. So that is the surprise. You can learn something of value from each of the nine experiential models.
Next you need a salient idea. When I say salient idea, I don't mean important. What I mean is an idea that sticks out. Some innovations, funnily enough, have too many good ideas, and you don't know what to focus on because which one is it? So it would help if you had an idea that sticks out.
The idea that stuck out with The Skills Studio was the notion of learning and then consciously applying a skill. You see, unless you purposefully use a skill, you don't get an opportunity to reflect on how well you did, so you won't have a chance to refine the application of the skill.
And finally, you need to know how to tell the story of how you did it, how it works, why it's essential. The story I wrote for The Skills Studio is outlined in a Blog Post.
These are the key elements to ensure that your work is recognized and remembered.
The notion of idea packaging generally implies involving specialists in graphic design and marketing communications. However, you can capture the elements I've outlined yourself or with help from a friend or two. Then when funds permit, you can have professionals give it all a fresh look.
My attempts at creating all these elements are my work because I didn't, and still don't, have spare funds I can allocate for that work.
I'm comfortable that my design and words are quite adequate in the early stages of commercializing The Skills Studio idea.
About the Author:
Greg Twemlow is a Sydney-based Social Enterprise Founder | Startup Mentor | CEO | Writer | Speaker | Designer at The Skills Studio