Idea A Day

Coffee can do wonders and when it is free of cost, you can’t ask for a better treat. This article is dedicated to those two cups which I wasn’t asked to pay for at the inauguration of “The” Pit Stop yesterday evening, which motivated me to take up this book, which in turn inspired me to scribble these lines.

When Mr. Neeraj Swaroop was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer of Standard Chartered Bank, India, one of his earliest introduction, was the creation of two email addresses: ihaveanidea@in.standardchartered.com and ihaveanissue@in.standardchartered.com both of which would be directly managed by him and any of the 5000+ employee force in India could write to him. Both of these formed his strongest tools in looking at innovative solutions to business problems and also getting a chance to remove issues at all levels which could otherwise remain unreported, under-reported or incorrectly reported. The improved performance of the bank and higher satisfaction levels in the employees can also be attributed to the above to a certain extent.

Similar to the above is this book called ‘The Big Idea Book’ edited out from the online website ‘idea-a-day.com’, which is an online archive of ideas on varied subjects as thought by the authors and submitted by the readers. This book and the website has ideas collected and visualized by the authors and presented in a copyright and payment free mode for the benefit of anyone and everyone who might be interested in it. While some of the ideas are funny and far stretched from any practical relevance, there are many, which could be converted into viable propositions. The idea behind the project though is not to find out as to how many of their published ideas are actually converted into full scale projects.

This brings me back to one of those things which I purposely avoided this new years eve: resolutions. If there is one that I now wish to make now, it is to generate ideas, insane or relevant they might be, but the process will not be useless ever. This also makes me feel that if this thought is absorbed and worked out by the management, we might be able to see several innovative solutions and great ideas on the campus. I would love to see anything at all being initiated in this direction.

For the moment, I will just leave with the idea which is posted on www.idea-a-day.com today.

“Award honors (like New Year Honors in Australia and the UK) only to individuals voted for by the wider population. The public would be encouraged to submit nominations and, subsequently, to cast a vote for the nominees they would like their nation to reward in this way. A combination of voting methods, including online and phone options, would maximize democratic participation and media interest.

Day 2694 2 January 2008 by Steve Evans”

The archives on the website and the book 'The Big Idea Book', a copy is available with the library are a must read.

I have an idea as well. There should be some free coffee coupons awarded for any good idea submitted to the management.