I recently had the opportunity to speak at Future Trends 2009 about a variety of topics, including idea parenting.

"Spend enough time around innovation and you become aware of a startlinganalogy: Ideas are just like children. Ideas need a loving set of parents to conceive them, encourage them, challenge them, and protect them until they are ready to stand on their own. Good parenting will produce ideas born as simple insights that can change the world. The problem is, we as corporate executives (parents) abandon ournurturing role too early. And just like in any family (or company), once the core set of parents is gone, the child (insight) suffers."

Watch a brief excerpt from the discussion below, and remember to raise your ideas correctly!

Have you seen the new Maddock Douglas homepage?