UNAUTHORIZED FIELD TRIPS + BAGS OF IDEAS
Concept Nest.
How did it start?
That’s a great question – and a fun one.
To understand the origin of Concept Nest, we need to hop in the “Wayback Machine.” Yes, a term shamelessly borrowed from some movie who’s name I can’t remember.
Looking back, I realize I have always had an active – and, at times, overactive – imagination. Ideas just show up. Most often, they are sparked by random observations, a conversation, or simply being exposed to different situations or content. Regardless of the inspiration, most of my ideas have one thing in common: they solve problems. Thus, I’ve been calling this process “problem-solving innovation” or “real-time innovating on the fly.”
THE (UNAUTHORIZED) KINDERGARTEN FIELD TRIP
I guess you could say my creative juices were flowing at a young age. After I had been punished for being disruptive (Who, me? Never. *Cough*), I took a solo unauthorized field trip.
For context, the teacher sentenced me to sit outside on the bench of shame. After a few minutes, boredom - along with my feelings of counter-dependence and resistance to authority - set in. I thought, “What if I just left?” Without skipping a beat, I grabbed my lunch bag and headed out. I picked a hiding place just down the road from school in some shrubs where I knew my mom would pass close by to pick me up from school. I hung out in the shrubs for a couple of hours, watching a freeway of ants crawling up a wall while enjoying my PBJ sandwich. Sure enough, around 3:00pm I saw my Mom’s ugly brown Mercury station wagon with fake wood trim (a classic, indeed) coming up the road. I quickly shimmied out of my hideaway and raced to the corner, the usual pick-up spot.
Smooth, right? Everything seemed cool, except when we drove to the front of the school where my teacher, the principal, and the police were waiting. Oops.
Let’s fast forward to my early teens where I was confronted with a problem. I was locked out my house and had to come up with a way to gain entry. During some experimentation, I found that if I used a flat head screwdriver, I could lift the sliding glass door up from the base, which moved this little hook off the frame. It worked! I was in.
It was then that I had another idea! What if I could come up with a way to prevent what I had just done and then, sell my idea to prevent this from happening?! I played around with different pieces of wood until I found the right size and length, tested it, and – violá! Success! I went door to door in my neighborhood demonstrating how one could break in and then offering my invention, little wooden dowels that functioned as security devices. They sold like hot cakes at $2 each. I was in the money, baby! Selling an idea was thrilling. Although, I think I might have ended up on a watch list as well.
THE $5 IDEA
Later, while working part time in the shipping and receiving department at a company that manufactured aftermarket auto-parts, management launched a campaign asking its employees to submit ideas to improve operations.
One practice I had observed was a quality control (QC) process for shrink wrapping our aftermarket tachometers, timing lights, oil pressure gages, etc. A few times a week, a truck would show up with pallets of freshly shrink-wrapped products. These pallets were then forklifted off the truck followed by two QC inspectors with white coats and clip boards who would walk around examining the packaging. Several times a month, these finished goods would be rejected and sent back for a “do-over” at the packaging company, which was located just a couple miles from our location.
My suggestion was to simply have the inspectors go to the location of the shrink-wrap company for their inspections. It saved time, resources, and money. The company implemented my idea right away and rewarded me with $5. Essentially, my compensation was equivalent to one hour of pay. Well, that was the last idea I shared with them!
BRINGING ORDER TO A PILE OF METAL
In my mid-twenties, I worked part time as driver for a company that tested metals. Simply put, my primary job was to drive to four or five foundries in the area, rub shoulders with the employees of these foundries (my early experience with customer relations), and collect and transport these pieces of metal to be tested with specific technical instructions. Additionally, I would deliver the metal that had been tested along with a detailed report back to the foundries.
It was interesting. A number of these metal components were for aircraft engines and other specialty needs that would be subjected to heavy stress, heat, cold, and other testing processes. However, there was a problem at the metal testing facility. Metal pieces were getting lost or mixed-up. Occasionally, the testing results were lost, separated, or misplaced. This wasn’t surprising given the messy nature of their process. Prior to me coming along, the accepted “workflow” was dumping metal and testing requirements into a pile on the floor.
I suggested, “What if we painted sections of the shop floor with a matrix format that had specific sections for each of the foundries we did business with? Incoming metal and related documentation would be on the left side of the loading dock and the outgoing materials would be on the right side.” When put into practice, this idea made a big (measurable) difference right away. The owner gave me some coveted tire rims as a thank-you present.
BIRD RESCUE
One day, I was working from my home office when I heard a scratching and fluttering noise coming from our ceiling in the bathroom. A little bird had found itself at the bottom of the bathroom ceiling vent pipe. To get a better look, I retrieved a ladder from the garage. I pulled the vent cover off to find a cute, little bird who had wedged itself in the vent shaft of the fan and seemed to be stuck. I fetched a pencil and used its eraser to gently push on the bird’s little beak. It managed to back up and flutter up in the shaft, but it still had no way out.
I needed to MacGyver our way out of this. I decided to get out an eight-foot-long cardboard tube that had been used for packaging carpet and a large carboard box. I positioned the top of the tube to cover the opening where the fan had been removed. At the bottom of my contraption was a carboard box. I sat back and waited for some time. Tick-tock. Unfortunately, the bird did not abandon its post. I thought to myself, “Perhaps, the bird would be attracted to light?” I added a small flashlight to the end of the box. Again, I waited patiently. This was very suspenseful. After a bit, I heard the bird wiggle around by the top of the tube. Then, I heard it slowly slide all the way down the tube and into box. I quickly and carefully removed the tube and covered the box so the bird would not get loose inside our house. I slid the box outside onto our wooden deck and opened the lid. The bird immediately flew out and onto the railing, looked back at me, gave me a “wings-five,” and flew off. Okay, I made up the last part up. I digress.
BAGS OF IDEAS
For years, I jotted down ideas and stashed them in literal plastic bags. I would write these ideas on little pieces of paper (old school) and then essentially sat on them. Occasionally, I would see one of my ideas hit the market, such as bandages with pre-applied antibiotic ointment. I had thought of this idea many years earlier, but did not take any action aside from adding another piece of paper to my bag of ideas. I would grumble ‘Darn’ and be forced to leave.. Okay, I used different words. Anyway, I still have some bags of ideas!
The biggest obstacle to moving forward with my ideas was my capacity to invest time, energy and money. Simply, there was just too much demand for my time – personally and professionally - for me to prioritize developing and realizing my ideas. For most of my adult life, instead of growing my ideas into various businesses, I grew my bag of ideas.
IDEAS THAT GOT AWAY
For several years, I ran large tech projects for a national bank. One day, after one of my wife’s many shopping sprees, I thought, it would be great if you could turn your credit cards on and off. I pitched this idea to my partners and they approved, but management seemed to be uninterested. As we all know, card control is commonplace today, but I had the idea decades earlier.
GUPPY BOWL IS BORN
Several years ago, I shared this dilemma with my best friend and wife. Together, we came up with the thought, “Why not sell the ideas to those who can do something with them, and perhaps we get a piece of the action along the way?”
That’s how Guppy Bowl was born. Yes, the name was cheekily inspired by a certain reality TV show about… Alpha fish.
Progress was slow until I teamed up with a creative friend, Savannah, who I call “Sav”. We clicked instantly. We had creative energy that could light up a room – and often did.
Later, Matt joined the crew. He is our tech and ops guru, researcher, and “The Idea Assassin.” You’re probably familiar with the one who says, “it’s already been done,” or brings up sites and apps in similar spaces almost instantaneously. He is a necessary rain on our parade, filtering and fine-sorting our concepts; he identifies the ideas that needs to be “kicked out of the nest” and challenges others to be bolder.
CONCEPT NEST
Since “Guppy Bowl” had been soundly rejected by my teammates, we went through a dynamic process of coming up with a new and improved name for our growing organization.
P.S. I still like Guppy Bowl.
Eventually, we landed on Concept Nest.
The first word signifies the business we’re in, the business of building and selling concepts. The second element equates ideas to eggs and, later in their development, fledglings. It implies that Concept Nest is the birthplace and nursery of ideas. This metaphor speaks to the level of care and intentionality that we bring to our idea curation, while gently denoting our interest in sustainability... Now that I think of it, there are so many parallels and easter eggs in the name that we could make an entirely separate blog about it.. And maybe we should. What do you think?
Most importantly though, the name “Concept Nest” is intimately tied to our values, which drive our focus and energy: creativity; sustainability; critical thinking; inclusivity, and most importantly, having fun.
Carving a path forward has been a swirly road, but we’re finally ready to share with you what we have been cooking up... Starting with our podcast, Curiositea by Concept Nest.
Listen now on Spotify or join the conversation by submitting ideas and feedback on social or on Curiositea’s homepage.
Cheers,