It's not how many ideas you have, it's how many you make happen
Hi, I’m Mike Allen.
I’m an ideas person! I have founded three businesses; Europe’s first on-line photo processor, fotango.com, TalkFreely (www.talkfreely.com) and a Chatbot / AI Agency called theBotFarm.io. You can find more about me, my background and business by connecting to me on Linkedin, but if you’re reading this, your probably only really interested in knowing whether I could help you.
If you want to innovate, you need to master the process: identifying where you need to innovate, finding novel and creative ideas, assessing and choosing the most promising ideas, analysing, testing and building prototypes and finally launching them. I’ve built lots of tools to support organisations and people throughout this process.
Most of what I do I give away for free. Partly that’s because I can’t help everyone – there’s only so many hours in the day so why wouldn’t I help as many people as possible, and partly because an awful lot of consultancies that ‘offer’ innovation are offering the same old snake oil…management consulting labelled as innovation or creative thinking.
When I coach innovation, I jump into the trenches with you. While a lot of the tools I use are my own creations, a lot is also based on Lean Startup. It’s THE best way of developing propositions and businesses.
So, take a look around my blog and if you like what you see, sign-up to receive free lessons from the homepage, starting with an ideation tool called Idea Hacking which will walk you through generating 50 ideas in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.
If you want to know more about how I can help, email me at mike@everythingbrilliant.co.uk
Thanks for reading this page, and let’s get innovating!
Mike Allen
@BrillianttIdeas
Brilliant ideas can happen at any time. Capture them and share them
I am publishing a book I am calling a small book about BIG ideas.
Millions of lines have been written about ideas and innovation and if you were to sit down to read them all you’d be sitting down for months. I can confidently say this because I have read just about all of them! (I have included an essential reading list at the end of the e-book).
There’s some wonderfully insightful reading to be done, but there’s a whole lot of intellectual babble as well. I’ve called this book the small book about BIG ideas not because I’m lazy (although I am short of time) but because I want to give as many people as possible the opportunity to pick-up some ideas (excuse the pun), insights and techniques to have more better ideas.
Please subscribe to the blog to be sure to receive news and updates, or click here to access the first two chapters.
You can also Like the facebook page accompanying the book at www.facebook.com/ASmallBookAboutBigIdeas or follow the Twitter account at @smalbookBIGidea
Ideas are the ultimate human resource
Great idea, great PR
by Michael on 18 Mar, 2020 - 0 comments
This is how you do great PR in a crisis!Scottish brewer, Brewdog have temporarily suspended a production line in their distillery to switch to manufacturing hand sanitiser. What’s more, they made it clear, it’s not to cash in, but to give away to try and help as many people as possible stay safe. Well done […]
Now this IS a good idea. Postal workers check-in on older residents
by Michael on 15 Feb, 2020 - 0 comments
Cohésio is a new initiative from the French National Post. It means “Watch Over My Parents” and was created by accident. The service began in 2013, after a heat wave, when a number of overburdened city halls asked their local post offices to check on vulnerable and elderly residents. There has always been a “natural […]
New research on crowdsourcing innovation from the market leader, Spigit
by Michael on 11 Feb, 2020 - 0 comments
The market leader in idea management software has been producing an annual report on crowdsourcing from their clients – many of which are the world’s largest brands – representing 21 different industry verticals for the last few years. The report delivers insights into how these brands leverage their innovation programs to solve problems and surface […]
Brilliant Idea #365. Electric Vehicle charging road train
by Michael on 10 Jul, 2018 - 0 comments
If they can refuel a plane at 30k feet and 500mph, can’t we-recharge an electric vehicle in motion? When all HGV lorries are EVs or hybrids, they’ll have huge batteries. The car (with a small battery) will drive behind the lorry, tether and recharge on the motorway. The car gets an un-interrupted journey (re-charging on […]
Brilliant Idea #364. Alexa stretch skill
by Michael on 10 Jul, 2018 - 0 comments
If you sit down all day, bad news, it’s slowly killing your. Doctors call it the sitting disease. More worrying, the latest research suggests that you can’t undo the 8-10 hours a day you’re sitting down working by then going to the gym in the evening. You can, according to the science, undo the harm […]
Brilliant Idea #363. Electric Vehicle charging robot
by Michael on 10 Jul, 2018 - 0 comments
We’ll all have electric vehicles soon. Daily we’ll be plugging them in. I can’t think of a better use-case for a robot. It’ll find the charging plug in the car and plug itself in. If you can refuel a jet at 20k feet at 500 mph, we can build a charging robot. Brilliant.
Birlliant Idea #362. The misguided tour co.
by Michael on 24 Dec, 2017 - 0 comments
A city tour in a bus, taxi or tuktuk, but the tour commentary is nonsense – amusing nonesense, just for fun. Brilliant.
First sight of my book
by Michael on 17 Dec, 2017 - 0 comments
First sight of my book, co-authored by my good friends Bassam Alkarashi and Patrick Roupin. Looks great.
Brilliant Idea #361. Start an internet conspiracy that internet conspiracies are just a conspiracy
by Michael on 16 Dec, 2017 - 0 comments
We’ve seen a number of internet conspirancies that have taken hold in the last few years – the flat earth one being an example which is, let’s face it, just stupid. How do they take hold? Presumably it’s not just highly convincing YouTube videos. Isn’t it also that some people are pre-desposed to wanting to […]
Logs from coffee grounds. Brilliant
by Michael on 14 Dec, 2017 - 0 comments
We drink millions of cups of coffee every day (in fact, I really should start a coffee shop, it might be more profitable than innovation consulting). That’s a LOT of used coffee grounds. Bio-Bean turn them into logs to burn in the fireplace. Brilliant. http://www.bio-bean.com/coffee-logs/
Rescam fights back against spammers
by Michael on 04 Dec, 2017 - 0 comments
Why didn’t I think of this! Rescam (www.rescam.org) uses AI to fight back against email spammers by replying to their spam emails again and again and again. Love it.
Brilliant idea #360. Point ring
by Michael on 28 Nov, 2017 - 0 comments
I’ve an Amazon Alexa in my home connected to wifi enabled lightulbs so I can walk into, for instance, the master bedroom and say “Alexa, turn on the bedroom lamp” and it will send a message to the lamp to turn it on (or off). It’ll even turn it up or down or, with the […]
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