Bryan Mattimore shares the importance of ideas with a TCU Neeley audience.
April 06, 2021
By Mariana Rivas
Chief Idea Guy Bryan Mattimore had one hope while presenting at the Tandy Executive Speaker Series.
“My wish is that for some of you it will actually be life changing,” he said. “That's my hope for everybody in the audience. You will take some of this stuff I'm sharing, then use it to reinvent your careers, yourselves and your businesses.”
Mattimore is the co-founder and Chief Idea Guy at the consulting business, Growth Engine Company. There, he’s managed more than 200 successful innovation projects for companies around the world that have combined to create more than $3 billion in new sales. He’s also a best-selling author of three books on business innovation.
At the Tandy Executive Speaker Series event, Mattimore shared with the audience of students, faculty and alumni how to design for innovation, how ideation goes deeper than brainstorming, the importance of ideas, and how to come up with good ones. He then answered Dean Daniel Pullin’s questions about adapting to the pandemic, advice for upcoming graduates and more.
Mattimore began by sharing how he incorporates strategies for innovation at the institutional level, at the team level and at the individual level in businesses.
He encouraged the use of ideation sessions with specific tasks and stimuli to promote ideas. It includes an encouraging environment where there’s no such thing as a bad idea.
“No bad ideas is not correct, of course. Most of the ideas in a session are bad; only about 10 or 15 percent are any good,” Mattimore said. “But the bigger thought there is really to withhold judgment, and that’s tremendously valuable and an important principle of this ideation work.”
But Mattimore shared four platforms he discovered to help come up with a good idea. According to them, an idea for a new business should adapt to new technology, help someone with self-actualization, save someone time or save someone money.
Pullin asked him how business students who don’t flex their creative muscles as often might use these strategies. Mattimore responded by saying anyone can think of ideas and use them to better serve clients, or do their jobs better.
“If you want to thrive and if you want to get promoted, my strong bias is that you need to be an idea person," Mattimore said.
The Tandy Executive Speaker Series is presented by Frost Bank and hosted by the TCU Neeley School of Business.
