Welcome to The X Factor Blog. Here you’ll find relevant use cases for Ideasicle X. Articles on the art of generating ideas while working remotely. Insights and studies into creativity itself. All from the desk of our founder and CEO, Will Burns.
Coming up with ideas remotely is unavoidable these days with hybrid work becoming more and more the norm. But that doesn’t mean the quality of your, and your partners’, ideas must suffer. 2024 can be the year to embrace remote idea generation. Here are three best practices (and worst) we’ve learned first-hand about participating in remote creative sessions that you can start using today.
Read MoreWhen agencies need freelancers they need them yesterday, not three days later after they’ve been called, negotiated with, W9s received, an office found for them to work, hotels to put them up, etc. What if freelance talent could be intimately integrated into an agency’s existing creative process, where teams who know your client’s business are but keystrokes away at any given moment and could be coming up with ideas within hours not days? Well, we have the meats.
Read MoreIn-house agencies live their brand every day, they’re immersed in its culture, they get it first hand. However, the in-house agency is at a disadvantage to external agencies in one respect: the thinking can get insular. While external agencies are working on different brands all the time, in-house agencies work on one brand. All. Day. Long. In-housers know they need to bring in outside perspective from time to time, but many don’t want the risks involved in bringing in outside help. Is there an answer? Short answer, yes. Longer answer below.
Read MoreYou’ve got a pile of creative ideas in front of you. Maybe they were generated by your in-house team, your agency, or even from an Ideasicle X project. Regardless, you’re feeling good, fortified, and excited with all this potential. But now you’ve got to evaluate these ideas and decide which ones with which to move forward. Here are a few important criteria by which to filter that list down to the 3-5 best ones.
Read MoreJust this month our crack developer team added some exciting new functionality to the Ideasicle X platform. If you haven’t heard, customers told us they wanted a division of labor with the implementation of idea jobs, as follows:
Organizer: sets up the idea jobs
Idea Director: monitors the team’s ideas within the Idea Stream
Observers: can view the Idea Streams but can’t engage with the teams in any way
Today, I want to share a deeper dive on these roles, what to expect, and how each can add as much value as possible to the idea-generating process.
Read MoreI’ve presented thousands of ideas in hundreds of presentations over the last 12 years with Ideasicle. Sometimes I leave the presentation excited and motivated to do more, other times I want to smash all my Beatles records. You could say I have pretty thick skin at this point. So today I’m going to reflect on how I think clients can review other people’s ideas without inadvertently ruining everything.
Read MoreIdeasicle X is a new platform and, as such, is still open to interpretation. It’s exciting, really. We hope to see customers using it in ways we never expected. But also because it’s new, our agency customers are still getting used to the platform. And we see three common mistakes made that are easily avoided in order to maximize every idea-generating job.
Read MoreIdeasicle X is all about ideas, but it’s not the “normal” way to generate them. It’s all virtual, it’s in teams of four, there are no meetings, etc. Well, David Baldwin has been an Ideasicle Expert since 2010 and has been a customer of Ideasicle X with his agency, Baldwin&. Here are David’s tips for other freelancers invited to idea projects on the platform. Wise.
Read MoreIdeasicle X, as wonderful as we think it is for coming up with great ideas quickly, is not designed to replace any creative departments. It’s a fear we’ve heard more than once. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Ideasicle X is designed to be a behind-the-scenes complement to magnify the power of creative departments.
Read MoreOne of the reasons Ideasicle X works so well is that the team feels comfortable and unafraid. Nothing scares creativity away better than fear, right? Well, our platform is designed to minimize fear and maximize ideas. Here are three ways we do that.
Read MoreThat’s what one of our Ideasicle X freelancers once said she appreciated about the virtual platform. Her ideas where happening while she was busy with other things. And it’s an incredibly important point about the virtual creative work we do, but also about any creative work anyone does for anything. Let me explain.
Read MoreIdeasicle X is a new way to come up with ideas in teams, virtually. And for users of the platform there’s a decent amount of room for nuance, for personalizing the experience, and acquiring the “skill” to truly master the platform. Below I’m going to explain how you can be great at Ideasicle X.
Read MoreIdeasicle X is a new way for freelancers to work, virtually. It’s not your typical freelance gig where you get briefed, go away for a few days maybe with a partner, and come back with comps. Ideasicle X is a platform that allows teams of four freelancers to work together as a team over a few days posting, building, and riffing on each other’s ideas. One freelancer said, “It’s like an idea video game.” But working in this way requires a shift in how you do things. Below are just a few things to think about if you want to be great at Ideasicle X.
Read MoreI was interviewed by Rob Schwartz this week for his (fantastic) “Disruptor Series Podcast” (my episode comes out in June sometime) and something I said without much thought struck a chord with him. It was something I’ve said or written hundreds of times, to the point where its significance had probably waned for me. But not for Rob. For him, a light bulb went off. The notion, to paraphrase, was that the ideas an agency gets from Ideasicle X tend to inspire more ideas with an agency’s internal teams. And it’s true. Let me explain.
Read MoreI need to set an expectation with all the new Ideasicle X freelancers who will soon be populating our virtual hallways. The original Ideasicle Experts all know this, so this is for the newbies. To succeed within the Ideasicle X model as a freelancer, you will need to leave your ego at the digital door. This platform is not about award shows, it’s not about individual glory, it’s not about competition, it’s not even about who has the best ideas. Ideasicle X is what happens when four brilliant people work together as a unit, posting, building, riffing, and inspiring each other.
Read MoreIdeasicle X is the first SaaS platform designed specifically for virtual idea generation. That means a customer can recruit any four people on Earth to work together on an assignment. For enterprising Freelancer Creative Directors, subscribing to this tool could change the way they look at their business. Specifically, it could turn Creative Directors into idea “agencies.” Let me explain.
Read MoreIdeasicle X is about to launch and change the advertising world. We’ve talked about why the platform uses four freelancers as a team, how the building and riffing are the magic, and how the virtual nature actually accelerates creativity. But what we haven’t talked about is the critical roles the customer plays in all this. In short, the agency customer not just a bystander, but an active participant. Let me explain.
Read MoreThere are many reasons that ideas happen quickly and exponentially on the Ideasicleˣ platform, but one of the most important is the degree to which the creative brief inspires the team. Let’s stop what we’re doing and talk about how to inspire your teams with a creative brief, be they Ideasicleˣ teams or your own.
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