Idea Cafe

On 18th April Idea Cafe was organised by the Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership of BITS Pilani.It was a brain-storming session conducted by Mr. Pradeep Sethi, an alumnus of BITS and a successful entrepreneur himself. 

He started off with a little exercise which tickled our brains. He gave us small riddles and brain-teasers to show us that a problem can be approached in different ways(which involved "thinking out of the box" and "broad thinking"). Then we all "put on our thinking caps" and the mass idea-generation started. There was one idea per person and we got almost upto 50 ideas. Everyone had an idea of their own- from Selling Indian Cultures and Graphic/Animation to Automatic Moving Dustbins(AMDs) and Food-ATMs! After that,the ideas were filtered depending on some criteria like cost and time of implementation, legal issues and technicality of the idea(whether the technology/process to implement the idea almost immediately exists or not). Around 20-25 ideas passed through the filter. Then other factors of the ideas were considered and all of them wereput to vote. The most popular ideas went to the finals. These, in the order of their popularity, are:

1. Laundry Service - Mythili

2. Pest Control - Ambarish

3. Ads on a Rickshaw - Neeti

4. Household workers bank - Ajay Bhise

5. Sarcastic Newspaper - Brijesh

The owners of these ideas were made to choose people to be in their team and Mr. Sethi discussed what is to be done next-how to go about the idea in developing it into a start-up. Finally, when it was time to go, we presented Mr. Sethi with a memento(photo-frame). Then he requested for a group-photo so that he could cherish the memory.

A lot of creative ideas and solutions came up during the session. It was a good experience for all those who were present as well as the organisers.

P.S. My idea was to open an "Architecture Consultancy" which takes care of A-Z of buildings - from the way it is built to interior decorating.Anyone interested??