IABC group thinks outside box with idea market
'Stretching-the-brain' exercises creates greater innovation in business
Matt Homann, a visual strategist at XPLANE, brought his innovative thinking to the International Association of Business Communicators for the first IABC/St. Louis Idea Market in August.
It's part think tank and part focus group -- with lots of networking thrown in as well.As an innovation consultant, retreat facilitator and conference planner, Homann devised the Idea Market in St. Louis about a year ago.
Homann joined XPLANE, a St. Louis firm, about four months ago. Since then, XPLANE has been holding the sessions at the Art of Living building in downtown St. Louis, where the XPLANE offices are located.
With offices in St. Louis, Portland, Ore., and Madrid, Spain, XPLANE has captured the visual-thinking discipline, calling it the XPLANATION, from which the company gets it name.
XPLANE helps companies improve their business communications through processes like visual thinking, which distills complex processes and concepts into easy-to-understand pictures and graphics.
"(XPLANE) has taken over the unofficial sponsorship of the idea market," he said.
While practicing as a lawyer in Highland a few years back, Homann had hints of his need to think and work outside the box. Stretching those boundaries eventually led to leaving the law field and working as an innovation coach and consultant.
Homann worked in Los Angeles as a consultant for about a year and a half. He started the idea market when he moved back to St. Louis.
He sees the idea market as filling a need for fun after work exercises that stretch the brain and allow a chance to network at the same time.
Many of the business "networking" events he has attended left him wanting.
"Often it can be a handshake and business card event," he said.
Homann found that while pushing people into an activity, they have fun and get to know each other as well.
"I found that while doing other retreats and conferences, when people actually meet and do something together, they learn a lot about each other and are far more likely to be engaged with one another, and ultimately do business with each other," he said.
"What's unique about this is that when you have a fun activity or (are) brainstorming, you find that people are able to learn about each other when the conversation isn't so 'mercenary,'" he said.
At the IABC event, people were indeed pushed outside their initial comfort zones in a different kind of "ice breaker."
Each of the more than dozen participants, with help from their team, used words to describe what they really do -- their true job -- in a fun and offbeat way. Then they explained their new name to the entire group.
Homann gives an example of one job title, a divorce lawyer, could describe the job as an unhappy-spouse-freedom facilitator.
Rhonda Sciarra, with Enterprise Rent-A-Car, attended an Idea Market hosted by Homann and introduced the group to the IABC membership.
"(Sciarra) came to one a couple months ago," Homann said. "She thought the format would be a good one to try for one of the meetings."
Sciarra said the evening was constructive and fun for IABC members.
"I think it was a great chance to try something new, and interact with business communicators in an unconventional way, beyond the handshake and the business card," she said.
Sciarra said the evening definitely pushed business communicators to think "outside the box."
Another activity required those participating to use pictures to communicate a simple phrase, such as a drawing on a road sign.
"It was something that business communicators do all the time, but in a different way," Homann said.
Homann said his idea markets are a lot different than what people do in a typical business after hours event, which can center on "what do you do and what can you do for me."
"Then people will often move on to someone else if there is not something mutually beneficial," he said.
Contrast that with the Idea Market, where the focus is usually outside one's job.
"It's lets build something, let's do something fun together," he said.
Sciarra said the activities require flexibility.
"They make you think about it from a different perspective," she said. "We were all just people brainstorming with ideas," she said of the activities.
"It was people collaborating in a very unconventional way," she said.
Sciarra said the IABC may invite their members to have their brains stretched again with Homann's Idea Market.
"It's a nontraditional way of becoming better communicators and of thinking outside the box," she said.
Jennifer Pruett, from the Solae Company, said the evening spent with Homann was one well invested.
"It was an amazing opportunity, especially for creative business communications professionals, to really get the opportunity to think differently about ways to deliver our message," Pruett said. "The tools and message that we learned are tools that we can take back to corporations, our businesses, and apply in those real time settings."
Pruett said she will be thinking about new ways to think about Solae products and how to find new solutions to issues that can help her customers.
Homann said the IABC group had fun with the activities.
"It was a good night," he said. "There was a lot of laughter. I think it was a valuable experience for me to see the group try to do things. If they had known what they had to do in advance, I think a lot of the people might have rejected it or been afraid."
Homann collaborated with XPLANE on visual thinking activities before he joined the firm.
Staff at XPLANE also attended Homann's Idea Markets, and even helped him incorporate some visual thinking and drawing exercises.
"I was surprised at how much more effective a little 'out of comfort zone' drawing could be than simply a verbal-based exercise," he said. "The sketching, combined with brainstorming, can create a more complete picture of what a client wants to communicate."
Homann said some of the people who come to the idea market events are natural entrepreneurs.
"But a lot of people come because they don't get that (creative) interaction during their day jobs," he said. "Some are engineers with a creative side. They need to exercise those muscles from time to time."
Homann said every community and city has its share of creative people.
"In St. Louis, I think it's hard for those creative and innovative people to find one another," he said.
Cities like Boston, New York or San Francisco, have existing institutions where creative people can get together and collaborate.
"That is especially true in the technology world in the (San Francisco) Bay area," he said.
But Homann says there are creative people in St. Louis as well -- and not just in XPLANE.
"There are a number of companies here in St. Louis that do amazing national creative work for the biggest companies in the world," he said.
As for the idea market, participants should not get used to any one activity.
For Homann, that's part of the fun, in an exciting and strange way.
"For me, it's also been a laboratory for me to try new things that I might not otherwise use with my clients," he said. "It's also fun and I get to meet a lot of cool people."
"I have been able to try this with a fairly cool group of guinea pigs," he said. "The guinea pigs love it too."
Homann maintains a Web site, www.realbigthinking.com, with a blog for innovative business people, www.nonbillablehour.com.
He also hosts the St. Louis Idea Market, which can be accessed through www.meetup.com.
For more information, e-mail mhomann@xplane.com.
E-mail: lingram@yourjournal.com
