Marcus Rebeschini, Chief Creative Officer of Y&R Asia, entitled his FOI session “Bring A Pen” and no one knew what it was going to be about until he got onstage and discussed the difference between the left and right brain, the Yin and Yang and how the two work together to create balance.
“Has anyone used the word innovation in the last year?” he asked the enthusiastic crowd, “Keep your hand up if you actually innovated.” A few hands remained and for those whose hands weren’t up anymore he told them to, “Delete the word.” He drilled this call to action to the young minds in the audience, “Let’s start.” Innovating, that is. As a follow up, he then proceeded to discredit the word “impossible” and gave instructions on how to ignore it. To encourage the crowd, he shared the example of how his idea ‘Guide Dots’ which was inspired by the technology of Blue Dots which stores data in them was pronounced as impossible, scared so many investors and inspired paranoia in the Blue Dot technology community.
He developed the concept mainly to help the visually impaired by providing them guided directions in the street through the technology of Blue Dots. The proposal was to install ‘Guide Dots’ along the streets and through the installation of the “Guide Dots’ app in their smart phones provide the visually impaired with directions and information thereby giving them a sense of security and helping build their confidence to go out into the streets and live like sighted people.
He pursued this idea for years and approached possible partners who either thought it was impossible, crazy, a business threat and wouldn’t’ amount to anything.
Rebeschini would give the idea a rest when he gets too busy with his day job as a creative but he never stopped probing and chasing its possibility. Soon enough, he found kindred spirits who bought into the value of the idea and helped him pursue its implementation. What was first a purely innovatively idea was then assigned some business value as ‘Guide Dots’ evolved into not only giving directions by mapping the streets. The addition of more information akin to location and details about retail store, groceries, and restaurants gave the idea more teeth – a business point of view to what started as a simple, innovative idea. A concrete demonstration of the right brain working with the left, and the Yin complementing the Yang.
To bridge the gap between the impossible and possible, Rebeschini shared two major points: 1. Ask yourself, “Who do you know?” Use your connections. Remember that between your idea and the person who can help you push it, there might only be six degrees of separation, 2. Make your idea long-term. Think of sustainability and not just of ‘one-time, big-time’ projects. To recap, Rebeschini asked the crowd, “Impossible? Let’s get started.”
