| Shreyas Seshan, a 22-year-old management trainee, has been given a daunting task. He has to think up 20 ideas in five minutes flat. His boss, a marketing manager at a leading FMCG company, is preparing a presentation on getting brand preference for a brand of flavoured tea. |
| Nobody can think of ideas with a gun to the head, right? That depends, actually: if you're focused on your game, you sure can. Ask Seshan. He's always playing something: a cricket-based business brainstorming game, this time round, called Batting For Ideas. |
| It is designed to let ideas brew under pressure. How does it work? Seshan boots his computer, and double-clicks the game's icon. "Enter your challenge statement" says the screen. Seshan scans the 100-odd pre-fed mission statements offered on menu, chooses "build brand preference", and decides to play a one-over game. |
| The software bowls the first "delivery" "" "serve" flashes on top of the screen. An active verb. Seshan must use it as a stimulant for an idea. |
| "Serve... tea bags along with your morning newspaper" enters Seshan, taking a whack at the ball. "Six runs!" declares the computer. |
| Yes, it's a game of "free word association", as creative gurus call this technique. A computer is no good as an evaluator of ideas, admittedly, so the cricket runs awarded by the software are just to keep the atmospherics buoyant, encouraging you to open up and free yourself of misgivings. |
| Batting For Ideas is the brainchild of R Sridhar, a former adman who runs an outfit called Ideas-RS that conducts creative blockbusting workshops. This computer-based game was developed in association with Hungama, an online games company, and works by simulating an ideation process that Sridhar has refined. |
| Sridhar is convinced that ideas can come just by putting business problems and active verbs together. As he observes, active verb throw-ins are the basis of many ideas. |
| For instance, to brighten up a room, you can "lay" the carpet, "open" the blinds, "play" music, and so on. "If each idea tends to have an active verb, then active verbs could probably trigger ideas," he reasons. |
| In his first experiment, Sridhar thought of Solitaire as a format. It didn't work. Then came cricket. "It's what everybody in the country is thrilled with," he elaborates, "It's an all-consuming passion that cuts across hierarchy." |
| So it was that Sridhar went for it, despite not being a cricket junkie (photos lie at times). |
| But the current craze is football, is it not? |
| Well, it's a ballgame all the same, and with downloads available free at ideasrs.com, Sridhar's not worried. |
| Meanwhile, Seshan has got himself 22 brand rejuvenation ideas, all quite mutable, off just one over. Maybe his boss will stop taunting him for playing games at his desk. |
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