This past Monday, LimeRed Studio was honored to be a part of the Today at Apple series, Accelerate Your Startup Idea: Business Ideation with 1871. Presented in the beautiful new Apple store on Michigan Avenue, crowds gathered as Howard Tullman of 1871 stood to introduce the Chicago series and our fearless leaders??Emily??Lonigro Boylan and??Demetrio??Maguigad.

Emily and Demetrio took the stage in front of a welcoming group eager to get started. The topic of the evening was how can we positively impact the city of Chicago through creative and innovative business solutions. Through a Rapid Ideation session, attendees were challenged to brainstorm words that began with the same first letter as their name. The purpose of this exercise was to gather as many working ideas as you could to have a foundation for your product or service.

Using the words they brainstormed in the Rapid Ideation session, the attendees partnered with other individuals to combine words to develop a new idea or brand to benefit Chicago and our communities. This exercise, 1+1=1, aims to encourage collaboration and team work with other attendees.

The mini think tanks were off and running!

After a few more rounds of refining their ideas the groups were ready to pitch. With help from the LimeRed branding experts, the groups created and fine-tuned their elevator pitch to help sell their ideas. The collaboration and ideation amongst the groups produced some phenomenal solutions to some of Chicagos biggest problems, a safe space with charging stations, hosted activities that help individuals advocate for Chicago communities, artistic recycling pods around the city that get people excited about recycling, and more.

We wrapped up the evening by sharing out LimeRed goes through the brainstorming process and how we have shaped our business model with the help of??Strategyzers worksheets and resources.??

With business ideas in tow, we wait until next week when Emily walks us through the storytelling process of pitching to investors and customers alike!