Our three founders answer the question that drives Baronfig.
We at Baronfig are especially tickled by the process of making ideas into reality. From the challenge of surfacing the spark, to developing through collaboration—it’s a treat to take an idea beyond the pages of our notebooks and share it with the world.
Discipline & Impulse
On giving birth to interesting ideas, by Joey Cofone
There’s a little note to myself on the corner of my screen that simply reads, “Be wild. Have discipline.” It acts as a reminder that sometimes it’s necessary to get uncomfortable and wreak a little havoc—and other times it’s best to be slow, meticulous, and methodical.
When exploring ideas I start out wild by pouring my thoughts into a sketchbook. I don’t edit what comes out, but rather aim for a feeling of freedom via continuous scribbling and writing. If all goes well, after a short while I’ll have several pages of ideas and can begin to review.
Going back, I start to see trends in thought. Usually there’s something in the mess that strikes me as, at the very least, an interesting starting point. Then I research to gather more fuel for thought, and jump back into the thick of it as I again let myself freely explore new directions.
This pong-like back and forth between discipline and impulse goes on until I find myself with an idea that may, perhaps, move souls.
Move, Moves, Moving
On the effect of good ideas, by Scott Roberston
From the creator who originates the idea, the collaborators who help grow it, to the people who experience the idea’s fruition — good ideas have the inscrutable power to move people.
When an experience moves a person to the core, an idea is born. It starts with a single vibration of thought, emanating from a person’s center. This thought must be strong enough to stir within its creator the commitment to stick with it and act upon it. It keeps him moving.
As the idea grows, its vibrations become stronger as pieces of the puzzle naturally fall into place. Like a magnet, a good idea inevitably moves others towards it—people come to build upon and improve it. Collaboration keeps the idea moving and growing.
As people work together to bring the idea from conception to realization, we come full circle. That single vibration from a single source has become something far greater. Its power becomes self evident in how strongly it now moves people.
Good ideas move us within and keep us moving without.
Intangible Seedlings
On taking ideas beyond the page, by Adam Kornfield
Ideas can be fantastic, vivid, amazing—and you can dream all day long thinking up concepts, ideas, sketches, outlines, and so on. But eventually you have to take all of this thought and make it into reality. There’s only one way to do it: Action.
Without action, a good idea remains merely that; something written in the pages of your notebook, lost to the annals of time, never to be seen because it never gets done.Without a plan, an idea is like an unwatered seedling, an ever-hidden vital underpinning that exists only as a should-have or would-have. Following up with a plan of action allows the seedling to take root and grow.
Once you develop an excellent idea it should be followed by a list of tiny steps and actions to get started. Each of these are like a single repetition at the gym, seeing almost no benefit alone, but eventually building slowly upon themselves to take your idea from mere pencil scratchings on a page to something tangible and inspiring.
Onward
The beauty of idea generation is that, like the uniqueness of ideas themselves, everyone has their own methods of exploration. Some of us do it with blinders, others with telescopes and magnifying glasses—but we all eventually arrive as long as we just keep looking.
