I’ve always found Pixar’s guiding principle to creativity elegantly simple: They avoid the “No, but …” and instead, when someone suggests an idea, others reply with “Yes, and …”.

Simple act. Great results.

In the first stage of a start-up, Phase I Innovation is an ideal place to implement “Yes, and…” idea incubation.

An easy value-add for an innovative VC is to provide an entrepreneur access to a “Yes, and…” brainstorming session that’s filled with brilliant minds.

A “Yes, and…” session of smart people will produce innovative ideas that pinball off the minds in the room. The value from something like this to an early stage start-up is tremendous, the VC adds value through a non-VC service, and the cost is zero.


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Incubating Ideas: Yes, and…

Posted on 03.01.06 to Startup Strategy. Subscribe to follow comments on this post. Add your thoughts or trackback from your own site.

Welcome to the conversation.

Hi, I'm Fraser and this is my personal site where I write about the things I'm interested in: start-up strategy, the web, music, and life.

My days are spent commercializing emerging technologies. Currently I'm helping to deliver the promise of semantic web to the consumer market at AdaptiveBlue. Previously I was at Trivaris, a Canadian seed stage investment firm.

I am a co-founder of Innovation Night, a community driven event supporting entrepreneurship in Canadian and US cities.

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