Brainstorming challenges in the lighting industry…

The power of a brainstorm with pen and paper…

In today’s day and age, pen and paper seem to have almost lost their value.
We rarely write letters, draw designs or sketch ideas. For every process we undertake in business there is probably 101 different programs to do it for us.

Or do they?

It’s interesting to note that many world-renowned designers working for some of the most high-tech companies still advocate the use of pen and paper for their initial ideas. And it’s not without reason.
The truth is, technology is a means to an end, not the end in itself; a facilitator, not a teacher; a servant, not a master.

As Jim Collins says in his book, “Good to Great”, technology simply accelerates the process to greatness but it can never be greatness in itself. Great companies use technology to move them closer to their goal; they don’t have the use of technology as their goal in itself.

So how does this relate to brainstorming?

Every company has challenges that face them all day, every day. So many of us try to figure it out using expensive programmes to analyse data and give us an answer. But innovative thinking using a humble sheet of paper and a pen, in a room with little else but a team that are ready to think wildly can have more impact on a challenge than any computer.

At RLT Onsite we regularly prove this. Clients come to us with operational issues. For as long as we are prepared to think wildly, work as a team and put ideas on paper, we’ll continue to come up with solutions.

And, yes, ideas can be so way out they could never (or seemingly never) be used.

We now provide a bespoke app for a growing number of lighting maintenance organisations. It was created in response to a serious operational issue with one of our clients. The use of that app in itself saved our client over one person’s resource, as well as eliminating errors and giving more data than had ever been collected before on lighting maintenance jobs.

With our lighting design and consultancy team, the power of brainstorming a problem has resulted in working with European LED lighting manufacturers we never would have heard of otherwise. We knew what product we needed and didn’t stop searching until we found it for our client. We now use that product on other schemes.

Innovation… making life easier for our clients takes revolutions, not evolutions.

Yes, we believe in technology.

But to solve challenges in the lighting industry, we believe in the power of a great team, and pen and paper.