Learning is a continuous journey and the recent ideation event – The global Big Pitch 2023 was an incredible experience that was equally challenging and rewarding. To give you a quick view into its extent, the event spread over a month had about 51 qualified teams competing against each other with awesome ideas and 13 teams presenting in front of the live audience and judges. Ten of these made it to the winning list.
Leading an event of such scale was a unique experience. Here’s what I learnt from this one!
Collaboration is Key
An old proverb says – “Two heads are better than one!” and time and again I have seen the power of collaboration in achieving feats that are difficult to crack alone. When participants from different backgrounds and experience come together, their diversity also brings in truly amazing ideas to the fore.
Freedom Breeds Creativity
Often, I’ve been blown away with the results that comes from pushing our own boundaries. This Big Pitch, almost all ideas were creative and out of the box proving that freedom to take risks often leads to bigger rewards.
Importance of Planning and the Need for Continuous Adaptation
To ensure, a seamless and fair experience to all who are participating, judging, mentoring or even taking care of operations, a lot of groundwork is needed. And even after your best plans, sometimes, we need to adapt to the curveballs that arise due to the real time situation. How well we adapt to it will always be the most important factor determining the success of the event we’re leading.
Embracing Failure and Wins
No matter how good our ideas are, failure and success are the two sides of the same coin and at the end of any event, some of us will win, and some will lose! We benefit most from the experience when we embrace both our wins and failures equally.
Your Community is Your Superpower
To pull up anything of great importance, it is important to lean into the community we are a part of while encouraging each other to give their best. An event like Big Pitch was a result of coming together of a whole community of experts working in the background to ensure the show goes on! For example, the event wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing participants, judges and the core team that continued to communicate, collaborate, and adapt.
I hope everyone who participated in this event learnt something new and thank all of you for being such a sport!
