Written in 4 minutes.

Warning : This post may not make any sense. But who said we have to make sense all the time?

I got introduced to blogger sometime in the summer of 2004. Blogging , as a phenomenon had just begun to gather steam and I quite liked the idea of having a somewhat modified version of a personal diary. The anonymity could be maintained by hiding behind the alias, also, there was no one curtailing your freedom of expression. Sometime around the same time, social networking started to become a rage and geographical boundaries didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Blogs and social networking sites,both gathered momentum around the same time, both helped people come together, share ideas, make friends, make business and a host of other things. On the personal level one thing led to another, and from being just a platform where I could go out and give vent to my feelings, blogspot gradually became inseparable from college life/education. Whether it was having blogs dedicated to particular courses or using blogging experience to type out term papers, blogging was probably as essential as going to college. (Ok, I may be stretching it a little here. Somehow, there was no escaping blogspot back then).
All that euphoria has died down now. This is not to say that I have lost my faith on blogspot. With time, emotion gives way to rationality, and rationality does channelise raw energy into something constructive. What used to be a fleeting emotion, has become an introspcetion. I am now an advocate of 'slow blogging'
The Pearson India blog has also followed a similar pattern and become something constructive. At least it has come a long way from being something which was just a good idea or a trend. If I remember correctly, one of the first posts mentioned that we really did not have any objective behind setting up a blog. That was sometime in July last year. Initially, people didn’t know what to write about and posts on the blog were rather infrequent. Add to that the couple of hiccups we had when an entire series of emails went up as a blogpost by mistake and one was left wondering if there was any need for a blog in the first place. Then in December it received the much needed boost , thanks to Vivek. You had a weekly contest and you had an incentive as well. The difference was there for everyone to see. While the first 6 months( July-December) had seen some 32 posts in total, the last one and a half months have had as many as 40 posts on the blog. Even if people were not writing, almost everyone was at least reading what went up. We came to know some facets of certain people that we would never have known otherwise. I have heard of companies investing in a lot of money for team building exercises and suchlike. Blogging is perhaps own cost effective way of doing the same.
Anyway, to cut the long story short, this whole idea of blogging, has actually got me thinking a little further and an “idea” just hit me. I don’t claim originality though.
It’s been a recent corporate trend (or so I have heard) to set up an “Idea Hub” or something like that.. The objective is to have a platform where employees could share any business idea that they think might be useful for the company. It could be small, it could be grand and who knows, it could be something that will change the way the industry operates. One may argue that in our various roles, we do bring a whole lot of ideas on to the table, but mostly we limit ourselves to our current functions. An “Idea Hub” ( or whatever one may wish to call it) would bring in ideas from across all departments and from all levels. Maybe we could have an incentive for the idea that gives us maximum business.
They say there is an entrepreneur in every individual.Why not make use of it?

Gargi Banerjee.