It’s Okay To Ask For Help: Getting That One Great Idea You Have Off The Ground
Turning a lightbulb-moment into reality is hard. Sometimes, getting a leg-up is all you need.
Brought to you by Telstra
Brought to you by Telstra’s Imaginarium.
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Having a great idea when you’re young is easy — there’s no shortage of intimidatingly smart, imaginative young people out there. The hard part comes when you try to turn that idea into reality. There are myriad obstacles between that first lightbulb moment and actually bringing it into the world, especially when you’re young and don’t have access to the time, money, experience and resources you need. Juggling a project on top of uni, work, paying the rent, maintaining some kind of social life and the general stress of being alive is a long, difficult and frequently exhausting enterprise — it’s no surprise that so many good ideas fall by the wayside, forever only half-realised.
That’s why the prospect of a helping hand — whether it be in the form of money, a dedicated workspace, expert advice or just another pair of hands — can be so valuable. Towards the end of last year Telstra ran a youth program called Imaginarium, aiming to kickstart three separate projects for social change that were conceived by young people, but needed some help getting off the ground. The eventual Imaginarium teams, chosen from hundreds of applicants Australia-wide, took part in an intensive eight-week in-residence development program with access to Telstra resources and mentors to develop their ideas.
Now, some of those ideas have come to fruition. We spoke to two of the teams about their experience working in the program, and how it helped them get to where they are today.
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Ben Gompes, of Rookie And Coach
What’s Your Project? “We want to help solve the problem of career uncertainty for young Australians. We’re hoping to ease the transition between leaving high school and entering the workforce by empowering people to find a job or career that interests them.
“We met with over 200 people to get qualitative and quantitative data. Consistently career importance rated as a 7 out of 10 across all age categories, we also found it didn’t matter where people were in their career journeys, worry surrounding career was still prominent.”
What’s The Plan? “On the basis of what we found, we developed a solution called Rookie. Rookie matches people to professional mentors based on common personal strengths and interests, and facilitates short, punchy taste-tests of prospective careers.”
Why? “Our solution’s aimed at a substantial but largely under-serviced demographic. Those most affected are undertaking tertiary studies and are at a loss with their career direction. They may be disengaged with the course content and performing poorly as a result. These are the people most likely to be looking for support.
“We want to empower people to pursue careers that are of genuine interest to them, with the run-on effect of reducing underemployment in university graduates.”
What are the most salient things that came from the program?
“Firstly, you need to define what ‘success’ means to you. Second, it’s important to separate yourself from your ideas. Realise that not all your ideas are going to be great and be open to having your ideas shot down. Judging an idea on its intrinsic merits, not on who it came from, is a really valuable thing to come away with.”
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Tristan Williams, of Face to Face
What’s Your Project? “We discovered that there’s a massive delay in teacher’s feedback when it’s relayed to parents. A lot of parents with children in primary school are unable to assist their kid’s academic issues as they occur due to a lack of, and delay in, educational feedback. Parents are finding out academic issues weeks and sometimes months after they are occurring.”
What’s Your Plan? “The three stakeholders involved in our problem are teachers, students, and of course, parents. So we created an app solution incorporating the research we were able to conduct, and the insights gathered from parents, teachers, headmasters and parents who are teachers.”
Why? “We’d love to see our app help eradicate delays in educational feedback. Short-term success is obviously being chosen by Telstra to proceed with the idea, as only one team will progress past the development stage.
“I feel like our biggest challenge was validation. We originally started looking at this notion of confidence; we were so sure that we had the right problem, but time and time again we tried to publicly validate our theory, only to find out we were wrong. If we didn’t have the Imaginarium there would be no way we’d have had the space or resources to test all this.”
What are the most salient things that came from the program?
“I had a whole new outlook on my future. The program made me learn a lot about how I work and what I am capable of. Honestly, the Imaginarium project has been life-changing. I learnt so much and met so many other people who are passionate about real, lasting social change. The only regret was not fully immersing myself earlier.”