Welcome to Energy for Growth!
Fiona Stevenson and Shelli Baltman
April 9, 2021
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our new business venture: Energy for Growth!
Although we’ve just officially launched, Energy for Growth is a business that has been many years in the making.
Six and a half years ago, we founded The Idea Suite – a boutique agency with a mission to unlock the creative potential of people and businesses through innovation. In those early days, as we set out to build our client base and carve out our place in the market, we had many initial coffee and lunch chats with friends, former colleagues, and prospective clients. We approached each of these meetings with one goal: to leave the person we met feeling more energized than before we met them. Our focus wasn’t on selling but on bringing positive energy to every single interaction and, rather surprisingly, we found a consistent pattern whereby 90% of those initial meetings ended up leading to a brief or project engagement – often within a few days.
As we built our client base in the months that followed and tried to solidify our unique selling proposition as an agency – we started to ask our clients what was different about working with us. Energy was a consistent theme they played back to us – the energy we brought to every meeting, the way in which working with us energized the project team, and the way our approach breathed energy into thought-starter ideas, transforming them into high-potential launchable concepts.
Reflecting on that feedback – we realized that energy was a critical component of the way we approached every aspect of our work. Our past careers in marketing and innovation – Fiona on the client side through her time spent at Procter & Gamble and Shelli through her consulting and agency experience at McKinsey and What If innovation – and the hundreds of innovation projects we’ve led for more than 50 client organizations globally as The Idea Suite – has taught us that less than 50% of the success of a project can be explained by process alone. The rest is persistence and energy – knowing when to push boundaries, and bringing a cross-functional team and stakeholders together and energizing them to deliver results.
And so, our unique approach to innovation not only leverages a tried and true 6-step design thinking framework but also integrates mindsets and behaviours that build creative energy – such as curiosity, hustle, and nurturing.
We’ve launched Energy for Growth with the objective of sharing the approach that has resulted in the successful launch of several multi-million dollar products, brands and services and created productive, energized teams in leading multi-national corporations, so individuals and teams can replicate these results on an ongoing basis.
Energy for Growth will be our one stop shop for our entire suite of training and behaviour change programs covering the key growth fundamentals: energy, design thinking, business development and marketing. Later this year, we will also launch the High Growth Business Academy: A comprehensive program for high-growth businesses and start-ups that encompasses the four key growth fundamentals: energy, design thinking, business development and marketing.
Our proprietary collection of tools, techniques, behaviour change programs and services are designed to empower individuals and business leaders to unleash the potential of themselves, their people and their businesses to drive transformative personal and business growth
Energy for Growth is the place for any individual or leader with growth aspirations – whether it’s personal growth, business growth, or growing an idea into a thriving start-up. No matter your aspiration – energy is the critical lever to success!
Fiona & Shelli
