I started to appreciate tea quite a bit. Proper tea, needs a china mug and a decent tea bag. You need to put the tea bag in first, then the hot water and leave the bag be. 

That’s it. You CAN have silverware, natty trays, ironic mugs…you can even serve it in a stately home. But if you haven’t done what you SHOULD, you haven’t got the basics right, no amount of embroidery can make up for substandard tea.

Just like a really good steak need not be smothered in sauce – if it’s good quality and cooked well, it doesn’t need it. In fact, it shouldn’t have it.

Just as good pasta tastes great with nothing more than great olive oil, garlic and quality parmesan.

It’s a bit like that with ideas in general. If your thinking is good enough, if you’ve done what you should:

Where are we?

Where could we be?

How could we get there?

It doesn’t need bells and whistles. It stands alone in a well crafted sentence or two.

Just as ANY creative idea, digital or not, should make folks excited with nothing more elaborate than a few sketches and a few, well crafted words.

Just any presentation should make no more than 5 well made points.

I can’t stand when ‘experts’ use insider language, needless long words and jargon, complex charts and slide after slide after slide. That’s not thinking, that’s hiding the fact you haven’t done any yet. 

Well I’m sorry, if you can’t say it concisely, if you can’t get folks excited in a few sentences, you haven’t thought about it hard enough. 

Just as no amount of reference, wireframing, quotes from Forrester or Mashable, mood films or concepting can mask something that is all execution, or even technology and no idea.

We’re really lucky that we live an age with lots of choice, over media, technology and making ideas come to life really quickly.

But what hasn’t changed is that all that stuff builds on solid thinking and a great idea.

It doesn’t make up for flaky thoughts and bad ideas.

Or not having either at all.