Ellen Bokkinga

Ellen Bokkinga is a concept developer 21st century style and brand storyteller. She has worked for brands like citizenM, TEDxAmsterdam, Frozz frozen yoghurt, Oxfam Novib, Stadskantine, Chillp and many more. She also supports entrepreneurs, teams and organizations in finding the essence of their business. She helps them to verbalize the personal philosophy behind their ideas (WHY), so they can scale their business and make a bigger impact. For over 10 years, Ellen is fascinated by “verbalizing ideas”. What makes it difficult and which methods gets you to the core of your idea.

“Over the years I’ve seen more and more idea developers – from creatives to brands — wrestling with verbalizing their beliefs to the market place. That’s why I decided to create a free tool, the New Verbalizing Grid, that lets you grasp your own idea in order to make better choices. This way an idea can spread more easily and grow faster. Each idea has the potential to become a strong brand, but it will only be as strong as the stories that are told about it.”- Ellen Bokkinga, founder TNV.

Why is it so difficult to verbalize ideas?

Ellen’s insights:
• An idea is organic – it changes, because we change. Structuring and capturing our thinking process gives us tremendous focus.
• Focusing on the WHY is crucial. Author Simon Sinek points this out in his marvelous book Start With Why. Our lifelong search for meaning is this why, and a project/idea is the blueprint of how we feel about this why today. A worded reflection of our soul, basically.
• Taking time to verbalize our choices will save us time in the long run, because execution happens with a complete understanding of the idea and outcome.
• Making an idea and its choices concrete (in words) as fast as possible. After this, you either execute it, completely change the direction or make room for another idea.
• Shifting our perception from ‘writing’ to ‘getting ideas on paper’ to ‘verbalizing choices’ will most likely make us more comfortable.