I had the pleasure of sitting in front of a large group of entrepreneurs last Friday at the WIM (Women Innovate Mobile) Founders Breakfast to share my career journey. In all honesty, the audience probably has a collection of much more interesting journeys than mine, but I guess being old like me makes my journey seem “interesting.” 
After the stage discussion, a number of the audience members introduced themselves to me and shared what they were up to. While many were fascinating, I wanted to share one particular conversation I had. A young woman told me about her site, Kabinet, that’s still in beta. Her company peers into people’s cabinets to see what beauty products they have and then chats with these folks about the rituals they have around those items.
This idea isn’t necessarily among the self-driving-cars-revolutionary type that we gawk at, but I love the way it twists a combination of different current concepts. I think of Kabinet as a mix of “whats in my bag” from US Weekly, quick interviews with celebrities about their beauty routines, and deeper, in-home ethnographies where we investigate what’s really going in people’s homes and, by doing so, what’s really going in their inner lives.
Isn’t this kind of mish-mashing the core of all innovative thinking? All great ideas are really a mixing and matching of seemingly unrelated concepts to form a new idea. Whenever I remind myself that ideas — big or small — are an intelligent mix of diverse notions that may be at our fingertips, I’m inspired to keep searching for new ideas myself.
And I LOVE the idea of peeking behind the tent and seeing the hidden cabinets of people. Think how much we can learn about others and even ourselves. Plus, who doesn’t like to pick up new make-up tricks ;)?