I had a very interesting experience while exchanging cards with a fascinating Silicon Valley entrepreneur at the Singularity University’s Global Conference in SFO last year. Let’s call him Mr. M for the sake of preserving his privacy. Instead of the traditional visiting card, he had a blank sheet, the same size as a visiting card, but blank. After we had finished our chat. I gave him my card and he flashed out this blank sheet, wrote his name and on it and scribbled a small note beneath it that said “the guy who runs a mobile platform startup in San Jose that you could explore for building your Marketing Department’s data dashboard”…

I was mind-blown by his ingenuity! By replacing the cold visiting card with that creative piece of paper, he had done three excellent things in one stroke – personalized our connection, gave our meeting an intimate touch and put an action-item for me to think about!

In the distracted economy where every moment is a fight to gain people’s attention, it’s but natural that we should all be thinking like Mr. M and get out of the comfort zone of conventional templates!