I love watching Gordon Ramsay's "Hell's Kitchen." So when the new season started last week, I was sure to tune in. As they usually do during the first episode, the teams were sent off to brainstorm their new team names. Lacey -- who I really hope is kicked out of Hell's Kitchen really soon, really -- was telling the camera how "stupid" some of her teammates' ideas for team names were.

My mind immediately thought of brainstorming with my teammates here at Hammock where we don't believe ideas are "stupid." One person's silly or outlandish or this-will-never-work suggestion might just be exactly what the next person needs to hear to come up with an award-winning idea. Our team is cool like that.

So, I conducted a little roundtable experiment. With no goal at all in mind, I sent a phrase -- purple monkeys make the best pets -- to one of my awesome colleagues and asked her to add the very first thing that came to mind, then send it on to another colleague for the same. I just wanted to see where our collective thoughts might go. Here's where the train took us:

• "Monkeys and all other primates are the most frightening animals on the planet."
• "The cutest Persian cat named Oscar was in the paper this weekend—I haven't been able to get him off my mind!"
• "Cats freak me out. They're always looking at you like they know something you don't."
• "I like dogs better than cats; I am in the process of trying to adopt a 5- to 7-year-old medium-sized dog."
• "I like adopting dogs, and the Middle Tennessee Golden Retriever Rescue has 15 that need homes (some are older and some are puppies)."
• "Cats are awesome because they don't take **** off anyone, and they are super intelligent and intuitive."

So, we talked about the color purple, primates, fear, cats, dogs, adoption, newspapers and intuition all in a span of just minutes. My point: Don't discount the ideas of the folks around you. Although one idea may not be the best, it may be the perfect jumping-off point for another one that is!