You’ve probably heard of the term “highdea,” an experience many cannabis consumers know well: getting high and coming up with ideas your sober mind would never, a high idea. One competitor at Boston University’s sixth annual Innovate@BU Cannabis Start-Up Competition appears to have tapped into this phenomenon. With the win and prize money, the victor is looking to launch an app specifically made to share these stoned concepts.
Last week, Isabelle “Belle” Bryan won the 2022 competition, along with the $10,000 grand prize, with her cheekily named app, Insphigher. It’s designed for cannabis users to explore and share their creative musings under the influence of cannabis with likeminded people, BU Today reports.
The cannabis community has had a challenging time finding space online, with policies on social media giants like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok generally steering users away from cannabis-related posts. Cannabis professionals and businesses have suddenly had their accounts removed, and some have suggested social media networks enforce their policies unevenly and that larger brands maintain their accounts through under-the-table dealings.
The current environment for cannabis on social media has led to the creation of other cannabis-focused networks, like WeedTube, where cannabis users can post about weed without the fear of violating terms of service or losing their accounts.
Bryan had similar inspirations, citing the lack of user-friendly platforms for cannabis users. Insphigher is meant to bring the cannabis community together, to connect and interact with one another and share ideas via audio and text. The app would also host monthly challenges where users can get rewards for their ideas.
Bryan was one of four finalists to present their ideas for cannabis-ancillary startups, described by BU Today as “companies or ideas that support the cannabis industry, but don’t come in direct contact with cannabis plants,” to the judges. Each team has six minutes to pitch their idea, followed by six minutes of questioning.
Along with the nice chunk of change, Bryan will also receive free consulting services from Denver-based business strategy firm Green Lion Partners, which sponsors the annual competition. The firm advises companies in the cannabis industry on elevating their business ideas, while striving to promote socially conscious legislation.
The BU competition required all participants to have a “social component to their work” to show the positive impact their idea would have on reducing cannabis stigmas, according to Co-Founder Jeff Zucker.
Insphigher would “work to create educational programs to all community members when it comes to cannabis safety and knowledge, regardless of race, gender, income, ability, or zip code,” Bryan said.
The conversation surrounding the “highdea” as a whole, specifically whether or not getting high actually makes people more creative, has been a debate in the cannabis space for a while now.
A 2022 study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology tackled the topic, ultimately finding that cannabis does not increase actual creativity; researchers said that users did, however, have biases to make them believe that their ideas, and other people’s, were more creative as well.
“While we expected that cannabis-induced joviality would result in people thinking that their ideas and others’ ideas are more creative, we were surprised that cannabis-induced joviality did not lead to more actual creativity,” lead author Yu Tse Heng, an assistant professor in the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia, told UVA Today.
Despite these findings, many cannabis users and creatives, including big names like Lady Gaga and Seth Rogen, would disagree.
Looking toward the future, Bryan said she will use the prize money to continue developing her app, hopefully bringing it to smartphone app stores soon.
“Ideas are infinite. We have them all the time. At work, at home, in the shower before bed,” Bryan said. “Cannabis is known to inspire ideation in particular.”
