Manifesting Ideas, an affiliate event of Chicago Ideas Week, featured a series of 12-minute talks on the power of an idea last night at International House. The event showcased several talks by members of the Destiny Speakers Bureau, a Chicago-based organization that provides businesses with motivational speakers.

The first speaker, Michele Hoskins, shared her experience founding a company that manufactures her unique brand of syrup. Her household recipe of three ingredients eventually grew into a multimillion-dollar business that she and her two daughters now lead. “It is not so much the product,” she said. “It is the dream that you have and the manifestation of that dream.”

Athlete and activist Jonathan Prince grew up the youngest son of a single mother. Defying the low expectations set by his community, Prince ran 12,000 miles across America and uses this journey to demonstrate the importance of perseverance.

“I’m enduring my race to become my biggest dream for myself: the most influential runner in the world,” Prince said.

Other speakers included Gil Michel, the founder of a personal finance Web site called Black Money Matters, and Clarence Nixon, founder of TLAB, a professional development learning center for K-12 students. The speakers all shared a single driving philosophy: They started with an idea they thought could incite positive change and persevered to bring it to fruition.

Founded in 2011 by Groupon co-founder and Booth School of Business Adjunct Professor Brad Keywell, Chicago Ideas Week is a weeklong series of talks and demonstrations focused on the sharing, cultivation, and incitation of ideas for the future.

This year’s Idea Week featured 217 journalists, artists, engineers, public servants, and innovators in panel discussions and hands-on demonstrations in various locations across the city. Speakers included writer Deepak Chopra, NBC’s Meet the Press moderator David Gregory, and Former Secretary of State Colin Powell discussing issues ranging from democracy to innovation and design in technology.

This Saturday, the University’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts will also be hosting a demonstration entitled “Art, Architecture, and Acoustics” led by acoustician Steve Wiesenthal.