Where to find good ideas

Cool post at My Brain Blog, answering the question, How Do You Come With So Many Ideas?

1. I come up with more good ideas because I come up with more bad ideas
2. I make room for more ideas
3. I constantly fuel my brain

That first one is the key: Good ideas don't exist in a vacuum. They come out of a rich environment of all kinds of ideas: good, mediocre, bad, would-have-been-good-a-few-years-ago, will-be-good-in-a-few-years, not-so-good-but-fixable ...

It costs very little to have a bunch of bad ideas on the way to a good one. But there's a massive hidden tax on the organization that blocks all ideas because it blocks bad ideas. Those organizations fail to solve problems, lose their smartest employees, and eventually find themselves unable to adapt to changing conditions.

If you want good ideas, you have to tolerate a lot of other-than-good ideas. Embrace quantity. Accept failure.

Comments

[Kris]

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[KrisT]

the campaign says it's ending Jan. 2010, has anyone gotten and update on how it actually did? It seems like unlikely way to raise funds but if it worked, maybe it was a good test.

[Dan Smith]

This is so timely! I'm going through a list of ideas and of course some totally flopped. Yet if I hadn't come across the bad ideas, I wouldn't have had the good ones either. Great post!

[Jeff Nickel]

I think there’s a corollary here: ideas usually come attached with ego because they spring from the person’s soul and therefore are always infused with the person’s identity.

So, on the organizational side it needs to create a receptive atmosphere for idea generation.

The other side then is that individuals who are idea generators (by nature? Because some are wired more that way) need to recognize that not all ideas are good/sound/right for the moment and be able to let them go without taking it personally.