Cool post at My Brain Blog, answering the question, How Do You Come With So Many Ideas?
- I come up with more good ideas because I come up with more bad ideas
- I make room for more ideas
- 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.