No BS Guide to Ideas
February 4th, 2009 Posted in advice, writing
Some people seem to have grand notions about creating ideas. They believe people are naturally blessed with the ability to come up with ideas, or they are not.
I don’t believe it is true.
Sure some people may be nurtured to have more creative tendencies from childhood however we can all learn this skill. I’m sure what follows will get you up to speed in the creativity stakes.
No New Ideas
The big secret about creating great new ideas is realizing that there really is no such thing. The fundamental breakthroughs and ideas have already been made. Man has discovered fire, invented the wheel. It’s mostly just incremental improvements and advancements from now on.
The most common and simple methods to create ideas is to take others peoples existing ideas and improve on them or combine it together with other ideas until you find something that works well.
Even many breakthrough innovations such as electricity, radio and television were just progressive improvements and borrowing from the ideas of others. Thomas Edison, the most famous and prolific inventor, openly admitted to stealing the ideas of other competitors.
Look Around for Ideas
Inspiration can come from anywhere, our everyday life is the easiest and often the best. Look at your competitors, take a cue from people you admire and checkout people you have never even considered. Borrow ideas from the news, books, magazines, blogs, a song, picture, movie, conversation or anything.
Find an Idea & Improve It
Then think about how you could make it better. Is there something missing from the original, could you make it bigger, smaller, more detailed, more appealing to the eye. Perhaps you can make it simpler to use or easier to read, more fun.
For instance I got the idea for this blog post from a conversation with a friend. She was a little shocked at how I could come up with so many ideas for blog posts (here and freelance), articles that I write and books that I am working on. I told her the basic principles that are in this post and thought if she had these concerns perhaps you might as well.
Bit of This, Bit of That
If you can’t think of a way to improve on someone else’s existing idea try combining it together with another idea.
Mix an old idea with a new one, add new features, use a new perspective.
Look at the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. The Bond movies are based on novels written by Ian Fleming. Fleming passed away many years ago now and the Bond movie franchise has already borrowed extensively from the existing novels and the themes from them are now very outdated. So they use the existing template from the books as well as past movies and work in new plotlines and villains. Much of Quantum of Solace uses the current theme of environmentalism as well as globalization. This is a great example of taking an old idea and reworking it with a new idea to create a great movie that is very relevant to audiences today despite being based on a character first written about many decades ago.
Apple provides many examples of combing ideas. They took their existing iPod idea and combined it with existing smart phones to create the iPhone. Their original click wheel idea was replaced with a touch screen, technology that had been around for many years.
Solve Problems & Salvage Mistakes
The best ideas solve peoples problems. Listen to complaints and concerns, then think of how they can be solved. An idea that is already out there could work, or you could make it suit.
Sometimes ideas can just come about by mistake. 3M created Post-It Notes after an employees attempt to create a better adhesive failed miserably. The otherwise useless formula was instead used to temporarily hold together a small stack of paper pieces which can then be stuck somewhere else. Don’t just throw out your bad ideas, see if they can be recycled and used elsewhere or in a different way.
Beyond the Idea
After you’re coming up with ideas you need to make sure you don’t forget them. Write your ideas down immediately. Getting it down on paper can help refine and improve your ideas.
Once those great ideas are down on paper the hardest part is putting them to work. Write that book or article, create that new invention… whatever you do just make sure you implement that great idea. Too many people, myself included, have kept those ideas to themselves because of fears.
So get thinking, start borrowing ideas from others. Improve on them, combine them with others and solve problems. Then unleash your ideas and put them to work for other people.
5 Responses to “No BS Guide to Ideas”
By Philip on Feb 4, 2009
This is funny, since I have always thought this. I wanted to write about it one day but it seems you beat me to it. I guess we both had the same ‘idea’. I noticed I get my best ideas when I listen to the ideas of others.
If you think about it most of our ideas come from something we have experienced. We base our thoughts around things we know. For example, if you never knew anything about a cell phone then you couldn’t get an idea about it. Perhaps you know about things that are similar, like regular phones, but you won’t get an idea if you don’t have the knowledge. So in essence we all plagiarize but in different degrees. You produce ideas based on your experiences. A native that never experiences modern inventions isn’t going to have an idea about a new rocket fuel, but someone that has knowledge of existing projects will be able to improve on them with ‘new’ ideas.
I guess the best way to be creative is to experience and learn more.
By Bill on Feb 5, 2009
Sorry I beat you to the punch Philip. What can I say though, great minds think alike.
Your right, ideas come from what we experience. The more you expose yourself to new ideas, new ways of thinking and new cultures, the more creative you will become and the better ideas you will produce.
I recall a fascinating point from Jared Diamond’s great book Guns, Germs, and Steel. It charts how the different cultures and geographic regions evolved over the centuries.
One example is the Spanish Conquistadors who conqured the South American Mayan and Incan cultures. The Spanish had fought, traded with and been exposed to neighboring cultures and nations for centuries, they had continual access to new ideas from all across Europe. The South American’s had far less exposure to new ideas and were nowhere near as sophisticated.
Another interesting way to view ideas is to see them as evolving or mutating. Look at how cell phones have mutated from the bricks people carried once upon a time to the tiny multimedia devices they are today. Each designer and company makes new tweaks to the idea, someone adds a color screen, smaller battery, better operating system, cameras, SMS, MMS, WiFI, etc. It keeps going and until we forget, not that long ago phones only came with a cord. Our grandparents lived in a time when they didn’t even have phones.
By Murphy on Feb 9, 2009
I saw a program once where they explained that a lot of inventions and ideas throughout history were actually created/discovered by two different people in different places at pretty much the exact same time.
How weird is that?
Murphy
By Bill on Feb 10, 2009
Very weird Murphy, I can believe it though. Working on a post at the moment about inventors.