Where do good ideas come from, and how to generate more of them

 

WHERE DO GOOD IDEAS COME FROM

If there is something important in entrepreneurship, it is a good idea to be carried out as a project. This usually comes either from finding an opportunity, or creating a product or service that seems attractive enough. The importance of an idea to be good is reflected in the success of the venture; If the idea is not good enough, there is a high chance of failure in the process.

So, where do we find an idea good enough for avoiding an undesirable ending to our venture? This is actually hard to define since the concept of an idea is a non-tangible entity. We can associate it with more than one factor that affects its apparition.

The first thing we need to consider is that ideas might be big but require small steps in order to be accomplished. And these steps usually need to have a low risk and be predictable for the idea to be good. In this way, the chances of success are high. For example, the telegraph was definitely a game changer for communications, this evolved into the phone, which affected the creation of video communications, which eventually led to many other different technologies such as desktop computers, smartphones, or even the Internet.

At the same time, new ideas originate from existing ideas. The Internet, for example, is a compilation of different technologies, all of these working as specialized pieces of a complex puzzle. At the same each of these technologies were other ideas that has their own discovery or creation as well. In this way, an idea can be also understood as a network of concepts. These concepts must be compatible between each other in order to thrive, and it’s a matter of time for them to appear.

However, odd situations can occur as well. Good ideas might come as a realization after an error happened. An idea might take a drastic turn after a failed experiment, because after all an experiment allows gathering new pieces of important information; Calling it a failed experiment only indicates that the result was unexpected, not a complete failure. In other cases, good ideas might appear in spontaneous situations, or better said, when those who get the idea finish piecing it together after experiencing a seemingly unrelated event. An easy example for this would be the famous story of how Newton discovered gravity after an apple fell on his head (keep it as an example since its versatility is questioned as such).

Going back to the idea of a good idea as a network, it is important to note that good ideas usually are not isolated but reside on platforms of previous knowledge that allows its inception. These platforms are not just specific pieces of knowledge, but rather broad areas which work as foundations for new innovations: We can understand our technological “state of the art” as a group of stacked knowledge platforms that humanity has been discovering for thousands of years.

Another important factor to consider as a generator of good ideas is motivation, which in our society is financial motivation, specially when talking about entrepreneurship. In this aspect, other related concepts like competition appear as driving causes of innovation. However, another important factor appears to be significant in the equation, this one being collaboration. Collaboration in this case consists in humans exchanging information, including knowledge, in order to benefit mutually.

A good way to understand all of these factors is using a 4-quadrant model. This consists of a cartesian diagram in which its horizontal axis represents networking or collaboration in which an idea was conceived, and a vertical axis which indicates the financial incentive that led to the specific innovation. In this way, all milestones in human technology can be plotted in a single graph.

 

4-quadrant diagram

HOW CAN WE GENERATE MORE GOOD IDEAS

If we look at the 4-quadrant graph that we used in the previous section, we will notice that the most populated one is the right inferior, or 4^th quadrant. This means that the highest amount of its discoveries were originated in non-profit / collaborative environments.

In order to generate good ideas, we suggest focusing on the following aspects:

-          Competition: A competitive environment forces its actors to constantly adapt and change in order to survive. This mostly translates as innovation, even though it can come with its drawbacks. We can see this in examples such as the nature of the economical markets, or political struggles such as the Cold War. This means that a good idea must be competitive in nature.

-          Collaboration: The apparition of Internet changed humanity forever, since now we can interact between individuals, nations, cultures, etcetera, in exponentially more diverse and effective ways than we did before. Taking into account the effect of knowledge networks in innovation, it is important to consider that using previous knowledge or ideas is key for successful ventures.

-          Improving existing ideas: An idea could have had a not so satisfactory result but that does not mean it was necessarily a bad idea. Its issue might have been a bad implementation. Reinventing it is a good opportunity. At the same time, specific ideas might be expanded in a specific way, and this expansion or small leap can work as a good opportunity as well.

-          “Thinking outside of the box”: In order for ideas to become milestones, these must be a disruptive in the current context. Thinking outside of the box refers to extrapolating the existing knowledge into new areas or possible realities, in a non-linear ­way. Non-linear refers to an idea based not on a pre-existing pattern, but rather a new shape that cannot be added just as an addition to an already existing idea, but rather a “rearrangement” of how we understand something. For example, Quantum Mechanics were not just a discovery of a new model in physics, but a whole new understanding of physics as a whole. This applies for innovation in all aspects.