We have been on the road all week and some of us are still working on consulting and start-up projects during the weekend. One thought I had during my last flight from Vilnius (LT) to Milan (IT) was: Where do good ideas come from? And I found this nice video of Steven Johnson on youtube that shows his thoughts in a nice and funny animation. We are working on spurring product, startup and project ideas every day and I still wonder, if there is a way to do this in a more structured and measurable way. I totally agree on the two enablers for the creation of good ideas:
- You need time to get to a good idea
- You need to combine all sort of inputs from your environment (ideas, thoughts, errors) to create good ideas
The internet and the social networks and communication channels within it are basically covering the point 2. on a global scale. On the 1. point I guess that our world’s acceleration enable also the acceleration of the maturing process of an idea. So it would seem that the connected world should be the platform, where all good ideas are created and exchanged. In my view the internet helps a lot, but from our experience there are two other enablers that need to be in place:
- You need time off from your day-by-day schedule (so not only the quantity of time is important, but also the quality)
- You need human interactions when it comes to exchanging and sharing thoughts and ideas (I think as human beings, we need human interactions to be able to really create a prolific exchange of thoughts and ideas)
This said, I think the internet is helping a lot in the process, but it can’t be used to exponentially scale the ideation process and I don’t think it can be used as the sole tool to create a structured ideation process. PS: You actually start thinking about different topics, when you have time off (like on an airplane: no internet, no phone), like I did on the last 2 flights.
written by Frank M. Saviane (CEO)
