Real Lessons on How to Generate Great Ideas
Good ideas are common. Good ideas are everywhere. Yesterday’s good ideas are today’s modern marvels that keep millions of people alive; and if we’re lucky, safe and healthy too.
If good ideas are common, it doesn’t mean they are born without torment and sacrifice. Most high-level professionals accepting hefty salaries are charged with plowing through thousands of expensive hours of professional as well as personal time searching for simple solutions to festering, complex problems. There are professionals and experts in every industry around the world working right now to think critically and innovate new ideas.
But, good ideas are common, right? Anyone can think of a good idea. We know you don’t need a hefty salary and a posh office on the Upper East Side to produce great ideas. In fact, we know Google, Dropbox, Nike, and a host of other mega-brands “came from the most humble beginnings,” their proverbial lightbulbs turned-on in scant garages.
So, how can you do it? How can you think of great ideas?
The answer is simple, but the commitment complicates the process.
Growing up half-time in big sky country Montana, good ideas were not ideas at all. Ideas and innovation were characterized as plain and simple, old-fashioned common sense. You either had it or you didn’t. Fail to use common sense, and the blue-collar sentencing was handed down (and the rules never changed).
Work harder.
For a ten-year old, that usually meant organizing and cleaning the hunting gear without squirming over spider webs and mice.
But, let’s say you argue the issues are more complex, and one’s tales of working hard setting up mouse traps and avoiding triggers on guns isn’t a viable recipe to prepare my son or daughter for a professional, technical education — and thus, success.
Yes, this could be true, and especially if the rural community doesn’t offer a proper secondary education in math and science. However, the rules on hard work remain the same.
Reaching high marks at an ivy league technical university requires equal parts of tremendous commitment and work. The rural raised farm kid may learn the standardized test enough and come into the University behind, but his fierce work ethic may also give him an edge to keep up or pull ahead.
Farming and ranching communities teach young people simple logic to problem solving. Work until the requisite education, industry expertise, and experience have been met. Work hard until the job is done. Ask yourself when it’s enough until you and your colleagues can fix the problem, and thus generate great ideas in the process.
Hard work is therefore a key to generating great ideas, but hard work requires commitment.
What about instincts? How do instincts play into our ability to generate new, innovative ideas?
Somewhere between Butte, Montana and the middle of nowhere is a small town with a run-down kitchen-bar slash country store that still stands open for business today. Inside the store are rows of merchandise including coffee cups, snow globes, and a ceramic chicken — on the bottom shelf is a magnet for your modest refrigerator that reads:
“Ideas pull the trigger, but instincts load the gun ~ Don Marquis.”
Children provide the best examples of how instincts can be leveraged to generate and execute on brilliant ideas; and, especially children whose environment is more condusive to violence than education. When a child is under duress and problem solving a serious issue, his needs are likely primal. He doesn’t seek wealth or fame or even basic financial security that grown-ups muse over. If he faces danger, then he will likely lean on his instincts to stop at nothing to hustle against all odds to meet his one, simple need — avoid suffering.
Because after all, “the creative adult is the child who has survived.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
Thanks for reading.
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This article was written by Kristin Miller, Co-Founder of Colorado startup, InMotion Albums. InMotion was named a CES Innovation Awards Honoree in Digital Imaging in the same category as HP and Samsung, and was featured by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)™ hosted startup-themed broadcast media tour.
Want to learn more? Visit us at www.inmotionalbums.com.
Reach Kristin at kmiller@inmotionalbums.com
