Have more ideas to get less attached.

When you have one big idea, it's really easy to fall in love with it. And that's where most people stop.  They get one really good idea, and are so excited about it that they start plowing ahead imagining all the possibilities.

That's risky though, because what if that one idea turns out to be not so good after all? 

What if you go forward with it, only to find that it is a total flop?  Or what if you tell it to a friend - and the look on their face makes you wish you'd never spoken up?  Or what if you try to develop it, and run into a brick wall?

It only takes one amazing idea to make all your dreams come true... but that doesn't mean you should have only one idea. 

Instead, you should focus on getting lots of ideas.  The more the better, in fact!  That way, you exponentially increase the potential of hitting a home run.

About a year ago, I challenged readers to think of 100 ideas for their next creative challenge.  It's a mean exercise that drains your brain totally dry, but it's completely possible.  In fact, getting the first 50 ideas is usually the hardest - after 75, it's practically easy!

But I bet no one did it.  Forcing yourself to think of 100 ideas sounds like torture, doesn't it?

Last week though, Seth Godin's group of Alternative MBA students challenged themselves to come up with 111 ideas each.  And they did it!  And to prove they did it, they posted the entire list of 999 ideas on their blog.

Here are 20 of their ideas:

• Local fresh restaurant that opens off-peak hours to hold cooking classes to locals.
• A party planner for kids birthday parties, but with educational and fun activities.
• Retractable spikes for boots to walk on the ice on sidewalks
• Chewing gum that is good for braces and dentures.
• Make your own batch of whiskey - takes 12 years, you pick flavors and types of oak barrels at the distillery, pickup in 12 years
• A half refrigerator/freezer/microwave in the trunk of a car. That way, wherever you go in the car, you can always have food handy.  How great for road trips.
• EZPass for humans on public transportation (key fob?)
• Roomba type toy for dog to chase around house. Should move faster, be fairly indestructible and make appropriate noises.
• Fish Burial Kit.
• Executive Power nap business - Locations where executives can take a 20 minute energizer nap during the day
• Pay at the pump carbon offsets
• Unique Bachelor & Bachelorette Parties - we work with you to design a fun, unique bachelor or bachelorette party experience
• A service where people are employed to talk specifically to antisocial or shy people at a party (they’ll feel better about themselves and will be more likely to open up next time with their new confidence.)
• Restaurant where you cook alongside the chef , choose your ingredients and learn a new technique.
• A personal education coach-they pick blogs, books, resources for you to learn based on your personal interests and career goals.  They gather all the materials and for you and make recommendations on the best way for learning the material.
• Build Your own Mardi Gras mask site.
• Create your own ice cream flavors
• Be a sports team mascot for day
• Netflix for home exercise equipment. Swap out your ergometer for an elliptical and then swap that for a treadmill.
• A perfect crayon box. com where customer is invited to create their own crayon box, picking his/her favorite colors.

As you can see, they're all over the map!  Some are good and have a lot of potential... and some are just silly.

But the best part about having so many ideas is that it's hard to get too attached to any of them.

That's good, because it allows you to pick out the best ideas.  And it also helps you push your creativity further - because letting yourself come up with "bad" or "silly" ideas is a good way to open up new possibilities.   Then, a stupid idea might lead to a great one.

So, whenever you start falling in love with an idea, take a step back and start thinking of more ideas.  You'll have much better results that way!

Comments

[Ed Kohler]

Wow, that's a lot of ideas.

There's nothing wrong with brainstorming, but generally you don't make money from ideas but the implementation of ideas. And you don't really know whether an idea is good or not until it's market tested. Personally, I'm a fan of getting ideas out there to see if they actually work. Until you have version one, you have nothing of value, in my opinion.

[Michalee]

Thanks Katie. It is always fun to think of novel ideas.
Many people mistakenly think that once you have these ideas you don’t need to be bothered with innovation any longer, all you need is to “just” implement....

One of the biggest challenges of brainstorming methods is filtering quality from quantity. At the end of a typical session you are often left overwhelmed with too many ideas. Some of which are not relevant, others are too raw, and some are just not implementable.

In SIT (AKA Systematic Inventive Thinking) we strive to create a shorter list of manageable and easy to implement ideas. This is being done by incorporating two filters in the thinking process: the “should we do it” - market filter and the “can we do it” - feasibility filter. The filters force us to ask (and answer) for each pre-idea considered, what are the benefits of the idea (making sure it has a market) and check initial direction for implementation (making sure it can be done). Pre-ideas that fail any one of the filters are not furthered considered and do not mature to become ideas.

[VpLegacy]

It takes one to three years to get a business off the ground. Spending all that time on one idea that may not work is a tragedy. I propose working on at least three, back and forth. The most promising one will eventually take up all you time and the other no-gos will be lost like yesterday.

[Jared O'Toole]

Ideas are the easy part. Everyone has ideas if they just sit down and focus for a few minutes. Its the execution that gets people in trouble.

But that's the fine line of pursuing 1 idea all out (which means focusing) and still being able to think outside the box and have more ideas.

[Douglas]

very refreshing

[Prakash]

Katie, I'm a regular reader of your blog, but this is the first time I'm commenting. One of your earlier posting, you did mention about the difficulties generating lots of ideas, but also gave a pointer to the "100 ways of...." I guess, when it comes to the practical implementation of ideas, generating loads of ideas are not easy without a magic wand sort of things in our hand. You having learned and practiced TRIZ may be able to relate some of the concepts talked there like resource thinking which in my experience have worked as that trigger for generating new ideas close to the situation we are in. I believe the success of any such ideation session is also depends on the "trigger" that are close to the situation. More the trigger we can generate, better the ideas are.. Appreciate your comments.

[Jim Belfiore]

High-volume idea generation isn't just a good idea in product innovation, it's essential.

A study by the Economist a few years ago showed that the average number of ideas it took to create a successful new entry in a product market was three thousand. Think about the failure rate that implies - any idea has a 1 in 3000 chance of being a winning idea? That's a lot of ideas you have to create!

There are tools and techniques for creative thinking that can help increase ideation frequency and quality. It's something I use in my innovation practice, and wrote about last year in an article called "How to Eat Soup with a Fork". I think you might enjoy it.

http://andromeda-30.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-eat-soup-with-fork.html

All the best, and keep up the fresh ideas!