How to get ideas

2 thoughts on “How to get ideas”

  1. Hi Ralph

    Thank you for your blog post. I think exchange with other people who are different than you is very important for ideas to come up.

    > 2. Innovation relies on three modes of operation: copy, transform, combine.

    Because of this, if you want innovation to happen it’s helpful to have an interdisciplinary team. For example a geographer can bring new ideas and concepts into computer science, which are familiar for the geographer, but brand-new for a computer scientist. Therefore innovation happens. But it’s nothing entirely new, it’s just something applied in a new way.

    Regards
    Andreas

    1. Thanks for your comment, Andreas. I concur: I think a diverse network and/or team is a definite asset for innovation, and there is some research to support this, e.g. for the diversity of your Twitter network (recently in HBR).

      I like that Kirby Ferguson explicitly included talking to people in the list of research acitivities. I think we often forget about this (very obvious) mode of research and bury our noses in books (or the internet’s equivalents of those).

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