Nov 24, 2010 Posted by John MacIntyre

Response to Seth Godin’s – Where do ideas come from?

Seth Godin is wrong I just read Seth Godin’s blog post Where do ideas come from? And in my opinion he completely missed it. Sorry, I think Seth is awesome as do many others, but on this one, I don’t think he really answered the question; where do ideas come from?  Instead, in my opinion, what he wrote was more a list of favourable conditions While I’m no Seth Godin, I’m going to share my understanding of ideas and their source[1]. I hope I don’t need to explain why a post about ideas and creativity is on a programming blog. Ideas come from questions Ideas are answers to those questions. Although it may appear that ideas come out of nowhere while driving to work or zoning out in the shower, they are really answering previously asked questions burning in your subconscious.  There are many conditions which help answers come more easily, but they never come if you don’t have the question in the first place. Questions need to be installed into your subconscious A fleeting question doesn’t quite make it into your subconscious to be answered later.  The question needs to be important enough to be prioritized by your mind. Installations depth comes from emotion The importance of the question is largely based on the intensity of the emotion driving the question.  That’s why many innovations come during massive change and crisis.  Fear and greed inspire many ideas. New information is assimilated to answer these questions New questions are never installed for questions you already have the information needed to answer it.  So you need more information to answer the question and will need time to assimilate new information which is filtered against your question. This information can be from; feedback from action, random thoughts in the shower, synergy, social media, blogs, news, conversations, books, radio, lectures, etc…  And yes, Seth even television[2] Fear constrains ideas Fear eliminates ideas.  Whether criticism of a bad idea, or constraint, or even a well-meaning, ‘helpful’ person who’s experienced proves it cannot be done. When people fear criticism, ideas are never put forth which may inspire better ideas.  All ideas must be valued for an innovative environment. Forcing ideas constrains you to existing information You’ll hear many people say that you sit down, brainstorm, make your decisions quickly and take immediate action, which is great, when you have all the information you need.  But unless you have all the information you need, forcing... read more