How to Generate Good Ideas

Good ideas aren’t the easiest thing to come by, and many times they seem to hit right out of the blue. While some may have a “Eureka!” moment while in the shower, an “ah ha” moment on the drive into work, or a “that’s funny…” moment (if you’re a scientist in the laboratory); they didn’t just come from nowhere. While these may be some of best places ideas hit us, there is still a looming question that needs to be answered: how are good ideas generated? We all know they simply aren’t lying around like seashells on a beach waiting for us to pick them up, nor are they so random.

Our experiences, observations, feelings and other stimuli are the raw materials for ideas. The thing about ideas is that they aren’t born, they’re made. As human beings, the capacity to collect and organize information in new ways is innate to our brains. If you think of the brain as a prism that breaks stimuli into smaller parts, then when they combine with other broken down stimuli, they can attach to form a new, separate idea. The question then is: how do we improve the chances that our prisms break down all of our different observations, feelings and stimuli to generate great ideas more often?

Taking our observations of the world around us, running them through our minds, and hoping to come up with better ideas during our next brain storming session isn’t the best way to create good ideas. They’re the result of the focused action that takes place in our brains. We take these bits and pieces of information that travel through our mind and actively turn them into good ideas. Some of the greatest minds in the world have toiled in laboratories, and tinkered with the same thoughts for hours, days, weeks, and even years; in an effort to generate that one good idea which makes all of that toiling worthwhile.

This motion graphic created by Column Five looks at five ways you can help yourself generate that next great idea more often.

ᔥ Column Five