What is a New Idea?
What is an Idea and How Do We Gauge its Newness?
Genesis
This story is based on my recollection of a collaboration I facilitated in a large corporation. The participants, all senior managers, were gathered to discuss ways of improving IT operations (that is code for cost cutting or cost extraction if you’re a dentist).
My role was facilitating the discussion, a euphemism for being very annoying. Naively, I thought the meeting was productive, so much so that afterwards I suggested we go to the café for coffee and further discussion.
Discussion at the café tables diverged from the cost ideas. I could see everyone relaxing, smiling, drinking coffee and eating delicious cinnamon buns. when it came time to say goodbye to them I realised that all the productive ideas discussed were really just “meeting talk”.
I made up the term “coffee drowning” to remind and warn myself for planning future consulting engagements. When I thought back on this meeting, I realised that I too was guilty of drowning my own ideas in coffee and eating far too many cinnamon buns.
Coffee Drowning.
Pesky idea, all too hard, tired. Reach for coffee. Nice coffee. Idea drowned.
I don’t think it’s possible to get value from every idea. But if you develop, enhance and practice the skills involved in the processes of thinking (called Ideation) then perhaps coffee drownings can be minimised.
The concept of an idea needs to be clarified and the question of when is an idea new answered. Finally, how do you come up with an idea and how can you improve your thinking to maximise the value of your new idea?
What is an Idea?
My career centered on being a systems analyst. I worked on performance optimisation of large distributed computing systems through pattern analysis of performance data. I studied systems, specifications, software architecture, software deployment, and peak period utilisation (especially in banking systems). I was consuming knowledge of systems to detect and understand performance issues.
During my daily analysis I would get an intuition of the existence of an issue. This ill-formed idea was something that I could not clearly describe and socialise with other engineers. In this situation I would conduct an analysis to flesh out the idea to the point where I could explain it to another engineer. This process of explanation was iterative in nature, both parties doing analysis to understand the other. There was an assumption of expertise in that we both spoke the same language — engineering.
Summarising, an idea results from thinking by self-aware entities (humans in our case). Ideas can be described as “mental representational images of some object”. My interpretation is that the object could be anything, for example a collection of ideas in a book, a system, an event, a car, a culture or country, a group of people, an idea could be about the state of an object such as the likely age of a car, and so on.
Ideas can be spread through socialisation (vocalised, written, emailed, spread by multi-media, performed and presented) and purposefully used to create value. If an idea is spread using social applications on the internet it is often called an internet meme. In effect, ideas are transmitted between minds and in this process they may be altered to some extent. The more intermediaries involved in the transmission, the greater the accumulated alterations (errors).
What is a New Idea?
Newness is the quality of having been recently created or having started to exist recently. I regard a new idea as being an idea that has been newly socialised.
Newness is dependent on context. An idea in (say) a small business about improving a process might be new, but it might already be established in the business processes of competitors. An idea might be new in Australia, well known in Canada (for example) and un-known in the Artic. The quality of newness of an idea decreases over time. An idea can loose its newness through transmission across time-zones.
An idea’s newness has to be verified. My ideas for process improvement were verified firstly within my organisation and then externally verified through the US and European patent application processes. Copyright is another means used by authors to verify and protect their new ideas.
It is one thing to have a new idea, it is another thing to have it accepted. Innovation resistance and the resistance to acceptance of new ideas are hotly debated issues. In my own experience with the introduction of new processes, these resistance issues arose because employees were expected to do their existing duties while learning about the new technology/processes. Often workers were not consulted, not incentivised and not re-assured about their continuing employment. I experienced adversarial situations that needed careful diplomacy to resolve.
Focus on Thinking as a Skill That Needs Practice.
Ideas result from thinking individuals. I treat thinking as a skill that is inherent in humans. Like all skills, thinking aimed at understanding, refining and successfully exploiting an idea requires practice and careful step-by-step validation.
The essence of critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to form a judgment about the state of the idea — do I need more information, does the idea make sense? Furthermore, critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. Critical thinking is vital to our long term usefulness. I use critical thinking to come up with ideas to manage my diet and organise my weight training fitness exercises. As far as brain health is concerned, it’s a matter of use or lose it.
Understanding how we think is a complex and often confusing topic of research. I find it helpful to use the garden metaphor to explain and explore practical steps to improve ideation.
Your Worldview
Your worldview is made up of all those things that makes you what you are: beliefs, values, knowledge, opinions, culture, ethics and emotions. Using the garden metaphor, soil has a similar role to your worldview.
Just as my germinating parsley seed grows roots into the soil to seek nourishment, so to a new idea takes root in your worldview, linking to items that add insight, context and understanding to your idea.
If the soil is dry and poor in nutrients the seedling will sicken and die. Similarly, if your worldview lacks diversity and the depth of knowledge needed to support your new idea then inevitably the idea will be discarded by your brain’s ideation process (coffee drowning).
Let’s suppose you suddenly get an idea to buy a red car for family outings. The implication is that to make sense of the idea, your worldview contains knowledge of the colour red, knows what a car is, understands family and finally has knowledge of what an outing is. Your understanding of an outing could based on past visits to favourite places or perhaps from reading a travel brochure. Your worldview is accessed automatically to make sense of ideas. You can also consciously explore your worldview, for example reviewing your knowledge of car models.
So, how do we enhance our worldview and our ability to improve the ideation processes?
Improving Your Worldview
Improving your worldview involves proactively engaging with the world around you. Talk and socialise with friends, seek out new experiences, talk with people outside your social network. Attend a variety of events outside of your experience. I did just this when I lived in London in the 1970’s. I was a real-life culture-vulture. My eyes were opened to ballet, classical opera, piano recitals, Shakespeare, beautiful architecture and a love of French cuisine. I attended philosophical societies. My friends at home were aghast, but mum and dad were most supportive.
In these days of miss-information be careful with the value of news and current affairs you read and view. Seek many independent reliable sources. For example, I access sources such as the New York Times; UK papers including The Times and The Guardian; BBC; Australian content mostly from the Australian Broadcasting Commission; and professional peer-reviewed publications like Scientific American, Nature and New Scientist. I also read academic peer-reviewed research papers on climate matters.
The diversity of inputs and opinions that you encounter and think about will enhance your worldview and provide a rich soil for germinating ideas.
Enhancing Ideation.
I have A4 notepads on which I scribble idea notes, draw diagrams and sketches, reminders to follow-up things, bits and pieces to check. It is an easy, uncluttered way to interact with and shape ideas.
In the next idea session, I found the notepad to be an effective way of refreshing my mind. Often this refreshing process highlighted issues or directions I hadn’t thought about and sometimes led to further new ideas.
Software that helps in ideation is often referred to as mind-mapping applications. I have found these useful, but, be aware that software and the computer it runs on often constrains your ideation process and unintentionally biases your thinking. Examples of constraints include, limitations on viewable screen area (idea fragmentation): number of diagrammatic links; amount of text allowed in the diagram; memory size; and so on.
Bias takes many forms and is difficult to eliminate. I use perspective triangulation to try and gained a balance in my ideas. Triangulation is often used to measure distance by using different points in the landscape to view an object. In ideation, triangulation helps me validate my data and ideas by cross-referencing data and information from multiple sources. That is, applying multiple viewpoints on the idea.
I learnt ideation by doing it and constantly checking my thoughts by asking “Does this make sense?” It is very much a learning by doing exercise.
Creating Value
Let’s suppose you have an idea that you have socialised. Your mind now turns to thinking about how to create value from your idea. The very first and most important step is to write a value proposition.
In the value proposition you simply summarise your idea and then list: who will take responsibility for implementing the idea (stakeholders); who will benefit from the idea (customers); resources required for implementation (infrastructure); time to implementation (sales cycle); indication of cash flow (value); and risk analysis.
I have done in excess of 30 large projects designed to improve process efficiency in my client’s financial systems. My take home lesson is that while it took time to come up with ideas, most of my time was spent talking to clients about my ideas, doing small pilots to show things would work and then working with clients to jointly frame a value proposition that was acceptable to all parties. Creating value is an incremental process that builds upon success.
In terms of our Illumination publication, the value created for me is through your feedback. Feedback helps me understand what your expectations and gives me insights to improving my writing. I’m about delivering something that you can use.