How To Find Your Next Great Idea

May 5, 2011

Interview with Andy Boynton, author of the book The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen

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Mike Carruthers:
Of course it’s possible that a great idea can be the result of ah ha moment, but most great ideas actually take a very different course.

Andy Boynton:
I think we know enough about innovation and studying innovation by now the best ideas are combinations of old ideas – and that it’s not the divine moment.
 

Andy Boynton, author of the book The Idea Hunter, says a clear and obvious example is Henry Ford inventor of the assembly line to build automobiles.

Henry Ford got his ideas when he looked at carcasses of beef moving down the slaughter houses in Chicago. And he said if you can move beef like that and cut them up and slice them up I can do that with automobiles.  And that gave him some key concepts to the moving assembly line.

Discovering a good idea is a very deliberate process or as Andy likes to say…

Behavior trumps IQ. And the behavior that trumps IQ in terms of innovation and creativity is the behavior of an idea hunter – which is to go hunting. Einstein says I’ve no special talents other than I’m passionately curious. And to be a great idea hunter will increase the likelihood that you will collide with a great idea.

Coming up with ideas is easy, finding a great idea is not.

Ideas that are really interesting and effective and matter are few and far between. And I think hunting is more likely to find them than just sitting there and kind of stumbling along hoping that you’re going to find something now or then.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here