5 Strategies for Coming Up With Great Ideas

Great ideas aren’t too hard to come by.

Even though they happen rarely, they are quite common in circles that are involved with innovation related work. Sometimes truly enriching ideas come from those on-ground as well.

They have the best vision for what’s new and trending and can catch something somewhere that no one else may have noticed.  

While there isn’t any science that can clearly state how you can become more creative, there are strategies that help you with coming up with great ideas. Don’t wait, start now –

Knock out a few bad ideas

This is a great approach even if your bad ideas turned out to be hidden gems. You need to knock out a few bad ones so that you can create space for some good ones. These may include new ideas for innovation, technology or branding. Because the bad ones go on without insight or processing speed, they are empty and shallow. You can easily recognize one a mile away. This is also a great tool when you’re really struggling and don’t have a lot of options to think of.

It’s a great tool to also clear up the mind that may have gotten packed with negative feelings and insecurities over time. You can think of a few bad apples, before you hit upon that golden one. The feeling of hitting that “aha” moment is unique.

The other reason why this process works well is because there is no accountability for your ideas. Often, we undermine ourselves into believing that our ideas are not that good.

This is more so apparent when we try to compete with ourselves in creating the best ideas for the company or for ourselves.

Then we pull down any idea that we think has merit because we think it’ll be bad all along. What we can do is take it easy and call out the bad ones before we go to the good ones. This also creates a sense of strength when we try to create a new parameter for growth in our lives.

Inspiration is everywhere

Certainly, inspiration is everywhere, and we need to have an open mind to listen and receive information. If we go around collecting insights from our own lenses, then we fail to see the world for what it is. We only think about it from the person that sits inside our heads.

When we look at great art, poetry or even read an interesting article, we can get inspired to act in our own business. We become more creative after learning about what the inspiration did to the one inspired and take lessons from that process. We also get a sense of accomplishment from the inspiration hitting our minds, and we are more prepared to take action.

Anytime you have inspiration you should take action and create a list of things to do right after you receive an insight. Don’t let inspiration become the end all be all and allow yourself some time to create new thoughts and ideas. When you feel like you have something in the bag, you should execute on it immediately by taking some action that puts you on the right track.

Start now (Wu-wei)

The principle of Wu-wei is derived from Chinese philosophers who would insist on doing something right now and right away. They didn’t want to wait until the next day, or anything like that. They were all about being in flow with everything and acting upon any idea they came upon.

Similarly, when you think about an idea or an insight, you shouldn’t wait around hoping for something different to happen. You should take initiative and just go! The longer you wait, the more time is spent in over-thinking which can create real problems for you if you’re not careful. Overthinking is the bane of all things creative and it can hamper the natural flow of creative energy. When you have something, you want to pursue you should follow your instinct.

Thinking child-like

When you start thinking like a child, you can access all sorts of creative energy that’s just sitting there hiding away. You can start to become looser and being more OK with failing. Failures seem like stepping stones and you feel like you’re playing a game rather than struggling with life.

You can cultivate playful mindfulness that leads you to new territories in the mind. New ideas get explored, with new changes and new exploratory patterns. Your brain’s default-mode literally changes into something more creative and useful in general.

Look around and learn from yourself

The self is the greatest teacher in life. You can learn a lot about what people want by looking at your own self. What do you want? When you start examining that question, you can start to think about what others might want as a consequence.

What your needs are, arise naturally, and those needs can be fulfilled quite effectively from experimenting with various solutions. You can create new ideas, new thoughts and new insights, but you need to ground them in what you would or what you need.

Snapchat started when Evan Spiegel, CEO, wanted to have an app where he could start instant photo updates. He saw a need that he had, and he wanted to take advantage of it.

He started Snapchat and it took off like crazy.

He leveraged his own need to be connected to people and he scaled the idea up after launching a rough draft for an app. Same is the case with Instagram which got acquired for Billions by Facebook.

Conclusion

Coming up with a great idea is tough, and executing it is even tougher.

When you’re an entrepreneur and you’re trying to build a company from scratch, you don’t see any simple solutions to complicated problems. All you see is barriers and challenges, so what you need to do is to switch your mind to think more creatively.

This open and creative mindset is important to get things going and to continue the process of innovation in your organization.