Where do good ideas come from?

I recently spoke at a SheSays event about where good ideas come from. If you've not made it along to a SheSays talk, pop along---men are also welcome. And they're not limited to London;  events are now happening in Scotland too. 

The rest of this post, is the gist of what I talked about, inspired by working with The Many. 

****

What a huge question. One I can't begin to answer without a little research. 

We all know they're the holy grail of advertising. And, those in the industry are all searching for that engaging, radiating and ambitious idea, and potentially its accompanying rapturous applause.

Secure in the belief that some of the women I've either enjoyed working with, or talking to, might know where good ideas come from, I thought I'd start by sharing their secrets:

Leila Johnston, the brilliant writer and strategist told me: 

"There is no formula for a good idea, but they arise naturally out of the right combinations of personalities, rather than "skills" in the employment sense of the word. Without everyone involved feeling positive about the process and goal -- and each other -- it's very difficult to get to anything of real resonance."

My good friend and former colleague, Kate Bordwell, strategist, blogger and dedicated cyclist, approached my question with a planner's head on: 

"Good ideas come from intelligent creative people working together. The brief just sets the parameters of the direction and records the thinking." 

The inspired Cath Richardson, strategist, maker, general green bean and digital whats-it eloquently described how talking to users can inspire ideas: 

"Working with potential users introduces an element of chaos into the creative process. By bringing in this foreign element you set the scene for serendipitous discovery."

And the smart New Yorker - who's sitting with us here this evening - Farrah Bostic, strategist, lean planner and entrepreneur gave her take as follows: 

"Good ideas come from an almost delusional optimism about the problem to be solved, an openness to seemingly unrelated analogies, and a playfulness with both the sublime and the ridiculous.  

Good ideas also come from people telling stories over a drink or after watching a video of a hamster on a piano eating popcorn."

So, four very bright women with four quite different perspectives.

If I'd been able to ask the Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto how to find a good idea, he would have replied that "An idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements."

Can there even be a formula for having good ideas, when it's an intrinsically creative, random process?

James Webb Young would have you believe that "the production of ideas is just as definite a process as the production of Fords; that the production of ideas, too, runs on an assembly line; that in this production the minds follows an operative technique which be learned and controlled; and that its effective use is just as much a matter of practice in the technique as is the effective use of any tool."

And, of course, for John Hegarty, the solution lies in magic, where the creative is cast as the magician. 

According to Hegarty,

"Creativity isn't about predictability - it has to surprise and challenge, it has to be daring and yet motivating." 

"The creative people - the ones who have to come up with the magic." 

At this point, as a verified non-magician, I might as well go home and choose a new career. Making magic and great ideas ostensibly belongs to the few.

Except, I'm lucky to work with The Many, and our ideas and our projects are Made by Many. It's not a tagline, or simply a great company name - it's an ethos and a practice.

We don't have job titles. Yes, really. We have specialisms and preferred interests. But there are technologists, who are creative, and design-minded people who understand technology. There are strategic-minded designers, who know how to run projects; and strategists, who can build websites. There are no departments and demarcations. 

The brief isn't handed off from planner to creative, from creative to technologist in a linear fashion. Individuals don't lock themselves away for long periods of time to unlock the solution, by themselves.

Collaboration is a pervasive founding principle. It's a radial process where idea generation is democratic; the innovators and creators are not sitting in silos or separate departments. We're all in one space, together; and as such we can respond to change rapidly.

And, that's an advantage. Two heads are better than one. And thirty heads are better than two.

You don't have to be at Made by Many for long before you're invited to a company-wide sketch brain-storm. 

I imagine many of you have been part of a brain-storm, and some of you may have sketched out some of  your ideas at the same time. At Made by Many, a sketch-brainstorm tends to be 20+ people in a room with pens and a pile of sketch pads. Someone running the project summarises the problem and then people start to sketch solutions. It's that simple. 

It's rapid, playful, egalitarian and enjoyable. When you've finished a sketch, you describe it, throw it into a pile in the middle, and move onto the next idea. That's it. 

So far, so magic-free. 

In my second week spending time at MxM I was part of an initial ideas meeting where we were trying to resolve a paid proposition service. 

Instead of working out each stage of the journey from registration to subscription (and credit card details), someone suggested we take a 'Time's Arrow' approach and begin at the end. 

We forgot about the initial stages and started at the end of the process -- where would people be using this service? On their mobiles, on the bus; on their laptop relaxing by the pool on holiday; on the train to Northern Scotland; on their iPads at home? By creating the contexts in which people would enjoy the service, we were able to figure what user journey they might take to get there. We all considered and sketched out some scenarios, which we then grouped and prioritised. 60 minutes later we had a multitude of ideas. 

In the spirit of sharing a good idea---that came to life over a few beers with people from MxM and Good for Nothing, a company with a great social mission---I thought I’d share with you an idea that launched about two hours earlier today. 

Working in an entirely rapid, collaborative and agile way, a group of MxM volunteers got together at lunch yesterday, to try and come up with a digital money-raising solution for the East Africa disaster relief fund. By 8pm last night, we realised it was about re-working code we already had, and using the greatest tools at our disposal: the brainpower of our talented network, and our own skills as makers and community-builders. We wanted to harness the crowd's ideas to find a mechanism to raise funds as quickly as possible for the crisis in Somalia. So Good by Ideas was born at about 5pm this evening. No perfect brief, no time for a formal creative review, or even taste-testing with users - just rapid collaboration. 

I guess I'm saying the lone wolf as creator is an outdated concept. 

Starting my career as a journalist, I was taught that your ideas were everything - having the original idea meant the better byline. The more ideas that were your own, the better you did, the greater your journalistic status. Other than the front-page lead story, how often do you see journalists sharing byline real estate?

But the last four years of working in digital have taught me about working in teams, not silos, sharing ideas, and making things quickly.

There is no straightforward formula for making good ideas happen. But with a group of bright, articulate, intuitive people you can create meaningful, fun, engaging (even sublime) ideas. As the age-old adage goes: many hands make light work.

There is, of course, an epilogue to all this. Having a good idea is obviously important, but doing research to test your idea---ideally a little customer development to understand if, and how, your potential audience will engage with it---and then making that good idea happen is just as essential. Although parts of the industry still tend towards elevating the creators over the makers, having a talented, smart group of technologists, service and interaction designers to realise an idea is integral to any project (no matter how large or small in scale).

In fact, distinguishing between the maker and the creator is no longer really valid. If you bring dynamic people together to solve a problem, then they are all creators and makers together. 

At least, that's my hypothesis.