When you think of ideas one of the first few things that come to mind is the proverbial lighting of a bulb somewhere in your head! Every idea that we have doesn't just pop out of the blue, it is the result of a cascade of our thoughts that lead to ideas. The question is what if these creative juices that give us those marvelous ideas run out? Or how to keep them going? This is one question that bothers entrepreneurs the most because innovation is their bread and butter.
One of the most important factors in idea generation if you may, is human interaction. As said earlier ideas are an amalgamation of your thoughts. And human interaction contributes a huge amount to that. Talking to other people expands your pool of knowledge and hence more ideas. The simplest way to form an idea is to merge two different ones to come up with something new and valuable. From the 1950s, the number of people living in cities has been going up and is expected to reach 70% by 2050. This is in direct relation to the amount of human interaction and hence invention, which has steadily been increasing with urbanization.
The next factor is Constraints. Contrary to the common notion that great ideas come out of free spirit and no constraints. But in reality, good ideas come from constraints. For example is you give A some work and give him all the resources possible, he will most probably take the conventional route, but if you give A the same work with limited resources, he will have to improvise or come up with something new to get the task done. This is the power of constraints. Like the famous quote from Bill Gates, " I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.", here laziness being a constraint ( not that I am professing it) but something innovative came out of that constraint.
The last factor here is the age or maturity of a person. Innovation is a game of the young. This could be taken as a glorified version of "Ignorance is bliss". The young do not have a lot of experience and are not afraid of traversing unexplored territories. Since they have not yet be exposed to the conventional way of things for that long a time, their ideas and thoughts wander and this one factor that plays a role in your thought process and can be seen in your ideas.
Your pristine pool of ideas never runs dry, it might just need replenishing from time to time and you can get your creative juices get to work.
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