I recently saw the Tacoma bridge collapsing on a documentary...
If a bridge collapses,
engineers around the world immediately start looking for what may have caused it, and start looking if their bridges will collapse. Can you blame them?
but how many people start looking for similar ideas when a new business does well ?
do you ?
This is the difference between being reactive and proactive. Be the first person to protect your bridge, be the first person to latch onto new business models. Don't wait until you need to.
(not keeping up in a rapidly changing world is almost the same as collapsing... this sounds negative but its positive side is that it motives you when you realize this is now the reality of business)
I will now present a method for abstracting the essence behind a successful idea, so that you can find a host of similar ideas yourself. This is useful as ideas are about number games. Out of the many, one of these ideas you generate is bound to be a best seller.
Ideas contain memes
Ideas contain memes underneath, and a new meme is very powerful, it can generate a host of new ideas, as we will soon see.
It could be anything you see that fires you up, a new business model, a new style of music, a new type of gadget, all of them have concepts underneath, that can be used to generate new ideas.
One way to do this is when you see a new good idea (that fires your passion) - ask - how could I have got this idea myself?
Recent successful model: teddy bear with LCD
I recently heard how a teddy bear with an LCD display in it, to show night-time stories etc, did very well.
How could I have got the memes for this idea?
How to get formulas: from any idea
Now we get to what this post is all about. How to take any idea and generate formulas to make similar ideas from it. Do as follows :-
- Start by breaking an idea it down into its key components, e.g. a toy and an LCD screen
- Then list these at another level of abstraction, e.g in this case an old traditional unchanged product, with something new
And so our first formula is born :-
Formula 1
- an old traditional unchanged product
- with something new
(by new something recently invented / made cheap - like the LCD)
another method is to not abstract every part but just some, so :-
Formula 2
- a traditional toy
- with something new
(esp. as I know toys are always selling well, and rife for inventions / new ideas)
These may not seem useful formulas until you start to see what they can come up with. A key part in any invention and innovation is first getting a decent set of problem definitions. In solving these you will generate many ideas, some of which will be good ones.
E.g. in this formula we could have one of my fav. old toys as a child, a plane with a catapult that propelled it far, and spice it up, e.g. by putting a cheap camera on it that can upload the image to a mobile phone after via. blue tooth etc. These are so small, light and cheap now. The angle of the camera on the plane body could be changed to get different viewpoints. You could even launch one plane and then try to follow it with another that films the first. or have other toys you could mount the same camera in, such as a small rocket that floats down via. parashoot. Such an idea has its time come now, or very soon, as it is suddenly so cheap to make.
The new, the LCD, can also be listed in another of its aspects, "a popular item", as LCDs are popular now.
Formula 3
- a traditional toy
- with something popular / trending
This is always going to be a powerful formula, as popular is strong. And mixing it with something that has proved popular in the past, with something new, will give a great chance of creating something both new and popular.
Formula 4
- an old traditional unchanged product
- with something popular / trending
This provides formulas rife for new ideas. Ideas that are likely to sell, as it is based on a framework that worked. Plus it worked recently, so is more likely to create ideas whose time is now (not to create ideas whose time is past or way in the future).
Finally, I noticed this has been done before, an old 80's best selling toy (in the millions) was a bear with a tape player in it to read out night-time stories.
Thus a new formula for ideas -
Formula 5
- look to old ideas that have worked
- list the parts
- see which of them can be updated
E.g. I could have looked at the best selling toys over recent decades, and found the teddy bear with the tape player in it. I could have then updated it to an LCD screen - another recent invention. And easily I could have got a great new idea! (How hard is it to replace the tape recorder in the teddy with an LCD when you are looking to replace it?) I could see myself getting this idea almost for certain using this formula. It would also be likely to sell well (because children in the past liked the same idea with a tape player). As long as it is executed well of course. So for a very small amount of work - we have a best selling toy. Ideas don't always come that quickly, but sometimes you get lucky. That's part of the fun, you never know when you will get your next great idea.
Which idea to start with? - Follow Passion
Passion is the best motivator for creativity and great work. Edison considered this so important, that he only let people work on what fired them up. So above all start with an idea that generates passion in YOU, and then find the memes behind that with the method above. Passion is the energy required to play the numbers game that is creativity.
