Five simple ways to get super ideas
Richard St John is an award-winning communicator, success analyst, and author. He loves researching and analyzing complex subjects, then simplifying and communicating them in understandable terms. His best-selling book is The 8 Traits Successful People Have in Common, and his talk “8 Secrets of Success” is one of the most viewed TED talks.
Bill Gates once said, “I had an idea, founding the first microcomputer software company,” and that idea was the springboard for his entire business success. One idea is often the starting point for success at anything, whether it’s building a business, changing the world, or just deciding where to have lunch. So the question is, How do people come up with the super ideas that change their lives and often the world? Well, for over a decade, I’ve been researching, analyzing, and finding answers to that question. The good news is, there’s no magic to coming up with ideas and you don’t have to be artsy or “creative.” Many of the world’s greatest ideas come from ordinary people doing surprisingly simple things. So here are five simple ways you too can get a super life-changing idea.
1. Have a problem.
Ideas are really solutions to problems, so to come up with a super idea, it helps to have a problem. Sky Dayton told me he had a problem: “I was trying to get connected on the Internet, and I spent 80 frustrating hours with my computer, and the service people wouldn’t even answer the phone. I had horrible service and a very frustrating experience. I thought, ‘I can make this easy and people are going to want it [Bing!],’ and I came up with the idea for EarthLink.” A super idea made Sky a technology star and very rich at a young age.
Richard Branson had a problem when his flight to Puerto Rico was cancelled and he was stranded in the airport. To solve the problem, he phoned around and chartered a plane. Then he ran around the airport, found a blackboard, and scribbled in big letters, “Cheap flight to Puerto Rico.” The other stranded passengers bought tickets, he filled the plane, and he actually ended up making a profit. Then, after the flight, a passenger said to him, “That wasn’t bad. Fix up the service a little and you could be in business.” [Bing!] And Virgin Atlantic was born.
2. Listen.
Richard listened, and keeping your ears open in everyday situations is another way to get super ideas. One day, Bernard Silver was in a grocery store when he heard the president of the store ask for help to automate grocery checkouts [Bing!]. Bernard got the idea for the barcode, an invention that revolutionized retail checkouts.
Beatle Ringo Starr was often getting his words mixed up, and one morning after the Beatles worked through the night, Ringo said, “Phew, it’s been a hard day’s night.” John and Paul were listening and [Bing!] they got the idea for “Hard Day’s Night,” which became one of the most influential musical films of all time and one of the greatest songs of all time.
The first use of Botox was to treat muscle spasms, and Dr. Jean Carruthers was injecting Botox into a patient’s eyelids to stop them from fluttering. The patient asked, “Why didn’t you inject between my eyebrows?” Jean replied, “You don’t have spasms there.” The patient said, “I know, but when you treat me there I get this beautiful untroubled expression on my face.” [Bing!] Jean got the idea to use Botox to reduce frown lines, and a whole new industry was born. Her advice: “You’ve got to listen to your patients, number one.” And I’d say, in business you have to listen to your customers and clients, number one.
3. Look around.
Want to get a super idea that wins you the Nobel Prize? Simply keep your eyes open and look around. It worked for physicist Richard Feynman. In his book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, he wrote, “I was in the [Cornell University] cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red Cornell medallion on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.” [Bing!] Richard got an idea, went away, worked out the motion of the mass particles (whatever they are), and won the Nobel Prize in physics. Gee, I look at a plate and all I see is food. He looks at a plate and wins the Nobel Prize. Now that’s observation!
Ron Rice told me that looking around changed his life. He was a lifeguard sitting on a lifeguard stand at the beach, keeping an eye on swimmers, but he also looked at the suntan oil people were using and he thought, “Even with my limited chemistry knowledge, I could make something a hundred times better!” [Bing!] Ron got the idea for Hawaiian Tropic, a more appealing suntan lotion with an exotic coconut fragrance. It was a super idea that took him from the minimum wage lifeguard stand to an exotic beach house with Ferraris in the driveway.
So EYE-Q is often more important than IQ. As Marilyn vos Savant says, and she has one of the highest IQs ever recorded, “To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.” Or as Warren Buffett simply says, “In the end, I always believe my eyes rather than anything else.”
4. Borrow ideas.
Having trouble coming up with ideas? Simply borrow someone else’s idea and then build it into your own super idea. One day, Steve Jobs went on a tour of Xerox’s R&D labs, and they showed him a graphical user interface (GUI), where you clicked images on the screen instead of typing complex codes. Steve said, “I was blown away with the potential of that graphical user interface.” [Bing!] He saw a way to make computers much easier to use, rushed back to Apple, and that super idea turned into the Mac.
Ruth Handler’s daughter used to play with dolls, and in the old days, dolls usually looked like infants, not adults. But then one day Ruth was on a trip to Germany, and she saw a very sleek and sexy adult doll that was actually a gag gift for men. [Bing!] Ruth got the idea to make a doll that looked like a woman and girls could dress her in different clothes. She brought the German doll back home to her company Mattel, and they created Barbie, the world’s most popular doll. So Barbie actually started out as a tiny porn star for guys, but don’t tell your kids.
5. Write it down.
When you suddenly get a super idea, the most important thing to do is simple: Write it down right now! Or your super idea will fly away, never to return.
Four Seasons Hotels founder Issy Sharp said to me, “If an idea comes up I will always, always, stop and make a note, wherever I am, even at dinner.” He could be at dinner with President Obama and he’ll still pull out his pen and paper and take notes.
Bob Dylan didn’t pull his great ideas for songs out of the air. He pulled them out of a box. One day he was complimented on a song he’d written and he said, “Oh I didn’t write that. The box did.” Bob explained that if he was walking down the street or in a restaurant and he heard somebody say something interesting [Bing!], he pulled out his pen and paper and wrote the idea down. When he got home he threw the piece of paper in a box, and when he needed ideas for a new song, he just went to the box.
And if Larry Page didn’t write down his ideas, there might be no Google today. He said, “When I was 23 I suddenly woke up thinking, What if we could download the whole Web and just keep the links? [Bing!] I grabbed a pen and started scribbling out the details and Google was born. When a really great dream shows up, grab it.” But you can’t grab it if you have nothing to grab it with. So I always carry paper and two pens, in case one runs out of ink, and also a small recorder. If I ever have a super idea, there’s no way it will get away from me!
There is one thing strongerthan all the armies in theworld, and that is an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo