Mitch Ditkoff's article, "14 Ways to get Breakthrough Ideas," starts off by breaking down two different ideas of where ideas come from in the first place. The first, a western way of thinking, attributes ideas "to inspired individuals who, through a series of purposeful mental processes, conjure up the new and
the different." The second however is a much more eastern way of thinking which "ascribes the appearance of ideas to a transcendent force, a.k.a. the 'Collective Unconscious,' the 'Platonic Realm,' the 'Muse' or the 'Mind of God.'"
Next, Ditkoff begins to break down 14 ways in which he believes the aspiring innovator can use to create new and useful ideas. I think the first of his ideas that really makes a good point is his third one; "Tolerate Ambiguity." I think it is a really important thing for someone to do, especially someone who is attempting to come up with new ideas. He uses the following quote to get his point across, "when thomas edison was asked how it felt to fail 800 times before coming up with tungsten as the filament for the light bulb, his answer was a revealing one. “Fail?” he said. “I didn’t fail once. I learned 800 times what didn’t work.” His point ends up being that even if what you are trying to do doesn't work out, just keep going from there and learn from your mistakes because even though you didn't necessarily get what you were going for, you could come up with something else you hadn't ever thought of in the process. I think that could be implemented easily into any creative persons life. If you give up on something the instant you are met with a result that is different than what you thought, you will likely never get anywhere with your work.
The 4th suggestion he makes, "Make New Connections," I feel is not as helpful as Ditkoff feels it is. While yes, it is true that many great ideas have been created by making connections and yes, it is still possible to make these new connections, I feel that the more modernized we get the more of these connections will have already been made. I'm not by any means saying that it is impossible for one to make new connections, I just think that the more time that passes, the harder it will be to come up with new connections that are actually worth connecting.
I think that Ditkoff's 9th suggestion, "Notice and Challenge Existing Patterns and Trends," is another good one to keep in mind. While there are situations when followings patterns and trends can be useful, being innovative and coming up with new ideas is not one of them. While I do feel this suggestion feels a little bit redundant to the idea of coming up with new ideas, I still think it's very important. Sometime the most successful ideas are the ones that people never imagined they could do; something completely different than any way they have used something before. I think this suggestion is also very important to any creative person's life because it is an easy way to start off for new ideas. Instead of focusing on the idea of "something new,"it might be more helpful to think of it in terms of "something different than the old." That way rather than just blindly coming up with a new idea, a person may compare ideas in reference to older ones coming up with more innovative ideas.
Suggestion #9: Notice and Challenge Existing Patterns and Trends
One pattern that I have noticed lies within the music industry. Now, I could easily be mistaken as I was not alive in the 1980's, but this trend is just something that intrigued me. It always seemed to me like a lot of the most popular music from the 1980's was and still is considered "good" music, and is by very talented artists. Fast forward to today's popular music, and it seems most of the artists (with notable exceptions) are quite the opposite. With the exception of artists such as Beyonce and Kanye West, much of today's most popular music is created by artists whom are not considered to be superbly talented or even innovative by any means. I don't know exactly how it would be possible to predict any further trends in relation to this, and thus it's not really possible to see how one could use any prediction to their advantage.
Mitch Ditkoff's "14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas"
No comments:
Post a Comment