Be Everyone, Be No One: A Simple Idea to Generate Real Good Ideas

Ideas permeate life. Almost all human progress begins with - and inspires - ideas. The wheel, the Eiffel Tower, the TED Talks, the General Theory of Relativity, the Internet, the Mars Mission, organic farming, the idea of Creation itself - of both man in general, and you and me in particular: these are just a few manifestations of ideas that come to mind, at the moment. 

Yes, if we have to get better at what we do, why we do it, who we are and who we are becoming; if we have to help and inspire more and more people to do the same; we have no option but to lock ourselves into an eternal embrace with the infinite power of ideas.

While there are many steps in the Idea Life Cycle, the first step, it seems, is Idea Generation (we will discuss the zeroth step, in a future post). Now, there are various roadblocks to creativity; many known and hidden factors hinder the generation of ideas, especially in a group setting. There are various methods, and types of methods, people and organizations can adopt, in order to remove these blockages.

Here is one more: a simple proposal - a hack if you will - that I think could result in more and better ideas, especially in group/community/organizational contexts.

The key is to look out for two specific types of Ideas - "Everyone Ideas" and "No One Ideas", by being obvious and being foolish respectively.

Now, that may sound both obvious and foolish. So, let me elaborate.

Be Everyone

Ask yourself: which ideas would most, if not all, people find worthy of being accepted?

We are often afraid to look stupid. At the same time, we often fail to see "the obvious". In other words, what is "obvious" is often not obvious. Even then, when the "obvious" is pointed out, perhaps due to hindsight bias, people tend to say/believe that it was always obvious, thereby belittling the idea suggester. 

Due to this interesting dynamic, we may often hesitate - to not only state, but even explore, what is obvious. The systematic failure to explore the territory of the obvious can often create a nagging gap in the comprehension and assimilation of reality, at the level of individuals, groups, organizations, even nations and the world. 

Adopting this principle can often lead to the generation of ideas that are both must-do and eminently doable, but which no one has bothered to think of/explore/propose earlier. Or it may lead to ideas that are very basic, yet remains unattended due to mixing up of priorities.

Be No One

Here, we ask: which ideas would no one, if any, find worthy of being accepted?

We are all prisoners; at least partial prisoners. Of our past, our experiences, beliefs, values; of who we are and who we aspire to be. This is true at the level of not only individuals, but also groups, families, organizations, industries, nations, societies and even civilizations. The feeling of community breeds silos, almost as a natural by-product. Organizations fail to look outside their industry; often, their industry itself would be in a huge crisis, and the organization may not have woken up to it. As individuals, interactions with like-minded people may form the dominant or even exclusive part of our social diet, thus entrenching these prison-walls of the global society.

Due to the immense self-preserving power of the burden of the past, great ideas would almost always be ahead of the times in which they originate. As such, they are likely to find little, if any, acceptance among most people. [The Theory of Diffusion of Innovations, propounded by Everett Rogers, provides an explanation of the phenomenon of the spread of new ideas and innovations].

Would it not therefore be a good idea to explicitly seek out those types of ideas which are almost certain to be rejected by almost everyone, except you yourself? This is not to suggest that only you or me can be ahead of everyone else; just that at any given time, in any given piece of any giant puzzle, every individual in the group involved in the ideation process has a non-zero chance of striking some gold-mine that is as yet unknown. 

The hope is that, by explicitly encouraging people to think of such ideas, we are able to facilitate and expedite the difficult process of freeing ourselves and our imagination from the shackles of our cognitive prison-guards. Hopefully, we would then have a better chance of instigating everyone to truly aim high, dream big, redefine reality, galvanize energies, inspire action and help transform the world.

It may be added that not just individuals, even groups can Be Everyone and Be No One. In other words, the same principle can be applied at the level of groups and organizations too. So for instance, an organization can be no one, by explicitly search for ideas which no other organization in its industry or related industries would find worthy of accepting. 

What do you think of this post? Please do take a minute (or more), to share your invaluable feedback. Thank you very much.

- Dheep

dheepjoym@gmail.com

May 14, 2017