Insights first, ideas second

I just want to add my thoughts to Tim Kastelle’s post earlier today: Ideas are cheap.

They sure are. There are all sorts of fun ways to come up with new ideas and tactics to help you see new ideas. Do a google search for ‘how to get new ideas’ and you get 381 million results, more links than you’ll ever have time to visit in your lifetime with some mostly the same information that is in those two articles I linked to! Ok so what’s a better way to generate ideas?

Insights, they’re the seeds of new groundbreaking ideas.

A more strategic way of generating ideas is to focus on building ideas on top of insights. Don’t get me wrong, thinking stuff up is fun. You let your imagination run wild, think of the impossible and think all kinds of stuff only you can imagine. It’s your own dream world! Mostly all these ideas will be way ahead of their time or not even doable. That’s why we need to combine our imagination with our intellect. Our intellect drives our capability to discover insights and our imagination helps put the pieces together in a new way.

So how do you discover new insights?

Recently I’ve written how insights can pop out of nowhere and how the most simple way of spotting them is by noticing things. To discover new insights we have to become really good at recognizing patterns and then making sense of them in this interconnected world. We must turn mud into gold if you will and this happens by making distinctions out of what we observe.

To get you started, a simple way is to observe the world, industries and people. Notice what’s changing, what’s different and ask yourself what does it mean for the world, industry your customers and you. Think about what needs and behaviors might emerge from these changes and how can you exploit them.

Ideas are cheap but insights are hard to come by.