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The magic of generating new ideas

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Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#41

Post by tabtab »

There's plenty of new ideas around, you don't have to generate them yourself. If you ask in forums or search the web you can get a big list. The problem is culling the list for practical and successful ideas. Somebody has to invest the time and/or money do actually do it, and accept the high risk of failure typical of startups and new open-source projects. That's probably the bottleneck.

Ideas are cheap, execution is not.

Here's a free sample tip: Dynamic Relational. It's the new "plastic" (a movie reference). The NoSql movement has shown a market/desire for dynamic databases. But with Dynamic Relational you get dynamism AND sql; you don't have to choose one or the other. And you can set constraints/rules to gradually make it more "static" like traditional RDBMS.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#42

Post by bryanrasmussen »

paideic wrote: post #5

Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia. One of my math professors had a great take on the difficulty of injecting a new idea into the world: he said that the greatest mathematical achievement that anyone had ever…

True, but unfortunately the whole story of that is lost in time and we can not accurately gauge the brilliance of their execution in relation to the brilliance of the idea itself.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#43

Post by [deleted] »

mkagenius wrote: post #13
paideic wrote: post #5

Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia. One of my math professors had a great take on the difficulty of injecting a new idea into the world: he said that the greatest mathematical achievement that anyone had ever…

Most of the ideas that already exist in the world, I would actively reject out of fear, examples, putting current carrying wires into water (heater), metals weighing 800 kg moving with high speed (cars). So I guess we (at least I) are rejecting quite a lot of potentially useful ideas?

[deleted]

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#44

Post by sdenton4 »

pugworthy wrote: post #29

I'm curious if anyone has run into situation where being an "idea" person has been a negative at work. Sometimes there is the perception of ideation as a waste of time, or that the ideator (is that a word?) is one of those "whacky ideas" people. "Why are you going for walks, don't you have work to do?"

As a former mathematician who can relate very well to the article, I can say that most of the self-described 'ideas people' I've met are charlatans who really aren't doing the necessary groundwork.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#45

Post by tabtab »

paideic wrote: post #5

Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia. One of my math professors had a great take on the difficulty of injecting a new idea into the world: he said that the greatest mathematical achievement that anyone had ever…

Re: Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for.

I have to disagree. The ancient Greeks played with idea of the Sun being the center of the solar system, along with inventing gear systems, and programmable mechanical robots (sometimes using wound thread). Ideas similar to natural selection preceded Darwin, but in some cases apparently kept quiet or wrapped in metaphor out of fear of religious backlash.

There is almost no invention that didn't have similar or simultaneous invention counterparts. It seems when the surrounding technology or precursors are in place, people put 2 + 2 together relatively quickly.

The only "one big leap" I can name right now is the piano. It did borrow from the harpsichord, but appears to be a single-minded attempt to make the volume of a note controllable, like a clavichord, but loud enough for performances. One needed a lot more parts than a harpsichord or clavichord had to do this well. Basically a wealthy person of royalty gave the inventor lots of time and resources to tinker.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#46

Post by galaxyLogic »

Hoasi wrote: post #27
tim333 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> back to what they once knew. Unbridled love and trust in others. Non-judgement... That's quite an optimistic assessment of little children.

> That's quite an optimistic assessment of little children. I'm not sure if it is. Little children lack preconceived ideas, and, often, inhibition. That combination is a good recipe for accepting the unknown and coming up with new ideas. That is not to say they can't be cruel at times.

Little children are also easily led and controlled by other people like their parents. And no doubt that is what Mr. Preacher-man also wants: Followers. Thank the Lord and pass the bucket. Become dependent on me telling you what is the truth, you believing that if you just believe what I tell you you are granted the ticket to heaven, if not you go to Hell.

Very conveniently it is very easy to make little children believe all that, and now you tell us we should be like them little children too.

We should blindly trust the preacher-man, like little children, that's what he is telling us.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#47

Post by thrav »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #46
Hoasi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's quite an optimistic assessment of little children. I'm not sure if it is. Little children lack preconceived ideas, and, often, inhibition. That combination is a good recipe for accepting the unknown and coming up with new ideas. That is not to say they can't be cruel at times.

Little children are also easily led and controlled by other people like their parents. And no doubt that is what Mr. Preacher-man also wants: Followers. Thank the Lord and pass the bucket. Become dependent on me telling you what is the truth, you believing that if you just believe what I tell you you are granted the ticket to heaven, if not you go to Hell. Very conveniently it is very easy to make little children bel…

That’s not my interpretation of the message at all. That was certainly not my intent.

My point was that the shaping of children by the world to hate, or judge, or otherwise adopt the beliefs of any given adult is exactly what corrupts them from who they truly are.

I’m referring to the goal as their state prior to those corrupting influences.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#48

Post by galaxyLogic »

thrav wrote: post #47
galaxyLogic wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Little children are also easily led and controlled by other people like their parents. And no doubt that is what Mr. Preacher-man also wants: Followers. Thank the Lord and pass the bucket. Become dependent on me telling you what is the truth, you believing that if you just believe what I tell you you are granted the ticket to heaven, if not you go to Hell. Very conveniently it is very easy to make little children bel…

That’s not my interpretation of the message at all. That was certainly not my intent. My point was that the shaping of children by the world to hate, or judge, or otherwise adopt the beliefs of any given adult is exactly what corrupts them from who they truly are. I’m referring to the goal as their state prior to those corrupting influences.

Right, but so the fact that they are so open-minded means they can be easily mislead which means they are corruptible.

It's not so good to be open-minded if that is the same thing as readily-corrupted. Or in other words we shouldn't strive to be in a child-like state where we are easily corrupted, easily mislead, because we are so open-minded.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#49

Post by musicale »

paideic wrote: post #5

Coming up with something truly new is much, much harder than people give it credit for. We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia. One of my math professors had a great take on the difficulty of injecting a new idea into the world: he said that the greatest mathematical achievement that anyone had ever…

> We take the sun being the center of the universe for granted today, but it was an extremely non-obvious fact for the smartest people in the world for millenia

When did the sun become the center of the universe? I thought it wasn't even near the center of our galaxy, much less the universe, though I seem to recall that expansion makes it look that way because all the other galaxies we can see are moving away from us.

Re: The magic of generating new ideas

#50

Post by iKevinShah »

tabtab wrote: post #41

There's plenty of new ideas around, you don't have to generate them yourself. If you ask in forums or search the web you can get a big list. The problem is culling the list for practical and successful ideas. Somebody has to invest the time and/or money do actually do it, and accept the high risk of failure typical of startups and new open-source projects. That's probably the bottleneck. Ideas are cheap, execution is…

I feel, in my opinion, getting an idea and generating something comparatively easier part compared to actually educating the market / users about what the idea is and what is the solution we have generated, we all see / are a part of so many good products which just had a steep learning curve and hence failed / didnt get accepted.
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