Have Lots More Ideas

Linus Pauling, the only person in history to win two individual Nobel Prizes, succinctly describes the essence of productive creativity: “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”

Pauling’s claim has been supported by various research efforts over the last several decades. One recent study claims, "We found that higher number of responses on the divergent thinking task was significantly associated with higher creativity (r = 0.73) as independently assessed by three judges." Which is to say, having lots of ideas is the best way to have good ideas.

Sounds simple enough. But just how many is “lots”?

As we’ve been socializing the concepts of Ideaflow with audiences around the country, we’ve been asking folks to take their best guess — as there is empirical research on the subject — “How many ideas do you need to have to have a commercially successful idea?” Last night, at SMU in Dallas, TX, tables of 5-8 people took their best guess: one table said 58, another said 500, another said 99, another said 21, and on and on around the hall we went. One team gave a more existential answer: “More than you think!”

That last group was right.

By one man’s measure, the number is 5,127. That’s how many iterations James Dyson undertook to perfect the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner. The exact number varies by field — in pharmaceutical discovery, it’s more like 10,000 to 1; in Taco Bell’s food lab, it’s close to 2,000 to 1 — but suffice it to say, “lots” means hundreds, if not thousands of ideas.

Which is to say, “lots of ideas” is lots more than you’d normally think.

I’m curious to know: what are folks’ favorite tactics to stimulate imagination and feed the flow of ideas? Drop your comments below, if you’re interested in the conversation, too.

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