How To Get A Million Dollar Idea

“My preferred terms for the process of ideation are synthesis and reduction.  In synthesis, a large number of ideas are created based on the problem at hand – without consideration for practicality, costs, risks, timeline, and other factors.  In reduction, some ideas are slowly and progressively eliminated.  Ideas which are impossible, impractical, or undesirable are discarded first.  The ideas worth pursuing are prioritized and pursued.  Next, those which aren’t working are also discarded.  Through this process of reduction, the ideas that are truly valuable eventually float to the top.  Google Labs is a good example of this process of synthesis and reduction.  Of thousands of ideas which are discussed, only a few hundred are pursued.  Of those, maybe a few dozen are marketable.  Only 3 or 4 find a profitable business model.  However, if you had not discussed thousands of ideas in the first place, you could not have found the 3 or 4 that are truly valuable.

Go meta.  Whenever you are working on a new idea, task, or product, always be ready to generalize and look at the bigger picture.  For example, if you are tweaking your shopping cart, briefly consider if customers would be better served by a total redesign of the shopping cart – or if you even need a shopping cart, eg. Amazon One-Click. Read more of this post