CORRECTION … THERE IS SUCH THING AS A BAD IDEA
Really!? How many times have we all heard this in a brainstorming session!
In my humble opinion, this statement is 100% bulls#*t!! … and I openly say just that to everyone in my sessions!
YES … YES, YES, there are bad ideas in a brainstorming session … often there are hundreds!
BUT … here’s the thing … bad ideas are the building blocks to amazing ones!
There are two reasons why bad ideas are necessary for great ideas:
- Ideas that solve a problem in a unique way are usually a combination of existing ideas, many of which may seem bad at first.
- Accepting that most of our ideas will be bad will help us move on to new ideas faster and more easily.
Like most things in life, creative problem solving is a trial-and-error process … that requires failure.
While bad ideas can be building blocks to creative thought, sometimes they are in fact really good ideas — just ones that nobody else understands yet.
If I give you ten bad ideas, on the surface they don’t have any value. But, if the 10 bad ideas lead you to think of 1 great idea … then the process was exceptionally valuable.
In the case of Norman Lawson, he had 39 bad ideas before he invented WD-40 … Water Displacement, 40thFormula.
Always remember that ideas that were once deemed bad and ridiculed, have led to some of the greatest inventions in history, like human flight, electricity and the umbrella!
