Page 47 - The Business Idea Factory: A World-Class System for Creating Successful Business Ideas

Quantity equals quality

Imagine that you want to solve a particular problem and need one perfect solution. Many people
would say, “Yeah, I will think until I find the perfect solution. Once I find it, I will stop thinking.”
Although this approach seems intuitive, it rarely works. Why? Let’s review the thinking strategies of
the left and right brain.

The left br ain lo o ks fo r o ne and the best so lutio n fo r the pr o blem. In ever yday life, we use the left
brain in a majority of cases and it gives us a good answer. You ask, “Which route should I choose to
g et to wo r k? Is this co at expensive? In what year did the Seco nd Wo r ld War beg in?” The left br ain
quickly looks at what worked in the past and answers, “Here is your best answer.” We are so used to
using the logical left brain every day that we try to use it even when we need a creative new solution.
Unfortunately, the logical brain is not only useless for generating creative ideas, but is even harmful
because it blocks the creative right brain.

The right brain is millions of times faster than the left logical brain and is responsible for generating
creative and original ideas. The creative brain looks for many solutions for the same problem. Even
though you may eventually implement only one solution, during the idea generation stage think about
all po ssible and impo ssible so lutio ns. The mo r e ideas yo u cr eate, the better yo ur final so lutio n will
be.

Pr o fesso r Dean Keith decided to explo r e the r elatio nship between the quantity and quality o f ideas.
He studied the work of hundreds of the most creative scientists and made a very interesting discovery.
The best scientists created more successful ideas than the mediocre ones. However, the best scientists
also created many more bad ideas than the mediocre scientists.

The vast majority of papers written by the world’s most famous scientists were never cited. A small
percentage of them received a little over 100 citations and only several papers had an incredible
impact on the world.

Professor Keith has done the same study with composers and other fine artists and found that the
more bad ideas a composer, a scientist or an artist generated, the more successful ideas he or she had.

Thomas Edison filed over 2,000 patents, but the majority of them didn’t make him a cent. Albert
Einstein published over 300 scientific papers, but the majority of them are not cited by other
scientists. Pablo Picasso created more than 20,000 pieces of art, but most of them are not presented at
the best art exhibitions. There is a direct correlation between quantity and quality of ideas. The
majority of ideas that the best ideas creators generate are bad, some of them are average and very few
are genius. These few genius ideas make the best creators enormously successful.

Nature creates multiple species through blind trial and error and lets the process of natural selection
decide which species survive. In nature, 95% of new species fail and die. Those species that survive,
thrive and become part of the world’s ecosystem. As an ideas generator, you need to generate a large
quantity of ideas and give them a chance to live. A few of these ideas will survive and make your
business incredibly successful. The more ideas you generate the more likely one of them will be a
treasure. To become a world-class ideas creator, remember the most important equation in creativity:
quantity equals quality.