
Paul Buchheit: Three types of ideas - paul
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/three-types-of-ideas.html
======
mxh
I think this could also be stated as:

If no one is doing what you're doing, it's probably not because no one thought
of it before. There are two reasons an idea might never have been developed
into a product before:

1.) Seems too hard 2.) Seems unwanted

Underlying these perceptions might well be the reality that the idea _is_ too
hard, unwanted, or both, but the perception is what matters.

So, if you're doing something new, most people will think it's either too
hard, unwanted, or both. (Otherwise, lots of people would be doing it.) They
might be right, but their opinions are not meaningful data points.

If you want to innovate, don't waste your time arguing.

~~~
paul
That's a good formulation as well. I wrote it the way I did in part because
I'm also trying to defend "bad" ideas.

~~~
juwo
Paul, that is reassuring. juwo qualifies as a 'bad' idea :)

see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26739>

If you would like to collaborate on it, please email me (your's isn't listed).

------
Alex3917
I'm not quite sure how to express this, but it seems like the smartest people
tend to work on the most seemingly trivial problems. You'd think that geniuses
would gravitate toward really hard problems, but a lot of the Nobel/MacArthur
winners are more like Karl Von Frisch who discovered bees doing the waggle
dance. Or Darwin who spent eight years studying barnacles.

~~~
paul
Trivial problems can have surprising depth.

<http://worldandi.misto.cz/_MAIL_/feynman.html> "Feynman finally broke the
depression cycle in a typically Feynmanesque way. He challenged himself to
describe in equations the wobbling movement of a spinning plate being tossed
in the air by a student in a Cornell cafeteria. After much effort, he was able
to show that, consistent with his observations, for a small degree of wobble,
a one-to-two ratio between the wobble and spin was indeed valid. When Feynman
excitedly described his results to Bethe, the other scientist listened with
interest but wanted to know their practical value. Feynman had to admit that
they had no practical value. He had solved the problem because he had fun
doing it. This recognition was an epiphany for Feynman. He decided that from
then on, he was going to do physics just for the fun of it. Energised by his
decision, he went back to problems in quantum electrodynamics that he had
started working on while still at Princeton-the work that eventually brought
him the Nobel Prize. Ironically, he found that the spinning-plate movement he
had studied just for fun also had application to the electron-spin problem."

------
chmike
The parallel with scientific research strikes me. To find gems one has to look
into spaces left in the shadow by people.

I often was surprised to see that better algorithm where obtained by counter
intuitive approaches (i.e. BM string search algorithm, radix sort,...). This
is now a heuristic I use in my activity.

In addition to looking into ideas that are often discarded, Paul also reminds
us that the testing cost (time, complexity, finance) should be minimal. The
rational is not to be economical, but to maximize the number of tests and
experiences one can do with the limite resource we have.

This is the Murphy's law in the positive sense as I explained here
[<http://tinyurl.com/25tjkv].>

Looking into the bad idea space increases the probability to find a good one
and picking cheap ideas to test allows to increase n. This maximizes the
probability of success.

~~~
corentin
"This is now a heuristic I use in my activity."

In case you're interested, there is a method called ASIT (for "Advanced
Systematic Inventive Thinking") to help solve problems in creative ways, by
forcing us to look where we wouldn't look otherwise (because of cognitive
fixation). One of its main assumption is that creative solutions are often to
be found near the obvious solutions, and that they are only different in small
aspects. Moreover, it tries to turn the origin of a problem into a part of its
solution!

The really, really sad thing is that it's a quite formal, very thoughtful, "no
bullshit" method (unlike brainstorming) but paradoxically the guys who promote
it make IMHO the terrible mistake of selling as if it was some kind of "snake
oil" (look at the main website, <http://www.start2think.com> ) I'm pretty sure
it turns genuinely interested people away; myself, I discovered it through a
professional training session and wanted to know more but I would never have
trusted those websites otherwise.

If you can find the ASIT book by Roni Horowitz (I have the self-published
french translation, but I guess the original english one is available
somewhere), and can read past the first few pages of grand promises, you'll
probably learn very interesting stuff about creativity.

------
donna
re find faster and cheaper ways of testing them: i test using myself, my
friends and my family. If i don't use what i've implemented it may not be a
good idea.

~~~
paul
That's a good strategy. Even if the idea were good, if you and the people
around you aren't excited about it, then it will be difficult to execute well.

~~~
nostrademons
I dunno - what if your friends and family are laggards on the technology
curve? My sister is probably the last person under 25 without a Facebook
account. My parents still don't have cable TV, let alone IPods and
videophones. They barely know how to turn on a computer. When I tell them what
I'm doing, they say "Who has time to play games on the computer, let alone
create them?"

If it weren't for my cofounder's constant assurances that yes, people want
this (well, and that his girlfriend's roommates tried to sign up for our site
even though we're not open yet), I probably would've given up a while ago.
Which I guess underscores the importance of having a cofounder from a
different background as yourself. It's easy to get stuck in a narrow
perspective if the people you're close to all share it.

~~~
paul
Yes, I should have said "you OR the people around you". Someone needs to be
excited, but they certainly aren't all going to be (most will think it's a bad
idea). This is also a good reason to spend more time with the "right" people
(people who get excited about new ideas instead of shooting them down).

~~~
donna
yes, finding compatible people with compatible interests to start the project
rolling can be the biggest a challenge

~~~
ralph
I've an idea that (I believe) would be useful to people in their day to day
real-life. If I get to the stage where I need to attract those people as users
I was thinking of targetting a small number of them that are geographically
local; I know where they hang out. Just with old fashioned posters on notice
boards, that kind of thing. They'll be a small set of guinea pigs to
experiment on. As luck would have it, they're typically in touch with others
of their kind so if they like the site I think they'll voluntarily tells
others.

My poorly made point is that old fashioned advertising may be an initial way
to attract users if they're targetable.

------
euccastro
Your two points make intuitive sense. Rather than using your next posts to
defend them, just come up with more of those. :)

------
ralph
I guess extremely fine execution of a "bad idea" can make its use so painless
as to raise its usefulness into a good idea?

------
amichail
Creativity tied to mental illness

<http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.23/01-creativity.html>

~~~
corentin
It's no surprise; creativity is "think different." It's seeing what cognitive
fixation prevents us to see.

