
Key to Innovation: Becoming an Observer - terpua
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/key-to-innovation-becoming-an-observer.html
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mixmax
I think that observing is certainly a key to innovation, but not the only one.
Equally important is the ability to quickly discard your proposed solutions.

I often find myself thinking about trivial problems and the solutions to them.
Not a day will go by without thinking up at least a dozen solutions to all
sorts of problems, ranging from how to make a better modding system for
websites (which was recently discussed here) to how to shorten the lines in my
local supermarket without using more resources. The solutions that I gin up
are for the most part totally ridiculous or undoable - but that's fine, as
long as I have the good sense to discard them quickly and think of another
one. After a while you become quite good at it, and can come up with a dozen
ideas to a given problem, think all of them through, discard the ones that
won't work and iterate on the ones that might in a few minutes.

I recently saw a study of innovative people, and what made them innovative.
The result was that they didn't have ideas that were particularly great, they
simply had many many more of them. And they were quick to discard the ones
that would not work.

Another important trait of innovative people is that they have a pretty broad
spectrum of knowledge. Often innovation comes from coupling ideas or systems
from different fields.

just my two cents ;-)

