
Ask YC:  Could you provide a specific account of how you personally come up with novel ideas? - amichail
So how do you do it?  How do you put your brain in a state of mind that is conducive to creative thinking?<p>Even if you can't say much about it in general, maybe you could say something about the specific circumstances under which you came up with novel ideas?<p>I am especially interested to know if you can will yourself to be creative by devoting hours/days entirely for this purpose. And if so, what sort of stimuli are helpful in this regard.<p>Also, can you be creative alone or do you need to brainstorm with others?
======
mixmax
I'm one of those guys that get a novel idea every minute of the day. I hold a
few patents as well. To me ideas are cheap, but that's probably because I find
it easy to come up with them. Here's how I do it:

Whenever I see something that doesn't quite work I can't help thinking about
why it doesn't work better and how to resolve the problem. This includes how
to shorten the lines without using extra personnel in my local supermarket,
how YC news recommendation system could be made to work better, and how to do
3D displays. Anything really...

The keys to getting the good ideas are:

1) have lots of them - my ideas are no better that anyone elses, I just have a
lot. Statistically a good one will pop up every now and then.

2) When you encounter a problem think through all the possible ways of
resolving it. Don't mind if some of them are outrageous, just be sure to
discard them when you have checked that they don't work. A friend and mine and
I once actually thought that according to the laws of physics a certain
combination of magnets and superconductors should make a perpetual motion
machine. We set up an experiment, and of course it didn't work. We tried it
and discarded it, and we weren't afraid of trying something crazy.

3) Know about different disciplines, and have broad knowledge. Innovation
often comes from crossbreeding different disciplines. If you put a physicist
and a web designer in a room you will get more innovation than if you put two
physicists in a room.

Just my two cents, hope it's useful.

~~~
jgrahamc
Are you me? That's almost exactly what I would have written. I have a yellow
notebook in which I write down ideas as they come to me. It contains
everything from a way to dry the shower curtain to prevent mold, through a way
to adjust car mirrors by eye tracking to various web site ideas.

Essentially, whenever I see something I end up wondering how to improve it, or
why it hasn't been improved in the way I think would work.

------
Hexayurt
"Perspective is worth 80 points of IQ" - Alan Kay

Almost everybody here is focussed on a single, simple consumer niche: rich
white people who shop online.

Because, you say, that's where the money is. Well... no.

That's where 2% of the money is. Maybe 5%. Out there, in the big wide world,
there are tens of thousands of other lifestyle niches, other places to see.
Take a look at that Nokia guy's blog,

<http://www.janchipchase.com/>

Nokia pays him to wander around the world learning about people and how they
use things including but not limited to cell phones.

The whole B2B boom, just before the .com bust was a moment of insight... "wow,
people outside of the home shopping by internet niche can use the internet to
buy things."

So. Ideas.

First thing, get the hell out of San Francisco. Stay away from TechCrunch. Go
to Iowa or Brazil. Spend two weeks walking or bicycling around. Call it a
vacation. If you take a computer, don't look at your usual sites, turn off
your RSS feeds, don't take work email. Put yourself in a new state of mind and
then, if money is the goal, ask yourself "what would these people like their
computers to do?"

But the space of "software for technohip 20somethings" is heavily swamped
right now. It's a saturated, clogged, grossly overfilled demographic.

You want a freebie? An integrated software/hardware/services combo for old
people's homes. Does email to help residents talk to their families, prints
out pictures when they are sent automatically so people can take them back to
their rooms, reminds people of calendar obligations like their grandchildren's
birthdays. Maybe even supports some kind of mediated e-commerce which has a
credit card account which can only be spent at a known-good list of a couple
of hundred stores, so that they can't get phished.

Yes, it would take some selling, but the improvement in quality of life for
the residents, and for their families is not insignificant, and business is
booming for old people's homes.

Get out of your demographic. That's where the money is.

------
edw519
I have had people come to me with seemingly complex problems requiring what
they thought would be complex solutions. Oddly, the elegant solution was often
a gross simplification of the complex problem. Often because I just didn't
understand the complexity.

Example 1. A shipper can only fit 1200 boxes in a 40 foot trailer. The
material is so light, they can never make weight. The boxes must be delivered
to depots throughout the United States with no more than a 3 day window either
way. What box should go on which truck? The customer thought they needed
sophisticated algorithms to provide an optimal solution. The simple solution:
a screen where an educated user can drag boxes (or groups of boxes) to
trailers and can drag trailers to destinations. The computer did very little,
but the difficult business problem turned into a "game" that employees fought
each other to "play".

Example 2: A cloth manufacturer wanted a linear algebra solution to determine
what products to mount on their mills and where to set the knives. The simple
solution: A screen with all customer orders and key data about each order
(size, weight, width). Everything on the screen was sortable and switchable.
Again, an intelligent user could "play a game" to schedule the mills almost as
well as any automated algorithm.

Example 3: A distributor wanted to know what to buy, when to buy it, and what
to put on sale to move slow inventory. He wanted an expensive ERP program. The
simple solution: A screen with all supplies and demands that can be mixed,
matched, sorted, and selected in many different ways. Again, an intelligent
user can "play" with his data and then confidently make decisions.

The "real" bonus of all these "simple" solutions? The person drove the
decision and felt in control of the situation. No more blaming the computer
for the results.

My suggestion: Slow down. Even stop. Ask, "How are we making this too
complicated? What simple little thing could I do to get just part of the way
there?" You may surprise yourself and find that the simple little idea IS the
solution.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Excellent examples.

One lesson I would draw from this: Stop pretending that computers can think --
which they can't -- and start thinking of ways that a computer can help a
human do everything _but_ the thinking. Think _cyborg_ , not _robot_.

------
andr
I'd say it's very hard to make a good product if it doesn't solve a problem
you are personally facing.

For example, we wanted to do a usability test, but it's quite a hassle to find
enough people to do it. I thought how more and more laptops had integrated
cameras. So I came up with the idea of a service that lets me pay $5 to random
people on the Internet in exchange of recording their screens + their faces
and voice while they use our site. It shouldn't be too hard to use the camera
to do eyetracking, either.

If I wasn't building a public-facing website and had not done in-person
usability tests, I wouldn't have thought of this.

~~~
hooande
We had an idea like this too. Almost applied to yc with it.

------
rrival
I agree with Parker on the pain point and I agree with mixmax on the constant
flow of ideas. Keep track of them. Keep lists. Revisit the lists. Prune the
lists. I usually hit instantdomainsearch.com to see if anyone's registered an
obvious name for the concept, reg it if it hasn't been, explore the
competition if it has.

Two thoughts:

1) Go to Amazon. It's obviously a huge center of commerce. Find an active
forum. Make it easier for someone (or a group) to do something they're talking
about doing there, complaining about, etc. Advertise it there in the forums.
That's how I launched RefreshThing.

2) Observe existing behavior in others you can relate to. Improve upon it,
make it simpler, show them how it should be done online. Double points if that
behavior is something they're accustomed to doing offline and are crawling
online where you can show them how to run.

Or try picking an idea you have right now, developing it (a little or a lot)
and then solving the problem you don't know it has until you're at a stage
where you can see that about it.

------
axod
I was standing on the edge of my toilet hanging a clock, the porcelin was wet,
I slipped, hit my head on the edge of the sink, and when I came to I had a
relvalation, a vision, a picture in my head.

Seriously though... I think best in the bath or while asleep or while driving.

~~~
rrival
+1 for inventing the flux capacitor

------
mwmanning
I dont' think that ideas are manufactured. They sort of "pop out" when the
right kinds of pressure are applied from the right directions. You seem to be
searching for some sort of methodology for generating good ideas. I personally
think procedure is detrimental to creativity. Procedure begets sameness. What
you need to have new ideas are novel sensations.

And stop trying so hard. Clear your head. Take a different route home. Go sit
on a park bench for a couple of hours and try not to think about computers. Go
out with a new circle of people and take an interest in them. Tune to a radio
or TV station that you would normally skip over.

When you get the seed of a new idea, it will usually be something nebulous.
Don't write down. Hold it in your head and let it churn around for a while
until you have something more concrete. Then talk to other people about it.

------
parker
I think it's all about understanding a) what creates human pain, b) how much
pain it creates, and c) how difficult it is to ease that pain.

A lot of people have problems understanding what humans would actually find
useful. If they've identified the pain-point, they don't spend enough time
investigating how deep the pain goes. The last point is a reflection of either
being a hacker or being comfortable with understanding how technology gets
built -- if you don't know how to solve the pain or how difficult solving the
pain is, you're in big trouble.

I think very few people have the ability to do all three consistently.

Generally, I don't think it's something you're born with, but if you are an
'ideas' person, you can refine your personal heuristics to identify good ideas
better over time.

------
iamwil
For me, it's simply something that's learned and cultivated. As far as I can
tell, my creativity comes from a sense of curiosity in the world around me, a
mental flexibility to entertain odd possibilities, and a broad scope of
knowledge.

This sort of question is asked of cartoonists a lot, and usually, they'll make
up some sort of fanciful answer, like "I like to drink coffee with cocoa
butter". In reality the very best ones have cultivated a sense of curiosity
about edge case situations. They make it a habit to notice odd things, and
things that don't quite make sense when you think about it. If you read Bill
Watterson's (Calvin and Hobbes) Tenth Anniversary Edition, he talks about this
topic, and his answer is that he mainly just sit there and lets his mind
wander in front of a blank piece of paper--which to others might look
remarkably like goofing off. Hackers in general are the same way, but they get
curious about systems and how things work instead.

A mental flexibility to entertain possibility helps as well. Often times we're
boxed in by our experience, and what we know, as hard as we try to break out
of it. When radio was invented, it was asked why you'd want to say stuff to no
one in particular. And when the TV came out, the inventor of the radio
dismissed it. Here, I think it helps to know how to daydream and let your mind
wander. Or when you approach a problem outside your field think of how to
solve it using something outside of your expertise. The only person I've ever
read about to overcome it was Richard Feynman. Apparently, he had the ability
to start from basics from any problem and work his way from the bottom up,
aware of his assumptions.

Lastly, what's called creative is often just taking two old things that don't
usually go together, and getting them to play well with each other. When you
know about lots of things and have a broad scope, you start to see how things
are interconnected. In school, I liked math, but other kids complained about
how they'll never use it. It wasn't until after college that I started to see
that the segmentations of subjects is done so that students don't get confused
and have discrete chucks of info to learn. In reality, every academic subject
is interconnected somehow, and when you have the broadness of scope with
deepness in some of them, you'll be able to make connections between things
that are related, but not usually thought of as being so. If you can make
those connections, people will usually dub you as being creative, when you
don't think it's as big of a deal yourself.

Being creative is a habit you get into.

------
D_T
Written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: "Glander best describes the notion of
lifting all inhibitions to “tinker intellectually in an undirected stochastic
process aiming at capturing some idea that will enrich your corpus”.
“Researching” or “thinking” smack of a top-down activity."

More on Glander by Taleb: "It is an irony that the academy does not have a
word for the process by which discovery works best—but slang does. I was
trying to describe in a letter what I am currently doing: French would not let
me. But argot lends itself very well... I am involved in an activity called
“Glander”, more precisely “glandouiller”. It means “to idle”, though not “to
be in a state of idleness” (it is an active verb). Gandouiller denotes
enjoyment. The formal French word is “ne rien faire” (to do nothing), which
misses on the active part —so do words that have a languishing connotation.
Glander is what children without soccer moms do when they are out of school.
It resembles flâner which has this perambulation part; though Glander does not
have any strings attached. The Italians have farniente but it is really doing
nothing. Even the Arabs do not have a verb for Glander: the construction
takaslana from the Semitic root ksl denotes laziness (other words imply some
inertia)."

Newton was a “glandeur”; In Dijksterhuis 2004:

George Spencer Brown has famously said about Sir Isaac Newton that “to arrive
at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of
contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behavior
of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking.
Simply bearing in mind what it is that one needs to know.”

I Glander whenever I am bored and I come up with formulate groundbreaking
ideas. Some of them are even viable for monetization!

------
holaamigos
The best ideas come to me when I am stoned. I have a set of huge white boards,
I smoke a little then doodle. 95% is not worth much the next day, but some of
the ways my mind drifts and connects is awesome.

~~~
TrevorJ
alternatively, there are a few other healthier ways to get into a high alpha
state. I find that a shower, or driving around is good. Also a nap. Sleep
deprivation leads me to full imagine some of my best graphic designs. They
just pop into my head fully formed as I lay in bed half crazy cause I haven't
slept. :-)

------
oz
Also, and this is absolutely important, keep a small notepad and pen(cil)
nearby, and write down your ideas the instant they come. You'd be surprised
how many great ideas we have and forget. Remember to note the date, and how
you came up with the idea. If you're without writing tools, set a reminder in
your phone to a time when you know you'll be home, but it is imperative you
record it.

Don't be afraid if ideas come out of sequence. I'm getting into freelance
graphic design, and one evening I just started writing the word 'concept' in
all sorts of ways, using 'k' instead of 'c', and then drew a capital 'T' with
the letters 'concep' under it. Then I thought: let's try another letter. So I
drew a capital 'S', but with a straight vertical line and 2 horizontal lines
instead of curves, and had 'con' down the left side and 'ept' down the right.
It looked good, but I wanted to explore some more. So I tried the letter 'C',
and wrote 'oncept' inside it following the shape of the 'C'. That was the
first breakthrough: it looked like half of a clock. So I draw a full clock,
and what do you know, the letters in 'concept correspond perfectly to the
number positions on a clock face! So 12 o'clock is a 'C', 11 and 1 o'clock are
'O' etc. So I found myself with a clock with the word 'concept' on it twice...
two concepts. A little more brainstorming gave me the final name "Twin-
Concept." This is what I meant by ideas out of sequence: normally, you'd come
up with the company name and then design the logo, but I was determined to use
that logo, and so I named the company after the logo! The hour marks are set
in green, to give it that 'glow in the dark look.' Against a black background,
it's sexy.

Oh, and did I mention that you should write down ideas as soon as they come?

------
Eliezer
The extremely embarrassing truth is that I've gotten many of my AI ideas while
trying to write science fiction and fantasy stories.

\- Eliezer Yudkowsky

------
TrevorJ
The best way I have found is this: Think about the most normal, expected
solution to a problem would be, and then try to imagine the opposite. This is
really good for getting juices flowing and starting things up. in reality you
usually use 80% of the "normal" solution and make a couple nuances that are
opposite of what people might normally think of.

------
manmanic
Here are 3 ways I've identified highly profitable ideas:

a) Having a problem that needs solving. It's OK if it's a focused need, so
long as you're not addressing a market which is _too_ small. The world of
people who research online is big enough. The world of Web 2.0 developers is
not.

b) Careful listening to user feedback. Often users of one of my products have
given me an inkling of the need for another. This will happen if (1) the
original product works well, (2) the new product appeals to a similar
audience, (3) you make it easy for people to give you feedback, and read it
religiously and with empathy.

c) Being in-the-know about breaking trends. Make sure you regularly read (or
at least skim) some high quality international publications. I read The
Economist cover-to-cover every week, along with BusinessWeek. Worth every
minute.

For me, each of these methods has been the catalyst for creating at least one
successful online business.

------
shimon
Consider practicing a discipline where you write down one new idea every day.
Most of these ideas will suck, but tracking them over time might show you (1)
some deeper ideas and (2) that even if 95% of your ideas suck, that 5% is
still enough to work with.

I'd worry about "devoting" hours/days to idea generation. You can make more
progress by drafting, shipping, and refining an idea than by sitting alone
generating a lot of ideas without implementation. Take your best idea and
figure out the fastest way to make it into something people can use. Pay
attention and you'll learn a ton.

------
davidw
This book has some ideas about a framework for looking at existing things in a
new light in the hopes of generating new ideas:

[http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/5/lateral-
marketing-n...](http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/5/lateral-marketing-
new-techniques-for-finding-breakthrough-ideas)

It's not a bad technique if you're actively trying to generate ideas.

------
lamaw
Useful novelty, that I would act on?

I've been immersed in my specialty for 15 years.

As it happens, this number of years is pretty much the norm for the highly
creative (10 years is the lower bound). For details, see:

[http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Handbook-Expertise-Expert-
Pe...](http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Handbook-Expertise-Expert-
Performance/dp/0521600812)

------
dzohrob
You might find this book useful: "A Technique for Producing Ideas", by James
Young. Exceedingly short, simple, meant for advertising, but helpful for any
industry.

[http://www.amazon.com/Technique-Producing-Advertising-
Classi...](http://www.amazon.com/Technique-Producing-Advertising-Classics-
Library/dp/0071410945/)

------
rrhyne
Most of the comments here are about very linear thought processes like:
problem->simplification->solution.

Those are great, and valuable but I think the most fun ideas are the ones that
come from having a head full of random shit floating around and colliding. The
ones that stick together well are the winners. :D

------
aneesh
If you don't have any (or many) ideas, you need to lower your threshold for
what you consider a good idea.

And when you see something that annoys you, think about how to solve it.

Talk about your ideas with friends. Get feedback. Tweak. Rinse and repeat.

------
paul9290
For me ideas come through conversations, reading tech news and working on one
idea that turns into another. Also, as a songwriter where songs just pop into
my head, ideas do to. Odd as that may sound.

~~~
yters
Do you feel that you can just "think different" and new thoughts come to you?

~~~
incomethax
Before I started my first startup, I used to see all sorts of problems and
never really think that they could be applied to something. But after I
started something based on what a friend of mine came up with, I've been able
to see so many problems that I've had before, and come up with ideas on how to
solve them. The only difference was that I had gone through the process to
understand a fundamental problem that existed and focused on how to solve that
problem.

What I'm trying to say here is that the difference in thought is really
thinking if anything that you are doing could be done differently or better.

I would argue that my thought processes pre-startup and post-startup are very
different, and also that I've been able to have new ideas because of it.

~~~
yters
Yeah, I've noticed something similar in myself. Once I've actually seen a
difficult problem through on my own initiative, I can see my crazy ideas are
actually insightful. I just need to develop that confidence, which is hard.

------
dangoldin
I find it important to just take some time off for yourself every once in a
while and let your mind wander.

Based on what your experiences, what you've read, and what you've done
something should pop into your head!

------
pius
Edgecraft.

Seth Godin describes the process in Free Prize Inside.

([http://decentmarketing.typepad.com/weblog/2004/05/on_the_edg...](http://decentmarketing.typepad.com/weblog/2004/05/on_the_edge_wit.html))

------
paulsb
My ideas tend to form like trees: I have loads of ideas (seeds) that I will
plant in my head. Over time, and through research and reading (what's
happening around me and on the web; what are the latest technologies; where
are things heading; how can I help solve these problems; etc.), one of the
seeds will start to develop into a tree. At this point I look up to the top of
the tree and try to see how my idea will change the world once its has fully
grown. Once I have an idea about that, I then work backwards to try and figure
out what parts (branches) are needed to reach the end goal. Some of the
branches will also need some development before they are fully formed
branches. Sometimes the branches develop so much that they actually create
there own seeds, which fall off and grow into new trees; the new trees are
related to the original one, but by developing them into their own fully
formed idea, allows them to have a wider/greater impact than they would if
they were still attached to the original. This process reiterates itself and
some of the ideas refine themselves. This is where it can start to get messy,
so good organisation is required, e.g. mind-maps and the like.

Most of my ideas develop inside my head when I am not in front of the computer
and when I am not really concentrating on anything, which is usually when I am
in the shower. I let them ponder in my mind, perhaps sleep on them, and then,
all of sudden, I will have the urge to frantically mind-map them out and
research them.

With regards to brainstorming, I usually do this after I have envisaged the
top of the tree. I usually go to my colleagues and/or advisor's and bounce the
ideas off them. We usually then "discuss" how crazy the idea is, what would
make it feasible, what attitudes and habits would need to change in order to
make them work, etc., which helps me identify what the branches need to look
like on the way up to the top of the tree.

So as an example, one of the things I am working on is a way to speed up
research - that was the first seed, which was born out of my own frustrations
with the status quo. If I speed up research, how will it impact the rest of
the world and how will the world work if I pull it off? - which is the top of
the tree. Imagining how the world would work if my idea reached fruition,
allows me to identify all of the other things that are also required for it to
work (the branches). For example, I think a new document format is required to
speed up research, and so I have started to develop this as a new branch,
which itself is almost at the point of forming a seed, falling off and
becoming a tree in its own right.

I have no idea if any of that jibba-jabba made any sense, but it's how I work.

------
yters
It helps me to understand the principles something is derived from. Then, I
know the path and I can deviate from it.

~~~
yters
Also, my biggest hangup is not a lack of creativity but the courage to see my
creative ideas through, despite others not getting it. I know there are people
like mixmax who can just throw together a bar in Ibiza and be wildly
successful, but I don't know why I can't do stuff like that.

------
brlewis
Pure luck:

<http://brl.codesimply.net/brl_7.html#SEC74>

------
mcxx
something, write, take photos, notice other people, their work, their world,
...). Have a broad understanding about different areas of knowledge. Think
about these different areas and how they could be combined together.

------
freax
I pray to pagan gods.

I have this wall chart of all sorts of religions, and I move a game piece
around it like a boardgame. Then whoever I'm on that day, I pray, like, "O
great Yegbabo, deliver unto me a vision of a start-up idea." Then I imbibe the
appropriate ceremonial substance, such as hashish, peyote, coca leaves,
licking a toad, LSD -- it depends on the culture.

Anyway that's how McCarthy "invented" Lisp (he was at Esalen on vacation with
Timothy Leary).

