One Super Common Barrier to Innovation

Recently, a contact reached out asking if I could brainstorm some new business ideas with him. I find ideating fun, so I agreed and looked forward to the meeting. I asked him about his skills, interests, and strengths, then pondered a handful of potential ideas. Each time I presented an idea, he knocked it down. He said, “That won’t work,” and “That doesn’t sound like fun,” and “ Too hard.” It only took a bit more poo pooing for my idea faucet to shut down completely. His idea faucet quickly dried up, too.

Later on, I thought of a dozen more ideas I could’ve shared, but there was something about that interaction that stopped me in my tracks. And the same thing happens in larger groups, too (especially in larger groups).

When you want to get 20 or 50 or 100 ideas out on the table, suspend judgment. Yes, at some point in the process, we need to throw out all the bad ideas, but not during the ideation phase. Pretend every idea has merit, and what you’ll find is that the bad ideas lead to okay ideas and okay ideas lead to better ideas. Or put another way, you might find that for every 20 bad ideas, there is one good idea. You’ve got to get 20 bad ones out of people’s minds before you strike gold. However, if the group starts adding judgment at this stage in the process, you’ll never reach 20.

Ideate today and judge tomorrow.