Hi, it's James Taylor, keynote speaker and founder of SuperCreativityU. Today, I want to talk to you about where do ideas come from. - Where Do Good Ideas Come From
Where Do Good Ideas Come From?
The philosopher John Locke once said that all ideas come from sensation, or reflection, sensation or reflection. I think this is an interesting thing to think about in terms of where our own ideas might come from, and how best we can really utilize our own levels of creativity. So I don't know about you, but for many people during this time of lockdowns, and we might not be able to move quite as freely as we want one of us could, this has actually been quite a challenging time for our creativity. - Where Do Good Ideas Come From
All the studies show that productivity has actually been pretty good during this time, in fact, in some cases actually gone up, because some people have been able to now work from home, and they are finally just a little bit more efficient and effective working from home. But when you look at creativity, many organizations, top executives, top leaders that I speak to say that they've actually kind of struggled in terms of that creativity. And that is then having an impact upon levels of innovation within the organization. - Where Do Good Ideas Come From
Sensation Or Reflection
So this idea that John Locke said that ideas come from either sensation or from reflection, let's talk about that. Some people, require lots of inputs, that's how they're, they get their creative juices flowing. They love being out in the world loving, meeting people, going to galleries, checking out new ideas, going online, just really immersing themselves in lots of inputs, generating lots of inputs, because, for them, their ideas really require the fuel of sensations of having lots of different sensations, that's the kind of fuel for them. But not everyone is like that. But others, actually do their greatest work, they may have a little bit of that, but they do their greatest work and their deepest work, when they can stop, pause, and they go to a deeper level of reflection. And they can sort and sift that information. - Where Do Good Ideas Come From
So they might have had lots of sensation, maybe early in their careers. they've, they've done lots of different things, but they go through a different point in their lives, where they need to just be still for a little bit and reflect on all this and think, what does it mean? What can I create? What can we design where we can innovate from some of these ideas? And for some people, I know, this has actually been quite a really creative time, that time we've just been going through because for the first time in their lives, it's forced them to sit still and reflect. They can go and travel to get new ideas. They can't go meet with people, have coffee with people, go to those meetings, go to those conferences, they have to be in one place, and just sit and reflect. - Where Do Good Ideas Come From
So think about yourself, you know, ask yourself this, could you get some of your ideas? Use that engine for you? Does it come primarily from generating lots of sensations, lots of inputs for yourself? Or do you maybe work a little bit better when you have that really strong, long, large period of time for reflection? For most of us here John Locke said sensations or reflections ideas come from sensation or reflections. I would actually say, for the vast majority of us, we need a little bit of both. And it's finding this balance between those things. So you have enough inputs, enough new ideas, enough firepower juices coming in, for that creative engine of your mind. But at the same time, you can stop, you can pause, you can reflect, you can let your mind D focus a little bit and start perhaps to see the patterns. - Where Do Good Ideas Come From
So think about that for yourself. Do you have enough time for those sensations? Do you have enough time for those reflections in your own creative work? My name is James Taylor. Thanks for watching.
- Where Do Good Ideas Come From
