How to come up with a good idea

The start of the year is a great time to gear up to start a business. But, of course, you first need to figure out a winning concept. “You have to come up with a lot of ideas to be successful,” says Stephen Key, cofounder of the website inventright.com based in Glenbrook, Nev., and author of One Simple Idea for Startups and Entrepreneurs: Live Your Dreams and Create Your Own Profitable Company, (McGraw-Hill, 2012).

Key, who has licensed more than 20 products in the last 25 years, says he generates ideas by finding different ways to engage his mind, from walking the aisles of stores to brainstorming about holes in the marketplace.

Here are eight techniques from Key and other experts that could help get your creative juices flowing:

Ask yourself, “What’s next?

Successful business ideas are often ahead of the curve. Think about trends and technologies on the horizon and how you might move into those areas, says Sergio Monsalve, partner at Norwest Venture Partners, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capital group. He suggests, for example, thinking about innovations related to the living room and home entertainment systems now that companies like Apple are developing new television technologies. “What can that mean in terms of new ways to live in your house and be entertained?” he says.

Do something about what bugs you

When Colin Barceloux was in college, he thought textbooks cost far too much. In 2007, two years after graduating, he decided to take action and founded Bookrenter.com, a San Mateo, Calif.-based business that offers textbook rentals at about a 60 percent discount. What began as a one-man operation created out of frustration now has 1.5 million users and 200 employees. “You just have to look at what frustrates you,” he says. “There’s your business idea right there.”

Look for new niches

Your business idea doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Take a look at what some of the big players in an industry are missing and figure out if you can fill the gaps, Key says. In 2003, for instance, he started the company Hot Picks, now based in San Jose, Calif., after realizing the major brands in the guitar pick industry weren’t offering collectible novelty picks. Key designed a skull-shaped pick that filled an empty niche and was sold in 1,000 stores, including Wal-Mart and 7-Eleven. “The big guys leave a tremendous amount of opportunity on the table,” he says.

Apply your skills to an entirely new field

Think about your skills and whether they might be useful in a new area, suggests Bill Fischer, professor ofinnovation management ?at IMD?, the top-rated Swiss business school, and co-author of The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen (Jossey-Bass, 2011). Consider, for example, JMC Soundboard, a Switzerland-based company that builds high-end loudspeakers. Jeanmichel Capt invented the speaker by applying his experience building guitars as a luthier, using the same resonance spruce to create a loudspeaker that produces a high-quality sound and looks like a sleek wood panel. There’s also Providence, R.I.-based Dear Kate, a company founded by Julie Sygiel, who used her training in chemical engineering to create a stain-resistant, leak-proof underwear material that active women can use without worrying about menstrual leakage during a workout.

Find a category lacking recent innovations

When coming up with ideas, Key likes to identify markets that haven’t had many recent innovations. For example, when he realized there were few new developments in the product information label business, he created Spinformation, a label consisting of two layers–a top layer that rotates with open panels through which you can see, and a bottom label that you can read by spinning the top layer over it. Companies needing to fit more information about a medication, for example, could use the extra label space for the details.

Make a cheaper version of an existing product

Companies often get their start by offering customers an existing product at a lower price. Take Warby Parker, an eyeglasses company launched in 2010 by four business school friends. The New York-based business sells prescription glasses, which are typically priced at $300 or more, for $95. Since its launch, it has grown to 100 employees.

Talk to shoppers

To come up with an idea that meets people’s needs, there’s no better way than by talking to shoppers. If you are interested in mountain bikes, hang out in the aisles of sports and bike shops and ask customers what they wish they could find in the marketplace. If you’re interested in developing an e-commerce business, consider sending an online survey to potential customers to learn about their needs and interests.

Good Business Ideas Are All Around You

Wondering how to come up with a business idea? Well, business ideas are all around you. Some come from a careful analysis of market trends and consumer needs; others come from serendipity. If you are interested in starting a business, but don’t know what product or service you might sell, exploring these ways of coming up with a business idea will help you choose.

1) Examine your own skill set for business ideas.

Do you have a talent or proven track record that could become the basis of a profitable business?

The other day I spoke to a man who had spent years managing cleaning services at a hospital. Today he runs his own successful domestic and business cleaning service. An ex-logger is now making his living as an artist; he creates “chainsaw sculptures” out of wood. And the examples of professionals who have started their own agencies or consulting service businesses are legion.

To find a viable business idea, ask yourself, “What marketable skills and experience do I have? Will people be willing to pay for my products or services?”

2) Keep up with current events and be ready to take advantage of business opportunities.

If you watch the news regularly with the conscious intent of coming up with a business idea, you’ll be amazed at how many business opportunities your brain generates. Keeping up with current events will help you identify market trends, new fads, industry news – and sometimes just new ideas that have business possibilities.

For instance, after same-sex marriages became legal in Canada entrepreneurs began selling tourist travel packages that include a marriage ceremony to same-sex couples from other countries. Would you have identified that business opportunity when you heard that the Canadian marriage laws had changed?

3) Invent a new product or service.

The key to coming up with business ideas for a new product or service is to identify a market need that’s not being met. For example, back in 2004 a Harvard University psychology student named Mark Zuckerberg recognized a need for a campus-wide social-networking website that would allow students and staff to share personal profiles and other information. He went on to develop Facebook and became one of the youngest billionaires in the world.

The explosion of mobile devices has created a huge demand for mobile apps. In 2008 a pair of young entrepreneurs named Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp had trouble hailing a cab in Paris. They decided that you should be able to tap a button on your mobile phone and get a ride, and as a result went on to found Uber.

Look around and ask yourself, “How could this situation be improved?” Ask people about additional services that they’d like to see. Focus on a particular target market and brainstorm ideas for services that that group would be interested in. For example, there are millions of aging gardeners across North America. What products or services could you create that would enable them to garden longer and more easily? Finding a niche market and exploiting it is one of the best paths to success in business.

4) Add value to an existing product.

The difference between raw wood and finished lumber is a good example of putting a product through an additional process which increases its value, but additional processes are not the only way value can be added. You might also add services, or combine the product with other products. For instance, a local farm which sells produce also offers a vegetable delivery service; for a fee, consumers can have a box of fresh vegetables delivered to their door each week.

What business ideas can you develop along these lines? Focus on what products you might buy and what you might do to them or with them to create a profitable business.

5) Investigate other markets.

Some business ideas aren’t suited to local consumption – but appeal greatly to a foreign market. My own little town is surrounded by acres of wild blueberries. For years the bushes produced berries that mainly fed bears and birds; B.C. has a thriving blueberry industry that doesn’t leave room for a wild blueberry market.

But one entrepreneur realized that there is a high demand for products such as these in Japan – and those same wild blueberries are now being harvested and shipped. Finding out about other cultures and investigating other market opportunities is an excellent way to find business ideas.

6) Improve an existing product or service.

You know what they say about the person who builds a better mousetrap. That person could be you! A local entrepreneur has created an improved version of the hula hoop; it’s bigger and heavier so hula-hoopers can control it more easily and do more tricks. How did she come up with this idea? She thought hula hooping would be a fun thing to do with her daughter, but found the commercially available product too flimsy.

There are very few products (or services) that can’t be improved. Start generating business ideas by looking at the products and services you use and brainstorming ideas as to how they could be better.

7) Get on the bandwagon.

Sometimes markets surge for no apparent reason; masses of people suddenly “want” something, and the resulting demand can’t be immediately met. For example, during the SARS epidemic, there was an insatiable demand for facial masks in several countries – and many entrepreneurs capitalized on the demand.

A “bandwagon effect” is also created by larger social trends. There is much more of a demand for home-care services for the elderly than is currently being supplied. And the trend for pets to be treated as family members continues, creating demand for all kinds of pet-related services that didn’t exist decades ago.

(Interested in starting a pet-related business? Read 18 Pet Business Ideas.)

Look at existing businesses and the products and services they offer and determine if there’s a need for more of those products or services. If there is, develop business ideas to fit the market gap.

Tips for Coming Up With a Business Idea

Are you brimming with ideas for starting a business now?

Write your ideas down. Let them swirl around in your head and coalesce. And keep an open mind and continue to assess everything you read and hear from an entrepreneurial point of view.

You don’t want to run with the first business idea you think of; you want to discover the idea that’s best suited to your skills and desires. Dream, think, plan – and you’ll be ready to transform that business idea into the business you’ve always wanted.

Want to browse business ideas to get your creative process flowing?

Grow Your Business, Not Your Inbox

To become successful at anything, you’ve got to practice discipline. You must do something over and over and over again to do it extremely well. And being creative is no exception.

For James Altucher, the American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur and bestselling author, discipline is key. Of the more than 20 companies he has founded or cofounded, 17 have failed, but three of them have made him tens of millions of dollars.

He’s an equally prolific writer, with 17 titles to his name, including The Power of No. Reading about Altucher in Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss’ latest book, inspired me. Ferriss writes how he’s never seen anyone build a large, committed readership faster than Altucher has.

If you can’t generate ten ideas, Altucher says, you need to focus on generating 20. How? By doing the work. To start developing your “idea muscle,” write down ten of your ideas every morning on your tablet or in a tiny notebook, Altucher recommends.

Regular practice is more important than the nature of the ideas themselves, because what you really need is the confidence you can create on demand. Don’t expect your ideas to be perfect; perfectionism is your enemy.

But do understand what’s going on here: As Altucher explains, your brain is trying to protect you from coming up with an idea that is embarrassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer. Yet, with a little effort, you can override this impulse by coming up with bad ideas.

Altucher’s perspective on discipline reminds me of another prolific writer I know, my friend and fellow contributor Daniel DiPiazza of Rich20Something. For some time now, DiPiazza has begun each of his days by writing, because he knows that doing so makes him mentally tough. It also works: In just a few months, his first book — the result of a six-figure deal — will hit the market.

More entrepreneurs need to embrace this notion: that you don’t need to be great. You just need to do.

Not only will you get better at that specific thing . . . you’ll be able to apply discipline to the other aspects of your life you want to improve.

I learned how closely discipline and creativity are intertwined early on in my career. For years, I wrote my ideas in a notebook every day, to exercise my creative muscle. At first, it was hard to focus for any length of time. But I had to do it. If I had waited for inspiration to strike, I’d have gone broke. That much was clear: I needed to figure out how to be in command of my creativity — to make it work for me.

I was able to carry on with this exercise by being disciplined. Eventually I was able to come up with ideas at will. I explain it to my wife like this: It’s as if ideas are apples, and I have a bountiful apple tree in my backyard. Whenever I want, I can go pick an apple off that tree.

I don’t think I bring any particularly unique skills to the table. Growing up, I was not someone friends and family would have called creative. But I was inspired by talented friends I had who were always drawing and making things, which I thought was magical.

Then, in college, I found my creativity, by accident, when I took an art class. Right away, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. But I’d also been studying business, and understood that making a living as an artist in the traditional sense was going to be tough. So I taught myself how to be creative. I learned to play simple games like Mix and Match, which is where you bring two completely different ideas together to create something new. I learned to ask myself, “What if?”

If you too want to be creative, you must be both courageous and disciplined. Embracing a childlike sense of wonder is essential, but so is the fortitude to carve time out of your schedule to make that a priority! That’s kind of funny, when you think about it. But why shouldn’t play demand our dedication?

Of the pages and pages of ideas I came up with back then, almost all were funny, dumb, stupid, outrageous or fantastical. In other words, nothing came of them. But, giving myself the freedom to make mistakes — to not be perfect, or even good, but simply to play — enabled me to start new businesses and succeed as an entrepreneur.

The process is important. Forcing yourself to go through the motions builds confidence. It’s not as if some of us are creative and some of us are not. In a 2012 TED talk, David Kelly — the legendary founder of IDEO and a professor at the design school at Stanford — describes how most of us lose our creative confidence during elementary school.

It doesn’t have to be that way. You can build up your creative confidence by taking something that exists and trying to make it different.

When I started a guitar pick company, I relied on the same simple strategy. I examined picks, which hadn’t changed in ages, and imagined what they could be. To be fair, a man I knew was selling guitar picks in the shape of an alien head. Why not pick up where he left off?

For me, visuals stimulate my creativity. So I went to the mall to look around Hot Topic, which I knew was hip. And, at the time, skulls were in. They were everywhere. Guitar picks are similarly shaped, I thought. Why couldn’t picks be made into skulls and the faces of vampires and ghouls? When I took my sketchpad out, other brand extensions came to mind, like picks made into the shape of Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh.

I also thought about whether the material could be changed, as well. The result was a series of lenticular picks. We could fit 13 frames of movement onto a singular lenticular pick. When you moved the pick, so did the image on it. In other words, we could put mini movies on picks! That’s how we made a pick featuring Taylor Swift strumming back and forth.

When we visited brick and mortars to understand how guitar picks were being packaged, we discovered that they weren’t: They were sold jumbled together in plastic bags or tackle boxes. Clearly, we could do better. If we packaged picks in plastic clamshells, we could include spooky graphics to better market them. We took this impulse a step further, and designed some of the clamshells to look like coffin cases.

What am I saying here? My partner and I were able to build a thriving product business by looking at things differently and having fun.

So, really, I could not agree with Altucher more: Abandon the need to be perfect. Try to come up with as many ideas you can.

Because, if you can get good at coming up with truly terrible ideas, you’re going to generate some good ones along the way.

Remember, it takes courage to come up with new ideas! If you’re disciplined, you absolutely can unearth your creative confidence. Don’t wait.

We all have a million excellent ideas for stories, but, without fail, they magically disappear the minute we sit down to write. It seems impossible, but it happens constantly. Hours are wasted staring at a blank page. And, no matter how many cups of coffee are in our systems, we still can’t find the energy to kick our muses into gear and develop story ideas.

Have no fear: I have five ways that will help pump up your creativity muscle and build story ideas that will keep you writing for hours on end. Here they are.

Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

1. Reinvent a scene from a book.

Take a very small, seemingly non-important scene from one of your favorite books and consider what it’d be like if that were the opening scene to your novel. Change the characters of course, and add one or more unique elements to that scene. The key is to give you a starting point and then let your imagination run wild. While there are many ways to stay inspired, this challenge really takes something that you love (an old book) and gives it new life.

2. Use junk mail as inspiration.

Take the next two pieces of spam mail you receive (either snail mail or e-mail) and use it to determine the profession on your protagonist and your protagonist’s love interest. I get this type of mail all of the time, particularly from politicians, credit card companies and auto dealerships—and that’s just what’s delivered by the United States Postal Service! When I add in the junk sent to my e-mail inbox, I get “foreign ambassadors from Nigeria” looking for million dollar loans and women begging me to click through to get “erotic” pictures of them. Any one of these jobs will lead to many fun and unusual situations—and will give you plenty of fodder to write about.

3. Invent a history for someone with whom you’ve lost touch.

We have all had friends in our lives from grade school, high school or college that we knew quite well back then, but haven’t seen much (if at all) since. In fact, most of their lives are a mystery to us. Pick one of those old friends and write about the life they’ve been leading ever since you lost touch. What happened in his or her family life? What career path did he or she choose? Was he or she involved in something that led them to a life of crime? The possibilities are endless, which should drive you to be as creative as possible.

4. Eavesdrop on a conversation.

Just because you’re stuck in a bit of a funk when it comes to ideas doesn’t mean that other people are. Take your notepad or laptop out of the house, sit down somewhere and observe the scenery around you—and listen to any and every conversation within earshot. You can do this at a park, restaurant, coffee shop or, my personal favorite, a bar (people who have a few drinks in them tend to share the best stories). Remember, jot down all the stories you hear but be sure to give them a twist to make them your own.

5. Find a writing prompt and run with it.

Sometimes the best cure for writer’s block is to let someone else start your story for you. You can search the web and find a number of sites that offer them, or check out our database of creative writing prompts that gets updated every Tuesday. And who knows: The idea you get from a writing prompt may be just the inspiration you need to spark your creativity and write a short story or novel that sells.

Have you always wanted to be a writer? Don’t let doubt or fear get the best of you—take a chance and learn how to start writing a book, novel, short story, memoir, or essay. WD University’s Getting Started in Writing will help you discover your voice, learn the basics of grammar, and examine the different types of writing. Register today!

“you cannot solve problems with the same thinking that created them” — Albert Einstein

Recently I was asked the question, “How do you come up with a good idea?” from a high school student at a speaking event.

It immediately dawned to me that I also had this question during my years as a high schooler. Often times, I see good products and services that already exist, but I am always intrigued as to how the person who created them came about the idea.

Coming from Dorchester of Boston (an underserved community), the mindset of my peers and myself was that

“only geniuses can come up with a good & revolutionary idea” — A liar!

I was fortunate to figure out 8 years later that this belief was completely false.

Innovation comes from multiple angles and in fact anyone can come up with a good idea. I bet you someone thought of Uber, Airbnb, or even the concept of a smartphone before the founders even invented them.

As of my current knowledge, here are 3 ways that can enable you to come up with a good idea.

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” — Helen Keller.

Much of the innovative ideas came to life because they actually solve real problems.

Case and point, Uber solves 2 problems. One problem is from the passenger side who needs to affordably get from point A to point B and the other problem is from the driver’s side who has a car, needs a job, and wants flexible hours. (Psst, I was an Uber driver for 6 months.)

Let’s take a walk through my high school years.

I wake up at the sound of my alarm clock. It is 6AM. I feel so groggy (pain). Then I walk towards my bathroom to brush my teeth. Brushing teeth takes so much time and too much work (pain). Now onto taking a shower. This is something that I enjoy doing but if I turn off the faucet I would immediately feel the cold air and that would suck (pain). Oh no, it’s getting late. I need to get to school on time, but I could spend the time to figure out what I want to wear or eat something quick before heading to school (DOUBLE PAIN).

Okay, I’m getting annoyed with the pain too. But the point here was to illustrate how if you just pay attention to the day to day activities that you or someone else are going through, you can figure out where the need to innovate is.

AirBnB started because of a pain point that conference goers have in finding a place to stay when hotels are overbooked. (Source) It’s a huge pain point that created a $30 Billion company. Oh and then other pain point was for people who need money and have space to rent out.

But you wouldn’t be thinking about offering up your space to strangers out of thin air. Sometimes, the best ideas are the ones that pain can actually be felt by the person who came up with it.

“Turn your wounds into wisdom.” — Oprah Winfrey

A Nobel Peace Prize winner, Doctor Barry Marshall figured out the treatment to stomach ulcers. This condition is simplified to intense stomach pain. Now I wouldn’t recommend you to ever drink a mixture from the stomach of sick people but Dr. Marshall did just that. After this, he figured out the cause of stomach ulcers. It was bacteria infection.

Everyone at the time thought that the cause of stomach ulcers were from stress and different type of foods, but nope! He went ahead and experienced the problem himself and figured out a solution for it.

So that was an extreme example, but it goes to show what it takes for a good idea to come about. You have to actually know the problem and experience it yourself. If not, then you’re playing a guessing game just like everyone else.

I experienced the painful process of writing over 120 essays to apply for scholarships. This was a huge pain that I am grateful for, because it taught me that there could be a better way. But the idea for ScholarJet didn’t come immediately. It came years later. I had to walk away for a while to acquire more knowledge on the matter.

“We are all intelligent. It is what separate us from the animals. What’s missing is knowledge. “ — Me

I’m going to use Anselm’s Ontological Argument to explain “knowledge”. Here we go.

This philosopher states that if you know what an apple is, then it exists.

If you don’t know that X, Y or Z objects exist, they don’t exist.

To simplify this, if you have never heard of “Painite” exist then you would never know that it does. Some of you might have already went, what the heck is Painite? It’s one of the rarest minerals on Earth. (Source) Before writing this article I didn’t even know that this thing existed. Now I do and now you do therefore now you “know” this thing exists.

Imagine putting a jigsaw puzzle together that you thought only had 200 pieces while it actually had 250 pieces. By putting these 200 pieces together, you created 75% of a picture, but you thought it was 100% complete because the picture looked perfectly placed. You now missed out on the fact that the picture would have actually been complete if you knew the other 50 pieces existed. So now, simply put, you don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle. (Pun intended.)

This is why education is so important. But the problem is that the thing we often lack is the ability to teach ourselves because the topic often looks so intimidating. Example of some topics include: learning to speak Vietnamese, jiu-jitsu, rock climbing, dancing, etc.

Some knowledge from one field may translate into the missing piece to the puzzle that you are trying to solve.

Did you know that the female human ears are susceptible to high pitch noises because of babies?(Source) Now instead of creating a loud alarm that often doesn’t work on heavy sleeper, maybe now that you “know” this fact, you can create an alarm that emits high pitch sounds instead.

All in all, my last piece of advice to you is, whenever you need to come up with a good idea or think creatively, you just need to…

Walk away….then come back. (works every time)

Hope this was a good read and that you’ll find many more great ideas coming your way.

Grow Your Business, Not Your Inbox

You’re reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

There are currently more than 2 billion smartphone users in the world today. That number of users is increasing every day. People love smartphones because of the convenience and functionalities. These little gadgets have simplified our lives thanks to the apps in them. Mobile apps simplify every day’s tasks.

Apps are also making many people rich too. Many startups have sprung up all over the world developing thousands of mobile apps. How do they come up with these app ideas and can you do it too?

1. Forget the money… for now

If you want to develop a new mobile app, the first thing you need to know is that an app is not necessarily a business or startup idea. There are numerous apps just developed to solve a problem or just provide entertainment. Your app idea must not be geared towards income. Focus on creating a great app first. Do not think about the money when getting started. What you need to do is come up with an idea that will attract many users. Even if you want a startup, you will need a proof of concept before investors can back you up.

2. Adaptation of existing apps

Looking at the existing app for inspiration or cloning is a great and one of the easiest ways of coming up with an app idea. You can look at the popular apps and emulate their concepts. Even the big boys do this. Just look at how Facebook and Twitter find inspiration from each other.

Many social media apps are also probably inspired by Facebook’s success. Do not be shy of look at the crowded spaces, therefore. A crowded space means that there is a good idea there. In any case, even if you develop a new idea, and it turns out to be a hit, you will get competition eventually.

The only way you can avoid competition is by having a terrible idea. You don’t want that, do you? You can also look in the app stores and find two or more apps that you can combine to an exciting, different app.

3. Brainstorm

Many mobile app ideas are a product of brainstorming with colleagues, family, or friends. Get a group of your family or friends and let them know that you want to develop an app and ask for their ideas. You might find that some of them have thought about the same, and you can even partner. Letting them know you intend to use their ideas to develop an app will save you from potential legal proceedings should you be successful.

4. Find Problems and gaps

There are many applications out there that are designed to solve problems that people face every day. These problems can be from any area from communications to lifestyle. Try and find such problems and solve them with an app. You might also have looked for an app online, and you couldn’t find it. Make one.

Your friends can help you identify these problems and gaps too. Conducting a research online especially in the android’s play store and apple’s app store will help you identify any gaps. You can also look into existing apps to find those that are under-performing and develop better versions of them.

5. Search for ideas on Social Media

Social media is a great way for you to get an app idea. Many people take to social media to vent out their frustrations or share their thoughts. You can identify many problems or ideas that require an app there. Utilizing tools such as TweetDeck, Hootsuite, or Social Mention allows you to know what people need. Use keywords such as “I wish…” to collect information on these tools.

6. Imagine the Future

What will be the next big thing? Think about the future and then work backward to build it. Great apps and startups are innovative. They bring us the future to as today. Facebook gave us the future of communication while WhatsApp gave us the future of texting. Instead of waiting for others to trail blaze and then play catch up, think about the future and be the leader in that space.

7. Enhance the smartphone

An app should enhance the smartphone users experience. Explore the smartphone’s functionalities and think of a way to improve its performance. You can either identify ways to improve existing features (like those calculator apps or the popular Truecaller) or add something missing (like the torch apps). Think of how you can also turn your smartphone into another device like how some apps transform a phone to a flashlight or a scanner.

8. Keep a journal and meditate

Meditating and keeping a journal might seem like a crazy advice for someone looking to get a mobile app idea but it helps. Meditating helps you clear your mind which is important when trying to come up with a great idea, any great idea. A journal, on the other hand, helps you record your thoughts and experiences. You probably have had an idea before, and you couldn’t remember the details days later. That could have been a million-dollar idea. Keep a record of your ideas on a journal.

9. Research

Everything will ultimately boil down to research. There is no escaping research when you are looking for app ideas. The research will not only help you get new app ideas but also help you explore the market for your mobile app.

Once you have a solid app idea, register as a developer and then get a programmer to code. Remember to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the programmer before sharing your idea. If you are looking to make money with the app, start by developing app for iOS.

There are more than 2 million mobile apps in the android and apple app stores today. Many more apps are not on these platforms. Many people are coming up with an app idea, and there is no reason you cannot do the same. Just remember that mobile apps are not just about the money. It is about providing a solution to a problem. Sometimes it’s also just about fun and entertainment. Do this and you might develop the next uber or angry birds.

Grow Your Business, Not Your Inbox

In 2002, Markus Zusak sat down to write a book.

He began by mapping out the beginning and the end of the story. Then, he started listing out chapter headings, pages of them. Some made it into the final story, many were cut.

When Zusak began to write out the story itself, he tried narrating it from the perspective of Death. It didn’t come out the way he wanted.

He re-wrote the book, this time through the main character’s eyes. Again, something was off.

He tried writing it from an outsider’s perspective. Still no good.

He tried present tense. He tried past tense. Nothing. The text didn’t flow.

He revised. He changed. He edited. By his own estimation, Zusak rewrote the first part of the book 150 to 200 times. In the end, he went back to his original choice and wrote it from the perspective of Death. This time—the 200th time—it felt right. When all was said and done it had taken Zusak three years to write his novel. He called it The Book Thief.

In an interview after his book was finally released, Zusak said, “In three years, I must have failed over a thousand times, but each failure brought me closer to what I needed to write, and for that, I’m grateful.”

The book exploded in popularity. It stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for over 230 weeks. It sold 8 million copies. It was translated into 40 languages. A few years later, Hollywood came calling and turned The Book Thief into a major motion picture.

The Simple Secret to Having Good Luck

We often think that blockbuster successes are luck. Maybe it’s easier to explain success that way—as a chance happening, a fortunate outlier. No doubt, there is always some element of luck involved in every success story.

But Markus Zusak is proof that if you revise your work 200 times—if you find 200 ways to reinvent yourself, to get better at your craft—then luck seems to have a way of finding you.

How do creative geniuses come ups with great ideas? They work and edit and rewrite and retry and pull out their genius through sheer force of will and perseverance. They earn the chance to be lucky because they keep showing up.

In her Dartmouth Commencement Address, Shonda Rimes shares a strategy that echoes Zusak’s approach…

Dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change…

Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer. Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you’re paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring and dreams are not real. Just … do.

So you think, “I wish I could travel.” Great. Sell your crappy car, buy a ticket to Bangkok, and go. Right now. I’m serious. You want to be a writer? A writer is someone who writes every day, so start writing.

How Creativity Works

We all have some type of creative genius inside of us. The only way to release it is to work on it.

No single act will uncover more creative powers than forcing yourself to create consistently. For Markus Zusak that meant writing and re-writing 200 times. For you, it might mean singing a song over and over until it sounds right. Or programming a piece of software until all the bugs are out, taking portraits of your friends until the lighting is perfect, or caring for the customers you serve until you know them better than they know themselves. You can make any job a work of art if you put the right energy into it.

How do creative geniuses come up with great ideas? They work hard at it.

You want to start a business but you don’t know where to begin. That’s only natural. The process of starting a business can be quite daunting. Here are five great ideas on how to start out with a great business idea.

Start With Something You Love

A common thread for new entrepreneurs is starting with something they really love and believe in, as evidenced in the new businesses at the Women’s Entrepreneur Festival.

Tanya Menendez is the co-founder of a company called Maker’s Row, which was designed to help American manufacturers source materials and labor from within the States. Though a challenging, fragmented market, she says she didn’t worry about a competitor beating her to the punch: “We had confidence in our execution. No one else had lived our lives.”

Kara Goldin, chief executive officer and founder of San Francisco based hint Inc., which produces all-natural essence waters, was thankful for the early doubters: “They are like bad coaches,” she said. “They are there to get me to show them I can do it.”

Start With Something People Need

Can you really start a business with less than a hundred bucks? Yes, if you focus on what people need. For example, consider this summer business idea: There are plenty of public places that don’t have snack bars, and even the convenience store’s just not convenient enough. Bottled water, sports drinks, visors, cheap sunglasses, and battery-powered fans will sell anywhere there’s sun. Try parks, the beach, baseball practice field, or even a busy street corner near popular summer destinations.

Start With a Twist

Rebecca and Daniel Dengrove are the brother-and-sister team that co-founded Brewla, a line of all-natural ice pops that are based on brewed ingredients like tea. They have been named “Startup of the Year” by the Wall Street Journal and were featured in a series of videos on that WSJ.

“We wanted to reengineer a classic, and also make it healthier,” explained Daniel of the product, and because his sister and co-founder is a food scientist, their experimentation bore plenty of fruit. And while the business started small (via a cart), the siblings now have their sights set on getting the artisanal ice pop in more retailers nationwide.

More on family food businesses here.

Start With Something You Can Test

The goal of a minimum viable product (MVP) is to test out a business hypothesis through a quickly produced, stripped-down model of a product that can be brought to market quickly and inexpensively. Examples include Zappos, which, early on, took photos of shoes in local stores, posted them online and then bought the shoes from the stores and shipped them out instead of building a large inventory. Groupon also launched with an incredibly simple version of its eventual daily deal email — it was simply a PDF and a WordPress site to begin with.

Start With Something You Can Do on the Side

Jesse Phillips, a co-founder of the calendar company NeuYear, explains a “muse” business as such: “an automated business that gives you your target monthly income number, so you can do what you want.” Phillips was very inspired by Ferriss’s book in starting a company to deliver well-designed calendars to help people track and achieve their goals over the course of a year.

“We started NeuYear to help people achieve their dreams,” he explained. “One of the best ways to focus your effort toward achieving your dreams is to plan and pursue goals. This doesn’t have to be a crazy big or detailed thing, it’s as simple as thinking about the steps to achieve something, and making deadlines for each step.” In crafting a large, design-focused calendar, he and his cohorts aimed to make that process as simple as possible.

“Execution is worth more than the idea.”

This is a Silicon Valley adage that’s been repeated millions of times. And there’s a valid reason why people repeat it so often.

New entrepreneurs often cling zealously to their ideas. In the most extreme cases, they’ll ask you to sign an NDA before telling you what it is. Any “startup expert” would jump at the chance to inform them their idea is worth nothing.

But this response is being taken too far. Sure, an idea remains just an idea if it’s not realized. But in the hands of capable people, it morphs into a compelling mission.

Venture capitalists often look for mission-driven founders. What does this mean? It means they want to fund entrepreneurs who are passionate about their ideas. This passion will enable them to overcome tremendous hurdles and make others around them care about their mission.

“So how do you come up with good startup ideas?”

If that’s what you’re wondering in your head, take a step back. Trying to pluck good ideas out of thin air is a wasted effort. Instead, you want to look for problems first.

A better question is: How do you find problems worth solving?

Inefficiencies in the world and problems you and your friends face daily are potential opportunities. Most people hit these obstacles, groan internally, and move on. They don’t think about why these obstacles exist and whether they can be solved.

Becoming aware is much easier said than done because it requires a fundamental change in being. The way I remember to do this is reminding myself as often as possible. I put “be aware” on my to-do list, calendar, and post-it notes. I also use Papier to remind myself every time I open a new tab.

But if your schedule is filled to capacity every single day, you won’t have the time or energy to reflect on the world. Always set aside some empty space in your day for you to think about what’s happening around you.

Turning off autopilot will help you generate great ideas over time, but what if you want to come up with new ideas right now?

One way is to hack the first approach by replaying your day in your head. Think of what you did and the problems you faced as you went about your life. Some of these problems may be valuable business pursuits.

Try to revisit unique events. For example, the problems you face while traveling in a foreign country or attending a concert will be very different from those you face in your regular 9–5.

Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk have often credited sci-fi for inspiring them to tackle ambitious ideas. The best sci-fi books and movies capture audacious visions of the future. Some of these visions are a little crazy in their scope, but the current tech world needs some of that lunacy.

These days, Silicon Valley is obsessed with small, frivolous things that will make a quick buck. For every company like SpaceX and Magic Leap, there are dozens working on trivial things.

I’m not saying things like social networking and messaging aren’t important. If nobody worked on them, we wouldn’t have Facebook and WhatsApp, which connect billions of people.

But wouldn’t it be amazing if more people dedicated themselves to scarier problems instead of walking paths tread millions of times before? Read and watch sci-fi, then build yourself a future beyond your wildest dreams.

Inspiration strikes at the intersection of different things. Whether it’s taking up a new hobby or traveling to another continent, you expose yourself to more problems and more possible solutions.

Scott Kaufman, a psychology researcher, has stated that “the drive for exploration, in its many forms, may be the single most important personal factor predicting creative achievement.”

If you take a look at successful startups today, you’ll find that many of them deal with fields that aren’t tech-based. For example, Stitch Fix solves problems in fashion, ClassPass in fitness, Soylent in food — I can go on and on.

A one-trick pony will never be able to make novel connections that lead to new solutions. So go out there and try new things!

Trying new things is intrinsically linked to the first approach of turning off autopilot. Deviating from your regular routine jolts your mind out of its default setting. And when your mind is actively making connections, finding problems worth solving is a breeze.

Talking to people doesn’t mean conducting formal interviews or brainstorming sessions. Just be a curious and empathetic friend. Get to know more people on a personal level, learn about their passions, and understand what problems they face in their lives.

The more people you talk to, the greater the pool of shared experience and expertise you’ll have access to, which will stimulate your mind to make new connections.

Plus, the ultimate goal is to make a product that solves problems for people. Going out there and understanding how different people live their lives is instrumental to realizing that goal.

But you should also give yourself alone time to think. Researchers have proven that when you tune out the outside world, your brain improves at making novel connections.

To succeed at anything in life, you need to be in good physical and mental condition. Coming up with startup problems is no different. Creativity is built on a healthy body and a healthy mind, so don’t mistreat yourself.

This is a popular piece of advice, but many entrepreneurs don’t following it. It has something to do with the cult of overwork, where entrepreneurs pride themselves on how many hours they spend on their venture.

It’s a twisted way of thinking, but it’s easy to succumb to — especially if many people around you are doing the same thing. Resist the peer pressure. when you’re trying to find and solve problems, quality of time spent matters way more than quantity. Don’t neglect eating well and exercising.

There’s no right way to come up with startup ideas. You might find something worth solving in the shower or at the end of an intense brainstorming session. You can’t predict when inspiration will strike, but you can do things to help you generate good ideas.

A lot of online startup advice nowadays will tell you not to rush into a startup because the best idea is one that occurs naturally. But this isn’t an excuse for you to be lazy. Be proactive in looking for problems and ideas.

Discovering an initial idea is like unearthing a strain of gold. If you’re a miner, would you pat yourself on the back and then move on? No! You want to find out how deep that strain goes. So take your mental pickaxe and keep digging until you collect all the gold.

Keep going long enough, you just might find a diamond.

We’ve all been there. The dreaded block. Whatever it may be–staring at a blank document, tearing your hair out over a website that you wish would design itself, or lying on the ground, defeated by a speech that you will seemingly never be able to craft, the inability to generate quality creative ideas is one of the most frustrating feelings man has ever known. It doesn’t have to be that way. Believe it or not, there are strategies that can and will help you combat how to come up with ideas.

I wanted to share with you the ones that work for me personally, and when you’re finished reading, I would love to hear what helped you come up with creative ideas when it seems like you’re out of juice.

1) Free Brainstorming – The Idea Factory

A lot of the time, we experience the inability to come up with good ideas because of our desire for quality. So just settle, the perfect ideas that you desire will probably never come, and there’s no use waiting around for them. Just kidding. What I mean is that we are so critical of ideas that pop into our head that we get discouraged, and that only serves to make it even more difficult to our brains to come up with new ideas. The solution to this problem is to let go of our own harsh self judgement and let any ideas–brilliant, mediocre, or atrocious, flow through our minds. I call this the idea factory because a good factory is wildly efficient, producing massive amounts of product.

However, because of the speed and error, some products may be imperfect. But because of the massive amounts of product produced by the factory, there are always diamonds in the rough. And that’s how the creative ideas are born: with you writing down ideas as quickly as your brain can think of them in this state, without judgement, you have a massive pool to choose from. Some ideas you come with are going to disgust you, that’s an inevitability that you are going to have to come to terms with. None of us are brilliant all of the time. But some of the ideas that you come up with are going to astonish you, and you will swell up with pride at your own ingenuity.

Brainstorming at its best.

2) Random Association

Sometimes all your brain needs is a trigger. Triggers can come from the most unexpected and random places. Obviously since you haven’t come up with any ideas, the stimulations your bodily sensors ordinarily receive are not helping your brain create the ideas you want, so it’s time to mix it up. Do a couple revolutions in your swivel chair, and slowly observe your surroundings, and see if your brain makes any connections between the objects around you and the idea that you’re attempting to concoct.

The brain works in mysterious ways; neural pathways that we would never suspect are related give our powerful brains the ability to access subconscious knowledge and make connections by way of random association, which you’re trying to aid with novel stimuli. Listen to a song. Maybe the lyrics are related to your childhood, which will evoke memories of an emotional story that will be the theme of the commencement speech you have to write. Who knows.

3) Collaborate

Sure, I understand the pride behind the origination of ideas. You allow yourself to be that frustrated for that long because you want the recognition as “that guy” or “that girl” who came up with the brilliant new idea. The thing is, that shouldn’t matter. All it is is another obstacle for the birth of ideas. Collaboration provides an extremely powerful tool, another perspective. Discussion and outside perspective can open your eyes to new avenues. Bouncing around ideas with a colleague (most of the time) is a refreshing, encouraging, and exciting process. Don’t think that you have to go it alone when it comes to producing ideas. As long as it gets created, who cares who gets the credit?

4) Put on someone else’s shoes

Studies have shown that wearing shoes that don’t belong to you stimulates the brain to tell the body to produce abnormally large amounts of dopamine, providing encouragement and fulfillment to the individual and allowing them to come up with good ideas as easily as breathing oxygen. Just kidding, that was all completely fabricated and I came up with it while wearing my own shoes.

What I mean by this point is that when you’re stuck coming up with ideas and have no one to collaborate with, it would serve you well to try adopting someone else’s perspective, and “put yourself in their shoes.” Figuratively. Choose an individual, and deeply consider how they might approach your particular problem. Really, all you’re doing is attacking your problem from a different mindset, but imagining yourself as a different person makes it easier for your brain to make a change in thinking. Instead of your brain thinking “Hey! I’m (insert name here) and I don’t normally think like this! This is hard!” it will think “Hey! I’m (insert chosen person’s name here) now and I normally think like this” Who knew sampling the footwear of others could be so beneficial?

5) Outsource

6) Give up (aka take a break)

Sometimes no matter how hard we try, we just don’t have it. I don’t know if imagination is a limited resource, but energy and focus most certainly are, so there’s no point in trying anymore when it’s clearly evident that the results aren’t going to come. So give up. Go home. Take a walk. Shower. Work out. Paint. Whatever floats your boat. But hey now, that’s not where it ends, don’t think you’re off the hook. After you’re done, feeling refreshed and revitalized, get back at it. Don’t let yourself get discouraged and mired in frustration. Don’t take this as a suggestion to give up as soon as you meet difficulty. Persistence is crucial. All I’m saying is that when you’ve poured your entire self into an endeavor, and it has yet to yield positive results, sometimes giving up and coming back is immensely more rewarding than trying to grind it out.

Well that’s what works for me! Like I said earlier, I would love to hear what kind of strategies you use to get past the block. Comment and discuss!

2 thoughts on “ How to Come Up With Ideas ”

Hi Eric, great post! Another way to generate ideas is to write down things you get frustrated about as you go through your day. I started a Twitter account to try channel these problems to one places and perhaps more ideas will spark as a result. Share your frustrations using #thisisbroken and I’ll retweet ; )

Hello Eric, my name is Aline, I’m Brazilian, and at the moment I’m a digital entrepreneur. I work on the internet promoting digital products. I really like browsing through American sites to get inspiration for my ideas. After all, America is always ahead of us. I simply LOVED your article. I really liked it. It gave me even the desire to offer you if you would like to write an article on the same subject for me. To post to my Blog. Surely I would have to translate it, but I will gladly refer you to your site. Now that I have found, I will continue to visit you. (laughs)

They’re the kinds of problems you can’t seem to think your way out of. Whether it’s a unique layout for your site, a concept for a blog post, or an intriguing interface, new creative ideas are hard to come up with.

They usually seem to come out of nowhere, but research suggests there are ways to cause these sudden flashes of insight to happen more readily.

1. Avoid Uncertainty

A study by Jennifer Mueller found that when people were made to feel uncertain about the future, in this case by paying them with a random lottery, it caused them to reject creative ideas.

They actually associated creativity with words like “vomit,” and “hell,” but this bias was completely invisible to them. While you might not necessarily be able to avoid feelings of uncertainty, you may be able to recognize when you are rejecting all of your ideas.

If you think you’re having trouble coming up with good ideas, it’s worth considering the possibility that you are just rejecting them because you have a subconscious fear of new ideas. It’s far better to pick an idea that may be less than perfect than to pick no ideas at all.

2. Recognize Multiple Solutions

The same study also found that if you tell people to write an essay about how all problems only have one solution, we are also more likely to reject genuinely creative ideas.

If you find yourself saying, “this isn’t the right idea,” it’s best to stop yourself, and instead ask yourself if it’s a good idea.

3. Think About Contradictions

Ella Miron-Spektor conducted an experiment where the participants were asked to write down some thoughts. One group was asked to write interesting thoughts, while the other was asked to write paradoxical thoughts.

The group that was asked to write paradoxical thoughts did almost twice as well on a problem that required creative insight.

If you’re having trouble solving a design problem, it can be helpful to think about contradictory thoughts, like how walking is sometimes less tiring than standing. These kinds of thoughts seem to make it easier to arrive at solutions you otherwise wouldn’t come up with. The thoughts don’t even have to be closely related to the task at hand, although this may help.

4. Look for Relationships

Paul Thagard has advanced a theory for how new ideas are formed in the brain. It involves a complex mathematical process called convolution, which combines two ideas together in a way that makes them distinguishable from the originals.

He points to examples like Darwin’s “natural selection,” which is a combination of the idea of artificial selection with ideas from nature, or the creation of “wireless email,” which is a combination of the ideas “wireless” and “email.”

If you can’t solve a problem by analyzing it, or you’re having trouble coming up with new ideas, it can be useful to expose yourself to ideas that might be “outside your comfort zone.” Look for analogies, similarities, and differences with the task at hand. This is often where new ideas come from.

5. Have a Good Laugh

Alice Isen has conducted a few experiments on how mood effects creativity, and one of the strongest results comes from humor. She discovered that people who watched a funny video were over three times better at solving a creative problem than people who watched a math video. Other experiments suggested that a good mood in general has a similar effect.

If you are having trouble solving a problem or coming up with a new idea, try exercising some positive thinking exercises or just looking for something to laugh about. Provided you don’t spend the rest of the day looking at cats on the internet, the boost in mood will actually make it easier for you to solve the task at hand.

6. How to Brainstorm

It would be a waste of time to tell you to brainstorm, since you’ve undoubtedly heard this before. Instead, it’s worth pointing out some of the ways brainstorming might not work how you expect.

For starters, most experiments suggest that brainstorming groups actually do worse than the same number of people brainstorming alone, so there’s no need to seek out a special team of people to help you brainstorm.

At the same time, Karen Dugosh has conducted several experiments that suggest exposure to other people’s ideas is helpful. People who listened to ideas from a tape recording came up with more ideas that people who didn’t have the recording. Still, they only did better during a brainstorming session by themselves afterward.

She also discovered that people who shared ideas through a computer had the best results of all. Presumably, this was because they could take inspiration from each other without distracting each other.

In short, look for inspiration from as many different sources as you can, but don’t bother doing the actual brainstorming until you are alone and have time to concentrate.

7. Let Your Mind Wander

There appear to be two kinds of problems you might encounter, those that require analysis and those that require a sudden burst of insight.

If what you need is the latter, it turns out focus is actually bad. An experiment conducted by Mareike Wieth found that people who came in during their least focused time of day actually did better on insightful problems. Oddly enough, patients with damage to their frontal lobe and people under the influence of alcohol appear to achieve the same results.

The lesson here is that if focus isn’t helping you solve a problem, it’s better to start daydreaming than to force yourself to think your way to a solution. Focus is for getting the work done, not for getting the ideas in the first place.

When you are trying to come up with small business ideas, it can be tough. Maybe there is an idea burning inside you, or maybe you have so many ideas that you are unsure about which one to pursue. But if you have nothing but a strong desire to leave corporate America, there are lots of places to look for business needs.

Start looking around you for small business ideas by making a list of your skills, your interests, and where you have networks you can leverage. Where do you spend your money? Is there a business or service you wish was in your community or available online? Look at how you spend your free time—could you turn a hobby into a business? What kinds of things are you investing in for your children? Could you start a business by creating a family fun venue, a tutoring business, or a kid tax service?

The possibilities are endless, so to guide your exploration, here is an 8-step process to help you discover your perfect small business idea.

8 Steps to Finding Your Small Business Idea

1. Brainstorm Ideas First

Take 30 minutes and write down all of your small business ideas. Then take a break and come back to your list and organize your thoughts. I am not one to crush anyone’s dream, but you do need to clarify which business ideas are actually doable, based on the resources and time that you have available today. You should also consider the industry trends to make sure you are launching a business in an industry that is growing. There are businesses you can launch on a shoestring budget . No matter what business you start, figure out how you can provide value to your customers; otherwise you’ll be like any other business out there, and out of business soon. Without a “secret sauce,” it’s going to be tough to stand out in the marketplace.

2. Niche to Get Rich

Regardless of what business you want to start, it’s best to focus on a specific niche target customer . For example, writing expert Stephanie Chandler developed the non-fiction authors association , to serve people who want to write non-fiction books. Niching means getting really clear about your customer personas, how you help, and how you will reach that particular customer online and offline. How to will you sell? Will you open a retail storefront, set up an online store, start a marketplace store on Amazon or eBay, or something else? What marketing channels will you use? Social media, email, Google AdWords or Facebook ads? How can you develop a content marketing campaign to attract your target customer?

3. Find an Unmet Need

What is missing in the marketplace? Could you develop a grocery store in urban markets? A product that stops kids from bedwetting? Plus size boots? A socially responsible watch company? Affordable glasses for kids? Mobile pet grooming business? Millions of dollars can be made if you create a business that really solves a problem for people.

4. Look at a Successful Business Model and Improve It

Success leaves clues everywhere. Sometimes you can see a successful business concept and then you can put a twist on it to call it yours. Selling shoes is not an original concept, but Uggs, Crocs, and Christian Louboutin red bottom shoes all managed to carve out a niche for themselves. Or maybe you could innovate how people buy the shoe, like Zappos selling shoes online with free overnight shipping on sales and returns. Think about it.

5. Sell What You Can Teach

Knowledge is power, and if you know how to do something that people really struggle with, you can sell your knowledge and make a fortune. Think Lynda.com, udemy.com, etc. If you are an expert in book publishing, getting freelance gigs, math, MCAT & LSAT prep courses, or something else, then you can use online courses, webinars, and ebooks to sell information online.

6. Look for You Must be Kidding Opportunities

Dirty job businesses pay big bucks. How about a business gutting fresh seafood, picking up dog poop, removing tree roots, or making sewer repairs? Or you could open a business as a gutter cleaner, power washer, or car detailing, etc.

7. Look at the Supply Chain at Your Work

What does your current company outsource? Is there an opportunity to become a vendor for your company? Look at your supply chain to see what you can pursue as a business. It would be awesome to leave your job with a contract in your pocket.

8. Get Your Business Idea Down to One Sentence

Once you identify your small business idea. You need to be able to describe it succinctly.

Use my XYZ method. I do X ______ for Y ______ customers and I help them achieve Z _______ results. If it’s too hard to get your small business idea down to one sentence, that should be a big hint that you have more work to do on your idea before you unleash it on the world. If this exercise is too tough, you might even need to go back to the drawing board and find a new idea.

Coming up with small business ideas can be a difficult process, but if you put in enough time really contemplating your passions and current industry trends, you could strike it big! Try out this 8-step process and see what amazing small business ideas you come up with today.

Updated on August 13, 2019

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by Ed Bell | Jan 15, 2018

Here’s an important truth about coming up with new song ideas: you should write about what interests and inspires you, not what some internet listicle tells you to.

So if you were expecting a 100-item list, I’m sorry to deflate your dirigible. Instead, I’m going to show you how to come up with your own (much smarter) list of your own (much more interesting) song ideas. I call it the ‘Give it a twist’ technique.

Let’s take a look.

So as you might know, songs tell stories. And the hallmark of a good song is that you can summarize its story, or central message, or central idea, in a single sentence.

It’s a song about a single mother who’s forced into sex work to support her kid while she dreams of a better life for him. (Rockabye)

It’s a song about a girl who’s lonely at night and wants to dance with somebody to fix that. (I Wanna Dance with Somebody)

It’s a song about a guy whose significant other left yesterday, and now he wants to rewind the clock because he was so much happier then. (Yesterday)

And how, you might ask, do you turn these old song ideas into new song ideas? The way you turn any old idea into a new idea: give it a twist.

Write a song about a recently single mother who’s scared to go into sex work but thinks she’ll have to to support her kid.

Write a song about a guy who’s lonely at night and wants to dance with somebody to fix that.

Write a song about a guy whose significant other left yesterday, but actually the relationship was kind of shitty and he’s already realizing he’s better off.

And how to come up with a hundred new song ideas? Just repeat this process another 97 times.

Pick out some of your favorite songs. Try and summarize what they’re about – in a single sentence if you can. Then… give it a twist.

And if you were wondering, no this isn’t plagiarism. This is creating. There is no copyright on ideas – only the specific expression of an idea – so it’s all good. In fact, it’s how it’s done. Creative theft is how it’s done. Taking existing ideas and giving them a twist is how it’s done.

In any case, you’ll find as you write that changing even one detail about a song idea forces you, more often than not, to write a wholly different song. Changing one detail somewhere forces you to change all kinds of other details elsewhere.

Whitney’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ sounds like a female singer’s song. The words she uses and the song’s groove belong to the world of a female singer. You couldn’t just swap ‘man’ with ‘girl’ and ‘him’ with ‘her’ and call it a day. You’d have to think ‘What would a guy in that situation say?’ and ‘What would a guy in that situation sound like?’.

And that’s why the ‘Give it a twist’ technique is powerful. It forces you to think for yourself. It forces you to do something original.

And the more you use it, the better and bigger twists you’ll come up with and the more original you’ll be. Eventually you’ll get so good at making new ideas out of old ideas we won’t be able to keep tabs on which old ideas you’ve been recycling – and eventually, neither will you.

Having an idea and developing that idea into a marketable, publishable book are two different things. I learned this early in the process when trying to decide what kind of book I wanted to write.

BOOK GIVEAWAY:

To win one of the five autographed copies of OH BOY, YOU’RE HAVING A GIRL, simply leave a comment on this post or any of the posts related to the “How I Got OH BOY Published” series. I will pick five random winners throughout the month of June. (Winners must live in Canada/US to receive the book by mail. Please note that comments may take a little while to appear on the site; this is normal. Deadline is June 30, 2013).

For an additional chance to win, click this CLICK TO TWEET button and post to Twitter. I’ll track those as well.

Like many writers, I’d always dreamed of writing a book—a super power all of us have. And, like many writers, I put it off indefinitely to tend to other things, like softball and raising kids and watching reruns of “Friends.” I had been honing my craft for years while writing a parenting blog, strengthening my voice and, slowly but surely, developing an audience for my writing. It took two major events life-changing events happening within the span of six months (the death of my dad and my sister-in-law) to kick me into gear. These events got me thinking, What if I die before I can live out my dream?

So I sat down and forced myself to develop an idea that I could turn into a book. That idea eventually turned into the recently released, OH BOY, YOU’RE HAVING A GIRL: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters (great gift for Father’s Day, I might add!). It took considerable time to come up with the right hook. That’s why I’m offering up these tips that I learned along the way. I hope to save you a few headaches and a little time as you develop your idea.

1. Force Yourself to Sit Down and Think

Like most writers, I come up with ideas for books daily. Could be from a magazine article that caught my eye. Could be from a conversation I overheard. Could be from a dream I had. One idea came from a joke written on a popsicle stick! But were any of these ideas actually any good? Thanks to the success of my parenting blog TheLifeOfDad.com, I knew that the book I wanted to write needed to be about parenting, so it helped me weed out the most ridiculous ideas and focus on the ones that were most likely built to suit my writing.

2. Force Yourself to Do Some Research

Every genre and market already has many books associated with it. In order to find success, you have to find a way to make your book stand out. When I was considering ideas for OH BOY, I searched on Amazon and spent time at Barnes & Noble, browsing all the books in the parenting section. There were plenty of how-to books and “what to expect” books and sentimental books, so I had to figure out where my niche would be. One of my favorite books of all time is W. Bruce Cameron’s, 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. This got me thinking: I have three daughters all under the age of five, so What if I wrote a humorous guide for the early years of raising a daughter? And that’s how the idea of OH BOY was born.

3. Force Yourself to Write

Having a good idea is only half the battle. Executing that idea into a book takes time, patience and plenty of caffeine. I started with an introduction, setting a goal of 1,500 words. If I couldn’t come up with 1,500 words that opened the doorway to a book on the topic, then I shouldn’t write it. Thankfully, I did write an introduction—and a reasonably solid one at that. It took me a couple of tries and a lot of editing, but once I cleared that hurdle I was confident I could write a full book on the topic.

4. Force Yourself to Form a Gameplan

How many chapters should the book have? What should the topics be? Should my book be straight humor or humor mixed with actual advice? Forming a gameplan is much like developing a book proposal that you’d ship off to an agent or editor. It’s helpful to answer these questions before you start writing your book and querying agents. If you’re writing nonfiction (like me), you need a full outline when querying. If you’re writing a novel, you’ll need to write the entire book first before making your pitches. Either way, the earlier in the process you can make decisions, the better—it’ll help keep you glued to the task at hand, which is write your book.

5. Force Yourself to Have Fun and Believe in Your Writing

Every writer goes through moments of self-doubt. We’re in a business that is designed to reject people over and over again, even the brilliant ones who go on to sell millions of copies. (Did you know Kathryn Socket’s The Help was turned down 60 times before finally landing an agent and going on to be a bestseller—and a movie?) Keep in mind that you love writing and, no matter how hard it seems at times, you’re doing it because you enjoy it. The more you do that and the more you believe in what you’re trying to accomplish, the harder you’ll work at it and the better your idea and your writing will be for it.

Want to Win an Autographed Copy of
OH BOY, YOU’RE HAVING A GIRL?

To win one of the five autographed copies of OH BOY, YOU’RE HAVING A GIRL, simply leave a comment on this post or any of the posts related to the “How I Got OH BOY Published” series. I will pick five random winners throughout the month of June. (Winners must live in Canada/US to receive the book by mail. Please note that comments may take a little while to appear on the site; this is normal. Deadline is June 30, 2013). For an additional chance to win, click this CLICK TO TWEET button and post to Twitter. I’ll track those as well.

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Follow me on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Check out my humor book, Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl.
Sign up for my free weekly eNewsletter: WD Newsletter

Are you ready to write but don’t know what to write about? Prepare to kick your writing into gear by browsing through our list of 200+ short story ideas. New prompts are added each week, and you can search by genre. But don’t let our categories stop you from putting your own spin on a writing prompt: if you find a short story idea tagged as sci-fi, but you think it would make a great romance plot, run with it! For tips on how to come up with your own story ideas, scroll to the bottom of the page.

We found 236 stories that match your search 🔦

You’re sitting at your desk eating candy hearts. You start to realize the notes on the hearts are trying to give you a message.

A team of scientists have successfully teleported an apple. It reappears with a bite taken out of it.

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After the crash, he vanished. Some say he moved to a compound in Africa, some say he went off the grid. But the Silicon Valley genius who engineered the greatest stockmarket disaster in history is hiding in plain sightƒ

Amazon has invented time travel and introduced pre-emptive shipping. Today, you receive something completely unexpected from your future self.

August 30, 1946: The date of the one and only time travel convention. You attend every year.

Every day, you visit the same moment from your past.

In the closet of your new home is a portal through space and time. You accidentally travel to Mars.

How to come up with short story ideas

We get it: writing prompts are an excellent resource, but you want to know how to come up with your own story ideas. Here are four of our go-to tricks when thinking of interesting things to write about.

1) People-watch: Hands down, this our favourite way to come up with story ideas. All stories, even ones about robots or plants, have some element of humanity at its core. There are therefore a countless number of stories to be found by observing human nature. 90% of the prompts included in our writing prompts newsletter are inspired by simply staring out a window and watching people go by.

2) Forget what you already know: Have you ever become trapped in a “but why?” loop with a child? It’s enough to make your head spin or an existential crisis occur. But if you can return to this sense of curiosity and wondering you had as a child, you can find a treasure trove of short story ideas to be found. Take in your surroundings and ask yourself why things are the way they are. What if they were different? What would that look like and how would it work?

3) Use your day job: If you feel like you have the most interesting job on the planet, well, perfect! It shouldn’t be hard to use it as plot-fodder for a great short story. On the other hand, if you find yourself yawning a lot at work, ask yourself: What could happen to make this work day interesting? Let’s say you work as a receptionist but your real passion lies with art. Write a story about a receptionist who sees a colleague hang a new piece of art in their cubicle — one the receptionist recognizes as being famous for going missing a century ago.

4) Read: Imagine walking up to a piano and trying to make beautiful music without ever having heard it played before. You need to consume great short stories in order to know what you enjoy about them. Figure out what you like, and you’ll be on the path to great writing topics.

Ready to start submitting your short story to writing contests? Find the right one for you in our list of writing contests.

Looking for writing tips? Sign up for our free course: How to Craft a Killer Short Story.

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So, you’ve decided to write a short story! Many a published author got their starts from publishing short stories. It’s the perfect medium for so many authors: succinct, clear, character-driven, and brief.

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Ever notice that when you’re in a meeting or a team brainstorm, you’re often hit with a stroke of genius, only to sound like a rambling maniac when you actually try to explain what you’re thinking to everyone in the room?

Practically all ideas start off as half-baked and vague, but if you can learn how to quickly sort through the mess to see if what you’re thinking is any good, you’ll instantly make yourself far more valuable. (And you’ll leave the conversation feeling like you said the right words in the right order.)

Not sure where to start? Read through these five steps to make any idea sound more concrete—fast.

Step 1: Decide if Your Idea Is Relevant

Before you go any further into fleshing out your thoughts, take a moment and ask this very simple question: Is this relevant to the conversation at hand?

For example, you could have a brilliant solution for trimming the budget, but if you’re in a meeting about a client’s social media strategy, what you’re saying won’t be at all on-topic. Be honest with yourself about how pertinent something is to your current situation. If you can’t find a good enough reason to say something, but think your idea is amazing, write it down and get to it later.

Step 2: Summarize Your Idea in One Sentence

Ever notice that when a series of random thoughts pop into your head, it’s hard to figure out what your actual point is? Before raising your hand or speaking up, quickly see if you can state it in one sentence. If you’re already mentally stumbling through what you’re going to say, chances are it won’t come out much better when you start talking.

One easy way to do this? Summarize the very basic problem you’re addressing in your head and write down your solution in 10 words. You’d be surprised how much clarity you get when you keep things short.

Step 3: Consider Any Supporting Evidence or Information

If think your boss, co-workers, or clients will be intrigued by your initial ideas, try to come up with follow-up evidence or examples to provide to back up what you’re saying. Anything can help strengthen your argument, so before you blurt it out, think through what your supporting evidence is.

For instance, before I pitched a new vertical to a blog I work for, I quickly came up with examples of other publications that were doing similar things. While my research wasn’t entirely fleshed out, it was enough to catch my boss’ attention—and she asked for a full proposal.

Step 4: Ask “So What?”

One of the most important principles in writing is the big “So what?” and it definitely applies to promoting ideas, too.

Ask yourself, “So what?” when it comes to your idea. Why would someone care about this? What specific goal does it help move your company toward? Or, how does it help your team solve its current problem? It’s much easier to think of an angle for your pitch if you have a complete understanding of your audience.

Step 5: Decide When to Bring Up Your Idea

You might find yourself in a fast-paced meeting where you don’t have time to collect your thoughts and spill them before the entire group moves onto something else. Or, maybe you have a great solution for a potential project you can take on, but it doesn’t have to do with your current team brainstorm. While your thoughts shouldn’t be absolutely irrelevant to your work, lots of game-changing epiphanies come during the worst times and aren’t fully considered because of that. Don’t be afraid to put off telling people about what you’re thinking until later. You’ll still get points for being brilliant.

Likewise, if your window of opportunity is right in the moment, don’t be afraid to speak up. And, because you’ve followed the above four steps, avoid using a qualifier like, “This is really half-baked, but…” Just go straight into it, see what feedback you get, and move on. Remember: No one will be as hyper-critical of your idea as you are, so even if it flops, chances are people won’t remember it soon after.

Remember, every idea starts off a little half-baked when you first think of it. The trick is learning how to quickly decipher your main messaging, who your audience is, and why you’re saying it. Once you do that, you’ll be surprised how quickly you can seem like the most put-together in the room without much effort.

Grow Your Business, Not Your Inbox

In their book, Start Your Own Business, the staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc. guides you through the critical steps to starting a business, then supports you in surviving the first three years as a business owner. In this edited excerpt, the authors offer suggestions for figuring out just what kind of business you’d like to start.

How do you start the business idea process? First, take out a sheet of paper, and across the top, write “Things About Me.” List five to seven things about you—things you like to do or that you’re really good at, personal things (we’ll get to your work life in a minute). Your list might include: “I’m really good with people, I love kids, I love to read, I love computers, I love numbers, I’m a problem solver.” Just write down whatever comes to your mind; it doesn’t need to make sense.

On the other side of the paper, list things you don’t think you’re good at or you don’t like to do. Maybe you don’t like to meet new people or you’re really not that fond of kids or you don’t like public speaking or you don’t want to travel. Don’t overthink it.

When you’re finished, ask yourself: “If there were three to five products or services that would make my personal life better, what would they be?” Determine what products or services would make your life easier or happier, make you more productive or efficient, or simply give you more time.

Next, ask yourself the same set of questions about your business life. Also examine what you like and dislike about your work life as well as what traits people like and dislike about you.

Finally, ask yourself why you’re seeking to start a business in the first place. Then, when you’re done, look for a pattern (i.e., whether there’s a need for a business doing one of the things you like or are good at).

Inspiring moments

Inspiration can be found anywhere. Getting an idea can be as simple as keeping your eyes peeled for the latest hot businesses; they crop up all the time. Many local entrepreneurs made tons of money bringing the Starbucks coffeehouse concept to their hometowns and then expanding from there. Take Minneapolis-based Caribou Coffee. The founders had what they describe as an “aha moment” in 1990 and, two years later, launched what is now the nation’s second-largest corporate-owned gourmet coffeehouse chain. Other coffee entrepreneurs have chosen to stay local.

And don’t overlook the tried and true. Hot businesses often go through cycles. Take gardening. For the past few years, gardening products and supplies have been all the rage, but you wouldn’t consider gardening a 21st century business. The same goes for shoe cobblers and seamstress businesses—with people wanting shoes and clothes to last longer or fit just-so, these businesses are in demand, and supply is short.

In other words, you can take any idea and customize it to the times and your community. Add your own creativity to any concept. In fact, customizing a concept isn’t a choice; it’s a necessity if you want your business to be successful. You can’t just take an idea, plop it down and say, “OK, this is it.” Outside of a McDonald’s, Subway or other major franchise concept, there are very few businesses that work with a one-size-fits-all approach.

One of the best ways to determine whether your idea will succeed in your community is to talk to people you know. If it’s a business idea, talk to co-workers and colleagues. Run personal ideas by your family or neighbors. Don’t be afraid of people stealing your idea. It’s just not likely. Just discuss the general concept; you don’t need to spill all the details.

Hopefully by now, the process of determining what business is right for you has at least been somewhat demystified. Understand that business startup isn’t rocket science. No, it isn’t easy to begin a business, but it’s not as complicated or as scary as many people think, either. It’s a step-by-step, common-sense procedure. So take it a step at a time. First step: Figure out what you want to do. Once you have the idea, talk to people to find out what they think. Ask, “Would you buy and/or use this, and how much would you pay?”

Determining what you want to do is only the first step. You’ve still got a lot of homework to do, a lot of research in front of you. Most important: Do something. Don’t sit back year after year and say, “This is the year I’m going to start my business.” Make this the year you really do it!

If you jumped online to find writing prompts or story ideas, you’re in the right place.

But what I’m about to tell you may surprise you.

Novelists must think differently from other writers.

Our aim is to create a world our readers can get lost in. But it’s easy to become overwhelmed before we even start.

Do you struggle with ideas?

Or is your list so long you don’t know where to start?

Writing fiction is not about rules or techniques or someone else’s ideas on the internet.

It’s about a story well told.

Ideas are all around you, and you can learn to recognize them. Then you can write with confidence and love the process.

How to Wrangle Your Big Story Idea

Suzanne Collins says her idea for The Hunger Games came while channel surfing between reality TV and war coverage. Both featured young people, images blurred, and Katniss Everdeen came to life in her mind’s eye.

J.K. Rowling got the idea for Harry Potter travelling by train from Manchester to London King’s Cross in 1990.

William Faulkner says The Sound and the Fury began with the image of a young girl in muddy drawers up a tree, peering through a window at a family gathering. He had no idea who the girl was or what she was watching, but she intrigued him enough to cause him to create his novel.

I can’t promise story ideas that rival those classics, but you CAN unearth story ideas buried in your head. Here’s how:

1. Recognize the germ.

Most fiction starts with a memory—a person, a problem, tension, fear, conflict that resonates and grows in your mind. That’s the germ of an idea that can become your story.

My first novel was about a judge who tries a man for a murder that the judge committed.

That’s all I had—along with its obvious ramifications. I knew guilt. I recalled being caught in a lie. I could imagine the ultimate dilemma—desperate to hide the truth while being responsible for stewarding it.

Learn to recognize those germs as they emerge.

I know a novel idea has legs when it stays with me and grows. I find myself telling my wife or sons the idea and embellishing the story more each time. If it fades or loses steam, I lose interest in it and know readers will too.

But if it holds my interest, I nourish and develop it until it becomes a manuscript and eventually a book.

2. Write it down.

Free write without worrying about grammar, cliches, redundancy or anything but getting down the basics. (In fact, until you complete your first draft, take off your perfectionist cap and turn off your internal editor.)

And carry a writing pad, electronic or otherwise. Being old school, I like the famous Moleskine™ notebook. Ideas can come at any moment. Record ideas for:

3. Invent characters from people you know.

Fiction must be believable, even if set in a land far, far away centuries from now. That means characters must feel real so readers will buy your premise.

Two failsafe ways to build credible characters:

• Base them on people you know
• Be fair with antagonists

Characters live inside you because of the people you’ve met.

Brainstorming interesting, quirky, inspiring, influential people and mix and match them. A character might be an amalgam of one person’s gender, another’s look, another’s personality, another’s voice…

Don’t allow your villains to be one-dimensional, evil just because they’re the bad guy. Have credible skeptical characters. Give them motivations as strong as your hero’s. The best villains don’t see themselves as villains. They think they’re right.

4. Get writing.

The note-taking and research has to end at some point.

You’ve got to start getting words onto the page.

Try the Greyhound Bus Challenge for Writing Ideas

Perhaps you’re struggling to come up with a viable idea.

Imagine a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. What’s on the corners? Corn? How high? Dusty fields? Snow? Mud?

A dot appears on the horizon and comes into focus as a Greyhound bus. Where’s it coming from? Where is it going?

It stops at the intersection. Is anyone waiting there?

A man? A woman? A child?

Anxious? Excited? Scared? Relieved?

Where are they coming from? Where are they going?

• Are they dressed appropriately for the weather?
• Are they running from someone?
• Are they running to someone?

By now a character should begin forming for your novel. Decide on the worst trouble you can plunge them into and see where that takes you.

You Have What It Takes to Come Up With Great Story Ideas

Few pleasures in life compare to getting lost in a great story.

The story worlds you and I create and the characters we birth can live in the hearts of readers for years.

Grow Your Business, Not Your Inbox

Now that you understand why you need a business plan and you’ve spent some time doing your homework gathering the information you need to create one, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get everything down on paper. The following pages will describe in detail the seven essential sections of a business plan: what you should include, what you shouldn’t include, how to work the numbers and additional resources you can turn to for help. With that in mind, jump right in.

Executive Summary

Within the overall outline of the business plan, the executive summary will follow the title page. The summary should tell the reader what you want. This is very important. All too often, what the business owner desires is buried on page eight. Clearly state what you’re asking for in the summary.

Business Description

The business description usually begins with a short description of the industry. When describing the industry, discuss the present outlook as well as future possibilities. You should also provide information on all the various markets within the industry, including any new products or developments that will benefit or adversely affect your business.

Business Plan Guide »

Before Writing Your Plan

Writing Your Business Plan

Business Plan Tools

Market Strategies

Market strategies are the result of a meticulous market analysis. A market analysis forces the entrepreneur to become familiar with all aspects of the market so that the target market can be defined and the company can be positioned in order to garner its share of sales.

Competitive Analysis

The purpose of the competitive analysis is to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors within your market, strategies that will provide you with a distinct advantage, the barriers that can be developed in order to prevent competition from entering your market, and any weaknesses that can be exploited within the product development cycle.

Design & Development Plan

The purpose of the design and development plan section is to provide investors with a description of the product’s design, chart its development within the context of production, marketing and the company itself, and create a development budget that will enable the company to reach its goals.

Operations & Management Plan

The operations and management plan is designed to describe just how the business functions on a continuing basis. The operations plan will highlight the logistics of the organization such as the various responsibilities of the management team, the tasks assigned to each division within the company, and capital and expense requirements related to the operations of the business.

Financial Factors

Financial data is always at the back of the business plan, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less important than up-front material such as the business concept and the management team.

Advice for Finding a Great Idea

Hero Images / Getty Images

• Ph.D., Biomedical Sciences, University of Tennessee at Knoxville
• B.A., Physics and Mathematics, Hastings College

Great science fair projects don’t need to be expensive or difficult. Even so, science fair projects can be very stressful and frustrating for students, parents, and teachers! Here are some tips for coming up with science fair project ideas, deciding how to turn an idea into a clever project, performing the science fair project, writing a meaningful report about it, and presenting a great-looking, sturdy display.

The key to getting the most out of your science fair project is to start working on it as soon as possible! If you wait until the last minute you will feel rushed, which leads to feelings of frustration and anxiety, which makes good science harder than it needs to be. These steps for developing a science project work, even if you procrastinate until the last possible minute, but your experience won’t be as much fun!

Science Fair Project Ideas

Some people are brimming with great science project ideas. If you are one of those lucky students, feel free to skip to the next section. If, on the other hand, the brainstorming part of the project is your first hurdle, read on! Coming up with ideas isn’t a matter of brilliance. It’s a matter of practice! Don’t try to come up with only one idea and make it work. Come up with lots of ideas.

First: think about what interests you. If your science project is restricted to a subject, then think about your interests within those limits. This is a chemistry site, so I’ll use chemistry as an example. Chemistry is a huge, broad category. Are you interested in foods? properties of materials? toxins? drugs? chemical reactions? salt? tasting colas? Go through everything you can think of that relates to your broad topic and write down anything that sounds interesting to you. Don’t be timid. Give yourself a brainstorming time limit (like 15 minutes), enlist the help of friends, and don’t stop thinking or writing until the time is up. If you can’t think of anything that interests you about your subject (hey, some classes are required, but not everyone’s cup of tea, right?), then force yourself to think up and write down every topic under that subject until your time is up. Write down broad topics, write down specific topics. Write anything that comes to mind – have fun!

See, there are LOTS of ideas! If you were desperate, you had to resort to ideas on websites or in your textbook, but you should have some ideas for projects. Now, you need to narrow them down and refine your idea into a workable project. Science is based on the scientific method, which means you need to come up with a testable hypothesis for a good project. Basically, you need to find a question about your topic that you can test to find an answer. Look over your idea list (don’t be afraid to add to it at any time or cross off items that you don’t like. it’s your list, after all) and write down questions that you can ask and can test. There are some questions you can’t answer because you don’t have the time or the materials or the permission to test. With respect to time, think of a question that can be tested over a fairly short time span. Avoid panic and don’t try to answer questions that take most of the time you have for the entire project.

An example of a question that can be answered quickly: Can cats be right or left pawed? It’s a simple yes or no question. You can get preliminary data (assuming you have a cat and a toy or treats) in a matter of seconds, and then determine how you will construct a more formal experiment. (My data indicates yes, a cat can have a paw preference. My cat is left-pawed, just in case you are wondering.) This example illustrates a couple of points. First, yes/no, positive/negative, more/less/same, quantitative questions are easier to test/answer than value, judgement, or qualitative questions. Second, a simple test is better than a complicated test. If you can, plan to test one simple question. If you combine variables (Like determining whether paw use varies between males and females or according to age), you will make your project infinitely more difficult.

Here’s a first chemistry question: What concentration of salt (NaCl) needs to be in water before you can taste it? If you have a calculator, measuring utensils, water, salt, tongue, pen, and paper, you’re set! Then you can proceed to the next section on experimental design.

Still stumped? Take a break and go back to the brainstorming section later. If you are having a mental block, you need to relax in order to overcome it. Do something that relaxes you, whatever that may be. Play a game, take a bath, go shopping, exercise, meditate, do housework. as long as you get your mind off of the subject for a bit. Come back to it later. Enlist help from family and friends. Repeat as necessary and then continue to the next step.

Eric Ravenscraft

Few things are harder than coming up with a good idea when all you have is a blank page. If you can’t come up with a good idea, try brainstorming a bad one to get your creative juices flowing.

Sometimes you just can’t force a good idea to pop into your head. Doing something is better than doing nothing, however. If you’re at a loss for good ideas, try coming up with a bad one. Brainstorm it to the worst of your abilities. Trying to intentionally make something wrong can help you start to figure out the right way to do things. As UX designer Jerry Cao explains:

For starters, you’re exercising your design muscles a lot more than just staring at a blank screen: designing badly is better than not designing at all. On a deeper level, designing a purposefully bad mockup forces you to think critically on the same topics, but from a different perspective. If you can figure out the worst place to stick a call-to-action, for example, that will shed some light on the best place. This kind of productive distraction allows you to think about solutions without actually thinking about them.

Of course, you don’t have to present your bad ideas as good ones. It’s simply an exercise to get you thinking. Thinking critically about a bad idea naturally leads to ideas on how to improve, so the more you can get your brain moving — even if it’s in a wrong direction — the better the overall project can be.

As a very new researcher who is exploring the best way to generate ideas, some guidance on this question would be very helpful. I have found that this is NOT easy. Ideas seem to pop out of my Professor every day and I wonder how he does it. This question is broad;

How do you tend to come up with initial/seed ideas? What is your search method (if you have one)?

What proportion of your ideas for past papers come from; (i) colleagues, (ii) intentionally browsing the literature for ideas, (iii) on the spot inspiration, (iv) conferences, (v) other?

How do you prioritize research ideas?

Is there any special, generalizable method that you’ve discovered to sift out those ideas that are likely to be unrealistic early on in the process of idea generation?

Based on small amounts of anecdotal evidence I have reason to believe that there is vast heterogeneity among professors regarding the above questions. For example, economist Steven Levitt says he works on 22 papers at once. A professor I know will have maybe 25% of this at any one time.

9 Answers 9

Okay, as you say, this is very broad, and possibly argumentative. So, I’ll try to section off my answer for your various sub-questions, and talk not so much about how I do come up (and organize) research ideas, but how I see it done by everyone (including me).

Coming up with ideas

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but rather, “hmm. that’s funny. ” — Isaac Asimov

It’s probably very akin to asking a large number of artists “how do you come up with inspiration?”, i.e. you can probably get one thousand different answers, and yet not useful answer at the same time. However, there are some elements that I think are common to all. You can’t “trigger” new ideas to come into your mind, but you can put your mind into the right disposition to host these new ideas: recognize them and welcome them. Below is a list, certainly partial and limited, trying to detail my perspective in this matter:

Be challenged! Nothing sparks ideas more than being confronted with contradiction, healthy criticism, a spirited debate, maybe a bit of competition. Some people manage to do that by themselves, arguing against their ideas and improving them. I myself (and most of the colleagues and students I have seen) need an echo chamber, someone to discuss things with. If they’re not exactly from your field, all the better, as they may have unusual/naïve/silly questions or expectations.

To give an example, some of the most “successful” ideas I have had came while answering questions, for example from a PhD student or colleague, and replying by “no, it doesn’t work like that… in fact, it’s probably always guaranteed to be false, because… see, it’s linked to X… or maybe it’s not? hum…”

Be curious! Ideas come from problems. Identifying worthy problems in your field of research, and dissecting larger issues into of specific problems of manageable scope, is at least as hard as coming up with new ideas. In the end my feeling is that, especially for a researcher, all ideas are the result of one’s curiosity.

Manage to get some free time for thinking (and not: teaching, supervising, tutoring, reviewing, writing, sleeping, …). Body and mind. Sure, an idea can pop into your head any time, but it’s probably less likely to happen when you teach basic calculus all day that when you get some time to really think.

Know your field, know where a new development need to occur, what is currently missing. Read review papers, search for such ideas through people’s articles or blog posts, discuss with senior colleagues who have a comprehensive view of the field, …

One of the ways you can come with ideas is by analyzing how different groups work in your fields, seeing what has been addressed and avoided, what big questions are still open, and how you can link between different works to build a coherent global picture… This is not always successful, but it usually generates some good ideas along the way!

Explore more or less closely related fields, and see if there is something from your background that you could apply to their problems, or ways you could build something together. Such ideas tend to be very strong, because you can oftentimes apply an entire branch of knowledge (ideas, methods, algorithms, etc.) to a very different problem. In that case, the added value comes from your different perspective, as you might try things that others would not think of.

Ways have been devised to come up with new ideas on a given topic, either alone or in group sessions. Brainstorming is probably the best know such method (and might be the most popular, in one form or another), but a really large number of creativity techniques have been developed. They can be applied both to enhance creativity or to boost problem solving efficiency.

Organizing ideas

A quote often attributed to Kant: “someone’s intelligence can be measured by the quantity of uncertainties that he can bear”. If that true, that has serious consequences for research. Accepting that your mind can only efficiently support a finite number of ongoing research ideas, you have to come up with ways to write them down, organize them, prioritize them, come back to them later, etc. Just as you cannot juggle with as many balls as you’d like, such “external” tools will help your brain focus on the ones that you assign high priority (or the ones to which it gives high priority; the brain works in funny ways).

Most people use very low-tech tools for that:

Notebooks, either sorted chronologically or thematically; in the later case, open a series of blanks pages for each new project/idea, and flip through the book whenever you want to check on them. I use a Moleskine (WP) for that purpose; having a nice, leather-bound notebook somehow helps me “value” it more and treat it with care (always have it with me, actually use it).

Post-it’s scattered through one’s (real or virtual) desktop. Downsides are obvious.

More people than I thought actually don’t use any tools, and just keep all in their mind. Apparently it can be done, but I don’t advise it.

But more complicated methodologies have been devised, that are supposed to help you with it:

• Mind mapping, either on paper or software-based.
• Using todo-list flat or two-dimensional todo-list software, or more complex task-tracking software (see, e.g. Trello).
• The software side of this question is already covered (though possibly not extensively) here on this very Q&A site.

Finally, don’t underestimate the possibilities opened by delegating: people in charge of a specific project or sub-project (PhD students or post-docs) can be tasked with maintaining a list of ideas by all contributors of the project, to come to later on.

Answers to your miscellaneous smaller questions:

What proportion of your ideas for past papers come from; (i) colleagues, (ii) intentionally browsing the literature for ideas, (iii) on the spot inspiration, (iv) conferences, (v) other?

Most ideas are hardly “traceable” to one source or another. A given idea might have formed in my head during a conference, seeing how people were failing to address a certain issue, then crystallized during a discussion with colleagues, but would never have occurred to me if not for a literature review I had performed a few months before.

I’ll come back a bit later and continue working on this answer 🙂