Daryl Zamora

All problems are idea problems. And the way to solve them is to flood them with ideas first.

That is how Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn frame their book, Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters (2022). Both Stanford design school professors, they argue that innovation begins with a habit of creating as many ideas as possible. 

This is tough advice. I tried their instruction of coming up with 10 distinct ideas upon waking up — to solve a problem that I had slept on. Limiting myself to two minutes to do this, at first the timer already rang while I was still on idea number 5.

Ideating is hard — especially under time pressure. Apparently, coming up with ideas is a muscle. It needs exercise to get stronger.

Here are other key takeaways I got from the book:

Test your ideas. You are not your product’s end-user. We might be the technical experts, but we aren’t the ones who’ll ultimately use the product or service we’re offering. It’s always sound advice to ask actual users to test our products first, observe them, and get their honest feedback. Never roll out anything without a proper test.

Give ideas the space to appear in your mind. Decompress. Defragment. Rest. If you feel like you’re not generating any more ideas, then a break is probably overdue. Taking your mind off the problem allows your subconscious to connect the dots in the shower, at a cafe, in your walk at the park, or upon waking from a half-hour nap.

Create psychological safety for your team. Creativity thrives only in places where reasonable risk-taking is welcome, where failures are considered stepping-stones to success. Encourage experimentation. Find lessons in failures. Then reward success.