Where Ideas
Actually Come From
A THUNDERBOLT OF
INSPIRATION? TRY AGAIN. ONE ENTREPRENEUR DESCRIBES THE LONG SLOG THAT LED TO
HIS BIG IDEA.
There’s a popular notion in tech
lore of the lone genius who's struck by a lightning bolt of inspiration and out
pops a brilliant product idea, fully formed and crystal clear. Sure, that might
happen sometimes, but it's never happened to me and quite frankly, in my
experience, it is not the best way to start a viable business. The concept for the Narrative Clip, a
wearable camera I developed, came from a highly structured, peer-reviewed
process that I hope can inspire other designers and entrepreneurs. Here’s what
that process looked like.
DON'T
KEEP YOUR IDEAS SECRET.
In the spring of 2011, I was
ramping down from my position as CEO of Twingly, a blog aggregator, and I was
looking to return to something more exploratory and unknown. I wanted to be
more creative in my everyday life, so I set out to find something new. Before I
started the process, I knew two things: that I wanted to make a consumer-facing
product, and that I was interested in more of a service model than a one-off
sale.
1. Relentless Brainstorming
I started off with a
brainstorming session. I locked myself in a room and just started throwing out
ideas. A lot of people have one or two ideas that they really like, and they
get stuck on them. But you have to move past them. The valuable part of this process
comes after about 40 ideas, when you’re completely drained. You think you’ve
got it all out, and at a certain point you become unrestricted by your biases,
and you start seeing things differently.
2. Guided Culling
The next day, you come back with
fresh eyes, you’re feeling better, and you’re ready to actually step back and
look at what’s there. A LOT of it was bad—there was an idea for a snow shovel
with your initials so you can brand your territory by smashing them when you're
done shoveling, and a weight loss video game where obesity is caused by evil
spirits. But there was also an idea for a TV channel that broadcasts live feeds
of video games like Twitch. After going through everything, I started loosely
grouping the ideas; there were ideas around crowdfunding, 3-D printing,
hardware, and data visualization. I then went through everything one-by-one
looking at each through different lenses. I took each idea and thought about
how it’d work in a consumer model vs. B2B, subscription vs. perpetual, and so
on.
3. Seeing What Sticks
After I narrowed down the list, I
immediately started talking to other people to get their opinions. I strongly
believe in not keeping your ideas secret. I think you need to pitch 100 people
before you can feel confident that you have a good idea, and you know how to
make other people excited about it. I relied heavily on people around me being
honest about what they thought.
4. Gut Check
When it came down to the idea
that would eventually become Narrative, I struggled. I really believed in the
product and what it could mean to people. I wanted to make a camera that could
be unobtrusive and capture what life was really like, as opposed to just
special occasions. At this point I had lost both of my parents, and when they
passed, a lot of memories were lost as well. The photographs that remained were
of moments that felt precious enough to document at the time, but nothing
in-between; the everyday stuff is gone.
I did a lot of research around
wearable cameras and looked at the work of Steve Mann at MIT and Gordon Bell’s
work at Microsoft, and concluded that the camera would have to be at least 2
inches by 2 inches. I honestly didn’t think it was technically possible to make
a camera that would be small enough to wear all the time. I was about to strike
if off the list when I discovered the Eye-Fi SD card and it completely blew my
mind. The Eye-Fi is the size of an SD card, but is a Wi-Fi transmitter as well
as a memory card. I concluded that if the Eye-Fi is possible, my camera would
be, as well.
Conclusion
The idea that eventually became
the Narrative Clip was not a gift from a muse, but more like the prize at the
end of a long boxing match. The idea had to distinguish itself from a large
crowd, survive multiple business model lenses, external criticism, and
technical feasibility battles. This process led to a product that I’m very
proud of, and now we’re about to launch the second generation product. The
precise steps might not work for everyone. But if you're sitting around waiting
for a thunderclap of inspiration, you could do worse than to lock yourself in a
room and start lobbing ideas at the wall.
BY Martin Källström
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3053694/where-ideas-actually-come-from?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-codesign&position=2&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=11192015
No comments:
Post a Comment