Your New Idea is a Collaboration.

Today’s smartphones didn’t just appear on the market and radically changed the world. Several instrumental developments had to happen prior. Actually, nothing just happens on its own. There is always a sequence of events before what is perceived as the major event. Whether it’s technology, medical advancement, music, story, or film, they are all influenced by prior events.

In the case of smartphones, their actual beginnings could be identified with pager technology, “beepers.” during the 80s, pagers were at the height of their popularity. This awoke a market need for remote access to an individual. Even though they could only receive and display a small alphanumeric message, it was enough to get the ball rolling.

The next prominent event was the introduction of cellular communication technology to the mass market. The concept of communicating bidirectionally with an individual rather than a location (home or office) was a game changer. Now, you could reach out and touch someone wherever they were without having to leave a message on an answering machine in hopes you’d get a callback.

Compared to today’s cell phones, those initial cell phones were primitive. Even with their limited functionality, it opened the door to a multibillion-dollar industry, person-to-person communications. The ability to communicate directly to an individual anywhere from anywhere became the accepted way of life. Cellular communication went from gimmick to necessity in the blink of an eye.

The next contributor to the smart phones’ personal communication revolution came from two other tech evolutions, “the personal computer” and “the internet.”. Those technologies allowed users to compose and digitally transmit written commutations, “email.”

Added to those evolutionary advances came digital music, cameras, and video. Suddenly, the world was available on a thumb drive.

A smart guy at Apple (Steve Jobs) saw the commercial NEED to blend all those technological evolutions into one device. On January 9, 2007, the iPhone was introduced to the world. Apple has since been identified as inventing the smartphone (actually, an IBM engineer, Frank Canova, built the first smartphone prototype). Apple should be recognized as being the first company to combine several existing products into one package.

The point of my smartphone evolution story is when you scratch the surface of any single idea, you will find a long list of ideas and concepts that preceded that single idea. As I said earlier, this holds true for technology, a story, a song, or a scientific breakthrough. All of us are influenced or enlightened by the world around us. Each new idea is usually built on the ideas of others.

The uniqueness comes when you identify a NEED and then look around to find a new solution that can be applied to that NEED. Apple did not invent all those technologies, but they did recognize that there was a NEED to combine them into one device.

Rock and Roll music wasn’t just pulled from the air. It was the blend of several musical influences that had evolved over time. Rock and Roll was born based on the NEED of teens looking for a generational identity. And if you think I’m going to jump into the battle of who was the first person to introduce this new musical style, you’re nuts!

I have lived long enough and spent time in several different industries, witnessing first-hand the repeated process of success arriving when a NEED is identified. Then, the solution is processed from blending existing ideas or products into a new single package.

As you scramble to be the first to market with a new idea, I’ve learned a couple of things you might want to consider along the way.

1. You must ensure that your solution isn’t more than ten percent new. If it is, you will spend more time explaining the WHY it’s important rather than the HOW it corrects an identified NEED or does something more manageable or quicker.

2. That the NEED and solution you identified are executable. How often have you heard people talk about their great idea, like a car running on perpetual motion, without a physics background? Or the guy in the 80s who thought he could take a “Hot Dot” guitar transducer, glue it to a drumhead, and trigger a synthesizer. WAIT! The guy was me, and it actually worked.

The points I’ve been dancing around are: 

• Dreaming up blue sky ideas, ideas with no limits, is awesome.
• Dreaming up ideas that correct a NEED better yet.
• Dreaming up an idea that corrects a NEED and you have the drive to develop the first-generation solution, perfect.
• Dreaming up an idea that corrects a NEED, you can develop the first-generation solution and bring it to market! You just hit the winning trifecta.

Remember, ideas don’t have to be a physical widget. New musical styles, painting styles, and even thoughts about ancient aliens’ podcasts are all new ideas that might fill a NEED.

Never stop dreaming up ideas, blue sky, or practical. Keep a list of those ideas and date each idea. Refer to your list regularly, pick some you think you can develop, and give it a shot.

Referencing that list will open your mind to new and visionary opportunities that may fill a NEED.

UPDATE:

Since I get tons of comments on this particular blog, I thought I’d ignore them all and add some “meat to the bone”. (By the way, I have no idea how that’s possible or why that became a phrase, “meat to the bone”.) Continuing with that bizarre phrase, here’s some “meat”, do with it as you like.

In the original blog, I identified for you how ideas are a collaborative/evolving process.  What I didn’t share was the practical approach I take to saving “new” ideas, concepts, improvements, and then evolving them

Here it is, Joe’s approach to “Creative Evolution”.

Keep a notebook!

I don’t care if it’s digital or an old-school notebook, like the ones detectives used in the 1950s Private Eye movies. The important thing is you have a physical place to capture and keep those fleeting thoughts.

In this notebook, you need to write down ideas, observations (big or small), or maybe a curiosity as it drops into your thoughts. Maybe it’s something like, “How would life be different if we had three arms?”

Write that in your notebook, had three arms. Now you can just leave it and carry on with your life. OR maybe you feel like kicking that idea down the road a little.

1. What cool things could you do with the extra hand?
   1. I’d use it to riff on my harp (harmonica) while playing guitar. (I hate those metal harness people strap on their neck to hold a harp; they suck for really blowing.)
2. While you drift off on that idea, maybe you start thinking of a better way to hold a harp, and you start thinking about a new mechanical gadget you could build.
3. Maybe a few months later, a friend says while building a stage out of wood, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I had a third hand to hand me nails while I hold the board and my hammer?”
   1. BAM, pull out your notebook. Find the page with the third-hand idea and add this to it.

Never force an idea or clever thought. When it’s time, it will come. Maybe not fully formed (it usually isn’t), but when it tickles your soul. WRITE IT DOWN.

These ideas are like dreams. You wake up thinking about how awesome it was, and by the time you leave the bathroom, it’s gone without a trace. Same with these ideas/thoughts.

How about a new business idea? Don’t go crazy trying to work out the details or why you can’t do it.

Just WRITE IT DOWN.

If you’ve ever seen a songwriter’s notebook, it’s filled with random phrases or just words scribbled on pages with no “rhyme” or reason. Songwriters often refer to these pages for inspiration when writing a new song or collaborating with another songwriter. It’s pretty funny to watch two songwriters or even scriptwriters collaborating, frantically flipping through their notebooks looking for that one idea or phrase that will fit perfectly.

The same would hold true for a tinker’s/inventor’s notebook. Flipping through the pages, you’d see random ideas scribbled down in no particular order. You’d also find raw sketches or drawings with notes or numbers written all over the image. It’s their Evolution Idea vault.

How do I know this?

Because it’s exactly what I have been doing for years. I didn’t start out keeping notes because I was smart. Quit the opposite. I did it, and still do, because I get distracted easily, and the ideas would run from me like a scared rabbit being chased by my dogs.

I always knew these ideas would be important somehow at some point down the road, and trying to recall them when I needed them was and is impossible.

So, I began writing them down as they came to me. At first, it was on any scrap of paper I could find. Those scrapes were then thrown into a shoebox. (yup, a real shoe box) As you’d guess, scraps of paper get misplaced like the original idea.

That led to the moment when an artist/sculptor friend and I were walking in the city. Suddenly, she pulled out a small notebook, jotted something down, and never said a word. This happened a few times until I finally asked what was going on. She showed me her notebook filled with pages of sketches and notes.

I told her how frustrated I’d get when one of my musician friends would mention, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you had this thing in the studio that could… ” or “I wish I when I was on stage there was…”

The moment I heard them make those statements, my mind would start thinking how that could be done… those thoughts would then drift into an “Idea Evolution,” and some crazy new idea would be forming. The problem was that I’d inevitably get distracted, and the “idea evolution” was gone forever.

She explained that when she is inspired by something she sees or hears, or a random thought pops in her head, she writes it in her notebook.

BAM…. NOTEBOOK!!!

BAM…. WRITE IT DOWN!!!