Kevin Kaiser

My neighbor, Dane Carder, is a wonderfully talented artist and photographer. This evening, while our daughters played on the swing set, we talked about where ideas come from. It’s a simple question and everyone wants to know the answer. Hands down it’s the most frequently asked question I receive from readers, specifically about Ted Dekker.

Our conclusion was this: ideas are like viruses. If you’ve learned anything about viruses in school you know they are an important natural means of transferring genes between different species, which increases genetic diversity. They are everywhere. Some drift on the wind while others are carried by hosts from place to place where they come in contact with others. Some die off; some collide with other viruses and mutate into something new. On a rare occasion, when conditions are right and a genetic fluke takes place, a super-virus might result. An anomaly, the biological equivalent of lightning striking in the same place twice…when there isn’t a cloud in the sky. Continue Reading…

The only way to have great ideas is to have a lot of ideas. There’s no shortcut and no trap door.

Our culture, which is addicted to “Just Add Water and Stir” success will tell you otherwise, what with the proliferation of blogs focused on this week’s “5 Ways to _______ (whatever)”. Most of them are, at best, common sense wrapped in a shiny cover or regurgitated posts from somewhere else. Somewhere along the line, Tweeting them out gave them more authority. Not sure how that happened.

Either way, it all comes back to the math of ideas, which is governed by the rule above: The only way to have great ideas is to have a lot of ideas.

60% of your ideas will be downright lousy. You’ll love most of them and cry when they die.

35% will be mediocre to decent, but will lack true greatness.

4% will be good ideas with potential…but will never go anywhere.

1% will be great. And, chances are, you will have to go through 100 ideas to get to the one.

Here’s the good news, though: The fact that you have to go through a lot of ideas to get to a great one totally takes the pressure off. So, most of your ideas won’t go anywhere. Big deal. The chances are pretty good, though, that the ideation process will uncover ways of seeing the world or whatever problem you’re trying to solve in a new light. And that’s worth it, so go start a Cat 5 brain hurricane.