Isaac Asimov Asks, “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (1959) | Hacker News Reader

Isaac Asimov Asks, “How Do People Get New Ideas?” (1959)

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I used to work at IBM, which used to have "Think Fridays"- you were supposed to use Friday afternoons for creative purposes.

Patents at IBM are very easy to submit and the process is somewhat like a game: basically you fill out a web form with the idea, which triggers a process to vet the idea and eventually get the patent written and filed if it's good. You get a small bonus for each accepted patent (and another after filing I think). You get a larger bonus after your first patent and after every fourth patent (called a plateau). You get a nice plaque for each plateau.

I have eight patents from this system, but there are IBMers who use it to enhance their income and have 100s of patents (they have a large stack of plaques). They have the discipline to use every Think Friday to come up with and submit a new idea- maybe one out of three will make it all the way through and be filed. Some form brainstorming groups. They often pay attention to new technologies and get ideas from how they could be used as components. Many ideas come from the interaction of components. (Many of mine are from hardware/software interfaces).

IBM's is a sad example of how the patent process is abused (although I guess I should blame the game, not the players).

If said patents were filed and shelved for some time, they should hold no validity in court afterwards.

Edit: that said, it is interesting how they came up with said patentable ideas :) , and it does fit with what Asimov said about the intersection of components, and daring being encouraged (at IBM, take note!).

> If said patents were filed and shelved for some time, they should hold no validity in court afterwards.

That’s how it works right now. The “some time” is 20 years after the filing date.

Yes, you're right :) . I was thinking of a drastically shorter timeframe in case of non-enforced patents, and maybe to be determined by a judge or jury. Say a few years at most, or maybe varying according to the field (doesn't make the same sense for tech advancements to be accorded the same length of protection than medical ones, say.).

Still, much wiser heads have written lots about this :)

I don't think the law can differentiate between medical/technical/etc patents to that fine a degree.

> there are IBMers who use it to enhance their income and have 100s of patents

IBM should open up this game to the outside world, so other people (not just IBMers) can use it to make a buck, while IBM can benefit from a large stream of interesting new patents from a diverse audience.

I would consider to submit ideas there myself, because I usually don't have time anyway to implement them myself.

Depends on your point of view.

At a corporate employer, "Think Fridays" would be a logical name for a program which rewards employees who do the least creative thinking consistently 4 days a week.

Thanks for sharing this. I read this around when it came out, but giving it a second read has helped clarify some of my thinking.

Something I find helpful is to have sessions where the goal is to come up with the worst idea you can about a specific topic or problem. This can be for both fun or profit. The key benefit of this is really opening up the field for a free and open discussuion. When a friend and I did this recently (for fun, not profit) and asked ourselves what is the worst "uber for x" we could imagine, we came up with Stork: an app that matches children as they are born with optimal parents, exchanging newly-born babies if the naive approach, having your own kid, would be bad match based on measurable variables. This is an awful, awful idea. But is it the seed of something interesting in adoption, babysitting, matching children to the right school, helping small children who have difficulty making friends find them? Maybe.

I thing good ideas rarely become great ideas, whereas great ideas frequently have some seed of initially being horrible ideas contained within them, e.g. en app that lets you sleep in strangers' homes on air mattresses, sending dvds via usps in paper envelopes, etc.

Something else I frequently do is preface a wild idea with "This is a horrible idea, but: " which I find helps lead to an open discussion, without people feeling challenged, or overly seriously approaching a conversation that is meant to be open. It can help signal that you want their thoughts and comments, and aren't explicitly issuing a challenge, trying to have a debate, or making a statement you already believe to be true and they might feel obliged to disprove.

So I write humorous stories and design games in my spare time. While writing one story a couple of months ago I tried coming up with the most boring ideas for games I could think of to add to the story, because at that point having a few dumb games in the scene would be funny.

One of the three "bad ideas" I came up with was basically just putting numbered cards in order. But apparently my brain isn't content to just leave it at that, and it started whirring, and thought of a bidding system to add to it...and now it actually sounds interesting and I made some cards and some chips and I'm planning to playtest it with a couple of friends tonight.

Oops. It was supposed to be a terrible game, but it might actually turn out to be fun.

Sounds fun, would love to give it a try.

Playtest went extremely well. My friend is going to playtest one of his designs with a well-known designer in a few weeks and suggested I tag along. If he likes it, it might get published pretty quick. If not, I've got a meeting with a publisher in a few months, and I'll show it to them then.

I participated in a workshop where they made groups, and each group had to come up with a really, really awful idea (based on a topic, say restaurant experience), and then a different group had to put a positive spin on it and sell it :)

It was very fun trying to sell such awful stuff, and it did exercise creativity, which was the point :) .

>But how to persuade creative people to do so? First and foremost, there must be ease, relaxation, and a general sense of permissiveness. The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome. The individuals must, therefore, have the feeling that the others wont object.

Absolutely true. Brainstorming only works if anything goes.

I find that oddly similar to what John Cleese said about creativity on this speech:

https://vimeo.com/89936101 (Highly recommended, but it lasts more than 30 minutes.)

Truer Words were never spoken.

What particularly annoys is also that every idea must have a creation story, aka a logical explanation how it came to be in a logical,incremental, analytical step by step way. Even if it never was born this way.

I guess, "I stuffed strange stuff and books into my brain- and one sunny day my sub-conscious gave birth to this. It can invent a how-its-made-story too, if you need that." scares a lot of people, because the process cant be learned, not be controlled, not refined or quantified.

If it could be the ideas would have already been found.

Agreed. The process is spontaneous and natural. But it can be and usually is damaged, that is confined to smaller and smaller areas of one's life or worldview.

If you work at or are otherwise involved in a startup, here is your key takeaway: cross connections between fields is fundamental to creativity. If you eat, breathe, and sleep software, you will only look at your problem space from the perspective of a software engineer. Startups already nail pre-requisites like informality, permissiveness, and relaxation

It's not unknown for the ingestion of chemicals to "help" with this, especially on the 'making cross-connections' front.

It's also not unknown for the ingestion of certain "chemicals" to "ruin people's lives." Exercise extreme caution.

Also people tend to use certain substances to lower inhibitions, to generate an environment where creativity is allowed and enjoyed and stupid mistakes can be laughed off later -- if you say something dumb then tomorrow you can all laugh because it's not that you're dumb, it's the substance talking.

It felt like Asimov spent the whole essay just at the brink of suggesting they open bottles of wine at these sessions without quite saying it.

But you don't need much for this effect (even a placebo would likely do) and too much tends to be detrimental.

Certain deeply creative fields really lend themselves to this sort of 'help' be it from alcohol or the more mild drugs like marijuana or hallucinogens for whatever unexplained reason -- music, comedy, writing, art. It's not unheard of even in those fields which are a little more technical, though it's much less common, though there are some very vocal well-respected examples. Jobs and Sagan to name a few are really the poster children for this sort of 'enhanced-creativity'.

>My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required.

And it isn't too hard to imagine, in this age of perpetual connectivity and distractions and mandatory use of a mobile phone (by social pressure), creativity has dwindled to almost nothing...

Actually, ideas often comes up when you do not seek them, during sleep, while driving, while meditate (although meditation is meant to help us managing our brains and thoughts), etc...

I tend to create into my calendar all these spaces to allow me to think about new ideas and to always have a pen or an iPhone to note everything I think about!

Individuals and Groups create value, make sure you create your value from your side.

His suggestions at the end for how to structure such a thing are glaringly similar to DnD. This is maybe why DnD remains so popular yet small and intimate.

Could you please expand "DnD"? It is not obvious to me

Dungeons and Dragons

Love the article but disagree on a couple points. First, the ideal is two where both are creative as they work off each other. You can NOT do the creative part with non creative it is too hard. Tons of miss understandings. If they talk about the session they will explain wrong and cause a lot of angst in the group, division, company, etc. Or explain but not provide the reasons as they might not understand the bigger picture.

A huge issue is if the creative person is not the boss or have very strong Influence it is very difficult to get a non creative on board.

With that said I really enjoyed the article. Plus would not be surprised if others disagree with me based on their own experiences. Think parts could be very individual and dependent on external factors.

I think there is some responsibility on the part of the "non-creative" here. It's very important to communicate when you are challenging someone directly and believe something to be true vs. throwing around ideas for comments and to generate new ideas. When a key business decision is being made, points of disagreement are exactly that, something to be debated and decision to be made. For someone who is less creative, it's easy to see everything this way. For a creative trying to come up with ideas and have a discussion, communicating clearly and upfront the purpose of your thoughts can go a long way. "I think we should..." frames a conversation very differently than "Hey, this is is a little crazy, but what would happen if..."

Also, I don't think the world is cleanly split into "non-creative" and "creative", but completely accept this simplification for brevity here :)

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