Ideate

Formula for a truly original idea?

by Fred on 17/09/06 at 10:29 pm
5 comments

Is there such a thing as a truly original idea? We, as small business people, spend a lot of time trying to be different, remarkable, better, ‘No 1 in our segment’ or just plain old original. The payoff comes in hearing the words ‘Geez, I wish I had thought of that!’ If someone says that about your idea, you know you’re in the money. So how do we achieve this, the Holy Grail of business?

Cast your mind to Pablo Picasso, often regarded as the most original artist to have ever lived. Was he truly original though? Look at his breakthrough piece Demoiselles D’Avignon. Picasso merely reproduced some masks he had lying around in his studio. He combined the African influence with some techniques he observed from studying Eastern etchings, and produced what Gertrude Stein called ‘a veritable cataclysm’. African art + Eastern art = the birth of modern painting; or Old Idea + Old Idea = New Idea.

Check out the new flip flops from Reef. Look at the bottom of the shoe, it has a bottle-opener on it. These have become, in a short space of time, their top selling flip-flop. An original idea, yet all it took was combining two old ideas.

I wish I had thought of that.

Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. He runs a web marketing company called World Wide Creative and loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. View more articles by Fred.

Tags: business idea

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