What new things should a growth-hungry economy be doing about coming up with valuable new ideas?
I’m just asking…
- what can or should we be doing to make the uptake of ideation activities intensify?
- how do we make the practice of ideation more productive for society?
- are some people better at ideation than others?
- can anyone or everyone be made better at ideation?
- are some people ‘natural ideators’?
- are there different types of ideation?
- is the possession of ‘natural ideation’ something connected to Asperger syndrome?
- are there things which suppress ideation?
- are organisations which have trouble innovating ‘ideationally challenged’?
- do the mental processes associated with ideation permeate other kinds of behaviour?
- do societies mostly tend to discount ideation as being ‘daydreaming’ or ‘frivolity’?
- have neuroscientists ever tracked ideation as a brain activity?
- do other animals ideate?
- do ideational capabilities change during a lifetime?
- what happens when we can’t stop ideating?
- are there such a things as ‘ideational demographics’?
- are there cultural attitudes to ideation?
- can ideation go wrong?
- is ideation an employee recruitment issue?
- are some social groups more likely to encourage ideation than others?
- is the Internet making ideation more socially attractive?
- are good ideators generally stigmatised as nerds?
- before modern science and technology, wasn’t ideation just what poets, artists and philosophers did?
- do today’s digital lifestyles make ideation easier or harder?
- is the study of ideation a special field within the general topic of creativity, or are the two indistinguishable?
- can you be an amazing ideator and never know it?
- is it still ideation if we do it, but dismiss it as an aberration?
- is it better when it’s subliminal and stays that way?
- when we do it in a systematic way, do we do it less effectively?
- if dreaming (but not daydreaming) is the most natural ideation, how do we capture our dreams?
Here’s a a brief animated talk by someone who wrote a book which asked (and tried to answer) questions about a few of the issues above:
This is an interview with someone who introduced me to the term ideation:
This video has an absolutely awesome ‘ideational feel’ to it:
For me, this one raises the question: ‘are there different kinds of ideation’?