Part II: What Makes an Idea Good?

While discussing topics for the blog recently, one of us asked the question: "What makes an idea good?". We thought we'd throw this out to a few Kindling employees and friends and see what where people take it. The responses will be posted here all week as a part of this series.

The most interesting part of most Kindling product conversations is often the discussion around idea moderation, specifically how decision-makers of an organization can find the best ideas. This, of course, touches on the question of the day: what makes an idea good? Kindling features a voting system, and other competing products feature similar schemes for trying to identify the best ideas, but does popularity inherently mean best? How wise are the crowds, anyway? My view, which is reflected in Kindling, is that once decision-makers of an organization start contemplating action on an idea, the question of context becomes front and center. The popularity of an idea is one important aspect, but the organization’s situation, timing, context and fitness are equally or more important. So in the context of organizational idea management and the search for actionable ideas, good ideas are those that have the best fitness for the organization’s situation.

Context Is Everything.

You better believe his ideas are fit

What do I mean by fitness? In these conversations, I often tell a story based on a metaphor with biological evolution in order to describe fitness and how it’s relevant to idea selection. In an evolutionary system, change is introduced through a gene mutation. The random mutation then affects the individual organism in some way. If you were to then observe this mutation in isolation it would be difficult, and quite often impossible, to determine whether it was good or bad. Only in conjunction with the environment can the change be subjectively valued. This is fitness. So if a baby squirrel has a random mutation making its fur much darker than other related squirrels, only by considering its environment can the fitness of that change be judged. Maybe the dark color will make it more visible to predators. Or maybe the color change will make it more efficient at regulating its body heat or have an effect on its metabolism. Roll all of this up, throw some random luck in the pot, and that squirrel may have more or less offspring than average, and thus the evolutionary race is on.

One very large step for Arc90

An idea is much like a mutation. In the context of an organization, with finite resources and time, the goodness of an idea is a function of its fitness for its environment. Take this example – Arc90, our web design consultancy, is comprised of about 35 innovative technologists. We’re a small private firm based in New York City with lots of experience designing and building web applications, but have exactly no experience with manned space flight. So imagine one of us has an idea to build a rocket and execute a manned mission to Mars. Is that a good idea for us? No, it’s a terrible idea for Arc90 – it would certainly drive us to bankruptcy in a matter of months. But consider that very same idea in the context of NASA or the Indian Space Research Organization – the same idea is now better because it’s a better fit for these environments.

Time May Change Me.

There’s another axis which can effect fitness: time. The squirrels’ mutation to darker fur might have been advantageous if it occurred last decade, when the average temperature was two degrees less than today. Or maybe 10000 years from now when its key predator’s vision is effected by some other change. Similarly, an idea within an organization might be not be a good fit today, but might be a great fit next year. Or in 10 years. One of the ideas percolating around Arc90 is to unify the often inaccessible Flash-ridden restaurant web sites into a single mobile-accessible standard. That’s not a great fit for us right now, as we’re really busy with our consulting work, Kindling and Readability. But it might be a perfect fit next spring. Or maybe someone else will solve it by then (please do!). So the same idea might be better at a different time – a time where the organization’s constraints, resources and timing are more favorable for this idea.

Lightening Occasionally Strikes.

Here’s another interesting thing about mutations – most turn out to be bad. This fact evokes the famous Richard Dawkins quote, “however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive.” For if life found its way successfully to the present, chances are that a random mutation will be harmful to its ongoing chances. Change is generally bad; stasis is preferred.

Every once in a while...

But occasionally something magical happens, and a mutation is helpful. Every once in a while, the giraffe baby’s neck is longer or the bat’s ability to distinguish its own frequency is improved. For whatever source you want to attribute that, it’s truly wonderful and magical. If you do believe in God, this is a great place in which to find Him. Another great place to find Him is in the those moments where an idea mutates in the mind. Great ideas, those truly inspired moments that strike the person in the right position at the right time, are magic. They’re also rare. I’d venture a guess that they rival positive random mutations in a biological evolutionary system in their inherent rareness. It’s amazing that either ever occur at all, but we should all be thankful that they both do.

So back to my demos, people often appreciate this metaphor – as they recognize that their organization has constraints. There’s a limited amount of resource for bringing new products to market or forming teams to explore a new process or implementing a customer service initiative. There will be plenty of good ideas and lots of popular ideas and then there will be those that are hand-in-glove with the organization’s goals. Those fit ideas are those decision-makers and management should be after, as those are the ideas that stand the best chance of being turned into action. For the best ideas are those that become real.

The giraffe’s neck and that iPhone you hold in your hand – perhaps they are more related than you ever imagined.