What are ideas, Exactly??

I was really glad to see some responses on my previous post, “How to get great IDEAS??” It was great, guys. Thank you! I was hoping for something more interactive, so do keep the comments and thoughts coming in for this one too.

So… what are ideas, really?

Jim Rohn once said, “Ideas can be life-changing.” And I believe that’s absolutely true.

To me, ideas are new connections between things we already know, forming something we didn’t see before. That might sound a little abstract, so let me put it in a simpler way. It’s that sudden flash of light that lets you see something from a completely new angle.

Every idea is, in a sense, a new discovery.

George Bernard Shaw explained this beautifully. He said that if you have an apple and I have an apple, and we exchange them, we each still end up with one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange them, then each of us walks away with two ideas.

Sounds a little mind boggling? Let’s make it even simpler.

Imagine you have yellow paint and I have blue paint. If we each share a little and mix them, what happens? You now have yellow and green. I have blue and green. We both gained something new.

That’s the beauty of ideas.

This is why when two people exchange ideas, both walk away richer.

As Leo Burnett once said, “The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures but putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.”

Advertising ideas work the same way. They bring together words, images, and sounds in fresh combinations that excite, entertain, and connect with people.

So how do we come up with great ideas?

I think you’re starting to get the gist of it now. :)