What I Learned This Week: All Ideas Are Born Equal (Even the Stupid Ones)

Four wildly diverse concepts have serendipitously collided to provide the impetus for this week's learning:

• The publishing of an interview I did with McGill U prof Karl Moore
• Seven days of riding the lifts at Vail Mountain
• The frenzy of last week's CES innovation orgy
• The inspirational message of next week's Martin Luther King Day

It all began with a question from Moore in an interview about entrepreneurship we did a few weeks ago during McGill University's Homecoming Week (you can catch the whole thing on video by clicking here). He asked me:

"What's the difference between a good idea and a bad one?"

My immediate answer was flippant, but I think rather on-target: "Success."  It's the ultimate qualifier, the X-factor that separates the champs from the chumps, so to speak.

But as I elaborated, I actually learned something...from myself, ironically:

All Ideas Are Born Equal 

I explained that, in essence, all ideas start off the same, with equivalent merit.  They begin to travel a parallel path down the same road, but at one point, some ideas die while others continue to fly. Eventually, after numerous drop off points along the way, a lucky few ideas reach the pinnacle of success...and are thus deemed "Good," I suppose. 

The process of idea survival, from conceptulization to realization, is very Darwinian.  The real learning though, is that at birth, all ideas have an equal chance at success; at the point of conception, nobody truly knows the end result. (As I mentioned to Prof. Moore: "If I could accurately predict the future, I wouldn't work, I'd buy lottery tickets.")

To me, ideas are like children--at birth, there is no such thing as a "good kid" or a "bad kid."  Their eventual fate, and defining "labels," will be decided by time, nurturing, upbringing, hard work and a sprinkling of luck.

Which brings us to CES. 

The number of ideas borne from this annual techfest madhouse is somewhat overwhelming, and the consumer marketplace battlefield is littered with the silicon, plastic and metal corpses of well-intentioned concepts that have crashed and burned.  Some are stillborn inside the booths of the Las Vegas Convention Center; others die a very public and expensive death, taking careers, reputations and stock prices down with them.

However, nobody goes into CES with the feeling that "My idea sucks." Hope springs eternal for every company and their respective "babies," and everyone at CES believes that someday soon, their kid's gonna play in the big leagues.  Yet, in reality, when it comes to the hundreds of ideas that see life over a four-day span:

• Today's sure thing may be tomorrow's laughing stock (uh, speak to Microsoft about Vista...or to NBC about Jay Leno).
• Today's eye-rolling cause for ridicule may be tomorrow's industry-leading standard.

Which brings us to the hills of Vail.  Doing upwards of 10 marathon-like runs a day leaves you with a lot of contemplation time riding to the top of the mountain, and I spent much of it thinking about the high-speed detachable quad lifts that took me there. 

Before the advent of these lifts, which fly at an average 13.6 miles per hour, riders moved up the mountain on fixed cables at a speed of about 5.5 mph. In trying to solve the problem of moving more people faster in the late '70s, one Doppelmayr engineer had the guts, the vision, or the foolhardiness, to propose:

"Hey, why don't we speed up the cable to more than twice its speed, and then, at the top and bottom of the hill, simply remove the chairs, and then re-attach them?"

Just think of the reaction that humdinger of an idea must've brought. 

CRAZY!  FOOLISH!   DANGEROUS!  RIDICULOUS!

Yet it was the one idea that survived all subsequent drop-off points, as Wikipedia points out in a very comprehensive look at chairlifts: "They (detachable lifts) are now commonplace at all but the smallest of ski resorts."

REMEMBER:

All Ideas.

Born equal. 

Even the stupid ones.

Yup, some ideas are indeed stupid (which is why I can't stand brainstorming sessions that begin "There's no such thing as a stupid idea").  And I don't mind stupid ideas; as we've seen, they sometimes reach the success pinnacle while their seemingly "smart" brethren die on the vine.  It's the mertilessness of the uninspired idea that gets me down.

That said, here's an idea I had while riding the Doppelmayr towers: 

The precious commodity of every mountain resort is snow.  Yet after every snowfall, so much of the stuff never actually reaches the surface of the runs themselves.  Instead, it covers the trees that line the routes; picturesque, yes, but a valuable waste as the surface snow gets worn down and groomed.  So here's the idea:

Why not invent some sort of blowing device that can attach to a small helicopter or plane and puff the snow from the trees onto the runs?

Yes, it sounds nuts, but I'm sure that detaching and re-attaching chairs from a lift line did too the first time it was uttered.  Same goes for the idea of "guns" that "make" snow...which are also now standard at all ski resorts.  Save this post for 10 years and see what path this idea travels...

So, all this to say, we need to promote un-judged ideas. In exponential quantities.  Ideas are a numbers game--the more we generate, the greater the chance of multiple successes and breakthroughs.  As I told Prof. Moore (gee, I was glib that day) eventually, the hand of fate will either congratulate you with a pat on the butt or humble you with whack to the head.  

That's the separation process, the one that comes at the end.

But in the beginning--as expressed by Thomas Jefferson and used as a rallying cry for Martin Luther King--all ideas, like all men, are all born equal.

So here's a toast to baby boom of ideas.  Raise your glass, and think up.