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writingAsk about failure
• If you failed completely or partially, what would happen?
• Are the risks and possible losses acceptable? Can they be avoided or reduced?
• If you fail, what can you salvage?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of starting over?
Ask about success
• What criteria will you use to determine success?
• Who is essential to the outcome?
• What place, location or thing is necessary?
• What action, process, activity or event must occur?
• What can you do to make your idea even better?
Ask about the future
• Will you idea become obsolete because of evolving technologies? When may this occur?
• If your idea is a product or service, what effect will it have on people’s quality of life? Physical or mental health? Safety? Standards of living?
• If the idea catches on suddenly, can you keep up with demand?
• How might changes in these circumstances affect your idea: overseas competition, change of management, cost of materials, availability of materials?
Ask personal questions
• If it were your money, what would you do?
• How strong is your commitment to the project?
• Should you challenge any of your assumptions?
• What do you assume are the givens?
• What facts should you question?
• What are you taking for granted?
Ask about your mission
• Do you know exactly where this idea fits into the big picture?
• Does it promote your mission?
• Have you been looking at this idea from all points of view or just your own?
Ask about timing
• Is the idea timely?
• Is it too early, too much ahead of its time?
Charles Thompson, “What a Great Idea! Key Steps Creative People Take”
“The basic idea was to solicit thousands of predictions from hundreds of experts about the fates of dozens of countries, and then score the predictions for accuracy. We find that the media not only fail to weed out bad ideas, but that they often favor bad ideas, especially when the truth is too messy to be packaged neatly.”
Philip E. Tetlock, “Expert Political Judgment: How Good is It? How Can We Know?”
1. When the idea is attacked by enough people.
2. When the idea fails to instill enthusiasm or passion.
3. When trying out the idea will prove expensive while there are other priorities demanding funds.
4. When there is too much of a risk attached to the idea.
5. When someone senior to champion the idea is absent.
6. When the idea does not seem feasible at the initial stage.
7. When there are people opposing the idea who have ego problems with those promoting the idea.
8. When the idea is deemed similar to or the same as an old idea or something that is already being done.
9. When circumstances change or strategy is switched to lessen the value of the idea.
10. When an idea fails after being tried out for the first time.
Edward de Bono, Management-issues.com
Several approaches have been attempted to fight ideas.
1. Deprive them of hosts and transmission vectors, by quarantining people that have contracted them, e.g. as McCarthyism attempted. Or worse, what Stalin did with purges etc.
2. Refute them openly, logically, rationally. This tends to work in science, mathematics, and philosophy. It also works to dispell children of simple mythological constructs such as Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. More complex mythological constructs have for the most part evolved immunity to reason and logic. This doesn’t mean you should stop trying (hat tip: Mike Linksvayer).
3. Replace them by developing better idea(s) which outpropagate, overwhelm, and ideally displace the idea(s) you are fighting. This is how science could defeat widespread superstition. How freedom has a chance at defeating fascism. How hope can defeat fear. How love can defeat suicidal hate.