You’ll be more creative: it’s the law.
People often think there’s a lot of mystery around creativity. Great ideas only happen when the stars are in alignment. There are only so many truly great ideas. Only the chosen few are creative. Bunk. Bunk. And bunk.
There are a chosen few, all right. And I think they are the ones perpetuating these myths.
There is a great deal of method to the madness in the world of creativity. Oh, it will never be entirely exact. I mean, we are talking about the human imagination here, right? But there are some parts of the creative process that are actually very exact - quantifiable even.
One of those things is the law of large numbers, or simply put; more is more.
“You mean if I come up with more ideas I’ll have more ideas?”
Exactly.
“Will they all be great ideas?”
If you’re the kind of person who usually comes up with 5 or 6 ideas when addressing a creative challenge, try coming up with 9 or 10 ideas. That’s between 50% and 100% more ideas. Now the law of probability says you have a better chance of having a better idea.
Could the first one be the best? Sure. But how do you know?
By considering more ideas, you give yourself a chance to top the first one. And the more ideas you come up with, the greater the chances. On average, that is. Which doesn’t mean there are any guarantees here, just probabilities, which I’ll take any day.
The greatest thinkers since the beginning of time have been prolific thinkers, usually not one hit wonders. When Linus Pauling, considered the leading chemist of the 20th century, received his second Nobel prize he was asked his secret to coming up with great ideas. His answer: “I come up with many ideas.” Implying, they’re not all great.
One could say Pauling applied the law of large numbers to his career focus, at various times specializing in organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, metallurgy, immunology, anesthesiology, psychology, debate, radioactive decay, quantum mechanics and molecular biology. Gee, with that strategy you could screw up on five whole careers and still be highly successful.
That’s another thing about using the law of large numbers when coming up with lots of ideas, it’s very forgiving. Come up with 20 ideas and you can fail 19 times but still win.
We see the law of large numbers in many high achieving people. Annie Leibovitz shoots miles of film. Michael Jordan took more shots than anyone else in professional basketball during his time. The Beatles wrote hundreds of songs.
“So, Monahan,” you’re thinking, “you’re implying that this mathematical principle is why certain people achieved so much.” Well, I could bore you with some correlations, i.e. almost all great writers published many books, whereas a predominant proportion of the lousy writes never got more than one book published. Or if you want a specific example - how successful might The Beatles have been if they’d only recorded “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da?”
When leading brainstorming sessions for business people my creative thinking coaches and I always use the law of large numbers. It’s routine for us to have groups of 30 people come up with 1,000 ideas in a three hour session, often many more (the record for one of our sessions is 3500 ideas for a consumer product improvement brainstorm).
Are all of the ideas great? You’re kidding, right? Do they all need to be great? No. But they all contribute to the law of large numbers and the probability that we’ll find a good many truly great ideas.
Now, I’ll never say coming up with great ideas is easy this way. I guess it may be more work for some people. I will say that looking for the perfect single idea isn’t easy either, because you’re aiming for perfection, which can be quite difficult and very elusive, and when you’re done, you have only the one idea.
I believe it’s no harder, and when it’s just part of your creative process, it may be even easier to consider lots of ideas - rapid faire, no judgment, no fear - then let the law of large numbers do it’s thing. You’ll have more possibilities to choose from, more variety and greater conviction when it comes time to sell the top idea, because you have considered so many options.
I’m practicing the law of large numbers as you read this. Because if this blog entry really sucks, hey, I got another 20 post ideas in the oven.
© 2007 Tom Monahan, Before & After, Inc.
Creative thinking in business.
