Invention ideas. You do not need them.

Crowds of people browse the Web looking for ready invention ideas.
But it is something like browsing urban streets to find a piece of gold. Even if you will find there a piece of something, it is very unlikely to be a gold. You understand this metaphor.

Well, and where is your gold? You have to mine it by yourself. Focus on idea generation rather than search. It gives you far more control over process. No matter if you do not consider yourself too creative person. Creativity is mining. If you is enough smart to dig ground with a spade, you can also dig multidimensional hyperspace of ideas with appropriate methodological tools. And you can find them here, in my blog.

First, stop looking around and take a look deep into yourself. Invention is a long, enduring process. Remember famous Edison phrase about genius consisting of 1% inspiration and 99% of sweat. No one want to sweat implementing others ideas. You definitely need your own inspiration to face all hurdles of innovation process. You can be an entrepreneur, an inventor, or an investor, it matters in every case.

Innovation is irrational. Mathematically it is a kind of gamble. There are factors under you control and factors out of you control. No matter, how rich you are with any kind of resource. Innovation can easily extract from you more than it will ever return. And, statistically, in most cases this is exactly so. It is safer and usually profitable to keep out from innovation. Every bureaucrat feels it. And his feeling does not lie.

Thus we have apparent criteria for selecting invention ideas: it should worth you effort even if it will not be profitable. You will have to devote substantial part of life, to sacrifice many other interests competing for your time and money. You need to be warranted this is not just a waste of resources. 

That is why you need your own idea. The beloved baby of your unique personality and intelligence, which deserves to be brought to life at (almost) any cost. Yes, you can easily generate tons of cool ideas (follow my blog!) , but you need a powerful irrational passion to put enough effort to born a viable invention.

The passion can have different roots. Somebody sees his only chance to change some bad personal situation. This is a wrong way, because in stress we tend to overestimate poor ideas.  Somebody wants to make the world better. It sounds (and feels) pathetic, but really rare ideas make it better. Most of ideas will be used by bureaucrats and capitalists to divide money and power and grab them from public. Many goods and services have negative value and sell just by exploitation of weaknesses of human behaviour and conscience.

But there are others like antibiotics or computers which definitely changed the world  in positive direction. And there are a lot of them. You can have also other reasons. And to find a right ones, you need to filter out all false motivations, which every of us have due to manipulative nature of society.

It is simple. Imagine you have actually spent most of your life pursuing your idea, and now you are old, and apparently going to rest in peace. Ask yourself some strategically important questions.

• Would you be happy if your innovation was not implemented in spite of all applied effort?
• Would you really be happy if it was implemented as you wished?
• What are other things to do which is definitely necessary to be happy in that dramatic moment?
• What will you feel if one day (may be soon) you suddenly lose ability to continue working on it?

This answers can take a serious time. And, for some people, they can feel uncomfortable. But, obviously, they worth it, because the bet is your whole life. 

I met some futuristic-oriented people who say: we do not need in these questions because we will never die due to progress of medicine and bio-nano-technology. Well, I really like nanomedicine ideas. But they have nothing to do with death and sense of life. There are two reasons.

First one is the next:  the weapons are easier to develop than shelters, and, dreaming about machines, healing at molecular level, one can imagine machines, doing something opposite. Just as guns definitely saved a lot pf us from tigers and lions, but not from ourselves. Second reason is a limited nature of our scientific knowledge about nature does not allow us to consider machines as absolutely guaranteed means to achieve any goal. Thus, it is better to face forementioned questions than to avoid them.

Really, robust, life-sense-consistent innovations are not so common. They create positive value with minor drawbacks. They serve people instead of exploiting them. Be very sensitive to your heart and conscience (if they sound silent, you may have to pay them more attention, but not to ignore). 

Will there still exist any area for innovation which you feel consistent with your personal life strategy? If no, it is OK. Nobody is urged to innovate just for fashion or impressing somebody, or raising adrenaline, getting better self-evaluation, or "arguing" something to somebody. It is a really enduring way.

But if your answer will be yes... Welcome to this crazy and brave world. Our civilisation is driven by people like you, and I wish you great success. Although nobody usually respect new ideas, you can take my respect in advance.

In the next blog post let's take a serious look at area where you consider an invention idea to be created. Ensure to follow my blog to be immediately notified when it will be ready for you.