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The Idea List

Guest post by: Jim Stovall

Article Overview: Sometimes we feel like there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who have great ideas and those who don't. Often, when we see a new product, a new business, a new book, or a new movie, we wonder how people come up with these ideas. Sometimes if we will explore the deep recesses of our minds and be honest with ourselves, we'll realize that we have had similar or even better ideas in the past.

The Idea List

Sometimes we feel like there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who have great ideas and those who don't. Often, when we see a new product, a new business, a new book, or a new movie, we wonder how people come up with these ideas. Sometimes if we will explore the deep recesses of our minds and be honest with ourselves, we'll realize that we have had similar or even better ideas in the past.

Ideas are like an oil well. They can produce great profit if you are prepared to take advantage of them. If you have a pipeline in place along with an oil storage tank, it's wonderful to have a new oil well flowing; however, if you strike oil and don't have a way to transport it or store it, your oil well will just create a big mess all over the ground.

All of us have great ideas that pop into our heads at random times. Since we are not in a position to immediately act upon most of these ideas, we dismiss them as irrelevant. If you are going to be a successful person in your professional or even your personal life, you are going to have to realize great ideas are regularly given to you as gifts. They can become the most valuable commodities on earth if you will utilize them, and they become worthless and even frustrating if you ignore them.

When I began writing these weekly columns over a decade ago, I seriously doubted whether I had the ability to write more than a handful. Today, after writing over 500 columns, I realize that ideas for new columns are emerging faster than I can write them. I keep a running file which lists all of the future column ideas that come to mind. It is interesting that when I go back to review this idea list, rarely do I remember the ideas until I discover them in the file; therefore, if I had not written them down, they would have wandered away into the great wasteland of long-forgotten ideas. Then, invariably, someday I would be reading someone else's column or book and realize that same concept had occurred to me months or years ago.

The same concept applies to my business and even my personal life. When I have an idea that might improve our current operation, I write it down and make a note in my calendar to reconsider it later. Many of the great innovations in our organization have come from these ideas that were deferred and acted upon later when conditions were appropriate. Seeds are extremely valuable, even when it's not yet time to plant.

As you go through your day today, determine to take advantage of every idea, either now or in the future.

Today's the day!

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Article Tags: continuous improvement, idea generation, jim stovall, new business



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