Mitch Ditkoff's “14 Ways to get Breakthrough Ideas” on http://changethis.com/ is a pretty good article about innovation. Pretty good, meaning that I liked the article as a whole, but at the same time disagreed with some points and found others to be fairly obvious. This blog post will be devoted mainly to dissecting 3 of Mr. Ditkoff's "14 Ways to get Breakthrough Ideas", talking about either how much I agree and how I will implement the idea in my own life, or why I disagree with a certain idea. That being said...
A. "11. Brainstorm."- Brainstorming is something that I dreaded in high school (mostly because it was only used for boring English assignments), but have embraced while in college. I guess I still don't really brainstorm for assignments ever, but I still experience group think in my comedy club, Kamikaze Comedy. Brainstorming is extremely helpful for a comedian. Not only does it allow you to test material before you go on stage, but it ends up improving your material because most of the other people in the group have some idea about how to make your jokes better and they all want you to succeed. Without my group's brainstorming sessions, I probably wouldn't have done quite as well on stage a couple of nights. I mean, I still wouldn't have bombed because I'm freaking hilarious...but I would have been slightly less great.
B. "12. Look For Happy Accidents."- This is one of the "14 Ways" that I don't like. It gives good historical examples of great inventions being born from a mix of hard work and dumb luck, but I feel as if Ditkoff may be promoting a bad idea here. He acts as if these dumb-luck type accidents happen all of the time and that it is as important as the actual work put into the product. The wording he uses almost makes it seem as if he's saying that you shouldn't work as hard, but sit back and count on luck to complete your ideas instead. I think I can understand what he was meaning to say, but the wording makes this "Way" seem very irresponsible.
C. "10. Hang Out With A Diverse Group of People"- I agree wholeheartedly with the concept of diversifying the groups of people one interacts with. Most of us in college sit through classes with people enrolled in the same or a similar major, and then go back to our dorms where we have been placed with someone that the university felt has a lot in common with you. This is a natural creativity-stifling environment, especially bad for a student in a media-related program where originality is the key to success. I know personally that hanging out with a more diverse group of people will definitely help my comedy. In fact, it already has. Since I've been in college, I have written way more stand up sets and screenplays about much different topics than I would have written about in high school. However, there is still definitely room for me to spread my proverbial wings into even more diverse groups. That's why I chose this prompt as the one I acted on, and I made a list of people who I've met so far up here in Athens, but didn't hang out with because they didn't fit my normal friend archetype. I look forward to hanging out with them in the coming weeks.
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