Stanford Online
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56:30 · 26K views · May 30, 2017
Part two of Alan Kay's Stanford Startup School lecture on inventing the future. He draws on his time at Xerox PARC and elsewhere to discuss how to think about new technology and what makes ideas useful.
Frequently suggested in Ask HN threads on finding ideas, creativity and why incumbents like Xerox missed what they invented.
13 comments from Hacker News
I don't know that I can say I'm particularly good at this, but to the extent that I do have any original / good ideas, I think a big part of it is this: 1. Know at least a little bit, about a lot of stuff. 2. Know a lot about at least a few things. 3. Constantly trawl for new "stuff" (eg, read books, magazines, the web, watch documentaries, etc.) 4. Think about how to combine different bits of the "stuff" you have in your head. Take notes, write down lots of ideas, even if they're dumb at a first glance. Keep chewing on things, and eventually the penny drops and you see some connection between things that makes sense. 5. Related to that, and I don't do this well enough myself, is "spend a lot of time thinking about the kinds of problems people have". I've read a few books on creativity / innovation / etc., but I'm not sure I can say any of them specifically helped, although a few of the ideas may have been useful without my being consciously aware of it. I read some of the Lateral Thinking book and I vaguely recall thinking it seemed somewhat useful. YMMV. [LINK] I also recommend Alan Kay's video series on "How To Invent The Future". Part I: [LINK] Part II: this video Another thing: I think sometimes ideas come out that are "ahead of their time" and seemingly die on the vine, or just get left behind. But sometimes when the environment changes, those ideas become ripe to get re-invented. There's a book title Rethink that sorta deals with this idea. [LINK] Anyway, I think there's
If I was really truly stuck for an idea and could not get anything to pop into mind, here's something I might try: Apply the "take an old idea and reinvent it in light of newer discoveries, new technology, or in application to a new problem" approach. To do that, read about old ideas in some area of interest to you, that didn't catch on, or were abandoned for whatever reason. Use Google, Wikipedia, Sci-hub, old print magazines, old newspapers, whatever it takes. Look at things through a lens of "Could I resurrect this idea with a new twist that wasn't available when it was first proposed?" Do that for enough "things" there's a chance it'll spark something. Extra hint: if you're looking for a startup idea specifically, Google for one of the multiple lists of "startup ideas that never work" that are out there. Of course it should go without saying to be very cautious about jumping into a project where many other people have failed with the same idea: there's probably a good reason for their failure. But IF you can find a new angle or hook that's "just right" maybe you can succeed. Or the whole exercise may actually bring a completely different idea to mind. Try to be open minded with this stuff. Also, find the two video series[1][2] that Alan Kay did on "Inventing the Future" and watch those. He shares a lot of great ideas in those. [1]: [LINK] [2]: this video
Yeah, I think you have a point. I'm not sure existing data is enough to generate ideas about all potential new products though, since behavior is shaped by what things/ideas/knowledge we have access to today. That is, what data is going to tell you that somebody wants a product that they can't even imagine yet? So I'd think consumer behavior data / demographic data / etc. is a useful guide, but I'm not sure it's sufficient in and of itself. All of that said, Alan Kay said something interesting in a set of lectures[1][2] he did a year or so ago. He brought up the idea of basing new product ideas on "Human Univerals", or universal aspects of human nature that really don't vary. A writer named Donald Brown wrote a book literally titled Human Univerals [3] which catalogs a number of these (a lot of them are pretty obvious though: food, shelter, sex, etc.). Kay suggested reading this book, pick one of the human univerals, and figure out a way to use technology to address that. [1]: [LINK] [2]: this video [3]: [LINK]
Counterpoint is that they picked one thing (laser printing) out of the dozens of ideas coming out of PARC and capitalized on it to the point that they were found to be a monopoly [0] and forced to license their patents [1]. Watch Alan Kay's "How to Invent The Future" talks from Stanford about this [2] and he talks in more depth. I don't think any company could have built products around all of the ideas that came out of there and been successful, they would have been focused on too many things. [0] [LINK] [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] and this video
I'll repeat my answer to the previous iteration[1] of this question from a couple of weeks ago: ---- You might find something of use in some of this stuff: [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] ---- In addition, the two videos on "How to Invent the Future" by Alan Kay might be inspirational to you (or anybody else thinking about this topic): Part I - [LINK] Part II - this video Actually, this entire playlist is quite interesting, even if you're not looking to launch a startup right now - this video [1]: [LINK]