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The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen
A different way of discovering and developing the best business ideas Jack Welch once said, "Someone, somewhere has a better idea." In this myth-busting book, the authors reveal that great business ideas do not spring from innate creativity, or necessarily from the brilliant minds of people. Rather, great ideas come to those who are in the habit of looking for great ideas all around them, all the time. Too often, people fall into the trap of thinking that the only worthwhile idea is a thoroughly original one. Idea Hunters know better. They understand that valuable ideas are already out there, waiting to be found - and not just in the usual places. · Shows how to expand your capacity to find and develop winning business ideas · Explains why ideas are a critical asset for every manager and professional, not just for those who do "creative" · Reveals how to seek out and select the ideas that best serve your purposes and goals and define who you are, as a professional · Offers practical tips on how to master the everyday habits of an Idea Hunter, which include cultivating great conversations The book is filled with illustrative accounts of successful Idea Hunters and stories from thriving "idea" companies. Warren Buffet, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Mary Kay Ash, Twitter, and Pixar Animation Studios are among the many profiled.
1. Know your gig. In other words, decide what you’re all about as a professional, and where you want to be heading in your career and projects. Without a concrete sense of purpose and goals, you won’t know what you’re looking for—in the vast jungle of ideas and information. And you’ll be defenseless against the demons of information overload.
2. Don’t let the job, company, or industry define your Hunt for ideas. You want ideas that stand out, and to get them, you have to chart your own course. That means creating your own collection of information and idea sources, different from the sources being tapped by everyone else in your business. Don’t fall victim to the plague of “me too” ideas.
3. Be interested, not just interesting. All of us naturally want to be interesting, but in the Hunt for ideas, being interested in the world around you is of equal or greater importance. Part of being interested is to be careful about the signals you send to idea-bearers, who can be anyone, at any time.
4. Be a “T” rather than a purely “I” professional. The “I” type (think narrow and tight) is deeply versed in a specific area of expertise, while the “T” professional (think extended and broad) has a greater breadth of skills and interests. Both types of professional have much to offer, but “T” people are better at fostering the diverse connections and conversations needed to bring exceptional ideas to the surface.
5. Even if you’re on the right track with an idea, you’ll get run over, if you’re just standing there (to paraphrase Will Rogers). Your ideas are worth little unless they’re in motion, shifting in response to fresh data and conversation, evolving through stages of reflection and prototyping.
Co-Author Bill Fischer 6. Understand that failure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, you’ll want to build failure into your Hunt for the best ideas, with the prolific use of prototyping (getting your ideas initially into some rough form). The point is to test your ideas as frequently as possible and to learn rapidly, before committing to a product or program.
7. Get the room right. Arrange your physical workspace in ways that will help you collide with and generate useful ideas. For example, store your hot ideas in folders or piles that are visible. Make sure that the books and materials closest at hand are the ones you need for your current projects.
8. Push the Hot Buttons. Link your idea to something that keeps the boss or client up at night. If you can do that, your idea will have a much better chance of getting noticed and winning acceptance.
9. Think compatibility, or “one revolution at a time.” Be ready to explain how your breakthrough idea fits into “the way we do things around here.” An idea that requires too much change in an organization may never see the light of day.
10. Focus on “Try-ability.” Make it easy for people to try out your idea, before buying into it. Think like Apple, which lets people listen to 30-second snippets of music on iTunes before they buy a track or CD. Customers and colleagues are far more likely to sign on if they’re less worried about making a decision they’ll come to regret.
1. Know your gig. In other words, decide what you’re all about as a professional, and where you want to be heading in your career and projects. Without a concrete sense of purpose and goals, you won’t know what you’re looking for—in the vast jungle of ideas and information. And you’ll be defenseless against the demons of information overload.
2. Don’t let the job, company, or industry define your Hunt for ideas. You want ideas that stand out, and to get them, you have to chart your own course. That means creating your own collection of information and idea sources, different from the sources being tapped by everyone else in your business. Don’t fall victim to the plague of “me too” ideas.
3. Be interested, not just interesting. All of us naturally want to be interesting, but in the Hunt for ideas, being interested in the world around you is of equal or greater importance. Part of being interested is to be careful about the signals you send to idea-bearers, who can be anyone, at any time.
4. Be a “T” rather than a purely “I” professional. The “I” type (think narrow and tight) is deeply versed in a specific area of expertise, while the “T” professional (think extended and broad) has a greater breadth of skills and interests. Both types of professional have much to offer, but “T” people are better at fostering the diverse connections and conversations needed to bring exceptional ideas to the surface.
5. Even if you’re on the right track with an idea, you’ll get run over, if you’re just standing there (to paraphrase Will Rogers). Your ideas are worth little unless they’re in motion, shifting in response to fresh data and conversation, evolving through stages of reflection and prototyping.
Co-Author Bill Fischer 6. Understand that failure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, you’ll want to build failure into your Hunt for the best ideas, with the prolific use of prototyping (getting your ideas initially into some rough form). The point is to test your ideas as frequently as possible and to learn rapidly, before committing to a product or program.
7. Get the room right. Arrange your physical workspace in ways that will help you collide with and generate useful ideas. For example, store your hot ideas in folders or piles that are visible. Make sure that the books and materials closest at hand are the ones you need for your current projects.
8. Push the Hot Buttons. Link your idea to something that keeps the boss or client up at night. If you can do that, your idea will have a much better chance of getting noticed and winning acceptance.
9. Think compatibility, or “one revolution at a time.” Be ready to explain how your breakthrough idea fits into “the way we do things around here.” An idea that requires too much change in an organization may never see the light of day.
10. Focus on “Try-ability.” Make it easy for people to try out your idea, before buying into it. Think like Apple, which lets people listen to 30-second snippets of music on iTunes before they buy a track or CD. Customers and colleagues are far more likely to sign on if they’re less worried about making a decision they’ll come to regret.
177 pages, Hardcover
First published April 4, 2011
36 people are currently reading
741 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
March 31, 2015
Like a number of other "business" books out there, this has the feel of a magazine article and is appealing if you had a tiring week (as I did!) but perhaps a little lightweight perhaps if you're looking for a more substantial how-to guide. The authors managed to get a good number of the people they cited as examples to write marvellous reviews of the book so my expectations were perhaps raised too high.
Having said that, it did re-inspire me to observe the world through idea-seeking, join-the-dots eyes.
Here's a decent peek into the book: http://yourstory.com/2012/12/book-rev...
Having said that, it did re-inspire me to observe the world through idea-seeking, join-the-dots eyes.
Here's a decent peek into the book: http://yourstory.com/2012/12/book-rev...
October 29, 2019
A fantastic read on creating, absorbing, connecting, modifying, applying Ideas. The assessment at the end showed me my strong and weak areas to work upon deliberately. This is a life long pursuit which will reward us with great satisfaction and excellence in all areas of human lives.
January 31, 2014
The Idea Hunter discusses the process creative people use to hatch, develop and implement ideas (new or previously considered) to create new products, processes and ways of thinking. While the authors present the notion of idea creation in the business/commercial/professional context, the process may also be adapted to other areas of personal growth, advancement and enjoyment. Using the word "idea" as an acronym for four principles in the "idea getting process" (each letter in the word "idea" standing for a word describing a part of the process), the authors outline an approach for spawning new ideas: "I" stands for being "interested" in a person's passion (his/her "gig"). A person must be sufficiently passionate about his gig to motivate him to action, to really investigate (ask questions). "D" stands for "diversification"; his investigation into his passion must extend beyond normal channels and carry him to new and varied avenues of inquiry. "E" stands for "exercise", or the act of thinking and rethinking, drafting and redrafting; in short, the process of synthesis. "A" stands of "agile", or the process of sifting, changing and adjusting to new information. Apple's Steve Jobs was once asked how to find and dismiss bad ideas. That is easy, he said, the difficulty is to discard good ideas (meaning, there are two or three best ideas, and a person must not be distracted by pursuing too many other good ideas at the same time). The authors illustrate the concepts presented by referring to the processes followed by great creators from the past (and present): Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Sam Walton, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Jim Koch (Samuel Adams Beer), and many other creative luminaries. The book suggests that the creation of innovative ideas results from passion, inquisitiveness, hard work, expansive thinking (going beyond our specific area of expertise), inter-connecting with others, and thinking outside the box. You don't have to be brilliant to come up with great ideas; but you must be passionately interested, active and persistent.
February 5, 2012
This is a great book! puts a whole new perspective on ideas. There might be a lot of them but only some of them will be great. Highly recommended.
April 30, 2012
Motivating in some areas. Coul have just been a magazine article.
November 6, 2012
Liked it
February 25, 2014
Passive point of view
great model and mindset on finding ideas. good examples of well known people who have done these things. ddddgghh hhhhh
great model and mindset on finding ideas. good examples of well known people who have done these things. ddddgghh hhhhh
October 19, 2011
This book contains some good, practical advice and A LOT of talk about the first generation iPod.
April 23, 2019
Brief but pointed. I didn't learn anything new from this book but it brought up some points that I am familiar with but have, perhaps, not used to my maximum benefit. It also cast some existing ideas into a slightly different light. Here is a brief summary of the ground it covers.
Ideas are a product of behaviors, not bright and shining moments of singular inspiration. They are a process of accretion and association and served best by saving all the scraps that your mind brings to you. Ideas come from other people, so increasing your interactions will naturally increase your accumulation of ideas. Good ideas come about as a result of quantity, not quality, so encouraging even bad ideas is a good idea. Ideas are evoked conversationally and it's best to encourage them in conversation rather than to quash the conversation through your words or physical stance. Exaptation, the process of using an existing idea for a new and unforeseen purpose, is a good idea. Who you are, the behaviors you exhibit in relation to ideas which excite you, is an area worthy of development in pursuit of the meta-'gig' of idea hunting. Cultivating relationships with people with different information and inspiration streams than you is a good idea. Cultivating relationships with connectors is a good idea.
Ideas are a product of behaviors, not bright and shining moments of singular inspiration. They are a process of accretion and association and served best by saving all the scraps that your mind brings to you. Ideas come from other people, so increasing your interactions will naturally increase your accumulation of ideas. Good ideas come about as a result of quantity, not quality, so encouraging even bad ideas is a good idea. Ideas are evoked conversationally and it's best to encourage them in conversation rather than to quash the conversation through your words or physical stance. Exaptation, the process of using an existing idea for a new and unforeseen purpose, is a good idea. Who you are, the behaviors you exhibit in relation to ideas which excite you, is an area worthy of development in pursuit of the meta-'gig' of idea hunting. Cultivating relationships with people with different information and inspiration streams than you is a good idea. Cultivating relationships with connectors is a good idea.
May 22, 2019
How to Ideate - How to cultivate ideas, how to breed them, how to tame them, how to manufacture new ideas, how to stack them together, this is a tidy manual about how to ideate.
The Art of Ideation should have been a better title and I would have prospered if I had read this book a decade alas, if only I could turn back time.
The book is a derivative work, almost all of it is derived from autobiographies and biographies of great thinkers over the decades and analyzed to find similar patterns with respect to their attitudes to idea cultivation. I wish that the author has done more contemporary research though. I have wasted tons of years re inventing the wheel, because I practice most of the techniques that are mentioned in this book, repeatedly!
Here is a list of books mentioned by the author:
The Brand You 50
The Science of Hitting
Poor Charlie's Almanack
The People's Tycoon
The Snowball
Innovate like Edison
Googled - The end of world as we know it
Jack Straight from the Gut
Sam Walton Made in America
The Creative Habit
The Animated Man
The Leaders guide to
The Art of Ideation should have been a better title and I would have prospered if I had read this book a decade alas, if only I could turn back time.
The book is a derivative work, almost all of it is derived from autobiographies and biographies of great thinkers over the decades and analyzed to find similar patterns with respect to their attitudes to idea cultivation. I wish that the author has done more contemporary research though. I have wasted tons of years re inventing the wheel, because I practice most of the techniques that are mentioned in this book, repeatedly!
Here is a list of books mentioned by the author:
The Brand You 50
The Science of Hitting
Poor Charlie's Almanack
The People's Tycoon
The Snowball
Innovate like Edison
Googled - The end of world as we know it
Jack Straight from the Gut
Sam Walton Made in America
The Creative Habit
The Animated Man
The Leaders guide to
November 17, 2017
A great book on idea gathering that defines four main elements needed for successful idea hunting :
- Being interested - curiosity is more important than cleverness as it helps to see the extraordinary in ordinary happenings and leads to real learnings
- Diverse - expanding towards our discomfort zone, communicating with diverse people out of our usual social circle leads to discovering new perspectives and finding analogies between different areas
- Exercised - the idea hunting has to be a constant process. In order to become good at something we need to always practice it
- Agile - ideas never come whole and polished. A constant idea flow helps identify small fragments of ideas and connect them to create a new one
- Being interested - curiosity is more important than cleverness as it helps to see the extraordinary in ordinary happenings and leads to real learnings
- Diverse - expanding towards our discomfort zone, communicating with diverse people out of our usual social circle leads to discovering new perspectives and finding analogies between different areas
- Exercised - the idea hunting has to be a constant process. In order to become good at something we need to always practice it
- Agile - ideas never come whole and polished. A constant idea flow helps identify small fragments of ideas and connect them to create a new one
July 29, 2022
Easy and fast to read with stories of the usual suspects, enlightening the reader about methods of finding ideas with yet another acronym. I've not read many business-like books like this, but the gist is how I expected, common sense but still inspirational. What bothers me the most is that "the usual suspects" are always people like Walton, Disney, Koch, Edison, Buffett, and people with loads of money and freedom to go idea hunting and to go making realities of those ideas - where missing the target or doing wrong is not that big of a loss. For the common man, working 9-5, with a few kids to think of and no extra time, these things don't really work and if you get a good idea or two, they are too big of a risk to even try.
February 27, 2020
"Learning is not a product of schooling but the lifelong attempt to acquire it." ✍🏻
•
•
Like a number of other "business" books out there, this has the feel of a magazine article and is appealing if you had a tiring week (as I did!) but perhaps a little lightweight perhaps if you're looking for a more substantial how-to guide. The authors managed to get a good number of the people they cited as examples to write marvellous reviews of the book so my expectations were perhaps raised too high.
•
Having said that, it did re-inspire me to observe the world through idea-seeking, join-the-dots eyes.
•
•
Like a number of other "business" books out there, this has the feel of a magazine article and is appealing if you had a tiring week (as I did!) but perhaps a little lightweight perhaps if you're looking for a more substantial how-to guide. The authors managed to get a good number of the people they cited as examples to write marvellous reviews of the book so my expectations were perhaps raised too high.
•
Having said that, it did re-inspire me to observe the world through idea-seeking, join-the-dots eyes.
August 30, 2017
This was a fantastic guide to ideation. My favorite insight from the book is that "the idea" is already out there. It's not about inventing something new; it's about combining, reworking and refining existing ideas. I'd recommend anyone reading through this book take the time to complete the exercises.
July 11, 2019
This is one of those books that has to sell in airport bookstores. Traveling businesspeople stop, look, and think, "man, I should have more ideas than I do. I will buy this book." I have a better idea for them: read the title, glance at the table of contents, and then spend the rest of your flight thinking about what this book says. You'll be right.
June 20, 2022
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December 27, 2023
A light but also solid how-to around finding your gig, being really interested, having diverse sources, applying learnings, iterating quickly, killing second good ideas and having continuing conversations.
October 5, 2025
Good book on how to systematically generate ideas and it details out the theory around it.
The book is packed with some interesting stories around theme parks, guitar strings, illuminated toothbrush etc. good things to learn from it all.
The book is packed with some interesting stories around theme parks, guitar strings, illuminated toothbrush etc. good things to learn from it all.
May 10, 2019
I liked it, but it did not blow me away by any means. Great concepts contained in the book though.
July 2, 2019
This was a brief guide to turning ideas into realities with accounts of those who navigated successful plans to fruition. It’s an interesting though, at times, unoriginal read.
March 10, 2020
One of the real mind openers.
January 28, 2021
This book is a good read but the one thing I realized is that even once you have a great idea, it's going to take a whole bunch more of them to get the idea to market. This is why it's so important to have a team. It's very difficult to come up with all the ideas you are going to need to get a single idea to market.
December 28, 2014
Remember the dark ages of scrambling to find the right lid for your coffee cup before civilisation was brought blinking into the sunshine world of standard lids? Never mind the budget deficit, a double-dip recession, famine and wars, my life was on the verge of collapse from the stress of working out which lid fitted my coffee cup at Starbucks.
The message of 'The Idea Hunter' by Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer is that it didn't take a genius to come up with the idea of a standard-size lid for take-away coffee cups. Wow Einstein, you're telling me that wasn't the work of a genius? No kidding!
Admittedly, 'The Idea Hunter' doesn't get any banal than that, but how could it? It's a formulaic book whose jargonistic language and bland, templated structure makes you want to hate it so much that it's hard to remain objective and recognise any good ideas when they appear. The first 'leverage' (as a verb) is in the preface, 'ongoing' appears on page 1 and we're only on page 5 when the laughable acronym I-D-E-A makes its first painful appearance, followed a page later by 'super-guru'. If you get to page 28, you'll come across the irony-free use of the term "wow-ize". Throughout, we are in the world of the inspirational management mystic - the kind who gets shown the door in any serious organisation except in America (and even there they went out of fashion a decade ago).
The usual business paragons are here: Warren Buffett, Neutron Jack Welch and Steve Jobs; but the first company to get the sycophancy treatment is Intuit, an organisation whose business methods have drawn some interesting comments on the web.
In some ways, this book lives by the principles it expounds. It insists that the best ideas aren't original but come from using "loose ties", picking up ideas from places that don't have an obvious link with a company's business, and doing a lot of talking and reading. This is sensible advice and I won't disparage it.
In keeping with the authors' philosophy that the best ideas are found rather than created, there doesn't seem to be much primary research here and the quotes from the top executives featured read like they're secondhand. The arguments follow the standard structure of hypothesis-quote-q.e.d., with little explanation of how to use those examples to advantage. Indeed, it seems to revel in its intellectual shallowness, and I can't see how the authors' method is worth of its own trademark.
There is some useful content in here and there is some practical advice later in the book, but its pompous style and self-importance are off-putting.
The message of 'The Idea Hunter' by Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer is that it didn't take a genius to come up with the idea of a standard-size lid for take-away coffee cups. Wow Einstein, you're telling me that wasn't the work of a genius? No kidding!
Admittedly, 'The Idea Hunter' doesn't get any banal than that, but how could it? It's a formulaic book whose jargonistic language and bland, templated structure makes you want to hate it so much that it's hard to remain objective and recognise any good ideas when they appear. The first 'leverage' (as a verb) is in the preface, 'ongoing' appears on page 1 and we're only on page 5 when the laughable acronym I-D-E-A makes its first painful appearance, followed a page later by 'super-guru'. If you get to page 28, you'll come across the irony-free use of the term "wow-ize". Throughout, we are in the world of the inspirational management mystic - the kind who gets shown the door in any serious organisation except in America (and even there they went out of fashion a decade ago).
The usual business paragons are here: Warren Buffett, Neutron Jack Welch and Steve Jobs; but the first company to get the sycophancy treatment is Intuit, an organisation whose business methods have drawn some interesting comments on the web.
In some ways, this book lives by the principles it expounds. It insists that the best ideas aren't original but come from using "loose ties", picking up ideas from places that don't have an obvious link with a company's business, and doing a lot of talking and reading. This is sensible advice and I won't disparage it.
In keeping with the authors' philosophy that the best ideas are found rather than created, there doesn't seem to be much primary research here and the quotes from the top executives featured read like they're secondhand. The arguments follow the standard structure of hypothesis-quote-q.e.d., with little explanation of how to use those examples to advantage. Indeed, it seems to revel in its intellectual shallowness, and I can't see how the authors' method is worth of its own trademark.
There is some useful content in here and there is some practical advice later in the book, but its pompous style and self-importance are off-putting.
May 13, 2012
I really like The Idea Hunter because there is a lot of solid and sensible information about the steps to take to find the best ideas.
The contents of this book is a combination of biographies about different inventors or business people, the way that they discovered the best idea and how they adapted to the situation to make that idea work.
My favorite part of this books is the section that challenges the reader to consider which one of the best ideas is the one to keep and why discarding or storing the other ideas may prove to be beneficial at a later time.
This is really a different perspective on how the best ideas reach this status.
I listen to the audio book version of this publication. The book contains 5 discs.
The contents of this book is a combination of biographies about different inventors or business people, the way that they discovered the best idea and how they adapted to the situation to make that idea work.
My favorite part of this books is the section that challenges the reader to consider which one of the best ideas is the one to keep and why discarding or storing the other ideas may prove to be beneficial at a later time.
This is really a different perspective on how the best ideas reach this status.
I listen to the audio book version of this publication. The book contains 5 discs.
May 1, 2014
I enjoyed the book while I was listening to it on tape. But I waited a while to write this and found I had to read the reviews to remember the details of the book. The book made a good point about there being lots of ideas out there and needing to keep track of possible solutions that might work on a later project if they don't get used on a current project. There points about where to look for ideas by going outside the normal places to avoid group think were good. They pointed to the importance of pulling from a wide range of sources to come up with great creative solutions. This may seem simplistic and obvious but they had good ideas for where and how to get ideas/solutions for problems and it was a good overview.
January 15, 2016
Observe and communicate - these were the only two things I came across throughout the 3/4th book I read before I decided to stop reading it. There are no tips or guidance as to how one can become an Idea Hunter, not even on observing and communicating.
In the past 9 months, it's been rare that I get disappointed with a book and this is the second time I have picked a book only to leave it before finishing it. It was an utter waste of time.
In the past 9 months, it's been rare that I get disappointed with a book and this is the second time I have picked a book only to leave it before finishing it. It was an utter waste of time.
April 17, 2012
My initial take on this book is that there is not much new to be found on ideation.
It does however manage to give a good overview and many practical examples of how to approach the 'hunt' for ideas.
I am, however, somewhat puzzled at one part of the 'package', namely the recommendation to first 'find your gig' as this seems quite contrary to the musings on taking an agile approach later in the book.
It does however manage to give a good overview and many practical examples of how to approach the 'hunt' for ideas.
I am, however, somewhat puzzled at one part of the 'package', namely the recommendation to first 'find your gig' as this seems quite contrary to the musings on taking an agile approach later in the book.
October 17, 2011
Very easy to read... kinda inspiring... but didn't excite me much...
The authors discuss 4 principles for attitudes and strategies for idea hunters abbreviated in the letters of I-D-E-A...
I cannot say I knew everything mentioned in this book -because obviously I didn't- but it somehow felt like that...
The authors discuss 4 principles for attitudes and strategies for idea hunters abbreviated in the letters of I-D-E-A...
I cannot say I knew everything mentioned in this book -because obviously I didn't- but it somehow felt like that...
December 23, 2012
Be curious and interested, discerning is what is a source of joy--taps into talents/gifts—serves others, Buffet has a circle of confidence and does not stray outside of circle to tech stocks and perhaps government too, a 20% rule for time to refresh and innovate, be a good listener observer questioner, live in the ? not the answer perhaps, Interested diverse exercise agile test at end.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews