How do you get Great Ideas?

Ideo are a design company that I hold in high regard. If Fabrica would ever reply to me I would be applying for jobs with them... or doing my masters in design writing in New Yoik.

Anyway.

I just downloaded a widget that asks a new question every day.

Today's question is: How do you get great ideas?

The grammar seems a little incorrect, but who am I to judge?

My thoughts are: that great ideas are not gotten. They do not just appear. They are not something that wakes you up in the middle of the night and by morning you are done masterminding your ideas.

A great idea is something that grew from an idea.

I'm going to use a quick and partially appropriate metaphor. It is like (or a simile if you're Ed Byrne) the Great Wall of China. It is great. It started with an idea, it started with a thought, it started with one brick, and one pair of hands, followed by many thousands of others. There was one person though that laid the first stone/brick.

And then as the chinese proverb says 'Many hand make right wolk.'

That's what an idea is. It's not something forced, and more importantly it comes from the want to fulfill and need (rather than the need to fulfill a want).

That is how great ideas come to be. From one thought, that is built on over time, and developed by other people to the point of it becoming great. More than likely your 'Great Idea' will far succeed your own meandering existence.